Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 207 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#121

Post by defrost »

sircastor wrote: post #119

I used to work in luxury automotive infotainment. The general feeling is that luxury customers want luxury level systems. EVs are still considered by the industry to be upper-level vehicles. Which is to say they still believe they’re catering to with more money. We’re not going to see a low-tech EV for a long time. In my opinion, we’re not ever going to see one. And respectfully to you and all the other folks here wh…

> We’re not going to see a low-tech EV for a long time.

Have a look at last years low end BYD domestic market EV offers, there's a crazy amount of choice in style, design, and no frills offerings.

By "we" I'm guessing you mean the tariff protected domestic north american and european markets.

The domestic BYD Seagull sells for under $10K USD on home soil and isn't being exported much ATM:

https://www.drive.com.au/news/2023-byd-seagull-unveiled-not-...

China spins out a lot of variations on a theme, there's bound to be limited run versions with little more than the absolute bare essentials to have a functional EV - the asian phone market is an indicator of the kind of range that is just not seen in the western markets.

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#122

Post by TillE »

bitwize wrote: post #112
ofrzeta wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, so called "Vision Zero": "The EU’s long-term goal is to move as close as possible to zero fatalities in road transport by 2050" https://cinea.ec.europa.eu/publications/eu-road-safety-towar...

It's a good start, but a grander vision would be to reduce or eliminate the need for cars altogether. You can build and sustain a mighty civilization without automobiles at all . Per Poi Dog Pondering: Well the ancient Egyptians and the other Africans The Mayans, the Incas, and all the Polynesians All around the world, a long long time ago People would walk wherever they had to go

Europe has generally done a very good job with urban transit. The real problem is that long-distance train trips cost a fortune, typically several times more than a budget airline. And ticketing systems between countries (within the EU) are poorly integrated.

Despite many years of hand-wringing about environmental impacts of air travel, almost nothing has been done to address this.

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#123

Post by shiroiushi »

m463 wrote: post #105

I hope someday there will be a backlash. - dumb TVs, or open-source TVs. - dumb phones, or completely open-source smart phones. - dumb EVs, or completely open-source EVs. I think the profit for open source stuff is not guaranteed, so funding a company is hard. People who fund companies want lock-in, patents, product monopoly. They don't want something that can be copied and productized by another company that had no…

>dumb phones, or completely open-source smart phones.

What use are dumb phones (i.e., feature phones)? They're only good for actually talking to people, and the only people I know who regularly use their phones for talking are my elderly relatives (in their 80s). Everyone younger than that uses their phones for: texting, games, web, various apps such as banking, etc. Actual talking is fairly rare, and usually only with some business (e.g. calling the doctor's office to schedule an appointment because they don't have a website reservation system, and even these places are dying out or moving online slowly).

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#124

Post by shiroiushi »

rdtsc wrote: post #118
bluGill wrote: post #55

Which would you prefer - a brand new basic car with the minimum legal features (so you get a backup camera, tire pressure monitoring, airbags ...). Or a 5 year old car with features like air conditioning, radio, infotainment, heated seats and so on? The reality is people who are cheap buy used cars anyway as for the same price as a bare bones new car they can get all the luxury features as well. People who care about…

I would buy a cheap basic car. I don’t want any fancy features and don’t want to care about how someone else took or didn’t take care of the car.

There's dozens of us! Dozens!

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#125

Post by sircastor »

defrost wrote: post #121
sircastor wrote: post #119

I used to work in luxury automotive infotainment. The general feeling is that luxury customers want luxury level systems. EVs are still considered by the industry to be upper-level vehicles. Which is to say they still believe they’re catering to with more money. We’re not going to see a low-tech EV for a long time. In my opinion, we’re not ever going to see one. And respectfully to you and all the other folks here wh…

> We’re not going to see a low-tech EV for a long time. Have a look at last years low end BYD domestic market EV offers, there's a crazy amount of choice in style, design, and no frills offerings. By "we" I'm guessing you mean the tariff protected domestic north american and european markets. The domestic BYD Seagull sells for under $10K USD on home soil and isn't being exported much ATM: https://www.drive.com.au/new…

> By "we" I'm guessing you mean the tariff protected domestic north american and european markets.

Yes, I apologize for the western-centric approach there, though I would extend that position to the UAE and Saudi-Arabia.

The NA OEMs are not interested in bringing very low-cost vehicles to market. And the low-cost OEMs from Europe haven’t really been able to reach the American market. aside from a very outlier products.

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#126

Post by shiroiushi »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #97
doix wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bet you could cut about 25% of the price off by removing goofy crap you don't need. Most of those things are low cost, high margin extras. Removing them wouldn't really decrease the cost of the car for the manufacturer. A lot of the time, if you don't pay for the extra's, they are included in the car anyway because it's not worth the effort of customizing the build. They are just disabled in software.

This is something that people without a manufacturing background often don't appreciate. Modern production lines are so efficient that it's frequently more cost effective to build all units of a product with the same hardware but disable some features in software. I first came across this 20+ years ago working for an office equipment manufacturer. We had to add code for the service people to enable a feature in the m…

Yeah, this kind of thing will really piss off individual consumers, but corporate buyers have an entirely different mindset. Corporate customers frequently lease stuff anyway, rather than buying it, because of the way that this affects taxation.

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#127

Post by defrost »

sircastor wrote: post #125
defrost wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’re not going to see a low-tech EV for a long time. Have a look at last years low end BYD domestic market EV offers, there's a crazy amount of choice in style, design, and no frills offerings. By "we" I'm guessing you mean the tariff protected domestic north american and european markets. The domestic BYD Seagull sells for under $10K USD on home soil and isn't being exported much ATM: https://www.drive.com.au/new…

> By "we" I'm guessing you mean the tariff protected domestic north american and european markets. Yes, I apologize for the western-centric approach there, though I would extend that position to the UAE and Saudi-Arabia. The NA OEMs are not interested in bringing very low-cost vehicles to market. And the low-cost OEMs from Europe haven’t really been able to reach the American market. aside from a very outlier product…

No drama.

Odd aside, these days "low tech" (minimal effort, low cost) cars are going to have screens and control by wire interfaces for many things - it's 2024 and touch screens are a throw away disposable item compared to physical controls, tension cables, routing looms for every physical switch and interface light bulb, etc.

In a sense the ideal notion of a "low tech car" is now a hand crafted artisan object.

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#128

Post by dyauspitr »

shiroiushi wrote: post #123
m463 wrote: post #105

I hope someday there will be a backlash. - dumb TVs, or open-source TVs. - dumb phones, or completely open-source smart phones. - dumb EVs, or completely open-source EVs. I think the profit for open source stuff is not guaranteed, so funding a company is hard. People who fund companies want lock-in, patents, product monopoly. They don't want something that can be copied and productized by another company that had no…

>dumb phones, or completely open-source smart phones. What use are dumb phones (i.e., feature phones)? They're only good for actually talking to people, and the only people I know who regularly use their phones for talking are my elderly relatives (in their 80s). Everyone younger than that uses their phones for: texting, games, web, various apps such as banking, etc. Actual talking is fairly rare, and usually only wi…

That doesn’t fit my experience. Anything that involves typing out paragraphs of text almost immediately revert to a quick phone call where you can get the idea across in seconds instead of lots of minutes. These are people in their mid and early 30s.

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#129

Post by shiroiushi »

bell-cot wrote: post #3

The really difficult and expensive part is manufacturing decent cars, at scale. The profit margins on that part generally suck - so Capitalism says "hahaha...NO". The pretty-easy-and-cheap part is adding glitzy screens to cars. Doing that gets most people all excited...and willing to shell out far more money. In an extremely well-run socialist country, there'd probably be good, low-tech electric cars.

>In an extremely well-run socialist country, there'd probably be good, low-tech electric cars.

Yep, that's exactly what happened in the Soviet Union with the Lada... ... depending on your definition of a "good car".

Re: Ask HN: Why is nobody manufacturing low tech electric cars in 2024?

#130

Post by Tagbert »

ipaddr wrote: post #93
lotsofpulp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similarly, Kia Soul has a reversing camera… and that's about it! No radar, lane assist, carplay or anything like that. According to Kia’s website, the cheapest Soul you can buy has CarPlay/Android Auto. Standard feature on the “LX”, 8in touchscreen. Does it even cost anything for an automaker to allow phones to use the screen for CarPlay/Android Auto? The cost savings must be so miniscule, and the convenience of be…

They get paid to put it in. Another revenue stream.

There is no licensing cost for Carplay, nor does Apple Pay car makers. It is purely a customer satisfaction feature. The implementation is technically pretty simple to setup on the scale of any mass-market vehicle. You can think of it as a web page with a video player on it connected via USB/Wifi.
Post reply on HN