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

Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

eupolicy.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 571 posts

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#151

Post by everdrive »

soared wrote: post #140
wrigby wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my exact same sentiment. I’m cautiously excited about the upcoming Slate Pickup[1] - I can see it being my go-to if I leave NYC, but it still won’t hit like the XJ Cherokee I drove before I gave up cars for the city. 1: https://www.slate.auto/

I like the idea of a slate but the truck bed just makes no sense at that size. I don’t understand why it’s not defaulted to another row of seats or hatchback, with the option to convert to truck. 5 ft bed without extension is kind of pointless as a bed, but huge as a trunk.

That's effectively what it is, but reverse. You buy it as a truck, and can buy seats & cap and turn it into an SUV. I see it as the closest thing you can get to a kei truck in the US without importing. Relatively cheap, good payload capacity, (better than a lot of trucks out there) effectively unable to tow, 5-foot bed, which is the same or larger than most mid-size trucks, and a tiny form factor.

It's certainly a niche vehicle, but it looks exciting if it can fill you niche.

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#152

Post by metalman »

I do get heat for my truck. I call it the truckasourus, it does take up a lot of room, I pulled out the rear seat and installed a three level shelf that fills the whole back of the cab, tools, grocieries, more tools, laundry, more food, and room on the top shelf to sleep if nessesary, then a 8 foot box, that will get replaced with a 9' flat deck, and front, middle and rear racks so I can move 24'steel, 4x8 sheets, welding gas, and whatever else, when I am not moving round bales or fire wood, other large heavy clumsy stuff. funny thing is that I have a car just for more civilised things, that costs me almost as much to sit there, as my truck costs to drive. I flashed the eprom in the truck so it gets significantly better fuel milage, and has forgotten how to go into limp mode, though the messages in the dash are dire. I could build a smaller rig, but it would fail in 1/3 of the tasks required, so it is impossible to come out ahead with running two, or hireing moving services. So the article, while funny, is narrow and snippy. Sometimes I consider a bumper sticker that would say, "Thanks for driving a Prius, I need the fuel!"

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#153

Post by ryukoposting »

jcpst wrote: post #99

First off, I agree with the point made, though I think a more reasonable comparison would be something like a subaru. The people I know who have to deal with excessive snow or mud on country roads commonly opt for that. Of course there’s the “men” who compensate for their lack of buldge with 350s, dualies, etc. If you don’t work a farm, those whips are dummm. That was a good perspective though- I grew up hearing Citr…

> I think a more reasonable comparison would be something like a subaru

Yeah, I get this is tongue-in-cheek but if you're going to try to convince Americans of this idea, you need to use units we understand, and a car we've heard of.

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#154

Post by Aurornis »

jfengel wrote: post #138
Aurornis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how differently cars would be built, if instead of maximizing for value extraction and crap nobody needs, they instead were optimized for utility and maintenance (and sure, fuel economy, aerodynamics and some sane environmental stuff). Auto manufacturers already have stripped-down base models of their entry-level vehicles. Many have commercial versions of their vehicles, especially trucks and vans, that ar…

I wonder how much of that is due to dealers, who want to upsell. Do they even keep the base model in stock, or does it have to be special ordered (or today, we can give you a "discount" on the fancy model that still has a higher profit margin for us). I'm just speculating; the same reasoning wouldn't apply to the iPhone mini. But car dealers have a lot of incentive to skew the results. It takes a fair bit of willpowe…

Anecdotally: I helped someone look for a cheap car recently and the base models are everywhere on my local lots. YMMV and I'm sure someone will respond that their area doesn't have any, but in my recent experience it wasn't hard to find a base model at all.

It's driven by consumer demand: If you can pay $30/month on your 5-year loan and get heated seats and a nicer navigation system, that's $1/day for 5 years and then you own it. It's easy to talk yourself into stepping up to something nicer that you're going to use every day.

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#155

Post by mihaaly »

Fiveplus wrote: post #12

The C15 represents a time when a vehicle was a tool. I feel vehicles want to turn into a subscription service these days. I still see these running in rural Spain and France, usually held together with wire and hope, clocking like what 400k+ km? The XUD diesel engines are practically unkillable. They have no ECU to brick, no adblue sensors to fail and put the car into limp mode and thankfully none of those DRM locked…

> If your Range Rover breaks down in a field

Do they go there?

I mostly see those in parking lots occupying two spaces (a white one 4, once) or cruising slowly in narrow high streets.

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#156

Post by [deleted] »

carlosjobim wrote: post #100
barbazoo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you like to live neighbours with this person, or share communal facilities with him? Sure why not? Because they made that comment? It’s not that they buy trucks because they are much taller than a short person but they still are. I’d rather not live next to the person with the dangerous truck.

If you can read people, you know a person like this is going to be constantly invading your privacy, inventing conflicts and complaining. Probably trying to make you join in his vendetta against some neighbour, and if you decline he will make a vendetta behind your back against you. These kind of people are so easy to spot once you have some experience.

[deleted]

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#157

Post by kube-system »

> The Ford Ranger (2020). One of the most popular pickups in the US. A key selling point is that the cabin is so high you can run over toddlers without even noticing.

The craziest thing about this criticism is that it is phrased as hyperbole but the reality is that this is seen as a small truck in the US.

The Ford Ranger actually is the best selling pickup truck in Europe for 10 straight years, but doesn’t sell as much in the US. The larger F series trucks sell more than an order of magnitude more in the US.

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#158

Post by jacquesm »

Aurornis wrote: post #143
jacquesm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modularity would be great too. Standardized connectors and outer dimensions for engines even between brands. Medium, large, small. You don't need 100 different types. Meanwhile, all this has been overtaken by the need to get away from fossil fuels as soon as we practically can. Oil should not be valued based on the cost of pumping it out of the ground but based on the cost of creating a liter of it from raw materials…

> Standardized connectors and outer dimensions for engines even between brands. Medium, large, small. You don't need 100 different types. There aren't 100 different types of engines. At any given time each auto manufacturer only has a couple different engines in production. Different models can get different variations for performance or use targets, but auto manufacturers are very good at standardizing within their…

We can do just that in lots of other industries.

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#159

Post by AlotOfReading »

Fiveplus wrote: post #23
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If your Range Rover breaks down in a field because a sensor in the air suspension noticed a voltage variance...you are stranded until a tow truck takes it to a dealer. No, you just reset the ECU and get on with your day.

With all due respect, you are confusing a software race condition with a hard fault in a safety critical system. Resetting the ECU only works if the error is a transient glitch in the code logic. If the failure is a physical sensor reading out of range? Furthermore, modern automotive architectures store permanent diagnostic trouble codes in non volatile memory specifically to prevent people from "just resetting it" t…

    Resetting the ECU only works if the error is a transient glitch in the code logic. If the failure is a physical sensor reading out of range?
In many ECUs I've worked on, most faults are treated as transient until they're seen across multiple cycles. Resetting often does genuinely help. Sensors do see weird transients and physically impossible values for all sorts of reasons.

Re: Allow me to introduce, the Citroen C15

#160

Post by Aurornis »

ultratalk wrote: post #74
jacquesm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modularity would be great too. Standardized connectors and outer dimensions for engines even between brands. Medium, large, small. You don't need 100 different types. Meanwhile, all this has been overtaken by the need to get away from fossil fuels as soon as we practically can. Oil should not be valued based on the cost of pumping it out of the ground but based on the cost of creating a liter of it from raw materials…

> Modularity would be great too. Unfortunately, that wouldn't pad the car companies' margins. What's best for th consumer is generally worse for the company.

Cars are highly modular. Parts are shared across as many models as possible. Engine series are designed to last 10-15 years.

The car makers increase their margins by keeping their cars modular.

Post reply on HN