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A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

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Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Lack of a mobile app. Minimalist design is great, but I still want an app to manage charging and be alerted to any vehicle issues. Noooooooooo! No apps, please ! Finally a car not tethered to and dependent on your phone, and we already have our first request to app-ify it! EDIT: Ughhh, according to the video that another user posted, it looks like there's an app, and yes, "updates" go through it :( > - Lack of go…

> Yes, definitely. It being a 2 seater is kind of a deal breaker for families. What you need is not a pickup truck. Catering to families means expensive bells and whistles, like entertainment systems, etc. > Back in the day, we'd stuff 3 kids between two adults, but these days the Safety People would have a heart attack just thinking about that. Rightfully so. Back in the day we did so many things we shouldn't have,…

> Catering to families means expensive bells and whistles, like entertainment systems, etc.

It absolutely does NOT mean those things.

Cars didn't have entertainment systems for nearly a century and families did just fine.

My entertainment system was the window. Observe the world, not just whatever AI-generated garbage some algorithm pushes to a small screen 8-10 inches away from your eyes.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#262
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Honda Fit is great. You can probably squeeze an extra decade out if you're willing to swap out the motor or transmission (used, 100k miles or so, if you shop around $2k-$3k should be doable), and if you're using it heavily then you have the advantage that most cara on the market take less abuse, so you can maybe grab a decade beyond that by picking up somebody else's used Fit when you're done repairing yours.

> used, 100k miles or so, if you shop around $2k-$3k should be doable Where are you finding a 100k mile Honda Fit for $3k? Before I bought my current daily driver, Honda Fits were on my list to look out for and in the central NJ area I never saw one in decent condition around that mileage for less than $5k. Even looking now I see people trying to part out theirs for $2k or looking for $4k for a 200k mile one. I messa…

Japanese cars, particularly cars that have been orphaned, keep their value at high mileage.

If I had to get a high mileage car in a hurry in upstate NY with some expectation that my acquisition + repair costs would be reason I'd go looking for a 2005 Buick. Maybe half of that is getting older, the other half is that my son drives a '96 Buick which has needed some creative maintenance but has been rock solid reliable after a flurry of work where we replaced aging parts.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#263
post #35

I love it. However I wonder about the overlap between people that need a truck and this particular truck. I have only owned trucks when I needed to go out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with a payload, in places with poor access to electricity. If I need to go in bumfuck nowhere without payload then there is no need for the truck, and if I need a payload in the city it's just way way cheaper to have it delivered wh…

Yes. I want this truck...but with a 4 cylinder ice engine. Nothing fancy. No needed stereo or seat warmers or complicated anything. I want a small, simple, and affordable truck with good reliability. Before anyone asks, I can't drive the tiny Japanese trucks in my state. They are cool, but look too small when people are driving what are essentially container ships with wheels these days.

Any company that made that would be penalized by CAFE: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43795946

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#264

Looks like a concept that will never actually reach the market. And if it does and I'm completely wrong, this concept is probably doomed anyways, as it is swinging far too far to the other side away from fancy tech and right into uselessly bare. I'm sure a few people are excited by this, but realistically it will have a tiny real market. Nearly no one wants manual windows and leaving them out isn't saving huge amount…

It seems performative. They remove a bunch of stuff nobody ever complained about, like paint or radio. Meanwhile it still has an app and it's still electric with pitiful range. The goal isn't to actually fix the car market, but provide a sort of self-flagellation experience so people can feel good about suffering with no radio, no ac, no auto windows... And I doubt they will reach that goal, sounds more like some kind of investor scam. With all these controversial design decisions they can brag to investors it's "making waves on popular platforms like hn".

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#268

Very exciting! Electric vehicles have the ability to be very simple, much simpler than an ICE. Although electric can't be 100% analog, I miss the old days when a car has no software updates, no telemetry, no privacy issues, no mandatory subscription for features.

Don't want or need analog: Just don't enshittify the digital! CAN bus is a great system; don't IoT it or use dark patterns.

I doubt CAN bus will be around that much longer, I know several EV manufacturers are actively phasing it out. Yes, it was revolutionary in it's time but it's a 40 year old standard that doesn't have enough bandwidth for the requirements of modern cars, and it was designed before security was even a thought. It's also unnecessarily complex wiring that adds weight to the car. Even the updated FD standard is only 8 mbps, so it's barely enough for video from a backup camera.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#269
post #35

I love it. However I wonder about the overlap between people that need a truck and this particular truck. I have only owned trucks when I needed to go out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere with a payload, in places with poor access to electricity. If I need to go in bumfuck nowhere without payload then there is no need for the truck, and if I need a payload in the city it's just way way cheaper to have it delivered wh…

Yes. I want this truck...but with a 4 cylinder ice engine. Nothing fancy. No needed stereo or seat warmers or complicated anything. I want a small, simple, and affordable truck with good reliability. Before anyone asks, I can't drive the tiny Japanese trucks in my state. They are cool, but look too small when people are driving what are essentially container ships with wheels these days.

The base model Ford Maverick XL exists and is the truck that 95% of most people need.

Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just pay somebody. In a rural area there are a lot of farmers with a big truck and a trailer and it costs less than the monthly payment on a big truck.

i'll be honest, if the rest of your profile wasn't at least somewhat corraborative, i'd say you're larping, but what you're saying is at least irresponsible. most farmers in rural area have livestock trailers, not horse trailers, hauling for hire (including if you're hauling for students at your barn or whatever) requires CDL and a bunch of other documentation, which you're not typically going to have as a farmer, an…

Often these "farmers" are horse traders or people I know with a CDL who have the right equipment and also do other work for me like cut my hay. One of them is "retired" but he waved to me driving a dump truck when I was photographing a sign for my Uni that had a field of daffodils in front of it this morning.

The farmers I associate with care a lot about their animals and I expect them to take the same care with mine. As a rural person I judge people based on relationships and reputation and not on how much insurance they have. I'd trust any of these people to haul a horse in a big-ass trailer than I would trust myself or my wife.

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