471–480 of 495 posts
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I'm trying to think of a case where regular passenger cars are driven in climate-controlled indoor settings, and I'm not having much success. What do you have in mind?
Teslas in the Las Vegas hyper loop.
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> a popular explanation When I was a kid, the urban legend question was: What if all of the Chinese jumped off a platform at the same time? Would it shake the other side of the world?
One of my favourite what ifs https://what-if.xkcd.com/8/
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>It would have been better to lay off people; many have money saved to survive a few months; others could have lend some money (and pay it back when employed again). This would have been "mean" in the short-term, but good for the entire society in the mid- and long-term. This is completely wrong and trivial to research: https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/research/average-savings-acc... Most Americans couldn't handle a $…
The fun part about recessions is that demand for savings is going up and since the most popular savings vehicle is money it means demand for borrowers and debt is going up. The people who end up unemployed have absolutely zero capacity to borrow even though they are the ones who need it the most. Thanks to our moral frameworks we interpret strategies like Keynesian fiscal stimulus as some sort of bad drug that the ec…
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First of all this "simple" car may end up being more expensive. Doing a lot of the things the old mechanical way requires a lot of labor and labor is expensive nowadays. Having to use turning wires and vacuum tubes for instrument clusters, and a bunch of pull wires for controls... Not only would that be expensive it would require skills and equipment long lost today. Oh and the wind shield wipers -- it is possible to…
So true. Computing is very cheap nowadays. It is also very reliable. If you watch Sandy Munro's videos, he mentions often how his visits with Chinese car manufacturers go, when they discuss architecture options. Customers hold up a cell phone and ask "How can we make it more like this?". The cell phone got rid of separate components a long time ago. Everything's on one PCB, plus the display. And many things that used…
This might not be a huge concern for the HN demographic, but it is for developing countries operating whatever vehicles the EU deems too dangerous or polluting for their roads. There are no PCBs making their way to Central Asia.
The problem with black boxes is that they work until they don't. In some cases like fuel injection, they're a significant reliability improvement. In others they're a ticking time bomb that can make the entire vehicle unusable.
This a problem in the motorcycle world. You now have bikes that are dead because of computer issues. Small pebbles if you're near a dealership, possibly deadly if you use adventure bikes for their intended purpose.
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That maybe true, but my anecdotal evidence is the opposite. > cars used to break down much more often and require much more skilled maintenance. My '78 John Deere 4640 (not a car I give you that) if it breaks down, I can fix it. If I cannot I can order the part. If I cannot, I can have the part made within a week. None of that is possible with a 2021 6145M. If it breaks, I have to sit and wait for JD to bless me with…
Anecdotes are always a mistake in these situations. You might have better luck with your tractor , which isn’t a car, but the average age of cars on America’s roads has been rising for decades. Your experience is, frankly, an outlier. Also, comparing tractors with cars is an extremely dubious proposition; these are different vehicles with different engineering constraints, uses, and consumer expectations. How many OE…
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That maybe true, but my anecdotal evidence is the opposite. > cars used to break down much more often and require much more skilled maintenance. My '78 John Deere 4640 (not a car I give you that) if it breaks down, I can fix it. If I cannot I can order the part. If I cannot, I can have the part made within a week. None of that is possible with a 2021 6145M. If it breaks, I have to sit and wait for JD to bless me with…
> My '78 John Deere 4640 (not a car I give you that) if it breaks down, I can fix it. That's great, but I don't own a garage, and if my car breaks, it goes to the mechanic. The mechanic needs to eat, and pay the mortgage on her garage, so she will charge $XYZW for repairs. For all the maintenance and repair work I and my father have had done on our cars, 'Some microchip somewhere crapped out' has never made the list.…
The problem with fancy electronics is that only a few people chosen, trained and supplied by the manufacturer can work on them. This effectively gives them a monopoly on maintenance. Your mechanic will be cut out of that deal.
This also creates a risk for the second hand market, not just in first world countries, but wherever they inherit cars that don't pass inspection. Some garage in Georgia (the country) won't be kitted out to fix computer issues and keep the car running. They can't expect help from OEM, nor third party replacement parts. It's a great planned obsolescence strategy.
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> cars used to break down much more often and require much more skilled maintenance. Yeah, but “skilled maintenance “ was an easy skill. There could only be a handful of things wrong if it didn’t start: e.g. no spark, no fuel. In the case of no spark, you check the plug, see if it’s dirty, change it if so; check the distributor, maybe the points are bad; check the coil or condenser… yeah there were things to check, b…
And how often does that happen with modern day cars compared to old ones? I would argue that older cars, pre electronic wizardry, are easier to repair (assuming spare parts are available) but break down more often. Older cars are also in need of more maintenance. Modern cars need an inspection every 30k km and hardly ever break down. When they do, they are usually toast so (at least financially). Older cars are finan…
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One of my motorcycles is from 1973. Nary a tube or chip on it. I think it's got a turn blinker that's kinda a flip-flop, but I think it's just charging and discharging capacitors. It's lasted way longer than most modern disposable vehicles. I don't know if most of these things actually require digital features.
You say "one of" your motorcycles, so I take it you aren't riding this bike everyday, putting 12-15,000 miles a year on it and needing it to be reliable every time you go to work or run an errand. Apples to oranges comparison.
However the computer won't crap out on you, and this is now happening with new bikes. Adventure bikes mind you. I wouldn't want my adventure cut short by a computer problem I can't fix in the field.
They still sell bikes without that crap, and they are absurdly reliable.
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Sure, but your own fab will prioritize your own chips in the order that they need to. TI doesn't care about that 50 cent part that's holding up your ability to produce a car. They're going to run every chip first whose profit per chip is higher than yours. On the other hand, your own managers will have lots of incentive to produce that 50 cent chip if it is in the way of several thousand dollars of profit from sellin…
Automotive suppliers pretty much care about 50 cent parts holding up OEMs, penalties are prohibitively high for a reason. An in-house fab is, as you said, probably more expensive. Simply because it has to rely on a single customer. Show me one company that is not looking at costs, one way or the other, that stays in business in the long run. Not doing so has, yes, something to do with savings on the procurement side…
Which works, until your supplier is simply willing to go bankrupt. And you still have no chips and can't ship anything.
> most have to compete on cost, and there every cent counts.
Until you can't ship and everything grinds to a halt. Risk reduction has a cost and nobody is willing to pay it because it doesn't enter the balance sheet.
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First of all this "simple" car may end up being more expensive. Doing a lot of the things the old mechanical way requires a lot of labor and labor is expensive nowadays. Having to use turning wires and vacuum tubes for instrument clusters, and a bunch of pull wires for controls... Not only would that be expensive it would require skills and equipment long lost today. Oh and the wind shield wipers -- it is possible to…
> cars used to break down much more often and require much more skilled maintenance. Yeah, but “skilled maintenance “ was an easy skill. There could only be a handful of things wrong if it didn’t start: e.g. no spark, no fuel. In the case of no spark, you check the plug, see if it’s dirty, change it if so; check the distributor, maybe the points are bad; check the coil or condenser… yeah there were things to check, b…
That's funny, because my OBDII reader tells me exactly which sensor logged a fault and what the fault is such as reading too high/low. Sure you can have oddball errors where a bus wire has its insulation melted and is sending noise over the CAN bus or something, but you also had bizarre issues on old engines with weird vacuum leaks in pipes and dashpots and all the other analogue junk that electronics have replaced.
People look at old cars through rose coloured glasses and forget having to clean distributors and adjust timing and fix tuning drift with carburettors.