- You money will be digital. No currency that you can hold on your hand. We can take it all with a flip of a switch - Your car will be a package of subscriptions. Want to hear radio? You can add a subscription. They probably will even provide up-sells like a dating service. Subscribe here and we will tell hot singles available in the area where you just parked. - Your bicycle probably will become a subscription.. "Yo…
Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
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Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a smog exam in California for electric cars? Honest question, as it wouldn't surprise me if there was due to complicated legislation.
As of now, no. But I wouldn't be surprised because the smog exam doubles as a road safety check, and as more EVs are on the road that are getting old, they're gonna want a way to verify road safety. Probably a state battery exam or something.
OK, interesting. In NY we have a mandatory yearly safety check for all vehicles but also an emissions check for specific classes of vehicles (ie: gasoline cars/trucks >=2 years old, but diesel passenger cars and EVs are exempt). Mostly the emissions test consists of connecting the state software/hardware to the OBDII port and having the car tell if it should pass or not.
Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I have zero interest in "advanced features" which is why I still drive vintage high end european cars I maintain myself, and not a Tesla. Nearly all cars since the mid 70s have had plenty of very simple software on board in each of the control modules- ABS, fuel injection, ignition, etc. and it works flawlessly in widespread global use for decades with no issues because it is so simple. These things are so s…
Have you read the NASA investigation of the Toyota’s unintended acceleration accidents? It’s millions of lines of not properly tested spaghetti code. But I admit that it mostly worked pretty well. Unfortunately modern cars are significantly safer than vintage ones so we are stuck with complex software for better and for worse
I have not, but if I remember correctly, it ended up being a physical problem (floor mats) and not a software problem?
Most vehicle ECUs are traditionally made with very simple C or assembly software that simply maps inputs to outputs via a lookup table... and the same basic ECU firmware is used for decades and shared by numerous car manufacturers (e.g. almost all cars use BOSCH fuel injection ECUs). If they have a complex algorithm or model to generate these tables, that code never goes on the ECU itself, to minimize the complexity and make it reliable and predictable.
So the car manufacturer doesn't even develop any code, they only produce a table of numbers for flashing into the ECU, eliminating the possibility of algorithm errors. Once you physically test in diverse conditions that hit every possible value in the lookup table, there is very little room for an unexpected problem to pop up later on. Recalls updating the ECU tables have been mostly to reduce emissions and improve performance, but the vehicle still works fine under all conditions without it.
One thing I find really fascinating, is that old fashioned diesel engines had a mechanical injector pump, which was basically a sort of simple mechanical computer that in some sense works the same as described above. All vehicles pretty much used the same pump, but each had different "lookup tables" physically machined into a steel block as a curved ramp.
I like the philosophy explained in this article, that mentions Dieter Rams thoughts on the Porsche 911 design:
https://www.classicdriver.com/en/article/design-furniture/mi...
I don't buy the idea that this philosophy can't be applied to make safe and modern electric vehicles.
Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#74I want to see this legislated out of existence. To be clear, because every time this comes up some dickfucks come in here and start making excuses about how it's better to rent in some cases and that this is just amortizing the whole payment, and there are some people who want this: No. This is a fucking terrible deal even just using mercedes numbers. It takes a whopping 30 months (2.5 years) for the monthly payment…
> You will be charged fucking $6000 dollars for a item that is already present in your car.
How so? The one-time fee is $1950. Also, this is nothing new: top end Mercedes-AMG cars always had an optional "AMG Driver's Package" [0] for years now, which did nothing but electronically unlock Vmax from 250km/h to 290km/h. No changes in hardware at all. It used to retail for around $2500.
Now you have the possibility to order a performance unlock after buying the car. You can even try it out for a few months to see whether you really need it or not.
You might not like it, but it's actually a better deal than before.
[0] https://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk/passengercars/mercedes-benz-...
Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#75SAAS - Speed As A Service.
Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#76Remember those Intel Core locked range of CPU's - you could unlock certain features afaik higher clocks and bigger caches by running a unlock tool and buying a code from Intel.
Needless to say the PC enthusiasts told Intel to get borked.
Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#77The next logical step is for CPU, in hardware you physically own, to have subscription that will unlock more cores. Imagine owning an Apple M2 device that requires an extra 30$ a month subscription to unlock 2 more cores.
I hope I'm joking....
Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#78Nice way to kill the EV industry. Usually companies would what until they get market share when compared to fossil fuel vehicles before pulling this crap. So no, I will ride a bicycle or horse or walk before I pay a monthly fee for a vehicle I purchased. It is like M/S with its 365 push pushing people to Linux/BSD or Apple with the fees they are hoping to tack on for Windows use.
Nobody is making you buy an EV with a subscription. And there have been ICEVs for many years that sold performance upgrades which amounted to nothing more than reprogramming the ECU.
Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#79Possibly the stupidest day-one DLC play we've ever seen. >"Customers might see that as “a bit of a cheat,” Because it is a cheat. There is exactly zero chance this doesn't get bypassed and unlocked for free with the quickness. Better still though, just don't buy stuff from people willing nickel and dime you like that. Pay real money for real things that you actually own. You will be happier this way.
> There is exactly zero chance this doesn't get bypassed and unlocked for free with the quickness
That's a big claim. There are comparable third-party unlocks to get the performance upgrade for a Tesla, but nobody is doing it for free. They still want about half what Tesla charges. The difference being that Tesla will still warranty the car if you buy it from them.
Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month
#80The next logical step is for CPU, in hardware you physically own, to have subscription that will unlock more cores. Imagine owning an Apple M2 device that requires an extra 30$ a month subscription to unlock 2 more cores. I hope I'm joking....
Intel's already's going to this, though