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Honda is killing its EVs

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Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#701

Post by jacquesm »

vachina wrote: post #580
jacquesm wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do live in a house, could easily afford an EV and have plenty of solar to keep it charged. And I still don't have one because all of these EVs feel like the worst of the computer world applied to automotive. The last thing I need is a computer on wheels and I'm old enough that I know my current car is likely my last. For my kids it is different, and I'm sure that they'll go electric at some point but I hope that th…

Ironically society would benefit tremendously from “computer on wheels” because when you inevitably have a heart attack on the road your car won’t swerve onto oncoming traffic or crash into people.

Why is me having a heart attack inevitable?

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#702

Post by adrian_b »

slg wrote: post #415
metaphor wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all motherhood and apple pie, but I'm sorry: the reality that we live in and incentives at play are such that if a capability can be exploited, then it will be exploited to the detriment of the consumer. Full stop.

It's interesting how many complaints I see on HN that are framed as if they're complaints about a specific piece of technology when they are really complaints about capitalism. I'm all ears if you want to criticize our entire economic system, but I think it's silly to have that conversation specifically in the context of car software rather than at a societal level.

As another poster already said, the complaints are not about capitalism, even if sometimes they are worded in such a way, but they are about monopolistic capitalism.

For "capitalism" without other qualifications, there are no alternatives. The so-called socialist or communist economies have always lied by pretending that they are not capitalist. In fact all such economies were the extreme form of monopolistic capitalism.

Towards the end of the nineties of the previous century, a huge wave of acquisitions and mergers has started and it has never stopped since then.

Because of this, to my dismay, because I have grown in a country occupied by communists so I know first hand how such an economy works, the economies of USA and of all the other western countries have begun to resemble more and more every year with the socialist/communist economies that were criticized and ridiculed here in the past.

While the lack of competition and its consequences are very similar, in some respect the current US and western economies are even worse than the former socialist/communist economies. At least those had long-term plans. While those plans were frequently not as successful as claimed, they at least realized from time to time useful big infrastructure projects.

The main role of the laws and of the state must be the protection of the weak from the powerful, for various definitions of weakness and power, to prevent the alternative of attempting to solve such inequalities by violent means, when everybody loses.

Therefore there must be a balance between the economic freedom of the private companies and the regulation of their activities.

It is obvious that in USA such a balance has stopped existing long ago and the power of the big companies is unchecked, to the detriment of individuals and small/medium companies.

The US legislators spend most of their time fighting for the introduction of more and more ridiculous laws, which are harmful for the majority of the citizens, while nobody makes the slightest attempt to conceive laws that would really protect the consumers against the abusive practices that have now spread to all big companies.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#703

Post by jacquesm »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #616
jacquesm wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I meant the latter. Onboard cameras and telemetry are fairly commonplace on newer vehicles.

Phones have those also, and you are comparing cars to phones, so I thought you meant that phones had all those things...but I guess they both do?

There are more kinds of phones.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#704

Post by ZeroGravitas »

laughing_man wrote: post #343
yndoendo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still find it funny when it comes to oil between the USA and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia started moving the electrical system to renewables where USA is doubling down on fossil fuels. Saudi Arabia is the drug dealer that knows you don't consumer your own supply unless you must were the USA consumes the crack they sell. My next vehicle will 100% be pure EV, not Tesla.

Transitioning to renewables makes economic sense for the Saudis because they make more money selling a barrel of oil for transportation fuel and generating power with wind and solar. The US has vast reserves of coal and natural gas. We generally don't use oil to generate power either -- oil is something like 0.4% of the total power generated, because we have vast amounts of natural gas and coal to use instead. The si…

But in the context of the current topic, USA could be demonstrating their technical prowess and running EVs off this amazing coal and gas bounty.

Instead they seem to be in a cycle of buying massive inefficient vehicles and then getting annoyed at gas prices.

Oil is 2/5ths of US energy use.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#705

Post by alkonaut »

hypfer wrote: post #609
simondotau wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your sentiment, and I agree with you in the hypothetical universe I think you’re imagining. But in this universe, that ship has long since sailed. Cars are software. They have been so for a long time. The only difference between a Tesla and an economy car from Stellantis is whether the software is well written or not. My wife has a 2015 Jeep Cherokee. For its purpose It’s actually quite a nice vehicle, s…

> But in this universe, that ship has long since sailed. No, you're combining "there can be updates" and "there will be subscriptions, always-online and enshittification" as if it wasn't splittable. It is. It can. It will be. As long as there are people making purchasing decisions, no ship will ever sail. This is just passive HN fatalism as we know and resent it; probably a survival tactic to not go insane in the SV…

Even for me (a software developer who reads these articles) it's really hard to actually know whether the software is any good. Are there unlockable features? Are there subscriptions with reasonable costs? What happens if I don't have a subscription? How often are updates shipped? What's the general consensus around the quality of the system as a whole?

It took decades for people to land on - in fairness some times very handwavy -generalizations like "Japanese cars are reliable", "German cars are well built", "French cars are...french".

All this is now on its head. The landscape changes very quickly and you don't even recognize the brands. A Chinese maker of vacuum cleaners might have sold more cars than VW in 2025 and yet you never heard of them. A reputable car manufacturer like Honda could be a complete novice when it comes to EVs and so on.

Even though software is extremely important for how cars work, we still don't have easy comparisons. It's mentioned in reviews/tests of cars, but it's mostly "Yeah it feels snappy and modern, 7/10" and no real meat in the comparison. I wish there was an WLTP comparison scheme for car software which made it easy to compare.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#706

Post by Yizahi »

margalabargala wrote: post #275
Yizahi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs are fine and dandy, but it is a luxury class of cars for now and it shows really. Most other countries are far far away from mass deployment of EVs or restricting ICE cars. EVs can win if either a) the car is cheaper than the same class ICE, or b) operational expenses of using EV car would be cheaper. Neither of which is happening yet. And the car do need to have some advantage, since EVs already come with inhere…

What's silly is that the reality you describe is a choice that's been made, not something fundamental to EVs. Cars like the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt are supremely inexpensive. China's BYD cars are extremely cheap for what they are. American/European car makers realized there is a large class of people who are wealthy and will buy a high end EV for status reasons, and started chasing that market instead.

Which Leaf? Leaf 1st gen with 150km range in summer and 100km in winter and which are already decade old? Those yeah, cheap, but also useless. Leaf 2 are nothing like that. Even base model with small-ish 40kWh battery is 30k euro, and 60kWh model is starting close to 40k euro. And for that price it's a small c-class hatchback, competing with way better cars, like large and packed d-class sedans or SUVs. And charging EV on a commercial station is currently more expensive than filling up a tank of a similar ICE with 95 petrol, per km of range. The only way to charge EV on a cheap, which is possible, is to own a house and charge it on a home line at domestic rates. And owning a house in EU is an expensive luxury.

Unfortunately, infrastructure need to improve a lot before the switch may happen.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#707

Post by yourusername »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #653
carefree-bob wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the issue of longevity. Most people don't expect 20 year old laptops to keep working, but they expect 20 year old cars to keep working. The software defined vehicle is a disposable vehicle, and that means it better be cheap or someone is taking a depreciation bath.

Cars with 20yo computers do work tho.

Cars with (double) DIN units are ok. When the built in GPS is missing half the roads in your area or Carplay/android auto stops working you can just buy a new headunit for a few hundred dollars. But cars with everything "integrated" aren't ageing as gracefully and it's not easy to upgrade the built in systems. 20 years old is fine, 10 years maybe not.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#708

Post by ZeroGravitas »

dalyons wrote: post #548
bluGill wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Phev is about 80% ev. It uses a tank of gas a month, replacing a nearly identical vehicle (similar body and same engine - though other things have changed) that needed one or two tanks a week.

sadly thats not the norm. Various recent studies from the EU based on real world vehicle data show that actual savings from the PHEV category are about ~20% less emissions than a pure gas version. Aka, they are just gas cars. Despite manufacturers claiming ~70-80% for emissions credits. The category is today kind of a scam, in aggregate. It doesnt have to be - bigger battery strictly-series EREVs would likely show be…

One key element is whether the incentive/penalty is attached to buying the vehicle or buying the fuel.

PHEVs in a world that includes externalities in the cost of fuel will be used in EV mode more. Same vehicle different outcome.

Currently it's a mishmash with some countries penalizing electricity use while subsidizing fuel sales in lots of different little ways.

In general it's trending in the right direction though.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#709

Post by eunos »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #99
putlake wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining isn't the only bottleneck with rare earths. There also the processing, which is an industry China has monopolized through sustained investments over decades. They have also improved processing efficiency through investments in technology. It's going to take a while for anyone else to catch up.

> There also the processing, which is an industry China has monopolized through sustained investments over decades. I don't think this is the right way to characterize it. China invested when other countries didn't, but they didn't monopolize the market, they have no moat beyond expertise and some tech advancement that could be replicated easily enough. The only moat they have is related perseverance and other countr…

> they have no moat beyond expertise and some tech advancement that could be replicated easily enough

Incorrect, de facto, the only firms invested heavily in the rare earth refineries technology are Chinese for the last 20-30 years. Their moats are as deep as TSMC moats so to say.

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