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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

#821

Post by constantcrying »

resters wrote: post #632

This is extremely refreshing. I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even. Cars and trucks are so over-engineered and come with tons of low value options intended to drive up the price. For a case in point, consider that headlights that turn on and off automatically in response to darkness (or rain) are not a standard feature on many cars, yet they include a manual swit…

>I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even.

The closest this comes to is a Dacia spring. Which is not a great car. The dacia could not be made at US labor costs. 15k is an absurd price, Chinese companies can do it because they pay Chinese labor costs and have serious economies of scale. Unless you sell hundreds of thousands of these a year AND pay US workers like Chinese ones, 15k will not happen.

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

#822

Post by bgnn »

atoav wrote: post #806
DidYaWipe wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What went wrong is that the federal government didn't build or legislate a national charging infrastructure to match the scale of the interstate highway system. They could have strong-armed the states into it with a combination of funding the construction and the way they mandated the 21 drinking age: by threatening to withhold highway funds.

Isn't this lack of forward thinking somewhat the general problem now? From an EU perspective the world as it has existed in the living memory is a world shaped by decisive US-actions. The way EVs have been approached were anything but that. Arguably neither did Germany, because of the way their politicians are entangled with the car manufacturers.

Germany actively hampered it by promoting diesel as THE greeen fuel.

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

#823

Post by constantcrying »

paulajohnson wrote: post #815

This has much the same design philosophy as the original Land Rover: tough, reliable, simple and maintainable. It was originally developed as the UK answer to the Jeep, but rapidly became the standard utility vehicle for anyone with an outdoor off road job. Especially farmers. Something like two thirds of all Land Rovers ever made are still in use. This might well go the same way.

>This has much the same design philosophy as the original Land Rover: tough, reliable, simple and maintainable

Where do you get any of this from? Especially EVs are not something you can easily tinker with as the risk of killing yourself is pretty high. In general they are also more integrated and less maintainable and it seems unlikely that this won't be the case here. Maintainability costs money and to make a 20k car happen every cent needs to be saved.

As for reliability it is obviously one of the first things to sacrifice to make low costs happen. We have seen nothing of this car, I doubt the engineering is even far along.

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

#824

Post by londons_explore »

Animats wrote: post #771

The US is falling way behind in electric vehicles. If BYD could sell in the US, the US auto industry would be crushed.[1] What went wrong is that 1) Tesla never made a low-end vehicle, despite announcements, and 2) all the other US manufacturers treated electric as a premium product, resulting in the overpowered electric Hummer 2 and F-150 pickups with high price tags. The only US electric vehicle with comparable pri…

> dominate in every country that does not have its own auto industry.

That's because they plan to have a small number of huge factories to keep costs down.

But that means they need cheap ships, and can only sell to places with no car tariffs - which tends to be the countries without an auto industry.

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

#825

Post by constantcrying »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #314
the__alchemist wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

God no, CAN is horrible and the horrors people working around its limitations have brought into the world are even worse.

CAN is really great for what it is. It is one of the simplest ways to get N devices to talk to each other. Really simple and easily debuggable.

Obviously it is too limiting for modern cars so it will get mostly dropped. It clearly is a great protocol though.

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

#826

Post by constantcrying »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #438

I'm looking for a vehicle which doesn't track my location, and doesn't have complex software controlling vehicle functions which could kill me. Maybe this is for me.

>and doesn't have complex software controlling vehicle functions

Nobody should be allowed to buy a car without these functions. You aren't a good enough driver.

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

#827

Post by constantcrying »

Invictus0 wrote: post #31

If Slate succeeds, it would be the total inversion of Tesla's original masterplan strategy of starting with a supercar and then slowly working their way down the value chain. And what's really astonishing is that, not only is this the cheapest electric car in the country, it's one of the cheapest new cars in the country, period. https://www.cars.com/articles/here-are-the-10-cheapest-new-c...

>If Slate succeeds

Obviously a very big "if" making it at that price point will be extremely challenging.

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

#828

Post by theshrike79 »

And the worst thing is that Elon could've been a living legend by building/funding colleges and schools focused on the tech his companies need, software development, robotics etc. Or even given out million dollar scholarships for the very top students.

And he still would've been worth over 250 billion easily.

Instead he chose to buy the president and start "optimising" the government with AI.

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

#829

Post by motorest »

jmpman wrote: post #817
IceHegel wrote: post #808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the biggest problems in the United States is the misallocation of ambitious people. The highly educated and ambitious people see finance, government, tech, and corporate executive tracks, as the way to convert their energies into social status. Even startups these days seem to be a case of too many chiefs, not enough Indians.

When Elon gets excited about displacing his engineers on a whim with H1Bs, why would any highly educated ambitious person want to work for Tesla?

> (...) why would any highly educated ambitious person want to work for Tesla?

To that dimension I would add ethics as well. It's very hard to justify working for the likes of Tesla when being mindful of the attitude the company and company representatives have with regards to basic issues ranging from workers rights to totalitarianism.

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

#830

Post by GoToRO »

constantcrying wrote: post #821
resters wrote: post #632

This is extremely refreshing. I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even. Cars and trucks are so over-engineered and come with tons of low value options intended to drive up the price. For a case in point, consider that headlights that turn on and off automatically in response to darkness (or rain) are not a standard feature on many cars, yet they include a manual swit…

>I think that it would be possible to make something like this in the US for under $15K even. The closest this comes to is a Dacia spring. Which is not a great car. The dacia could not be made at US labor costs. 15k is an absurd price, Chinese companies can do it because they pay Chinese labor costs and have serious economies of scale. Unless you sell hundreds of thousands of these a year AND pay US workers like Chin…

Dacia Spring launched in Romania at 6000$. Now it's 15-18000$ just because they can.
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