Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm. The thing is, EU directives aren't themselves law, or rather, in a sense they are but they're laws for the EU member states, telling them that they need to legislate to achieve this thing but without specifying how. The EU can write legislation which is binding on actual citizens, but it mostly writes directives, like this, which just tell the member states to do the legislating. So, was this directive actually…
That directive was implemented in the UK by The Motor Fuel (Composition and Content) Regulations 1999 (as amended) - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1999/3107/made Part III makes it illegal to sell leaded petrol in the UK without a government permit No idea how many of these permits have been issued
Honda is killing its EVs
871–880 of 919 posts
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#872Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a place somewhere in the world where Hydrogen powered passenger vehicles are a success? I know that the one Hydrogen filling station here in Australia's Capital City has shut down after opening with great fanfare a few years ago. And the approximately 20 or so Hydrogen cars it supplied are no longer being used.
I just looked it up for Germany[0] and there were a whopping 3 (0.0%) new hydrogen fuel cell cars registered in Februrary 2026. Even LPG cars were more with 397 registered. For comparison 21.9% were BEVs, 11.5% Plugin hybrids, ~51% pure petrol or non plug-in hybrid, and 14.8% Diesel. [0] https://www.kba.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/Fahrzeugzula...
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#873Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might surprising to you, but most people haven't already locked themselves into the apple prison
My 20-year-old PC hardware will just about work, but a lot of projects are dropping support for 32-bit x86 these days. If you brought the newly released https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonah_(microprocessor) in 2006 - no Windows 11 or later, no Debian 13 or later, no Ubuntu 20.04 or later...
One way to think about it is that temperatures inside a car left in the Arizona heat can easily reach 160. Inside the engine bay, they can easily reach 200F.
Now, if you leave your consumer electronics inside a car every day during the summer, you can expect a significant proportion to fail. For instance, your lithium batteries in your laptop are going to have a bad time if you operate them over 113 and they will start getting damaged when operated over 100.
https://www.apple.com/mz/batteries/maximizing-performance/
But you expect your computer modules to take it, and they have been built in such a way to take it, as well as all the vibrations, moisture, and temperature swings of a car. You can leave your car in the street in the summer, walk back into it after it's been sitting in the sun, and apart from needing a steering wheel cover you can start the car and drive away, with all your modules working. And you can do this for a decade. It's pretty amazing. How many people have gotten the "phone is too hot to operate message" when leaving their phone in the car in the summer, but their infotainment screens continue to work? It's happened to me all the time.
If you drive 2 hours a day on weekdays and one hour on weekends, so 12 hours per week, then that is 6240 hours of operation in a decade, so expect your car electronics modules to start dying around year 13 of use, and by year 16 of use, you are past the point for which these modules have been rated.
The infotainment screens will last 7-10 years. Sensors in the engine bay will last 5-10 years.
The problem is that people expect their cars to last 20 or 30 years, and they should be able to, but cars weighed down with electronics are going to last only about 10 years. That's a huge problem for people who will get saddled with massive depreciation. If you paid $70K for that car, you are going to lose it all over 10 years, that's $7K depreciation per year (on average) but of course it is front loaded as you will lose 40% of that in the first 3 years.
So the software defined car, is going to radically change the economics of car ownership, and how much automakers can charge for cars, or equivalently it will dramatically shrink the pool of people who can use a car.
Now, you may think "I will escape this and just lease the car", but that is just a financing arrangement does not allow you to escape depreciation, as you pay for the depreciation in your lease cost. You can say "I will escape this and take an uber or taxi" but here, too, the depreciation costs will be passed onto you as a customer. You may think "the automaker only cares about the first buyer" but the first buyer is the one that absorbs the vast majority of the depreciation. There is no escape.
I don't think people have internalized the financial horror that is the software-defined car. The average age of a car on the road is now 14 years. You are talking about transitioning to cars that will only last 10 years. It's going to completely shock both automakers and car buyers.
What will happen to your iphone-defined dash in 10 years, when iPhones use completely new protocols and are not usable with your car anymore? It's one thing when it was just infotainment, and people could install more modern aftermarket units, but when the entire thing is integrated into the dash and controls critical functionality, then this will turn into a nightmare.
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#874Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Criticising our entire economic system tends to have very little effect. I think its actively counterproductive. Criticising the entire economic system doesn't do anything. Complaining in broad strokes about stuff you can't change reduces your sense of agency over the world. Also, if people believe that businesses must be sociopathic, they will make sociopathic choices in business. The belief reinforces the problem…
It's not that they must be, rather that they are incentivized to be. If you dangle money in front of them what were you expecting?
I expect people to have ethics, and not act like greedy sociopaths. Especially people running large businesses.
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#875Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cars with 20yo computers do work tho.
I own a 2019 VW egolf. It does not work as intended and its only 7 years old. When they shut down 3g nobody thought about what it would do to "smart cars" that only had 3g modems. Mine lost the ability to update and is now stuck with an out of date map, no remote start or preheating, no ability to check charge levels remotely, and a ton of bugs that will never be fixed. When the software stops being supported it basi…
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#876Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people including the author think more software = premium/better. But as software engineers, we know better. That's not the case at all. More software = more control by everyone else except you. Manufacturers. Governments. For this reason, I always avoid cars with big flashy LCD screens that are central to controlling the cars accessories like sunroof, AC and other electricals. The other issue is support. So man…
> But as software engineers, we know better. As users we should also know better. All too often software is used to remove functionality from your things, or add unwanted ones. Even just adding ads. It's used as bait and switch and can make the thing you bought unfit for the job. Car software comes with so many locks and it's intentionally made to not be serviceable by the user in any way. You can't tweak it, replace…
This is such an underrated comment.
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#877Honda is setting itself up for failure on the second disruption sweeping the automotive industry: the software-defined vehicle (SDV), which has core capabilities that can be upgraded and improved over time. No thank you. Not sure why the author frames this as a good thing. They've been bamboozled by the automakers and have got it backwards - you're buying a vehicle that already has the capabilities, but are disabled,…
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#878Earlier quoted context omitted.
Americans in most of their country are besieged by massive SUVs and pickups. Driving a tiny little Japanese/Chinese import in, say, Oklahoma is asking to get literally run over.
I get the trucks and SUV's where you need them. I live in a rural area and without ground clearance and 4x4, I literally wouldn't be able to visit my parents. But my daily driver is a Honda Civic. Because 75% of my driving is done on paved roads that are well maintained (except in the winter). What kills me are the MASSIVE vehicles in the suburbs though. Why do you need a 3 ton suburban to drive around 2 kids on very…
Safety.
I’m expecting and looking to get a full size SUV instead of the current crossover I drive.
It will be a pain to park in some areas/situations, but the safety it provides to the child is much more important to me.
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#879Honda is setting itself up for failure on the second disruption sweeping the automotive industry: the software-defined vehicle (SDV), which has core capabilities that can be upgraded and improved over time. No thank you. Not sure why the author frames this as a good thing. They've been bamboozled by the automakers and have got it backwards - you're buying a vehicle that already has the capabilities, but are disabled,…
"Download more HP" is the new "download more RAM".
Re: Honda is killing its EVs
#880Earlier quoted context omitted.
1/4-1/3 EVs is an underestimate for somewhere like Shenzhen (probably for Beijing too). It's going to be well over 50% there. And virtually all scooters will be electric. You're right about the smoking, though. It's a massive problem.
it's definitely not underestimate for Beijing where I stayed for 3 weeks this summer, maybe you count PHEV as EVs, many of those cars which look like EVs are actually hybrids, only in late 2025 China reached 50% newly registered BEV+PHEV cars plus there are lots of previously registered cars and if we count only BEVs the percentage will be much smaller, actually I think 1/3 of BEV on the road is quite an overestimate…
By the way, NEVs might have only reached 50% of new registrations across all of China in late 2025, but in Tier-1 cities, it has been far higher than 50% for years. It's extremely difficult to even get a license plate for an ICE car in major Chinese cities. You have to enter a lottery, with a very low chance of winning. Even if you do get a license plate, you're banned from driving on one weekday every week.