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Honda is killing its EVs

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Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#881

Post by simondotau »

smsm42 wrote: post #869
simondotau wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cars have software. But I don't think cars are software. Can I apply a software update to make my Honda Accord into Tesla or Dodge Ram? That's a disingenuously literal misinterpretation of what I said. I wasn't saying that a Tesla and some economy car are identical, only that they have in common the characteristic of being defined at their core by software. It should go without saying that software alone can't turn…

> I wasn't saying that a Tesla and some economy car are identical, You literally said: > The only difference between a Tesla and an economy car from Stellantis is whether the software is well written or not. You didn't say "one of many differences". You said "the only difference". Maybe you wanted to say something else, and you still can, but you can't claim it's my fault you said that. > It should go without saying…

[dead]

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#882

Post by rurban »

neya wrote: post #453
rkagerer wrote: post #308

Honda 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,…

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…

That's why I have a dumb car, but added a tablet with maps and can bus connection (OBD-II) via bluetooth. All in my control. The OBD-II adapter is not visible. Did cost my about 50€.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#883

Post by M95D »

michaelt wrote: post #766
tcfhgj wrote: post #726

Earlier 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...

Gentoo works and you can build or even cross-build it yourself. The next big problem is going to be, unsurprisingly, Firefox: glean component is exceeding 3GB memory during compilation (the 32bit user address space).

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#884

Post by Markoff »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #880
Markoff wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Looking into this a bit more, it seems that 20% of the total number of registered vehicles in Beijing are NEV vehicles, but that a far larger percentage of cars on the road at any given moment are NEVs. That's because almost all taxis (and buses) are NEVs. 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 even to get NEV license plate, trust me I talked with many of those taxi drivers who drove me every single day during those 3 weeks about how much they paid for car, how long it took to register it. The benefit of NEV passed years ago already, even for NEV license plate you have to wait years.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#885

Post by deepsk »

deaux wrote: post #781
jdlshore wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics are against them nonetheless. Solar + battery is seeing massive rollouts.

Those rollouts are seeing massive cutbacks from what I've read, as half the country is straight up banning new solar. Good luck ever getting that off the books.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47034087

Sorry for an absolute offtop, YC cuts reply date to two weeks. You wrote a bit lower in the discussion from the linked thread:

>Because the AGENTS.md, to perform well, needs to point out the _non_-obvious.

Could you briefly elaborate on how to do this?

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#886

Post by deaux »

deepsk wrote: post #885
deaux wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those rollouts are seeing massive cutbacks from what I've read, as half the country is straight up banning new solar. Good luck ever getting that off the books.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47034087 Sorry for an absolute offtop, YC cuts reply date to two weeks. You wrote a bit lower in the discussion from the linked thread: >Because the AGENTS.md, to perform well, needs to point out the _non_-obvious. Could you briefly elaborate on how to do this?

As I said there, it's inherently something the LLM can't do, at least not without lots of engineering. So I'm assuming you're talking about "as a human" here.

Some of it is just trial and error. You notice it makes an incorrect assumption, it takes longer to find something than it should, and so on. Some of that can be predicted, simply by you knowing the codebase. If you sat down with a new hire to walk them through it and get them up to speed, what would you tell them? It'd be a waste of time to tell them about things they can easily figure out on their own within a minute by looking at filenames and so on. It's the low effort thing to do, but it also achieves nothing.

For example, "A's B component has a default C which should be overridden unless desired". If A is an internal library then you could just fix that if it goes against the LLM's common assumptions, but maybe it's an external dependency and it's not worth it.

Or maybe you're building a game, and there are a few core mechanics that are relevant to much of the logic. Then you can likely explain in a few sentences what would otherwise need hundreds of lines of code read across multiple files. So you put that in an AGENTS.MD file in a relevant folder so it gets autoloaded when touching any of that code.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#887

Post by plqbfbv »

nottorp wrote: post #806
fetassdd wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s nonsense. Tesla screen for example is $1800 Australian + GST. Cheap? No. But not overly expensive all things considered.

How much does it cost to replace a broken physical a/c button?

Asked Claude for cutting down research time:

- the button is integrated in the A/C dashboard? Everything needs to be replaced. Part cost: 250-600€ depending on car model and brand

- some dashboards can be stupid annoying to disassemble (Claude mentions VW, BMW, ...), 2-3h work at the dealer: 240-540€

- diagnostic fee they'll charge before they touch anything: 80-150€

Total cost: 550-1300€

"...With a premium German brand and a complex dash, breaking €1,000 for what is functionally a single button is entirely realistic..."

Yes, you can save money if you go used/aftermarket and DIY, but the same applies to Tesla.

Tesla:

- 1300€ touchscreen (e.g. for my old M3 2019): https://epc.tesla.com/it-IT/catalogs/34f82bd6-90fb-417c-8a06...

- probably 45m tops disassembly and reassembly: https://service.tesla.com/docs/ModelY/ServiceManual/en-us/GU...

Lots of used parts available, since they have the same parts for 10+y now.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#888

Post by Yizahi »

margalabargala wrote: post #847
Yizahi wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The 1st gen Leafs are absolutely not useless. They have a specific use case, which they excel at. That use case is simply different from most cars, which are general use and can drive many hundreds of km. If your use case for a vehicle matches the 1st gen Leaf, it blows away anything else except a bicycle in terms of cost per distance. In the US, DC fast charging costs ~$0.50/kWh. A typical EV gets around 3.5mi/kWh,…

Theoretically there is a use case for 100km range car, I won't object that. But in practice such a use case is extremely unrealistic, if alternatives exist at all. 100km range car is city-only car cheap car, basically locked forever to a single location. But cheap car is not a cheap thing in general, it is still 10-20 thousand dollars and requires all the car things - insurance, changing, parking spot, yearly maintenance etc. So with a very few exceptions no one would buy it as an only car. And buying a second car in a city is even higher luxury than a house. And even then, an intra-city car is competing with public transit in many cases.

What this means is there is no real market for 100-150km range cars, with a few exceptions where rich people can buy a stylish, expensive and impractical EV like a Mini EV. They won't consider Leaf 1. And non-rich people wouldn't buy such a limited and impractical car which still costs a lot.

In actual reality, Leaf 1 were popular in the period 10+ years ago, when there was almost no options in that segment. And during that time exactly two categories of people bought them in my country - taxists and people with private EV changing spots or private houses. My colleague bought Leaf 1 as a ICE Clio replacement, but only because he had a garage where he could charge it on a very cheap rate. Taxists the same, they were optimizing like hell. But Gradually, both categories replaced their Leaf 1, and now taxists are on hybrids mostly, and private citizens upgraded to more rational and expensive EVs. There is no market for very short range EVs today. Except as toys for rich.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#889

Post by littlecorner »

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.

The world we live in is capitalistic. We can imagine another world that isn't, but when we're considering specific pieces of technology, it's worthwhile to judge it by how it will perform or be exploited in the world we live in.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#890

Post by schiffern »

trashb wrote: post #759
schiffern wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it's the F-150 Lightning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421383 I chalk it up to poorly designed software from a company where software isn't the core competency, rather than blaming the basic concept of putting software in a vehicle. "Bad software is bad" doesn't have the same ring though...

I think in this case the point being made is "bad software makes the whole product bad", not just "bad software is bad". Its similar to how bad brakes or a roof prone to leaking makes the whole car a bad car. The "weakest link" undermines the whole system. > software isn't the core competency Software is a essential part of modern cars, remove the software and they don't function (or in some cases are not allowed on…

I agree it ruins the whole product.

I also agree traditional car manufacturers should have software as a core competency, but instead they're notoriously terrible at writing software.

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