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Honda is killing its EVs

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Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#901
post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels to me like a false dichotomy. The only alternative to the current way of doing things isn't a planned command economy, no matter what "libertarians" or tankies might argue.

Then explain how it would work exactly. Anything other then capitalism with slightly more regulation is just going from the US to Germany. Great, but they have software updates on cars too. If you want to change anything more fundamental, you are going to have to do a planned economy. At best you can say, maybe could be slightly better Germany by having a better political process or something. But even then, software…

> I bet you 100% that in any planned economy OTA updates would still happen.

How so? In a democratically planned economy, we would expect that economic decisions considered by the majority of the population to be unwise/upsetting/etc. would not take place. Yes, many/most decisions would probably happen 'behind the scenes', according to the delegated authority of smaller committees or individual officials, but that's only so long as those decisions don't cause bad results for the broader populace.

More broadly, how exactly would enshittification take place in an economy not based around market principles? The whole idea is that someone makes a high-quality app (or whatever), outcompetes all other entrants, and locks down the market. Then, having acquired pricing power, they can raise prices or, more often (as these tools aren't 'priced' from the perspective of the consumer, but rather indirectly funded e.g. through ads) lower the quality of the product. These steps are not intrinsic to reality, they emerge entirely from the confines of our market-based economy.

And yes, you can argue that in an "ideal market" they wouldn't happen, but a truism of modern economics is that "sufficiently free markets" produce actors with the power and desire to capture/destroy said free market.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#902
post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're fighting the same enemy on a dozen battlefields, you won't stand a chance of winning until you understand that fact and go after the root cause.

Because enshittification wouldn't happen in a centrally-planned economy? What's the basis of this?

Pasting a bit from another comment...

The whole idea of enshittification is that someone makes a high-quality app (or whatever), outcompetes all other entrants, and locks down the market. Then, having acquired pricing power, they can raise prices or, more often (as these tools aren't 'priced' from the perspective of the consumer, but rather indirectly funded e.g. through ads) lower the quality of the product. The steps in this chain are not inherent to 'making products', they emerge entirely from the confines and incentives of our market-based economy.

And it's not just "centrally planned economies" that avoid this. We see evidence from historical modes of production like artisinal handicraft. Despite there not being a free market of producers (as guilds generally possessed legally-enforced monopolies over saleable production) the general quality of goods thereby produced did not generally trend downwards. Indeed, we can see from the sources that in cases where quality was known to have dropped, popular backlash led to interventions, e.g. the various Parisian bread laws, or hallmarking regulations for goldsmiths. Obviously, similar mechanisms exist today in the form of governmental regulations, but the problem with free market economies is that they produce actors both incentivized and empowered to hamstring the government, capture regulators, and ultimately undermine that self-same free market, to their own benefit.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If every oil exporter used some of their oil revenue to switch to EVs, that would, all things equal, hasten the transition to EVs." The premise is all things aren't equal. The oil Norway would have used just gets used somewhere else so what difference does it make what Norway does instead. I don't know if that's the reality of the situation but if it is just an offset, it does sound like a bookkeeping trick doesn't…

Norway switching from ICEs to EVs objectively reduces global oil consumption+burning by exactly that much. Norway exporting oil increases oil supply, but doesn't increase consumption. The world's oil consumers are not supply-constrained; the producers are not running at 100% capacity, and they'll happily pick up the slack if Norway just stopped exporting oil for no reason. And there's a large amount of consumption th…

"Norway switching from ICEs to EVs objectively reduces global oil consumption+burning by exactly that much."

Meaning what they are in fact doing has the same effect as if they stopped producing/exporting oil exactly to the extent that it gets replaced by EVs over there? I could only see that happening if they undersell everyone in the world so they create no new consumers. I guess the truth is somewhere in the middle. I imagine the truth be known though? When Norway enters the market, how much other producers' sales go down?

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main argument for manual transmissions would be that because it requires both hands to be engaged it leaves less availability for the right hand to pick up their phone. The number of people I see holding and staring at their phone while driving down my residential street is shocking. I also think it just connects you to the act of driving more, which I'm convinced (without evidence, just a hunch) makes you a safer…

People have been distracted while driving manual transmissions for ages too. I remember my father telling me a story of drinking coffee out of a coffee cup, while smoking a cigarette, and driving his manual transmission in a blizzard. How distracted a driver is with phones/etc is up to them; enabling them to be safer within their existing usage is only a benefit. Same reason things like the semi-autonomous driving ar…

> People have been distracted while driving manual transmissions for ages too

Of course, but it's definitely worse now that people have devices designed to grab attention within arms reach constantly.

> How distracted a driver is with phones/etc is up to them

And many people choose to be quite distracted. I would love it if they had less ability to make that choice when it comes to endangering other people's lives.

In any case, I don't disagree that there are some benefits to semi automated safety features. For some people it's certainly a net benefit. But I think you're underestimating the number of people who use that extra bandwidth to dive into an even deeper distraction hole. The number of people I see scrolling through short form vídeos while going full speed on the highway is shocking

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or manufacturers should learn from Tesla. Did you know - if your Tesla shuts down (screen goes blank) you can still drive it! If done right, it works like magic.

I have had 3 software updates in 12 years of ownership of Tesla that bricked my car and require mobile service (twice) and tow (once) to resolve. tesla is probably better than most but far from perfect when it comes to this

What Tesla you had? I never had issues with 3 different ones I had.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#906

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been distracted while driving manual transmissions for ages too. I remember my father telling me a story of drinking coffee out of a coffee cup, while smoking a cigarette, and driving his manual transmission in a blizzard. How distracted a driver is with phones/etc is up to them; enabling them to be safer within their existing usage is only a benefit. Same reason things like the semi-autonomous driving ar…

> People have been distracted while driving manual transmissions for ages too Of course, but it's definitely worse now that people have devices designed to grab attention within arms reach constantly. > How distracted a driver is with phones/etc is up to them And many people choose to be quite distracted. I would love it if they had less ability to make that choice when it comes to endangering other people's lives. I…

> The number of people I see scrolling through short form vídeos while going full speed on the highway is shocking

Then what would change? Highway driving in a manual is essentially no different than an auto.

The problem is people are choosing to be distracted drivers, not that driving is so easy that they choose distractions as a result.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#907
post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because cars are fundamentally hardware products, not software products. Yes, software powers the heart of it (ECU), but it is just another "part" in a million other parts, not the main central selling point of the car. So, if I buy an expensive hardware product for something that can significantly alter my net worth, it is not unreasonable to expect it to last a few decades. The analogy for this would be the…

And because we know cars do not have to have all that crappy software. We have cars lasting decades without it.

Agreed!

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a single manufacturer out there makes a "good" ev. All have proprietary bullshit parts, proprietary fancy software with features that nobody gives a fuck about, and are all expensive. Im not paying fucking 30k for a Nissan leaf. EVs are supposed to be simple. Where is my 12k OTD Corolla with a battery and a motor instead of an engine? Meanwhile BYD has an app that auto parallel parks. And China has cars like Gree…

And BYD doesn't have propietary software? Also this leaves out Kia and Hyundai, the latter which I would argue has some of the best EVs and in Europe with the Inster also one of the most affordable ones without it being stripped down completely.

BYDs software is basically android, and their software stack is fully integrated as an appliance piece, which means you get all the features of android. Some versions you could even root.

> Also this leaves out Kia and Hyundai

Let me know when they make a $10k car and then ill consider them "good". The prices they sell their cars at are ridiculous for the utility that you can get with gas cars.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#909
post #886
post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you.

Re: Honda is killing its EVs

#910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So nobody lives in Alabama

I understand that you're being intentionally difficult, and probably think it's quite clever, but clear to the rest of us that the original point was that Norway is an extreme outlier with their immense (oil) wealth, hydroelectricity generation and tiny population density.

People love to compare the US to an individual country, rather than a continent.

Compare a country to a state if you want to be honest.

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