The sloped design of new cars isn't just about aerodynamics. In a low-speed impact a pedestrian is lifted onto the hood. Forward leaning grills, such as on the Dodge Charger, some of the beefier Mustangs, and any number of other muscle cars or sedans, instead clip pedestrians in the knee or hip, tip them over and drop them onto the ground, where the car then runs over them.
I think there was also an issue with those profiles and Jersey barriers, in that they were more likely to pole vault over them off the side of a bridge or onto - not into - oncoming traffic.
You are not ever going to get those designs back.
The fact that modern American passenger vehicles have evolved into statistically significant deathtraps for surrounding pedestrians, cyclist, and even smaller cars is as political as anything else in that country these days.
It can also be introduced with new vehicle registrations so as not to bring out the pitchforks. Anyone with a truck can keep going, but next purchase, they need to do a driving test.
I can't imagine parents paying for their kids to do the extra course if it costs them a fraction of that for their kid to drive a regular sedan.
You need to do a pilot study to see if accidents can be reduced. This could be done in a Western town that has tens of miles from it to anywhere else, so you are only putting a few thousand people through the course.
This could be financially incentivised, so people get paid to do the course. If the results are good then you could make it so that people buying a truck or wanting to drive one get $500 off if they have done the course, with insurers in on it so that it just becomes easier to do the course. No freedom to be American need be jeopardised.
You can find plenty of more compact pickups - I've been searching for the best one for a while because the Dodge Ram and Ford F150 are just too big.
The Honda Ridgeline, the Ford Maverick, the Chevrolet Colorado, the Hyundai Santa Cruz, the Toyota Tacoma, are all more compact, only seat 2-4 people, and have more bed than cab.
Bring back small, capable trucks.
Toyota could bring back the tiny 90s tundra, and they would sell a tiny tiny number of them. That's why the modern corolla is as large as the 2000s camry.
Kids and and dog have plenty of room. And the bed is plenty big for all luggage / camping gear.
Plus it’s useful when we do need to haul couches or bigger items.
Downtown park isn’t fun but is doable.
Trucks used as passenger vehicles are already more expensive to register and run than farm vehicles.
The CAFE standards for cars are too restrictive. The fleet averages look great, but the percentage of cars as vehicles on the road is low. Cars such as station wagons don't exist any more - the only option is to go larger and get an SUV.
The current crop of technocrats thinks that regulation is like violence. If you don't get the result you want, then add more regulation. Still don't get the result you want, add more regulation. They never think about offering compelling products that people want to buy at a decent price point.
The danger posed by pickup trucks is chiefly a function of the absence of regulation: the US has decided that you can role-play as a farmer and get treated as one for safety purposes, without actually demonstrating a need for a car that's patently unsafe for US streets and highways.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-726-may-7-2012-suv...
Far be it from me to defend truck-style SUVs!
But since you asked: just about anything that can be turned into an explosive. Or, you know, prescription medicine.
I thought this comment was saying the opposite of what you meant at first. There are no small cars anymore, even the "Mini" is gigantic. And modern cars are safer than ever, due to smarter design and better engineered materials.
Each step of the way they went out of style when people went "eww that's a car for soccer moms"
Hell, my father used to have a fairly common French sedan that would sometimes need a lot of maneuvering through the public garage ramps, and would barely fit in the parking slots.
Road tax depends heavily on the vehicle. I think we pay ~€1000 a year, ~€83 a month, for our Hyundai ix35.
* Electric Cars are exempt from both IIRC.
* Diesel is mostly front loaded in the yearly road tax. With a very low tax on fuel. So if you drive a lot it is worth getting a Diesel for this reason alone.
* Petrol has a lighter yearly tax. There is a formula someplace and it has to do with engine size, weight, age and some other things assuming I understood correctly. The yearly tax is cheaper on average than the diesel. Then there is a large tax on petrol. About €0.17 a liter or €0.642 a gallon.
For example, you can't attach animal guards here to pickup trucks, and you need extra reflectors and different lighting configuration in US for all cars.
While not directly related to safety standards, intelligent active matrix LED lighting systems are illegal in US, too.
The tall grill at least doesn't ram your head through the glass. I don't know who started calling them FUVs (Fuck U Vehicles) but they are not wrong.
And much like 18 wheelers they can’t scale down the front while maintaining utility because they need large engines and high ground clearance.
Pickup trucks are the opposite of fashion. There are to cars what Crocs are to shoes.
Utilization of private vehicles scales with income, not with population density. HN just all tends to live in "nice" places so they never see people using their vehicles to the max. This is true for all vehicle classes, not just pickup trucks.
Fashion is about signaling not whatever you happen to agree with.
Tattoos aren’t universal, what’s acceptable for Army special forces, goths, gang members, etc are all different. So, good or bad only exists in a specific context it isn’t something that any person can judge universally. Someone really can define good as whatever pisses people like you off.
If people decide to broadcast their opinions about the world using cars, they certainly can; but I don't think that kind of behavior can be called "fashion". Ideology, maybe.
Political affiliation is definitely part of social standing and the degree to which such signaling impacts how people talk, dress, and what they buy is very much fashion.
As you venture out into the world you will also find trucks that are clear political statements. You might be right that an individual cannot own a truck for both fashion and political reasons (although I'm not sure I agree), but just because some people use trucks for political statements does not mean all trucks are political statements. Some trucks can be used for fashion without crossing those who use them political statements.
I happen to think that most modern trucks look incredibly stupid, but that's because their design language isn't intended for me. It's intended for people who have different fashion tastes, tastes that approximate political positions that I don't hold. In other words: the truck itself isn't a direct political statement, ordinarily; it's an efficient means for signaling politics through fashion.
As a Canadian living in the heart of supply management (i.e. state ownership of the means of production) country, where supplies are provided by the so named and literal Co-op (i.e. community ownership of the means of production), trucks are very popular. In part because they are useful tools in carrying out the business within that socialist system, but also because outsiders emulate to try and convey similar social standing.
If there is a political statement to be found in there, which may be a stretch, to me it would be that trucks = socialism. But when I look beyond my bubble, I'm left with the impression that trucks are, if anything, especially stateside, a statement at the compete opposite end of the spectrum.
What approximate political position do you believe is inbuilt into the design of modern trucks?
99% of trucks are not that these days and that may be being generous.
Also... spend half the money on a beater truck and the other half on a civic so you dont take up the whole damn road on your commute to your office job and kill me when your comically oversized vehicles rides over mine in a car crash. I am tired of seeing $70,000 trucks without a scratch on them being used like they are a commuter sedan, its selfish and stupid.
Yes. One in 10 or maybe 20
If you want a vehicle that will handle moderately deep snow the best a subaru station wagon is probably the ideal shape, or at low speeds a shorter jeep wrangler if you are actually going off road.
That’s the thing even in urban areas you will see pickup trucks cleaning parking lots etc.
For personal driveways, people had cheap push snow blowers. For the roads, we had big plow trucks and literal construction equipment was used for large roads and parking lots.
Very few people plow, because plowing is harder than snow blowing, more damaging to your lawn and driveway than snowblowing, and just all around less effective. And the few people who do actively plow their own driveway will either start a business to do other people's driveways (a common way for 16 year olds to make money in the winter) or just straight up plow neighbors driveway for free or payment.
Even in this literal heaven for trucks, full of farmers, outdoor activities, mud, and construction, 8 out of 10 trucks were driveway queens.
Back then I would say around 1/3 to 1/4th of households in the area with large trucks had a snow plow, but I only knew one guy with a snowblower. Of course that also related to how long it took the state to deal with back roads after even a minor snow event.
If somebody is using a nice truck to snow plow they are pissing away money. Ice, constant torquing stress on the frame, hitting shit hidden in the snow, salt on main roads everywhere (depending on place) etc... it is fastest way to reduce the value of a vehicle next to driving it into a brickwall or driving it off a bridge into the ocean.
However when my wife walks past one and the hood is over her head, knowing that this is possible because it’s exempt from regulation as a ”farm vehicle” seems like a corruption of government regulation.
I don’t think we need to make people prove how they will be using a vehicle, so maybe we should just require different license classes based on vehicle’s current weight and/or height? Driving a 7,000 lb truck that is 6.5’ tall is not the same as driving a passenger car.
The talk about "farm vehicle" is a red herring in this whole thread. Actual farm plates are rare. The significant distinction is cosplayer vs contractor, which happens to be independent of commercial plates.
The right answer is probably charging yearly registration (/road use) fees based on GVWR. This is already common for trailers. There should be a part that scales as the road wear from weight does. I think it's something like the third or fourth power?
[0] - https://www.campanda.com/magazine/rv-special-drivers-license...
Among the community of people that use their trucks for "real work" (whatever their definition of that may be) an immaculately kept truck like the one you're describing would be referred to as a "pavement princess".
The farmers in my family do have pickup trucks. 40 year old ones with standard cabs and no frills.
There is virtually no good function for a modern leather appointed king cab other than signaling your group. Which is fine! Half of car ownership is that but do t pretend that even half of trucks are used for some truck like usage. Heck the half that are is for hauling boats or rvs once or twice a summer.
Yes, farmers use pickup trucks, and they're great for that purpose. Nobody is arguing or disagreeing with you on that point.
Nobody is arguing against the purchasing of pickup trucks in the general sense. We're arguing against the purchase of a pickup truck as a daily driver. Something that will be used to commute and buy groceries.
Individuals buy push snow blowers or snow blower attachments to their lawn tractors.
Occasionally a business will contract someone with a plow on a truck but that's not common because the contractors who actually deal with this regularly have dedicated equipment that's better than a plow on a truck and using a shitty plow on a standard truck is actually not easy.
Even the parking lot in my private apartment complex is cleaned after a snow storm by a company with multiple front end loaders and skidsteers.
This is what you build for that purpose:
https://img.archiexpo.de/images_ae/photo-mg/67143-15337174.w...
https://d3v9db8ug40up8.cloudfront.net/styles/large/s3/2020-0... This is colloquially called Unimog (successor, kind of), a general purpose utility vehicle with awesome drivetrain, huge tires, great weight distribution, not too heavy, serves winter and summer in several roles.
or
https://www.ecotech.at/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Ecotech-Sc...
As you say, you don't need very many pickups for that. The fraction of American pickups that are used for snow plowing is pretty much irrelevant to this conversation.
Doesn't justify the urbanites buying SUVs though
US is 68% Urbanized, 21% Rural, and only 10% Urban Cluster.
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g...
And of course those horse farms only demand a big truck if you are doing big work on the horse farm. If all you need is AWD you don't need a big truck.
Enjoy the Chicken Tax. It's why we can't have the Hilux in the States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
edit: I suppose it's not unintended consequences. It's LBJ's corrupt decision to trade tariffs for votes / curry favor with unions that harms US consumers.
A bigger problem is fuel efficiency standards that encourage larger footprints. You can't hit the mandated mpgs in a compact truck, so enlarge the truck to make it hit the standards.
Well, we have the Tacoma, which fits pretty much the same niche. I was under the impression it was more market driven and less regulation driven.
As to why Ford etc is targeting regular people with these monstrous trucks it’s both profitable and current regulations promote their sale. You can dig into the history of these regulations but as far as I can tell it’s a mix of trying to appease businesses and a specific voter demographic. Call it corruption or giving people what they want, it’s not going away anytime soon.
...then I realized that one of the vehicles taxi companies use are toyota siennas and read some articles about how minivans had actually barely gone up in price even though people were desperate for cars.
I got a 2006 awd sienna with nice newer tires, a 3500 pound towing package, roof racks, sunroof, power doors and hatch, disc brakes, an absolutely cavernous interior with removable seats that can fit a full size plywood sheet, window shades, a leather interior and the top trim level audio system with a newer android touchscreen radio unit for $6000. Yah it had 180,000 but on a sienna if it is maintained well that is nothing. I mean.. all the electrical shit still works on it somehow? Also this thing is fun to drive, it isnt a sports car by any means but steering is sensitive and accurate and the wheelbase is so long it eats bumps like a couch even though the suspension isnt floaty.
If I had bought a civic it would have had 250,000+ miles, cloth seats, shit tires, huge dents and probably a replacement panel that was a mismatched color along with innumerable random small problems.
Americans hate the idea of owning a minivan more than the idea of not owning a car and it is hilarious because minivans are what you get when you take a hard look at american life and design a large vehicle for it that ticks off every box. Unless you are towing very large things frequently ever other large vehicle is a joke compared to a minivan.
I mean.. sliding doors yo... I will never buy a large vehicle without them after owning one with them.
Mostly insecure rich people (or desperately wannabe rich), especially "overcompensating" macho-men and short-women, buy SUVs and shiny non-work big trucks.
Now we have no small trucks, and a continued parade of bloated, impractical junk that manufacturers are pushing as “small.” The new Ford Ranger and Chevy Colorado stand out as regressions from their former incarnations, and the Maverick is another joke. They all force giant four-door cabs and puny beds on all buyers.
Thus they lack the usefulness of a proper truck, and the safety of the “utes” you describe.
I remember seeing them everywhere in Australia when I visited.
While not styled to lean forward like what Dodge does pretty much all the tall bulbous front ends that HN hates and are found on modern cars and crossovers are designed like this. A bunch of plastic with air behind it is the primary means by which OEMs meet the European pedestrian safety requirements. The styled plastic provides something that's softer than the quasi-structural radiator core support that all the front end cosmetic stuff attaches to for the pedestrian to hit.
If you ignore that bit of the conversation, you're right that in a modern car you've got a good foot of material before you reach the first bit of metal, which is the hood, and the hood as some others have said is designed - today - to have a little give when a human encounters it. Something I actually have limited first hand experience in.
A lot of those muscle cars though, the hood of the vehicle extended all the way out past the bumper. So you wouldn't be able to build those exact designs. But maybe there's some compromise that incorporates your points with mine? The modern Mustang looks like an homage to the Mach era, but it's a shadow of that bad boy, and it only comes after decades of wandering in the proverbial desert.
The problem is always when you ask why generations of smart people didn't see the obvious answer, occasionally the answer is only visible to outsiders (curse of knowledge) but more often the answer simply doesn't work because of other, bigger concerns than aesthetics. For every time Beginner's Luck works out, there are tens or hundreds of cases of Chesterton's Fence.
How so? Could we just use modern crumple materials in the same shape?
Found it - Nissan has an actuator[0] that lets the cars hood be used as a damper for unlucky pedestrians in case of collision.
[0] https://www.nissan-global.com/EN/INNOVATION/TECHNOLOGY/ARCHI...
edit: also recently people noticed that high 'trucks' would simply miss the crumple zones in the car they were crashing into
> Another problem is "impact incompatibility" where the "hard points" of the ends of chassis rails of SUVs are higher than the "hard points" of cars, causing the SUV to "override" the engine compartment of the car.[18] In order to tackle this problem, more recent SUV/off-roaders incorporate structures below the front bumper designed to engage lower-height car crumple zones
Anytime anyone waxes nostalgic about how "they dont make cars like they used" I think about this video. They sure as hell don't make cars like they used too, you can get out and walk away from a crash in your ugly newer car that would brutally end your life in one of those beautiful classic cars.
For anyone that is curious the key thing to pay attention to in survivability here (besides yah know... the airbag) is.. does the interior cab of the car change shape? The cab of the old car violently changes shape in a way that would destroy parts of your body whereas the newer car's cab doesnt seem to be affected at all. Even if getting crushed between the seats and dashboard didnt kill you immediately in the bel air, I struggle to imagine how emergency first responders would even get you out of that.
Did you see that bel air in the video? It is in beautiful condition as far as I can tell.
Besides, things like rust would make the car crumple more not less and the issue is that the car doesnt crumple enough (in the right spots) so I imagine rust in the frontend could actually make it safer ironically.
Yup. But because pickup truck drivers still want to sit 50 feet above traffic, the trucks end up with these ridiculously tall front ends and complain about how ridiculous they look. When you tell them it's so you don't run over other cars and kill the occupants in a crash, they literally tell you that they don't care.
A more bizarre solution Google patented always stuck with me: A sticky car hood beneath an eggshell coating so that a struck pedestrian would stay on top of the car instead of falling and hitting their head or being run over [2].
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiiBlirAG8w
2: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a20953/google-pa...
The defective Tanaka airbags used ammonium nitrate, of Oklahoma City Bombing and Beirut port fame.
https://owners-manual.mazda.com/gen/en/mx-5/mx-5_8fl9ee16j/c...
They wanted to keep the profile of the car low which didn't allow for the space normally needed, so they provide it 'on demand' in case of impact. Unfortunately for a friend of mine who is an owner, that turned a fairly minor collision with an object into a several thousand pound repair as the system shears the bonnet mounts and deforms the bonnet.
[0] https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla... [1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/five-star-safety-rating...
Edit: yep, @Buttons840 nailed it..
Fortunately shielding against one shields against both.
That's already happening, too. "Root" is a car insurance company that only serves "good drivers". Guess how they evaluate your "goodness"?
The same thing will happen for all current vehicles when cellular providers eventually start shutting down 4G networks.
That's why fortunately for now, all vehicles can still function properly without a network connection. I do suspect that someday that will change tho.
Anything that has a remote chance of making more profit than the competitor will be attempted. Even if it's morally questionable... moral != legal. Heck, VW even threw legality out the window with emissions shenanigans a few years ago.
I'm not arguing that it's wrong or right... it's just the entrepreneur's duty to try and the consumer's obligation to keep things in check.
Caveat emptor.
It's not a complete joke. Lots of tyres contain RFID chips for inventory control.
Michelin consider it's an asset that the "Tire tag can be read even when the tire is moving or rolling"
---
Edit: Just realised that "Someone" posted the same comment 4 hours ago.
The point is they'd put a fart detector in the cabin (and send that data to the mother-ship too) if they thought it would be profitable.
:-)
“Through RFID technology, Michelin makes tires that "communicate" by linking them to a more global ecosystem, to create infinite potential for innovations and added value for its customers.
Our goal: connecting all MICHELIN tires for Passenger Cars, Light Trucks, Heavy Trucks and Busses by 2024.”
and
“Permanently readable
- RFID used in tires is a passive technology that doesn’t require a battery
- Tire tag can be read even when the tire is moving or rolling”
and
“Secure
- Tag is locked after writing by the tire manufacturer
- Robust traceability technology against robbery and counterfeiting”
It wouldn’t surprise me if some governments tracked cars by their tires,
The prima facie reason is that in case of an accident the car should be able to request help even if everyone inside the car is unconscious. The other reason is, of course, that document you signed at the dealership stated that you've only purchased the _right_to_use_ the car... not the actual car.
Have fun with your rental :-) You should have read the fine print.
I can assure you that (in the US at least) when you buy a car, pay off any financing, and ultimately hold the title free and clear, you do in fact own the car.
Titles to ratty, broken down, cars are bought and sold every day... aren't they? And, just because it's shiny doesn't mean it's a great car either. It could be a great sculpture.
I think the issues at play here are more about service and warranty contracts as well as buyer expectations. Having the title just means I own a giant hunk of metal and plastic, no?
Radios these days are software defined. They can sit on the same chip that uses a trusted bootloader and also provides an engine control module. Marketing departments can and will bend and pervert engineering specifications to highlight the consumer benefits and minimize the profit motive.
QED
Assuming you can even get to the antenna without special tools... you're just going to cut the antenna so short that the radio can't get a signal? On a hunch?
What if the SOC in your vehicle has to download a rolling encryption key every week in order to activate?
Going back and forth with measures and counter-measures besmirches the point. Cars have to be serviced and this may be considered just another aspect of it.
I'm not suggesting that this sort of thing is necessarily a good thing(tm) but, it may be viewed as such by some and it's possible.
Isn't it the consumer's prerogative and responsibility to decide?
Not to mention, lawsuits and PR nightmares can be factored into a business case analysis. VW actually went ahead and defrauded the US government in diesel-gate and they're still an almost $100 billion company.
This is reality already? I'm starting to think maybe computers were a mistake. I mean how much more screwed up can our world get before it turns into a cyberpunk hell?
And where are the political candidates to take pliers and a blowtorch to the regulatory barriers to satisfying the customers?
Down with all or these regulatory pencil-necks and their doctrine of Portion-Controlled Servings[1], say I.
One of many reasons I will never buy a new car and will always buy classic cars no matter how much they cost.
What alternate dimension are you from? My older brother had a 60's Ford Fairlane when I was growing up. My first car was a 67 mustang. I had a friend with a 68 Camaro. I knew someone else that had multiple Thunderbirds from that era.
These were not small cars. The Mustang and Camaro were the size of a full size sedan today , if not bigger. The cross sections of the doors were very large, they just aren't very space efficient at all. They're only small relative to the other cars of the era, and I wouldn't call their size reasonable in any real way.
Those are the coupes. The sedans, such as the Fairlane and Thunderbird? Those were about as big as a modern full size crew cab pickup.
This is verifiably false with three minutes of searching, which I did on my cellphone as I sit by a campfire. As an owner of both a 1965 Mustang and a 2015 Explorer, the difference in size between these vehicles is comical. I've rented a 2020 Camry that was larger in every dimension. It got great gas mileage, but small it was not.
1967 Ford Mustang Length: 183.6" Width: 70.9" Height: 51.6"
2020 Toyota Camry Length: 192.1" Width: 72.4" Height: 56.9"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mustang_(first_generati...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Camry_(XV70)
The 1965 Mustang was even smaller and lighter. The 1969-1970 Mustangs, while larger, are still smaller in every dimension than a modern Camry. Some older cars were indeed boats, but almost all modern American automobiles are boats, and a lot of this has to do with the laws that regulate and shape the products created by the American automotive industry.
I'm not sure why you compared the Mustang to an Explorer though. I mentioned the thunderbird as being comparable to trucks, and those were well over 200 inches in the 60's. It's still an exaggeration to say that's as large as a truck with a crew cab in most cases, but the 209.4" length of a 1969 Thunderbird sedan is slightly longer than a Ford F150 with a regular bed size at 209.1". They were all, by most measures, much larger than their comparable categories today, and much larger than those categories a decade or two ago.
They still make the Mazda Miata, BMW 1 series, Toyota BRZ, etc. These are all small cars, although I'm not going to research all of their dimensions. The truth is there is a very small minority of people who want cars smaller than that, and it's not profitable to produce them.
I’m reminded of my grandparent’s 1979 Cadillac (Not sure of the model). It barely fit in the garage. They parked their Chevy Suburban in that same garage.
Basically, OP is "graciously" willing to give up his manual transmission if we provide him a car that suits his style and comfort at the expense of everyone else.
Luckily for us, he isn't able to find one.
And judging by their popularity, that's where a lot of people who may just want a little bit larger car are going.
It seems like a set of rules that locked the window and left the door open.
It has a screen but as far as I can tell it's not required for anything that doesn't implicitly require a screen (i.e. GPS).
Overall the car is amazingly well designed. The tactile experience is there, you can feel your way around everything without moving your eyes from the road/immediate dash area. It still has an analog clock. I also feel like there are a lot of advanced, car enthusiast friendly features I have yet to explore.
It's also a stupidly practical car. I've frequently loaded the back with cinder blocks and bricks, filled it with a small arboretum of house plants, drum sander, multiple bikes, small couches, etc. I feel a bit silly loading up a Porche at home depot, but boy does it do the job well.
And at the same time, when you're getting on the highway it has all the power you could want, and is just a blast to drive around at night on empty roads. Comfort wise it feels like it has exactly what you want, but nothing more.
Not anymore, unfortunately. In the current gen (2022+) Macan they got rid of the buttons in favor of a glossy touch panel. It looks cleaner, but it won't by the time you get home from the dealership.
Huh? What generation is this? I use that button all the time in my 95B.2 while CarPlay is up. Last time was a couple of days ago, hauling a load of pavers home from Lowe's.
Another interesting issue is compatibility porsche id and apple car play. it seems the car play kicks out porsche id 3 times out of 4 given that you use your iphone as identification means.
Yeah, the Porsche ID thing is a tire fire. It almost always fails to log in immediately after startup, showing an error message before it even bothers to attempt reconnection. Then, if you leave it alone, it reconnects on its own and usually works as expected. About 5%-10% of the time it won't log in successfully until the next drive cycle.
Porsche should update their famous "There's a reason why most rocket scientists are German" ad to include "... and why most software developers are American." (I'm sure the PCM OEM is American, but it would be a well-deserved hot take.)
Don't feel silly for utilizing your vehicle's capabilities!
I fit 9 bales of hay in a Saturn Vue. I'm still really proud of that :-)
It's beautifully styled imo and has only physical controls inside
This sounds like the opposite of OP's request for physical controls.
That sounds like a nightmare. So you have to forcibly silence everyone in the car to do anything? Even if I'm alone I would prefer silence and pushing buttons instead of having a conversation with a machine.
Obligatory reference, if you haven't seen it: Scottish Elevator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8
Safety considerations aside, the aesthetics of the rocket and atomic age reflect the hope on humanity's future that was dominating back then. Automotive designs of late 10's early 20's are a tiny bit fancier than in previous couple decades, but they don't look futuristic, they tend to look more aggressive instead. That's also because there's demand for that aesthetic in our era.
To change the way cars look, change the way you live your life.
Old school Fiat 500 or Citroen 2cv style
Manual door locks, manual windey windows, manual seats, buttons and dials, mechanical gauges. All based on "proven technology" first-gen Renault Megane components, so it's easy to fix.
Maybe I should get another one.
I was always skeptical of the P38s because of the airbags. How do you deal with that over the long term?
I won't say I've never had EAS problems but it's never left me stuck, unlike coil springs.
You goto Magna, Foxconn, tesla, and get their EV platform skateboard. With intention of manual transmission.
You goto https://www.factoryfive.com/hot-rod-truck/ for the body of the ev.
Coachbuild the inside, you can basically be rolls royce here because you're low volume.
Obviously all the knobs and switches would be built with reliability in mind.
Sound system I was thinking would just be a good bluetooth speaker system and a phone mount. Dont have to worry about android auto or carplay or sound system or gps going out of date. its just your phone.
Although a counterpoint to this is the giant A pillars limit visibility so much as to be dangerous themselves.
Stupid of me, of course. But it’s easy to miss a bad combination of factors.
OTOH there's also a fairly simply fix invented by an 8th grader... [2]
If you're ever in the Netherlands you should book a driving lesson for shits and giggles. Not claiming we're all amazing drivers, but we sure do have hard driving exams when compared to the USA.
Even when there IS a Driver's Ed class, there's not enough behind-the-wheel time. They need to include hands-on lessons on emergency maneuvers, especially in the rain, so people can get an understanding for how the car will handle, rather than a trial-by-fire the first time they have to slam their brakes in the rain.
So, the original Mini Cooper?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uxHVVEEGx7Y
The Cyan Racing Volvo P1800 “restomod” is, in my opinion anyway, the most desirable car in the world.
Anything with a Koenigsegg sticker comes a close second.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-automatic_transmission
You choose when to change the gears but the computer deals with the clutch, best of both worlds.
case in point, me flooring it on a left hand turn in my moms prius and having to wait a good 500ms for the thing to start moving at all.
I know exactly what my manual does in first gear and when, I don't think about it, it's an extension of myself.
Though I will also say that a modern automatic doesn't need 500 meters. It works almost as well as manual. If you floor the pedal if shifts to apply more torque.
Sure there is! Electrics have maximum torque at zero RPM. As RPM increases, their torque drops off. Some cars will have a torque limit that provides for constant torque (less than the motor would be capable of), but as RPM continued to increase, eventually the torque falls off.
> You always have full power available.
This is also incorrect, but less so than the max torque claim, as power is torque times RPM (times a constant), so as RPM rises and torque falls, power is closer to constant than torque is.
Here’s an article covering a dyno test of a plaid Model S: https://electrek.co/2017/02/21/tesla-model-s-p100d-ludicrous...
> This is also incorrect, but less so than the max torque claim
Eh, I think you're being a bit pedantic here.
The point was that in an EV, you always have the maximum torque for a given speed available. Whereas in an ICE, you'll have to downshift, which in some automatic cars can take a second or two. You can suddenly floor the gas and go nowhere, whereas an EV takes off immediately. Even a 600 horsepower hypercar will be a little sluggish if you floor it at 55 mph in the top gear.
https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/02/29007...
I can downshift before the hill to get revs, and prevent the auto-shift as I go up the hill. Or I can downshift to use engine as brake. No clutch to worry about, and my hands never leave wheel. Long-press the paddle to return to auto for the boring sections. Awesome usability! Could never go back to manual, the paddle-shifters are too much fun and too easy!
You can do that in an automatic, too. Reach over to the gear selector, move it from D to a lower gear.
I can honestly say I don't give a shit whether I'm driving a manual or an automatic. I don't really think about gear changing in either.
Automatic instead of manual feels how I imagine pre-chewed ice cream feels.
Nailed it. Not to dismiss those romanticizing clutching and shifting, but that is incidental. The entire point of a manual transmission is performance. It's control over torque that delivers it.
I love that I can pump RPMs into the red before clutching into gear, the vigor of that power, G forces pulling the body against the seat, chirping wheels in 4th gear at 70mph, going up a steep hill with a quickness. (Crud, did I just romanticize torque?)
I find it hard to believe the ICE manual will ever die completely so long as there is a rally to race. No matter how quick an automatic electric is, it's not going to beat decent drivers of ICE manuals. But hopefully someday they'll all be rice burners, for the enviro.
I will also add that the break pads in EVs are criminally underused to the point that they reach their maximum service life with barely any usage on them.
If you want a comparison, it's basically like flicking on the little dynamo engines on a bicycle and then turning on the light. It'll slow you down a lot quicker than without the light on. Same principle here and works just as well.
The simple fact of the matter is it is not possible to engine brake in an EV, because it is not possible to reduce to a lower gear. EV is better than ICE in nearly if not every other way, but let's not take it too far. The driver of an manual ICE vehicle will be able to have better control at faster speeds than an EV on curvy, non-flat roads solely due to the ability to engine brake, but this probably isn't legal driving.
And for the record I believe “engine braking” is a slightly different mechanism than “downshift braking” but could be wrong here - my manual passenger vehicles don’t have explicit “engine brake” controls but a semi truck might.
I recently had a car with "10" speeds (it was actually a CVT) and to get any passing power on the highway I had to drop it into 3rd.
Shift shift shift shift shift shift shift and then pathetic engine would scream like nothing Ive heard before.
You only represent yourself and you are mixing multiple issues. Why would car makers listen to this "compromise"?
Looking at you Mini. The clues in the name.
I drove a Triumph Spitfire for a while. Any time I took it out of town I took the state highways or country roads, because not only would that thing fit under a truck trailer, at a stoplight I could reach out and touch the bumper on most vehicles. Anything bigger than a sedan and I had to reach -up- to do it. I was only ever safe in that vehicle in the same way that motorcyclists are safe - constant vigilance and pre-planning, which I learned as a bicyclist.
I looked on IIHS for the ford F-150 and it gives a green rating for the pedestrian safety. On further inspection, this is because there is a type of automatic braking. Now, I am happy to have that system, but that doesn't have much to do with the shape of the car at all.
I don't think people understand how much engineering goes into a dash/interior in a passenger car, at least from a company that prioritizes crash safety. Everything is designed to give just the right amount when hit by a body flying around in crash. Even the lower part of the dash is designed to crush just the right amount if you "submarine" in a head-on crash - enough to stop you, but not enough to shatter your knees.
The number of crashes per year has remained remarkably stable year over year, despite the number of driven miles and number of cars rising enormously. Conversely the number of fatalities due to crashes has dropped considerably.
So despite driving many, many more miles then they did previously, people aren't dying in crashes at a greater rate (total crashes is harder to track due to intermittent and inconsistent reporting data).
[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/yearl... [2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit... [3] https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/driving-went-down-fataliti...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32397975
I will give up my manual transmission, if you will bring back pull-knobs, twist knobs and other tactile switches for the main controls of my vehicle, with the appropriate tactile feedback at set points so I can set them without looking.
After thinking on it, I am going to raise my demands, however: you also need to produce cars that are as visually appealing and reasonably sized as in the 50s and 60s. Fire all your designers, go back to whatever your models were in 1965, and begin anew. When in doubt, don't.