Problem with gathering data off cars is that it's really not that effective vs your phone. A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time, while a phone is with you 24/7, likely powered 24/7, and already has telemetry mechanisms built in. An old car with someone using a phone probably still collects the same data as you assert.
And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.
I mean, besides shape and speed, what is the difference that most people are concerned about. I wasn't aware that golf carts are all electric. I just thought of a golf cart as a car used specifically to traverse golf courses and resorts.
Shape, speed, comfort (better seating), body work, windscreen, lights, gears, radio, air conditioning… I could go on
If people just wanted to drive around in vehicles that were equivalent to golf carts then everyone would own a quad bike instead of a car.
Cars have been around for more than a hundreds years so it’s astonishing to me that some people cannot imagine what a car would look like without the “smart” features
The Luddites haven't been criticizing cars for anything, given how they came and went 50 years before a first proper car was built.
And, if anything, the Luddites were not anti-technology, they were anti-being fucked over by capitalists. The problem they rose up against wasn't the automatic looms, it was the way they were deployed - to replace skilled workers instead of augmenting them, depressing salaries and eliminating jobs across the industry. The Luddites weren't fighting progress, they were fighting to keep themselves and their descendants from destitution.
Alas, since technology was involved and technology is magic, the misconception about the Luddites has spread wide and persists to date, conveniently distracting everyone from what the actual problem was. Compare with everyone today whining about "tech bros" and the supposed folly of "solving social problems with technology", which is both wrong and entirely missing the real problem, which is the same as the ones Luddites fought and lost to.
Yup, the parallel is the dream of a lot of the AI companies "Hey look, this LLM can maybe come in and do 80% of the work, so maybe you don't need 80% of your staff? Certainly you don't need the most expensive members".
That's effectively the scenario that Luddites found themselves in. Looms came in and decimated previously well paying jobs and the owners of the looms basically told the skilled workers to pound sand.
On the other hand, cars are much less limited in terms of sensor size (allowing you to determine location and acceleration more precisely, for example), power and permissions. In theory, root permission on your phone would be better, but a normal app won't have this amount of far-reaching permissions, but the manufacturerers have full control over hardware and software on your car.
In theory I can disable most if not all of the telemetry coming out of my phone, though. I can also choose to leave my phone at home, knowing that it's likely there's still something on it that's collecting data on my movements, even if I've been careful about disabling and uninstalling things.
But the car is largely a black box when it comes to its electronics, and if I need to drive the car somewhere, I can't leave the black boxes at home; they come with me wherever I go.
> And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.
> A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time
A bit besides the point, but isn't it wild how inherently wasteful personal cars are? Every time the thought crosses my mind to get another one, if I don't stop at the cost, I stop at the fact that I'll have this giant chunk of metal sitting idle on the street or somewhere else nearly all the time. It'd be useful in an extreme minority of cases (for me), but I/we pay for it all the time by allocating quite a lot of space and money to them. The tires, the insurance, taxes, fuel, charging stations, driveways, parking garages, natural resources, air quality, ambient noise, senseless deaths, it's crazy. Granted, some aren't a result of idle existence, but c'mon.
Renting an arbitrary car periodically ends up being the most tolerable option. A small temporary expense when it's really needed or desired, and it's enough to remind me of the good and bad bits.
Sounds like maybe you don't need a car. That's good for you, and I truly mean that. But that doesn't mean it's the case for everyone. It's a big, diverse world out there.
Rural southern England here. Public transport is non existant where I live. You need a car if you want a life.
I lost my driving license for medical reasons and have spent two years without driving. I am really conscious of what a car means in terms of having a social life, working, etc. If I was younger, I would have had to relocate
None of what you said here makes sense in the context of what you replied to.
> Tell that to the Amish.
The Amish have large populations in the northeast US, not rural southern England.
> Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.
What does this have to do with the fact someone was unable to drive due to medical reasons and learned first-hand how much society was set up to need a car?
> Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.
Yes, it is not the natural state of things but for many people it is the actual state of things. I absolutely hate the fact that I live in a car focussed society but that is where I do actually live. And because of my investment in my house and garden I don't want to move
> Tell that to the Amish.
I had to count to 10 before responding here.
Perhaps you didn't notice the bit where I said I have spent two years without a car. It is something I have thought about a LOT. And have been impacted by. I don't have a convenient Amish community nearby to help me put up barns in my backyard, or even to lend me a horse to ride to the local B&Q when I need to buy a new tool of some sort. I deeply wish there was better public transport - I am not a petrolhead - but there isn't and won't be for the foreseeable future.
This is not about usage. I am not saying we should live without cars. I am saying that there is a very bad systemic issue if people simply can not live without owning a car.
If you want to make a comparison with utilities: The fact that people in Flint are getting bottled water delivered from distant cities (and the fact that some people prefer to drink bottled water anyway) does not mean that this is not a serious crisis.
I am not saying "other people can live without cars, so just suck it up". I am saying "if you are living in a place where you can not function without a car, this is a serious issue and you should be getting the pitchforks to hunt down the responsible authorities that brought this to you."
I've been of a similar opinion for many years. I have public transport and my office commute is about two hours and half in each direction, but I only need to go to the office once per week, so it's somehow acceptable.
But I'm getting old. I've decided I want to use my remaining years of any strength to do more hiking, kayaking and camping, and for that I need a car every weekend. Rentals would be slightly more expensive than owning a second hand one. But I do wish car ownership were cheaper and more painless.
I keep my cars for a long time. 200k miles is the usual, and that has held true buying used a little ways north of 100k miles already on the board.
If we designed for very long car life, the waste equation would look different.
Toyota does, and there are a small number of people planning on half a million miles. Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change?
Honda is similar without the Toyota attitude. I’d never buy a Toyota, ever.
All of the newer safety doo-dads are less reliable. Where I live, the road salt effectively caps effective lifespan of a car to 180-220k miles. The exhaust and suspension maintenance started to approach or exceed the cars value.
On a separate topic, is there anything to be done about the salt?
I feel for people living where they do that. I like long term car ownership and that seems like a curse right out the gate!
Can the car be treated, washed? Hmmm, our move to negative ground makes the salt worse. Positive ground cars would help a lot with corrosion, but we don't make those anymore. I never learned why that is.
I recently did a Toyota to Honda and back to Toyota cycle.
I liked the overall performance of the Honda. Little things like slightly more aggressive gear ratios, steering and such were superior on the Honda. Economy was almost a push, but the edge goes to Toyota.
The Honda got my attention for service and repair more than the Toyota cars have. And Honda had the advantage overall. My Toyota was older than the Honda, both similar mileage, but the Honda failed earlier. Transmission. :(
I came back to Toyota, but wanting some of the creature comforts offered by Honda, I chose Camry this time. Excellent car. It's a serious, understated, very unassuming vehicle. It performs, feels better than a Corolla did, and still lacks the subtle things like gear ratios that are a bit more fun.
I live where one can put a half mil on a car, if it's up for it. Damn near did that on a Ford Expedition 2000's era vehicle. Guzzled gas, but man! I loved that one for a ton of reasons. Being an active family at the time, the Expy made sense.
For me having the thing just go when I do the maintenance properly matters more than the other aspects do. So, Toyota it is!
*I buy used, 10 to 20 years back, moderate to low mile cars, under $5k. No new vehicles for me. They simply do not make sense.
Now, current Toyota might be a turn-off for me too. The quality issues playing out right now seem worrisome. I hope they get past that.
I'm driving 2000 era vehicles because that was the sweet spot for people like me who will do their own work a majority of the time. I enjoy that, and I know it's done right. It's gone south a few times with shops and I really hate having to navigate that BS.
2000 to 2010, Toyota has me, but Honda is damn close.
So tell me about the Attitude please. Super curious about that. What's the big turn-off? And are you sensing a newer thing, or is this long term, basic?
No judgement or battle here. Just genuine curiosity.
The dealer thing varies by region. I’ve run into stuff with relatives like:
- Difficult basic activities. Like you can’t talk to anyone without an appointment. When you need to talk about something they aren’t interested in talking about, they get busy.
- Aggressive & deceptive upsell on service, as in service advisor demanding an unnecessary $750 repair as a condition to honor a battery warranty.
- Trying to steal deposits for unfilled car orders. “Sorry, we can’t get the car you put a $1000 deposit on, and we don’t do refunds.”
- Ridiculous up charges, scammy deal accessories, ripoff financing and market adjustments. My sister was trying to buy a Grand Highlander, which was a hot car. I think Toyota punishes dealers by putting on allocation for hot cars, so they try to pump every nickel possible.
In my sisters case, it was so insane I was able to find her a better deal for an equivalent Lexus. Whatever contract the Toyota dealers have, they don’t allow the manufacturer to effectively manage the brand.
My experience with Honda is you get the usual car dealer fluff, but they aren’t aggressive. There’s also more dealers, at least in places that I live in, so there’s more competitive juices at work on the sales side.
Ah, I see. It is the dealers attitude you were writing about.
Oh yeah. Some of those ring true for me too. Now, I basically quit buying new, and the shitty dealer experience is a significant part of why. The other part is a lot of cars are being made that I just don't want to buy!
The dealer here presented some of those items. So did a Ford dealer, for what that is worth.
> Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change?
I'm hoping they fix this. There's almost no other reason to buy a Toyota other than this reliability reputation.
It seems like the way to go now is a naturally-aspirated Subaru, which I ended up after all the Toyota dealers near me treated me like a chump (which apparently is common; Toyota doesn't have as much "say" over their dealers as other similar companies afaik). Subies have basically been iterations on the same engine for a decade (the FB series), and the brand cannot afford to do much goofy R&D. They're also still dealing with the head gasket reputation despite that being >10 years old at this point (almost 20).
I mean don't expect to beat on them, under-maintain them, etc, like one can a lot of older Toyota gear, but used within parameters, they have lasted my family (almost all of whom drive CVT Subies) well over 1m miles at this point without any big failure.
Key thing is to change the CVT fluid at least at the 60k interval (some countries say to do it every 30k, but that seems excessive). The "it's a lifetime fluid" thing is a total lie; it's the "lifetime of the CVT", so when it grenades itself, that's its lifetime ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Depends where you live, and how much of a hassle it is to get a rental car.
If you live somewhere with decent public transportation and good car sharing infrastructure (eg. walk to a nearby car share and unlock the doors with an app or a card vs Uber to Hertz and wait for an hour to sign paperwork), then yes that's a viable option. For many places in the US and Canada, that's not viable unfortunately.
True, and that really does constrain where I'm willing to live these days. There's some threshold probably where I could deal with owning one in exchange for some hypothetical benefit of living in the boonies or something, but for the foreseeable future I get too much personal value out of living on the west coast.
It's not always suitable mind you. Extremely short random day trips are the trickiest, which might tip me at some point if I'm making decent money again, but it's so hard to get to a point where I could rationalize that as an occasional leisure luxury instead of a burden.
I wouldn't move to another city though for any reason that would require me to own a car just for getting around. If they ain't investing in viable transit, they won't get my income tax.
They also create problems in terms of extra journeys as a private car will go from A to B, whereas a taxi goes from C to A to B to C.
It's quite amusing as people try to come up with more efficient use of cars and typically end up reinventing public transport (e.g. buses, trains etc).
Those extra journeys can be minimized with decent routing software. Even if it's as simple as ending up at B, then going directly to the nearest customer waiting for a ride.
And fwiw, if Tesla gets their robotaxi stuff working, their 22-passenger "robovan" is basically a bus anyway, just without a driver.
Bro just platoon the autonomous taxis into a convoy, give them separated lanes, and get rid of the rubber wheels and add steel wheels and steel lane guides for maximum efficiency. It's obviously new and revolutionary!
This is a weird thing to call out. I'd suggest a car is powered as much as a phone. I'm trying to decide for people that have a car and a phone which is more infuriating to not have power.
That’s your retort? Do you have numbers of them being anything more than a rounding error? More and more cars need something reset when the battery is disconnected. I can only assume that this will become even more prevalent as a “security feature”. I had after market head unit that used that as an anti-theft deterrent.
And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.