Except, with advances in computational design and engineering, manufacturing automation, and moving to plastic for the body I would expect a reduction in price, in real terms. Not impressed.
>Except, with advances in computational design and engineering, manufacturing automation, and moving to plastic for the body I would expect a reduction in price, in real terms.
Except with all the safety equipment, crumple zones, airbags, sensors, etc. I would expect an increase in price.
And this back-and-forth here is why the folks at the BLS
have a hard job. Both options—
a car in 1990 is a car in 2025 and real value/utility is unchanged and price should be compared 1-1 ignores that cars are actually better now. But at the same time you literally can't buy a new car at 1990's quality so the additional value/utility might not actually be wanted by some and so this in effect makes real price go up.
Some of those $10k cars in the 90s had more plastic in the bodies than cars today, e.g. Saturn S-series, where all body panels below the belt-line were plastic.
It isn't necessarily the cost savings one might expect though, because steel panels can also be load bearing and part of the crash structure, which is not really practical with plastic panels.
Cost savings wasn't the reason for the Saturn plastic panels, IIRC -- they were intended to make the car more durable; they were hard to dent. Some Saturn salespeople would kick the side of the car, hard, to demonstrate their resilience.
With plastic panels, that means they're replaceable. Possibly even swappable (custom 3D printing?). This just adds to the "modding platform" they could be marketing to.
In fact, on modern cars many times these panels are replaced.
If you get a big enough dent in a door, a good body shop will offer to replace the outer skin instead of filling with bondo. They cut the weld on the inside of the door all the way around, take off the shell, and epoxy a new one on. The body shop owner told me that the epoxy is actually stronger than the factory weld.
Yes, bodywork is quite a mature discipline. I was presuming the parent commenter meant user-replaceable, i.e. bolted on.
> The body shop owner told me that the epoxy is actually stronger than the factory weld.
Often this is because the special high strength steels used in vehicles today depend on proper heat treating to attain their strength, and welding can compromise this. Many OEMs even specify panel bonding for repairing particular crash-critical parts of vehicles now because of this.
It's mostly because the factory welds are the result of someone running numbers until they find the bare minimum whereas the autobody guy would rather not risk it.
The OEMs have proper repair procedures that are the correct way to fix the vehicle, and if the autobody shop is reputable, they follow them. And the stated reason OEMs specify panel bonding instead of welding is:
1. because UHSS is sensitive to heat, and robots are much more accurate in how they heat than Jimmy with a tig torch, and they were programmed by a process engineer, where as Jimmy welds until 'it looks good'.
2. welding may compromise anti-corrosive treatments on the inside of inaccessible cavities, which can lead to corrosion issues
In nearly all cases they're faster. 10+ second 0-60 times used to be pretty normal for "regular" cars. Now days, people will complain that a car is slow if they can't put down 7 second 0-60 times. And "quick" boring cars of today are as fast as sports cars of the past.
The 1996 Ferrari F355 Spider and the 2025 Hyundai Elantra N both have a 0-60 time of 4.8 seconds.
What do you mean by "analog?" It's not possible to make an "analog" vehicle of any kind due to regulation:
* It would be impossible to pass modern car emissions standards without electronic engine control.
* Backup cameras are mandatory, so you need an electronic pixel display somewhere.
* Lane keeping is required in Europe as of 2022, so that's a suite of sensors and computer-steering as a requirement.
* AEB will be required as of 2029 in the US, so that's a full electronic braking system (some form of pressure accumulator/source, solenoids/valves) and forward looking sensors (radar, lidar, visual, etc.).
>Backup cameras are mandatory, so you need an electronic pixel display somewhere.
The vast vast majority of backup cameras ARE analog, including all the little one inch cubes you see poorly mounted on the back of sedans, and including the ones VW/Audi uses.
You could in fact plug their signal into a tube TV from the 50s. You might lose some overlay features.
If you want any one of:
Smooth running. Reliable start. Smooth Throttle application and resistance to all the problems we had with carbs. Airbags. Automatic management of cold weather performance.
Then you REQUIRE electronic actuators, sensors, and microcontrollers.
> The vast vast majority of backup cameras ARE analog
The camera<->head unit signal modulation is analog but unless the display is a CRT, both ends of the system are digital.
This is basically why I was asking “what do you mean, analog” - I suspect the OP really wanted either no touchscreen or no telematics, which are totally unrelated to whether the systems are analog or digital.
There was a whole generation of very cool analog computer fuel injection (K-jetronic for example) that avoided most carb problems for end users without going full computer - but, there wasn’t a chance these kinds of system could continue to pass modern emissions standards.
Nor practical but an analog system could probably meet the standard.
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Rearview image means a visual image, detected by means of a single source, of the area directly behind a vehicle that is provided in a single location to the vehicle operator and by means of indirect vision.
Rear visibility system means the set of devices or components which together perform the function of producing the rearview image as required under this standard.
---
5.5 just says it needs to meet certain testing standards, start displaying within 2 seconds of backing up, and stop displaying when driving forward.
In many countries around the world you can buy a brand new 70 series Land Cruiser with a mechanical injection diesel fuel pump, crank windows, no screen, etc. No computer.
NGOs and UN buy them in the thousands for Africa and the Middle East.
If this can’t compete head to head (no tariffs or other import restrictions) with BYD and the like, then I don’t know why one would get excited. Feels like an expensive consolation prize with tons of compromises. I want competition.
You can't really compete in a any real sense when the labor price differential is so massive and the companies and supply chains are directly subsidized. The price does not reflect the product, but all its inputs.
I never said that I’d expect that a US automaker would “win”. I want the best car at the cheapest price to be made available. And for that to be done within a level playing field with regards to safety / workforce / environmental / labor regulations. My expectation is that US automakers do not win, even with subsidies. But I do think keeping an industrial base in the US would be worth that compromise.
Historically, tariffs guarantee the local market will not win.
Tariffs (the "chicken tax") are directly responsible for US trucks being so expensive. They have no foreign competition in the US.
Environmental regulation loopholes cause US trucks to be so big, which is a related problem.
It's probably possible for US manufacturing to compete directly with foreign manufacturers, but they have no incentive to do so now that Trump extended the chicken-tax to all imported cars.
It's not a loophole if you explicitly state: "This is what we are going to focus on." The CAFE regulations also regulate pickup trucks, just less stringently.
>CAFE has separate standards for "passenger cars" and "light trucks" even if the majority of "light trucks" are being used as passenger vehicles. The market share of "light trucks" grew steadily from 9.7% in 1979 to 47% in 2001, remained in 50% numbers up to 2011.[7] More than 500,000 vehicles in the 1999 model year exceeded the 8,500 lb (3,900 kg) GVWR cutoff and were thus omitted from CAFE calculations.[10] More recently, coverage of medium duty trucks has been added to the CAFE regulations starting in 2012, and heavy duty commercial trucks starting in 2014.
>"If this can’t compete head to head (no tariffs or other import restrictions) with BYD and the like, then I don’t know why one would get excited."
Would you prefer our roads flooded with cheap Chinese EVs that are the automotive equivalent of Shein hauls? Protectionism has its place in certain areas, and I would say building a thriving domestic EV industry that isn't beholden to a single weirdo is one of them.
I’m pretty sure there are more possible outcomes than “this one truck or cheap, dangerous Chinese EVs.” False choice fallacy.
A lack of import restrictions in no way prevents safety regulations. You could also subsidize the domestic automobile industry without having tariffs, so that we protect our domestic industrial base. These things take no imagination.
I can’t find any evidence that the NHTSA has ever evaluated Chinese EVs negatively. The ones not available in the US meet high standards in other places like Europe and Australia.
>"Do you think that the rest of the world needs to protect itself from Tesla then and slap tariffs on any Tesla cars exported?"
If it were a stated policy goal of said country to develop their own indigenous EV production at scale, then yes. The same the US did for 30 years after WWII to develop its own auto industry.
The era of dumping mass amounts of cheap "good enough" products on the global market, made entirely possible by the ignored and externalized costs of dumping trillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere via oceanic shipping, is coming to a close.
I drive a Polestar 2, which is a Chinese manufactured EV, and it's better quality than most North American vehicles.
The Munroe Live episode on it should disavow people of these biases. He ends it with a strong warning about people's weird biases about Chinese manufacturing.
Completely anecdotally from a friend who has BYD Atto3 - he had couple of issues with cameras. Plus some early rust (which is not unheard of in forums). So did his sister.
My impression of driving it - materials are nice, but overall experience (interior looks and software, aka what you use the most) was quite terrible in the context I own Tesla Model Y. I'm sure going from 15 year old Nissan you'd be ecstatic.
I learned to race first and am now learning to cruise. And I’m glad I learned in that order. Cruising has a very specific set of skills that you’ll never learn racing. That stuff will be obvious and if you want to cruise, you’ll learn those skills.
But what is not obvious to cruisers is that racing teaches you how to handle your boat in many different and difficult conditions, with confidence. When you race you have to go from a specific place to another specific place and you don’t get to pick the weather. You’re often pushing your boat and are in high stress situations.
Often, cruisers will go out, when it’s nice, and turn on the motor when they can’t make their boat go the way they want it to go.
So, what happens when you’re out sailing and an unexpected storm rolls in? Because if you sail enough, especially offshore, it 100% without a doubt will happen. I’d honestly be pretty comfortable handling the boat through all but the worst weather, boat breaking weather. And even that, I would be confident in my safety gear and ability to contact support for a rescue. Because all of that is drilled into you as a seasoned racer. And I’ve been through some bad weather on the race course. I’ve had to make my boat go upwind in horrible sea state for hours on end while my crew is throwing up from sea sickness.
There are multiple occasions on which I’ve turned down sailing with cruisers because I just don’t trust that they have the skills or equipment to keep me safe should things go sideways.
Agreed. I used to race on a one design 34ft boats (steward 34s for the kiwis here). For the Thursday night rum racing they always casually divided up sailors amongst all the available boats and therefore the yacht squadron would refer people in town to them. So naturally we got a lot of cruisers on there around the world trips who wanted to try out racing. The most striking was the lack of urgency. Even though many were quite experienced sailors they were often worse than people who never sailed before. The newbies could be told to which as if your life depends on it and they would go full out, some of the cruisers not so much.
My sailing buddies and I are always asking each other, “why is sailing dying”? Sailing is a very self selecting sport. People generally love it or leave it very quickly. We are in the “love it” camp, and we are always super excited to take people that are curious about sailing out sailing. I would strongly suggest not taking classes. Just get on a boat. It is hilarious how easy it is to find a sailor that will take you out. And if you enjoy that experience, people are always looking for crew to help them sail their boat. So I’d suggest your next step would then be that. You’ll learn so much faster going out for Wednesday night races at your local club. You’ll learn both how to sail and whether you even enjoy it. A lot of places even have a “crew seat” where you literally show up, not knowing anyone, and people see you sitting there and ask your qualifications and if they have room on their boat and are comfortable with the match, take you, a complete newbie and stranger, out sailing.
Classes make it easy feel like you’ve learned “levels” of sailing or to feel like you could rent a boat in the Caribbean. But, they hide a lot of what sailing is really about. Maintenance, rigging, de-rigging, showing up for no wind, learning the rules of sailing, etc, etc. They also miss out on one of the most amazing aspects of sailing: community. Learning from other sailors is key. You’ll borrow parts from (and lend to) other sailors. You’ll help organize races for them and they for you.
Sailing is a beautiful, beautiful lifelong endeavor that I wish everyone could be exposed to and pursue if they’d like to. Look up your local yacht club or Hobie / beach cat fleet or other sailing club and just ask if you can get a ride. Show up early, listen and do what you’re asked, be polite, stay until the boat is totally put away, and repeat. Try different boats with different clubs and people eventually.
Eventually, maybe take a class (RYA not ASA) to formalize your knowledge or fill in the gaps. You’ll clearly know what they are at that point. Eventually maybe buy your own boat, or do as many people do, just keep crewing. Truly good crew are really rare and boat owners will love and appreciate you.
If you’re in Austin, TX, check out Austin Yacht Club or austincats.net.
If you’re in Charleston, SC, check out Charleston Ocean Racing Association (CORA).
Or if you’re somewhere else and interested, message me, and I’ll do my best to find a place and make an introduction. The sailing community is a small world.
To be completely explicit, you're telling anyone with any need or desire to pull a trailer or go off publicly planned and constructed roadways that their needs or desires are not even on the table for discussion. I don't believe it is in fact necessary to eliminate cars as a primary mode of transportation in the future in order to meet climate goals. But, even if it was, the argument just will not fly with many many many people. I could easily counter with the argument that we should keep cars but eliminate all air and boat transportation (and recreation) and eliminate the future production of computers. The path forward will not look like either of these proposals.
I lived in New York City for 5 years. I loved it. I didn't own a car. I took the subway, cabs, trains, and planes everywhere. But, I didn't go camping or own a boat. I live in South Carolina now where I tow my catamaran to different regattas or just to the beach for fun. I go camping with an amount of gear that would be completely unreasonable to take on a train. Public transportation does not allow for the same activities as a car or truck. That's just obviously true. I'd be happy to give up my car. I would not give up sailing or the type of camping I do. People that hunt, should they give up hunting because they can't transport their game? How are contractors going to get equipment to the worksite? Cars/trucks/vehicles are not just for moving people.
Well obviously middle class people shouldn't be allowed to go sailing if that conflicts with urban planning and climate justice goals. Such activities should be restricted to the elites who can afford to keep their private yachts moored in the local marina. All for the greater good.
To be fair I'm not saying ban all cars, but otherwise you're right. Over the last ~100 years a lot of cultures and activities have grown up around super easy car ownership and use. Just like, teaching your kid to drive is a big cultural thing. It's a huge lift, but the downsides of car-centric societies are pretty well known at this point.
I don't for a second think the US will do this, FWIW. We'll probably over the next 10-30 years give the highways and interstates to AI (at insane expense) and never slough off the scourge of SUVs in the last mile. The US probably has enough natural resources to manage this, though as fewer and fewer Americans want to be miners and auto workers the burden will shift internationally, which is its own moral issue. We'll still have all the problems of noise, tire pollution, pedestrian/cyclist/motorist deaths, drunk driving, waste cars, super inefficient use of energy and labor, and an increasingly isolated and sedentary society, but IMO it's clear the US is fine with all of that.
What I think will actually chafe us is watching other societies do better. It's already happening. The wealthier among us travel to Asian or European countries see how they're not car-centric, and feel envy. They agitate for it in their communities, which puts them--even more--at odds with other US cultures that love cars, and political strife intensifies. The elite will force auto manufacturers to stop producing ICEs, car America will rebel, blah blah blah.
Lex Fridman is a Russian-American computer scientist, podcaster, and writer. He is an artificial intelligence researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and hosts the Lex Fridman Podcast, a podcast and YouTube series.
Lex Fridman has also done original research on robotics and computer vision detection of facial expressions. Here is one of his papers; there are several others on related areas.
So, the US economy is larger than the Chinese economy, but somehow China can build enough empty homes to house multiples of the US population, and yet the US has a housing and homelessness crisis…
If AI is the intern, how do the economics of entry level positions work? And if they don’t, how do people enter the workforce at all? More schooling? Only hire PhDs?
> If AI is the intern, how do the economics of entry level positions work? And if they don’t, how do people enter the workforce at all? More schooling? Only hire PhDs?
They don't, and in 10-20 years corporate leaders will bemoan the shortage of high-skilled experienced people that they created through their own decisions. Of course, they won't take any responsibility or change their approach, though.
> They don't, and in 10-20 years corporate leaders will bemoan the shortage of high-skilled experienced people that they created through their own decisions. Of course, they won't take any responsibility or change their approach, though.
It's a free rider/prisoner's dilemma problem.
If everyone cooperates then we all come out ahead. If you all cooperate while I defect then I end up even better (I don't have to train anyone). But if we all defect then we're fucked.
It used to be that there was entry level work that needed to be done by humans and so you didn't have this problem. If the entry level work can be done by AI then you need something else. Either government coordination and incentives to hire humans (this is the kind of things gov't is good at). Or people stay in education for longer/education becomes different.
Well, we have to work with what we have :-) It would be highly unlikely that something new violates the established trends over thousands of years.
It's not surprising that the human race has survived for this long - we always find ways to adapt, no matter what challenges history throws at us. This is what distinguishes us (and I suspect will always do) from the machines.
> It would be highly unlikely that something new violates the established trends over thousands of years.
What now? Established trends have been regularly violated over thousands of years.
> It's not surprising that the human race has survived for this long - we always find ways to adapt, no matter what challenges history throws at us. This is what distinguishes us (and I suspect will always do) from the machines.
You know what would count as an adaptation? Large fractions of population becoming immiserated and either dying off or living in poverty at the margins.
I think you're severely overestimating the abilities of this "AI" and underestimating the abilities of the human mind here :-)
However, if you'd like to be pessimistic on it I won't argue, I have that tendency too ;)
And to lighten up the mood, I highly recommend listening to this episode with Gary Marcus, where he invites experts in the field of humor to discuss how distinctly bad the LLMs are at explaining what comes naturally to us: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-ai-make-you-laugh/...
> I think you're severely overestimating the abilities of this "AI" and underestimating the abilities of the human mind here :-)
"This AI" seems perfectly capable of resulting of extending the kind of economic immiseration that has already affected many blue collar jobs into many types of white collar work (ironically enough, the kind of work those blue collar workers were told to pick up).
Past this iteration of AI, who knows if the advances will peter out, but it's foolish to assume things will be fine because other things were adapted to in the past. That's kinda like assuming you won't die before having kids because none of your ancestors did.
I won't engage any further. I see that I won't be able to convince you in the opposite, so there's no reason for me to try to "defend" my argument :-) And your "command" is kinda rude, regardless.
> I won't engage any further. I see that I won't be able to convince you in the opposite, so there's no reason for me to try to "defend" my argument :-) And your "command" is kinda rude, regardless.
You mainly been making vague, unsupported assertions backed by emoticons. It's a stretch to call that an "argument," and arguable you haven't been really engaging from the start.
I don't think you can convince me because I suspect you don't really have any support or specifics for your position to provide.
> As a matter of fact I do, if you read my comments in other threads, before jumping to conclusions without knowing me.
Come on. If you have them formulated, you should have responded with them. It's not that hard.
> Regardless, I flagged your comment since it really doesn’t follow HN etiquette on respectful arguments.
Again, come on. The disrespectful thing is expecting someone to go on a scavenger hunt just to find out what you, some internet rando, should be saying in your half of a conversation thread.
It's also just bizarre for you to note you flagged my comment. Am I supposed feel intimidated or ashamed or something?
> You know what would count as an adaptation? Large fractions of population becoming immiserated and either dying off or living in poverty at the margins.
> Mere survival is the wrong metric.
People don't have to live in cities. Knowledge work has brought many people to cities and the absence of it will reverse that trend. It is welfare that keeps impoverished people living in cities.
> Established trends have been regularly violated over thousands of years.
I don’t think that’s true. The archetypal constructs of human cognition have been unchanged. Hence the enduring relevance of myths. It’s always the same stories playing out.
>> Established trends have been regularly violated over thousands of years.
> I don’t think that’s true. The archetypal constructs of human cognition have been unchanged. Hence the enduring relevance of myths. It’s always the same stories playing out.
I think you misunderstand. I didn't say everything has changed, just that many "established trends" have been.
I mean, at some point it was a well established trend that all humans hunted and gathered for their substance, then that trend was violated.
At some point, the trend of "we will find something productive to do with all these people who's jobs have been made obsolete" may be violated. And it seems like that's getting more likely the more rarefied the remaining valuable skills become.
