• myyass@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’ve wrote this before and I’ll write it again. Conversion kits need to become mainstream. It’s like my old Jeep can have pretty much any engine. Someone converted theirs with using parts from a junk yard Tesla.

  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    oh great a flying car, can’t wait for an “update” at the zenith to shut everything down, then smash itself in the ground while I’m in it. It will explode into flames, and I’ll try to climb out but oh no! The door won’t open.

    Fantastic

    I’ll wait until analog buttons return and perhaps even update control. What year will it be before the car remembers my custom settings? 2050? Can we do this by 2050?

    p.s. somebody please make a simple car, electric, electric hybrid, and gasoline, that has easy repair access and interchangeable batteries. Remove the fucking TV and return to buttons so you don’t have to scan a screen while driving. A basic generic car that you can upgrade if you’d like. Something you can drive to death, like the classic Honda Civic of yore.

    There’s some reason nobody is making is car, because people want it… is it governmental regulation? I don’t know

    • dustyData@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      They make those cars. But in Melonski land it was made Illegal to sell them because “China scawwy, god bless gunland”.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    2 days ago

    Business idea: Very cheap electric city car with low range, but standardised commodity batteries you can rent for long journeys.

    • HerbGrower@slrpnk.net
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      1 day ago

      Why not a city car EV and just rent another car when you need to make long journeys?

      Or for me in the UK, why would I want a car, you can’t even drink in it. Trains have staff to sell me a drink.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        1 day ago

        Having sat on a rail replacement bus inching its way towards Stansted down the M11 while the takeoff time loomed closer and closer, I think I’ll pass on that for important journeys.

        Quite happy to take it to work, the worst that happens there is a shorter working day.

    • Jiral@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Making batteries exchangeable adds a lot of costs and overhead. The battery changing infrastructure is even a greater nightmare. Nio tried it and failed. With batteries getting better and better, this concept also is getting less and less feasible. It is really easier and cheaper to expand infrastructure of long range EV renting. That said, in Europe taking the train and renting an EV at the destination (range is not much of an issue then either) is probably the more relaxed option anyway, if a car is needed at all.

    • VAK@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Home charging is easily better for city car. Only two use cases for changeable batteries are commercial two wheelers and trailer trucks. And for trucks you’ll need to change out the driver too. There are ones being trialed which use a forklift to change it out.

    • Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      Most cheap EVs have a battery you need to rent, and they are “standard” to the company (proprietary)

  • carpelbridgesyndrome@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    I walked past a Tesla showroom recently and they had one car on the floor that they still sell, one that they haven’t sold in decades, a frame to a car that’s out of production, and a robot they still don’t produce. They used to have more cars out then they stopped producing them. The stock is still high somehow.

    • MagicPterodactyl@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      The original roadster is still so cool to me. I wish a small relatively light ev sports car was sold in the US. I don’t want a barge with 800 HP I’d much rather have something nimble with a quarter of the power.

      • Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        There was very little original with the roadtser. The chassis is just a Lotus Elise that they stuffed an EV drivetrain into.

        And there are some small ones. The Kia EV3 is 201hp and under 30k.

        • MagicPterodactyl@lemmy.ml
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          2 days ago

          Yeah I know and that’s exactly why it was good, because the elise already had an incredible sports car chassis.

          The EV3 seems like a fine commuter but is certainly not a sports car in weight, shape, chassis, or suspension. It’s just another compact crossover, seemingly a good one, but not really what I’m talking about. In the US the closest thing is probably the Mini Cooper SE, but it’s still heavier and less powerful than the original roadster.

          Imagine if Mazda made an mx-5 EV or Toyota made an 86 EV.

          • soupcon@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            2 days ago

            Imagine if Mazda made an mx-5 EV or Toyota made an 86 EV.

            I’m pro-EV in general (pro-trains notwithstanding), but don’t see the point in that. I’d rather they just got the people who designed the MX-5 and GT86 to design EV sports cars on their own terms. An MX-5 EV would just be there to remind you how much more fun the ICE version was to drive.

            • MagicPterodactyl@lemmy.ml
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              1 day ago

              Well yeah I don’t mean literally make the same car but an EV. Of course there are special considerations that need to be made when designing a different type of car. The main reason most EVs aren’t very fun is because most of them haven’t been designed to be.

  • BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I don’t honestly think the US has the technical ability anymore. The US doesn’t really make much and hasn’t since the seventies. That’s a long time. How much of a Ford is actually made in the US? Shoot, how much is designed in the US?

    Best they could do would be buy the parts, maybe make the frame, paint it and assemble. Don’t make batteries, don’t make screens, or chips, or leds or much of nothing.

  • Donk240978@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    There won’t be flying cars until Autonomous Vehicles have a perfect self driving score.

    Joe Average Potata-brain can’t drive as it is. Now they want to add the extra chaos of multiple tons of debris falling from the sky after minor crash bends one of the stabilizer ports out of alignment?

  • Jiral@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    You see, Europeans cannot have the Cybertruck. Americans cannot have the R5. I can live with that, but then, I am European.

    • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      25k€. It’s insane to me how expensive European EVs are. How did they fuck this up so badly?

      • Jiral@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Not really much more than what the Chinese charge here, also those that avoid special tariffs.

    • ms.lane@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      They also won’t sell it in Australia

      Europe’s loss really though, euro cars sell well here but since you refuse to sell us the EV versions, China is already taking over and Euro cars are already on the back foot, I don’t think they’ll ever gain the marketshare they had either.

      • Jiral@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I am not Renault. I have no idea why they are not selling it in the US or Australia. It is very well possible that they already have given up Australia against the Chinese. The “Made in Europe” argument certainly has less weight there than in Europe. Like I said, I am not sitting in the strategy meetings of Renault but if I had to guess they are choosing their retreat battles already.

        • ms.lane@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I choose to believe you are Renault’s corporate personhood! (obviously you’re not)

          Also you’d be surprised how much weight ‘made in europe’ carries still.

        • thatOneGuy@aussie.zone
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          3 days ago

          Renault had seemingly given up on hatchbacks for the Aussie market, it feels like only a few years ago the Megane and Clio were all over our roads.

          I can’t particularly blame them, though. We have something like ~5% of the population of Europe in about the same landmass, our regulations (ADRs) quite onerous, we drive on the other side of the road compared to continental Europe, and the logistical costs of sending a finished vehicle from Europe to Oceania makes it quite difficult to compete economically against Chinese, Korean and Japanese brands.

          I say this as someone heartbroken, who absolutely adores the designs of European marques like Peugeot, Renault, Alfa Romeo, Abarth and Citroen - they are all undeniably cool.

          • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
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            2 days ago

            I’m your defense you drive on the same side as the UK which does have an R5, you’d think selling more of them would reduce the UK specific tooling cost per car. The driving upside down bit is probably trickier, I’ll concede that.