GhostInTheMachine
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Even if you're able to afford paying a loan every single month to buy one of these things, repairing the car should anything go wrong is going to be nearly impossible due to how electrically complex these things are. Everything is connected to a module, modules that no mechanic wants to touch. I personally live in an area that's extremely rough on cars so I'm guessing any of those machines will only last around 5 years at most before you need to buy a new one. You think your average person can pay off a loan that big in 5 years? I make a pretty decent salary and I definitely couldn't.
I mean there's no reason we can't have semi affordable cars on par with late 90s Toyotas in terms of quality other than bullshit government regulations regarding emissions right?
And I know I'm not alone in hating just how much tablets and other tech has been integrated into newer cars. Needlessly bloats the price and makes them a pain to work on. As the cars get "smarter" your ownership and control of them will only diminish.
Wasn't the major upside to any form of electric vehicle, that they are simpler than their predecessors? Compare a steam locomotive to a modern electric one. True technological progress is when you have the means to make something simpler. For example a mechanical watch compared to a quartz one. You have to take care of a rolex, but the cheap casio terrorist watch I rediscovered at the back of my drawer after several years is only half a minute wrong. An EV is basically a big RC-Car. For maintainance, a dream, right?If these companies gave a shit about the planet, they'd make products that can be easily repaired with readily available parts. Whether that be ICE or EV. Driving a 1999 Toyota Camry for 30 years will always be more environmentally friendly than pumping out EV shit boxes to the masses every 5-10 years when the batteries stop working and they cost 6-15k to replace.
Meaning this trend we are witnessing is wholly artificial. The goal isn't saving the planet, that's just a Trojan horse for the real goal: to make the car a smartphone on wheels - and in all the worst ways. The next level of centralisation and planned obsolesence. "Your car doesn't support Windows 11" - what the shit.
Even all of the small electric car start-ups I have seen seem fall for this trap: Half the windscreen is blocked by a TV sticking out of the dashboard.
That 1999 Toyota camry already has planned obsolesence to quite a large extent as well, people were already complaining about how bad cars had allegedly become back then, smaller amount of space to work on the engine and lack of standardised parts for example. That they now seem like a gold standard to us is not a good sign. If the future proceeds as this thread describes, will people in 20 years reminisce in the same way that we do now (this being a vaporwave forum and all) about how good the last of the petrol cars were?
What we are experiencing isn't technical progress, it's technical bloat. Making things as complicated as possible, for profit and for its own sake; Us poor humans are being strung along for the ride.
No wonder people are going back to LPs and analogue photography (CDs and Cassettes too to a lesser extent) - me too, and with cameras just for the fact that an old SLR is just more intuitive to use, however annoying developing film may be. The device has all the features you need to take good pictures, and nothing more. Sure, you need to learn how to do things manually, but all of the functions are intuitively layed out so that they quickly become non-distracting muscle memory - just like in a pre-2010s car. Who even cares about the newest algorithmic auto mode that allows even a brain-amputee to paralel park or win a pulitzer prize. I am human, I don't need this; I just want to drive a car / take pictures for gods sake!
Of course, that our modern world is built for the car, and not for the human is another big problem, the bigger one in my opinion. But that's a whole different can of worms.
The Youtube-search-algorithmication of everything. Either you submit to your new globally centralised tech-industrial overlords and let your new helicopter parent, the algorithm, make the "right choices" for you, or you can let yourself be assaulted by an overwhelming clusterfuck of menus if you dare to have any sort of control yourself. Most will end up choosing the former, if with the latter it will even be possible for a human to have a life otherwise.
I am glad though to hear this sentiment echoed, not just on the lesser known parts of the internet, but among friends too. I believe there is great demand for a repairable barebones car - electric or not- the sort with hand-crank windows, and whoever meets it could make loads of money. Just like, potentially, with the affordable repairable Smartphone or Laptop. But it's not like anyone manufactures what the individual buyer wants these days anyway. Only that which we have been convinced to want.
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