alt Hacker NewsThere's a fortune to be made for whomever produces a car that has minimal features, and and electric-drivetrain with onboard gasoline generator. No screens, knobs and buttons, no assists. Extra fortune if you can licence designs and revive some of the old-and-loved classics with new safety features.
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There is no way that is true, basic cars have always existed, like Dacia with bare minimum features to pass all requirements and they are far from being popular. The fact of the matter is, is that people just like fancy things and cars especially
It is probably like with smart TV's where the value of the telemetry data ends up subsidizing a significant fraction of the hardware. Car manufacturers seem to be doing a lot of experiments with what they can charge for in terms of ongoing subscriptions. I am sure if they could show ads without it being considered distracting they would.
I think the problem is there isn't a fortune there. It would be a successful endeavor, but not something to rake in huge piles of cash. The kinds of leaders and investors who could pull off what you're describing are instead working where they can make multi-millions rather that multi-hundreds of thousands.
Well, Bollinger Motors tried just that, but they couldn't make it fly.
However, you now have a chance to buy one of the rare prototypes!
https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/bollin...
A screen for the back-up camera is federally required for new cars in the US, afaik. But using the screen for additional purposes is still optional... for now...
> electric-drivetrain with onboard gasoline generator
Generally speaking, it's more efficient to power a car using a series-parallel hybrid system than an electric drivetrain with generator (series hybrid) while not really being any more complicated.
In a series hybrid (electric with generator), you're losing energy converting the rotational energy into electric energy. It's better to use the engine's output to power the wheels while it's in an efficient range. It's why Toyota's series-parallel hybrid design offered better mileage than vehicles that (primarily or fully) operated as series hybrids like the Chevy Volt.
> No screens
You can't really sell a car without a screen due to government regulations which require backup cameras (since 2018 in North America, since 2022 in the EU and Japan).
> no assists
Automatic Emergency Braking is going to be required in the US in 2029 (detecting frontal crashes about to happen and automatically braking, including pedestrian detection).
The EU requires even more including blind spot detection and lane-keeping assist.
I certainly agree that cars need knobs and buttons for controls like AC/heat, music, etc. However, it'd be hard to make a car where you aren't putting in a screen and assistive technology. I think a better argument would be to make a car where the screen was simply Apple CarPlay/Android Auto and a backup camera - rather than shoving a lot of garbage UX into it.