Technology

Physical switches > screens. It's much harder to develop the muscle memory for a screen. I don't have to look away from the road with switches.

The reason everything is on a touch screen now is that it's cheaper than physical switches, as ridiculous as that seems. And yes, I greatly prefer physical switches.

Buy and wire multiple switches on every car, requiring wiring harnesses, ECM IO pins etc. or pay an intern a minimal sum once so he can put "designed Chevrolet in-dash console" on his resume. Then never update it even though it supports OTA updates and is a glitchy mess, Chevy

This is the same reason so many products come with a stupid Bluetooth app now rather than more than one button. Pay once rather than pay on every unit.

"Get your cheap, reliable EVs here!" Done. You can pay me that $100k marketing salary whenever it's convenient.

China wasn't "outcompeting us on undesirable, low productivity, jobs". Corporations were shipping jobs to China to undercut highly productive factory jobs back then, too, so they could save on labor costs. It's only now that China is undercutting corporate profits that these same corporations come crying and shitting their pants. That's also why you see a ramping up of negative media pieces on China. It was never about charitably raising people out of poverty. It was always about corporations undercutting labor to gain greater profits. Fuck 'em, bring on the cheap cars.

Don’t think labor costs is a big factor. Car production is the sector that is most automated. Just think of this endless bands of hanging cars with robot arms working on it. Tesla even topped this.

It’s mainly the unwillingness to design and sell cheap cars due to less profits. In Germany we had electric cars for 20k€ or even combustion cars under 15k€. But they stopped building it. Although it was sold out in weeks.

In my region there was a Startup by the Aachen University RWTH (which is an elite university in Germany) bulding small EVs for around 20k€. They simply bought all parts from suppliers and just assembled it. And engineered and designed it first. Unionized and still competitive. Unfortunately, they didn’t fly.

EV building is rather simple. The software is key. And this is the missing part at car makers capabilities.

I second your thoughts on trade war. However, I guess it will be much simpler with high taxes, high quality regulations, and may be less support by car workshops. We will see…

Complements. The reason we’re stuck in this auto-dystopia (are we auto-asphyxiating? ;-) is people wanting one size fits all infrastructure. Let’s apply this more intelligently this time - recognize that some areas are more built up than others and different solutions scale differently . In general that can be a good thing, but we need interconnected services for everyone. That does include cars in many areas, although I agree a worthwhile goal for cities/town centers is that people not need a car

We need the incrementally more eco-friendly options as well. Most pickup truck driving office workers won't suddenly get a bike and change their ways, so a more eco friendly personal vehicle is probably a lot more likely to reduce emissions for that demography.

I get your sarcasm, but Chinese products are life savers in 3rd world countries like mine. My brother bought a Chinese pickup truck for $3500 brand new. American trucks are at least 10 times that. People there work a whole month for $500 - $900. No one can and will never afford that shit. Same goes for other products like cellphones, computers.... Etc. an iPhone there costs $1200 - $1400 and a Chinese one costs $300 max and it does the job no problem. People in those countries love China.

I know someone is going to read that and not get the implied /s

giant, 6 kWh...