I love taking the wind out of Elon’s sails because he is just a horrible and cringe person to an extreme degree, but I personally like the cybertruck aesthetically. It definitely different from anything we have seen in a truck, and I’m all for it. It’s also basically a concept car that is somehow actually making it to market, and if it motivates the bigger auto makers to take more chances with their designs and ideas, I think it’s great.
That said, its so ludicrously expensive, and so impractical/not advisable for all the reasons I would personally use a truck, because it’s basically an SUV with a bed. It’s like a Chevy Avalanche/Honda Ridgeline mashup. This thing is the ultimate pavement princess. If there’s one thing I wouldn’t be an early adopter for, it’s something thats whole purpose is to get beat the fuck up.
I can understand liking the idea of the cyber truck but its aesthetic is so different from convention that I think people need to see it in person to decide if they like it.
There are so many things in it that are different in ways that might be better it is hard for me to imagine it selling well.
I really can’t fathom anyone seriously thinking this is good aesthetically without assuming they have a serious bias affecting their judgement in form of payment, cognitive deficiency, misplaced Musk sympathy, or otherwise.
Other auto makers are doing just fine with their designs overall, we don’t need to include children’s scribbles of a car when talking about where car designs should be headed.
There’s aesthetic differences stemming from simple original taste, then there’s differences stemming from being on the challenged side of the bell curve. Like smearing poop on a wall and trying to call it art.
I’m lucky enough to live somewhere with 24/7 public transit and generally walkable spaces. Some of my coworkers have moved out of the city to cheaper places and I’m just like yeah sure you pay less for rent or your mortgage, but now you’re in a car-first wasteland.
To keep in line with the meme, you must acknowledge that bikes also have pollution from tire wear and replacement, require road salt many places, causes accidents which lead to wounds or death of humans and animals and causes pollution from brake wear and manifacturing.
As the post clearly implies, if you can’t fix every issue with something simultaneously, then you should’t attempt to fix anything at all. /s
I don’t even think you have to fix every issue. Human existence by nature requires us to use and change our environment and our job is to minimize that so we can continue living on this planet.
Both of those examples solve our issues to a point where they’re non-existent. Yes, they’re still produced but they’re well within our manageable amounts and would reverse much of the damage we did if we did them on mass.
I’m not even necessarily against electric cars. I just don’t want one personally, I don’t think they’re great or even the solution, but they’re certainly better than combustion. They just still aren’t great, especially when we already have the actual solutions.
It resembles Steven’s Creek by I-480(?), lemme try to enhance that sign
Edit: oh man this image is compressed all to hell. There’s a very similar death trap at Steven’s Creek Blvd. and I-280 in Cupertino, but this ain’t it.
I’m like 95% sure I’ve seen that somewhere around Orlando, and the sign looks like a Turnpike sign, but the turnpike doesn’t go to Tampa unless you go turnpike to I-4…
EDIT: there’s a less crunchy image on Reddit, apparently FDOT posted it to Twitter. That is definitely a Florida Turnpike sign (sorry for linking to Reddit)
EDIT 2: Found the original tweet via wayback machine, which was deleted by FDOT (gee, I wonder why?) and it’s somewhere in Palm Beach County (Lyons Road to the Turnpike), not Orlando.
Transit projects ALWAYS go over budget and over time. That’s just what happens.
But they are never regretted after they are built. Those expenses are only terrible to people as they are built but as soon as it’s done people can’t imagine how they lived before it. Transit projects always at least break even in the long run. They really are “if you build it they will come”
Also, you know what else goes comically over budget and over time? Car infrastructure projects! But when talking about highways it’s “an investment for the country’s mobility and ultimately its economy” yet with trains it’s “a pointless money sink that will never succeed due to this one very commonly experienced setback.”
(Full disclosure I’m not in the UK, I’m annoyed at him for the people there too, especially since their politicians’ attitudes toward high speed rail seem pretty similar to attitudes in Canada where I am.)
Ah Canada, where 50% of the population lives within the pretty narrow Québec City - Windsor Corridor and yet we don’t have any decent rail service, let alone anything high speed.
I live out in the Maritimes, so this isn’t even something I’d directly benifit from, but it’s one of the most frustrating policy failures in this country for me.
It might sound crazy, but a coast to coast high speed rail line could potentially be conceivable in Canada if we really went all in on rail. We only really have one or two major cities for each of the interior provinces and BC, so just draw a line connecting all of them. There’s not that much in the way outside those cities, and this corridor could connect to the Montreal-Quebéc corridor, and then further on toward the east coast where it again only has to connect a few major cities.
The biggest problem would be BC though, we have a ton of mountains over here which might require some serious tunneling.
Perhaps we could colocate it with the Trans Canada Highway corridor?
according to McKinsey. “And for those Gen Zers who decide that driving just isn’t for them, they can keep themselves busy with TikTok in the passenger seat—or get behind the wheel in the metaverse.”
Be a good consumer and accept our thought control.
Great question - but semi related, I really enjoy sim racing despite rarely driving a car in real life (maybe once a fortnight).
The metaverse doesn’t appeal to me, or most people, but there’s something to be said about jumping in VR and taking a car to a track virtually with a good force feedback wheel, nice load cell pedals and a H-pattern shifter.
Heck I even enjoy euro truck simulator from time to time.
Fun fact from Germany! These giant Christmas markets actually double as parking lots outside of holiday seasons! Everything is temporarily built on top of a giant parking lot!
Furthermore these tend to be close to both major hubs (Think like a central train station!) and some other event areas that DO need the parking (like a football stadium!). That way, while the holiday markets (plural, several a year) are off, the space can also be used as parking space for sports events hosted in the adjacent stadium!
Just some amazing German efficiency for you. Oh also they frequently get used as skateparks.
Also to add (having just spent a good portion of the season going to various Christmas Markets all over Central Europe), a lot of times these central square event spaces are essentially the roofs over underground parking garages. LOTS of multi-level underground parking garages in all these cities.
Well, they’ve probably been markets for some hundreds of years before they dug a parking cave underneath. Old cities especially get increasingly cramped with time.
It’s called an event space and it can’t be occupied all year. There’s stuff going on pretty frequently but when it ain’t, it’s gonna have to be a skatepark + parking lot.
It ain’t just Christmas. There’s holiday markets for every season and even off holiday there is frequent flea markets. It’s even where popular bands will hold their concerts. Without a dedicated space like that, it’s impossible to set up these kind of markets and fairs. It’s inevitable that some days it’ll sit empty.
You try setting up a ferris wheel and rollercoaster in the cramped areas of the city. It won’t work.
As a German, I have never been to a Christmas market held in an event park. I know Christmas markets as just occupying the town square or city centre instead of a dedicated area away from it.
Event parks are in my experience usually just used for fairs, food festivals and sometimes concerts.
There is plenty of subscription or always online software out there that is cracked and fully working, Adobe products, Microsoft office, Spotify, etc.
Obviously any service that can’t be replaced with a free or open source alternative won’t work, first thing I think that would be on the chopping block would be anything that uses GPS, though that’s just a guess, I don’t really have intimate knowledge of this
All around Vic, too. They generally don’t even put in a bike lane, just say “use the emergency lane”. Here’s a sequence of images for one on the freeway in to Melbourne from Ballarat, starting from the onramp:
Features like this really do require a subscription model. This isn’t enabling remote start by pressing a key on your fob. This is sending a request to a server, which connects to a cell tower to broadcast signal saying “turn on this car”. That stuff ain’t free. Someone has to pay AT&T for the data connection.
What BMW was (is?) doing is abhorrent. You’re buying a car with heated seats, and you have to subscribe to hit the button.
Sure, you need to pay for the connection, whether wifi for cell. There’s no need for specific servers or computation to take place. Yeah, you’ll need to pay for another (low data usage) phone line probably, but that should be it.
Then let me have the remote start that has existed for decades as ONE option (without a monthly subscription), and the remote start that requires an entire infrastructure that isn’t required for me to look out my window and remote start my car as an option for those who want or need it.
That’s Kia - I thought we were speaking more broadly. We drive a Toyota product and were offered nothing but the app. However, to your point that may have been poor salesmanship.
Features like this really do require a subscription model. This isn’t enabling remote start by pressing a key on your fob. This is sending a request to a server, which connects to a cell tower to broadcast signal saying “turn on this car”. That stuff ain’t free. Someone has to pay AT&T for the data connection.
Only because they unethically intentionally designed it that way, when they could’ve just as easily picked a different design that could’ve worked entirely locally. They are inventing excuses for rentiership.
As they pointed out in your original post, it’s not, “the subscription model…for something that you already paid & own.” This isn’t subscription seat warmers, it’s paying for an additional service outside the car. You can argue it’s too expensive, but without their internet connection and servers, these features wouldn’t be possible.
Remote start has been around for well over a decade and did not require internet or a subscription. If you just subscribe and use the feature then clearly the neccesary equipment for remote start is already installed and you paid for that equipment regardless if you use the subscription service.
There’s no need to host servers for 99% (maybe 100%) of this stuff. All the remote start features can be done through a direct connection between your phone and car. There’s no need for a third computer to be involved, except to check if you’ve paid for it. As long as your car has wifi access (or phone network access, which would need to be paid for) then it can communicate with other devices on the network/internet. Sure, you still have to pay for the internet, but that’s paid to the ISP, not the car company.
I’m not sure which direct connection you’re thinking of, but for most phones that would be limited to WiFi (probably WiFi Direct), Bluetooth, and maybe NFC. NFC range is tiny and Bluetooth’s is pretty small. WiFi’s range is approximately the same thing as an RF remote, which isn’t great.
Also, if we did have direct connection (which would be great for confirming the start worked, and the status of the car), why would we need internet??
By direct I meant routing to the car and user device, not through company servers. There’s no need for that. Both devices are computers. The only reason the company would need it routed through them first is to make sure you’ve paid up.
Yes, I mentioned that. However, the cell plan would be a lot cheaper. There shouldn’t be a lot of data coming through.
It would mean exposing it as much as any other device is exposed. It’d have a port open and listening for communication. Honestly, I’m pretty sure it’d be identical to how it is currently. It’s not like sending the communication from the company server is any different than from any other device. Its not connecting directly to the company’s servers. It’s a wireless service. Sure, it needs security measures, but it already needs that.
IMHO, It makes sense though. Piracy and open source are two approaches to attacking the enclosure of public (intellectual) space. Roads for cars are literally an enclosure of public space. The subscription model just extends from this logic.
Edit: These are also things that make sense because the car has to have cell service via a provider.
Don’t forget that you can’t haul much because the dumbass designers sloped the walls of your bed. You have plenty of room for friends though, if you could make any.
The vast majority of pickups don’t have sloped bed walls. The only other one I can think of is the Chevy Avalanche, and they aren’t sloped the whole way to the tailgate, only part way.
I would personally bet a full paycheck that in two years, most of these trucks have hauled no more than like a few pieces of furniture, a couple 2x4s, and maybe some bags of potting soil or mulch.
Definitely justifies daily driving a 7000lb, bullet proof, pedestrian slicer.
No sane industrial or construction operator is buying a Cybertruck. They’d probably get the base model F150 Lightning or something if they wanted electric, you know, like they’ve already been doing.
When my little 4-cylinder truck wore out in 2021, I looked so hard for one of the little kei trucks. But all of the ones I could find were $20k, or they were $15k and needed a lot of work to be driveable. And none of them were within 200 miles of my location.
I ended up with a used base-model F150 which only cost me $12k. It had 81k miles on it. As near as I can figure out, it started life as a rental truck for a hardware store called “Menards”. It has an 8ft bed, no carpet, no power locks, no power windows, no back seat, no touchscreen, and no color LCD screen in the gauge cluster. I use this truck for a small farm that my wife and I run, so it doesn’t get driven every day.
It was half the price of the next cheapest truck on the lot, and the next cheapest truck had twice the miles. But the next cheapest truck had all the whiz-bang fancy electronics, instead of being four wheels and a truck bed.
The Suzuki Carry is the one I really wanted. I’ve a soft spot for tiny suzuki vehicles.
Every time I mention not being able to find one in early 2022, people come along to show me where I can get one now. The issue was, I couldn’t find one when I needed it.
Literally same. My entire life has been striving to build a life where I don’t need a car. (mainly out of frustration with NJ’s toxic surcharge program).
Sadly, no one in NY was hiring and my dumbass moved to Austin. Now my drive is to get back to NY where there actually is a hope of using public transit.
Exact same here. The amount of money cars cost is fucking ridiculous. I would pay more and wait longer to not have to deal with the bullshit of owning a car, but I can’t even do that because American public transit is worse than Mordor.
Ebikes will get you a good chunk of the way there in a lot of places. Other than that, if you live in a city then vote like hell and go to city council meeting as often as possible to demand bike lanes. Local voting actually matters and can change (some) things.
If you live in the country… Eh… Start sabotaging gas stations I guess? I don’t even know where to begin with a constructive answer. Rural folks are basically forced in to cars and there isn’t much to do about it without massive changes. In the Netherlands even small towns get train stations, but in the US and Canada and even a lot of Europe rural folks are just screwed.
At least here in Illinois rural towns have okay train access and can easily accommodate bike infrastructure. Many rural towns with a university have decent bike networks already. It’s North American suburbs that are more hopelessly designed around private vehicles.
I lived in rural California and Oregon for a while and there was just nothing. You had a car or you couldn’t live. Wanna get groceries? Drive, because it’s too far to bike and even if you did you’d probably get killed by a car. Wanna get your mail? Drive to the post office. Don’t bike because you’ll get hit by a semi. Wanna go see a movie in a theatre? Yeah, drive for at least half an hour to get to the closest one. But both of the towns I spent the most time in burned to the ground in wildfires so… Yeah…
But it’s good to hear not all of the US is hopeless and some of it is almost functional. I hope at least some parts survive, because there’s a whole lot that just can’t exist without cars and cars can’t exist forever.
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