[southerntofu]

Hello Cruise CEO, there's a huge market for durable and profitable "dumb" cars. Why don't you get on that market? In a time when electronics represents over 30% of car costs and ~50% of car failures, people like me would be happy to buy a car that doesn't suck (low-tech) and can be maintained for decades for a reasonable price. In the meantime, i'll keep buying old Renault/Peugeot cars from the fifties/sixties i guess :(

[protocolture]

I actually concur, my DPF is a nagging beast and I hate it.

But I am betting that quite a lot of the electronic components of cars these days are tied to things, my DPF is a great example, that come from safety and environmental regulation. If you pull the ECU out and tricked the motor into running anyway, I am betting your emissions profile will suck massively. Ditto transmission. The rest of my car seems to involve safety features, sensors and cameras mostly.

By the time you reinvent the car to exclude all these things, then make it roadworthy again I reckon you would end up with almost exactly the standard modern car again. Car makers arent putting computers in for funsies.

[southerntofu]

> Car makers arent putting computers in for funsies.

There's a bit of everything. Some parts are due to regulations. Some parts are due to providing fancy options (LCD screens, seat heaters..), some parts are useful for diagnostics.

Still, some designs are overly complex because during production it's easier to use a hundred MCUs assigned to a specific task. But for durability purposes, it would be better to have clear circuitry with only a handful of MCUs running open source software.

I'm guessing there's an interesting middle ground to explore between "raw motor + wheels" and "FSD car".

[panick21_]

The things you say are just factually wrong on many levels.

> durable and profitable "dumb" cars

Both of these are pretty much wrong.

First of all, just based on regulation and safety, the car is gone have a huge amount of electronics. Second, regulation about emissions also require a huge amount of electronics. You can't get away from that no matter how dumb you want to make a car. Maybe you don't like it, but society prefers less people to die even if it is not inconvenient for you.

Granted, in many way an old inefficient smaller car is still saver and better for the environment then a modern huge car. But that i a failure of the regulation.

Next the idea is that such cars would be profitable. This is simply inaccurate. Car companies can barley make money on cars as it is, in fact, without parts supply they don't really make money on those cars.

Additionally most consumers simply prefer to buy cars with lots of multimedia options and things like that. Having the ability to warm up your car before you get in is useful for example. Having phone conversations in your car is useful. Having GPS in your car is useful. People like having heated seats. People like having good sound in the car.

People simply aren't buying the cars you seem to be demanding and doing such cars simply wouldn't be profitable. In fact, generally if you look at China you will see an increase in the types of features you don't like.

To suggest an autonomous car company gets into that business makes no sense at all.

And I say this as somebody that doesn't own a car and generally thinks cars should be replaced as much as possible and band in many places.

There are many ways repeatability could be improved without going back to 1960s cars. Many of those should be embraced but you will simply not get around some inherent complexity of the modern world.

[tw04]

They do? Nobody is forcing you to buy a decked out Cadillac. If you want to buy a base model Malibu for $25k, I'm sure you can find a dealer that will gladly sell it to you.

If you want a brand new car for $10k you’re going to need a time machine, or move to a country without modern safety standards.

[dventimi]

Why don't YOU get on that market if you think it's so worthwhile?

[code_runner]

Sounds like the market works and you can easily find the cars you’re looking for that last “forever”

[southerntofu]

That's not wrong, but still some parts wear out and it's harder to find them nowadays. Although to be fair there's still some production for the most popular cars (eg. 2CH, 4L).

But it would be interesting if we took that old "built forever" approach (remember washing machines that last a lifetime?) and used it to build modern low-tech cars with the newer higher safety standards and efficiency gains. It's a shame how everything that comes out of factories nowadays has a 10 year lifespan.