In some BMWs the engine sounds come from the speakers because the actual exhaust is quiet.

There was a special Renault hatchback covered on Top Gear a while back where the engine sound is also through the speakers but it could be changed to sound like an F1 car or a Nissan GT-R.

edit: found a clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNs9rPN ... gs=pl%2Cwn

not many of todays performance cars and trucks do not use it.

it's quite the common from the manufacturer

avkills posted:

dv posted:

Metacell posted:

TOS posted:

the problem isn't reliability, it's audio

a huge reason why people get those cars (and muscle cars too) is the sound they make

how the hell will they goose the lizard brain when their cars make no noise?

part of me thinks the supercars will be the last to go electric for this reason

Why not just mount speakers to the hood and have your own custom engine sound? Downloadable sounds for 99¢!

Some gas-burners even do that.

Yup, sorta. The Club trim level of the Mazda MX-5 has a sound tube that runs from the engine bay into the cockpit. A lot of people remove them or plug them up. It does not bother me, so I just roll with it.

My Fiesta does that too. Not so great when I'm trying to talk to my bf, but otherwise I sorta like it.

I just have to say that it brings whole new levels to human stupidity.

But my car would make the TIE-fighter sound.

Here you go:
http://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/com ... st_tippie/
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2014/07/formul ... aking-off/

https://jalopnik.com/enough-with-the-ac ... 1834338565

Glad to see gearheads piling in.

meanwhile, unsold ice cars are piling up at near-record levels

prices too damn high

DukeofNuke posted:

prices too damn high

And cars are lasting too long. The life span of a car has doubled in the last 40 years. Time was that cars used to really start showing their age around 60,000 miles, now it is very typical for a car to run very well till 150k and longer.
Kinda like how the desktop PC business was great with 3 or 4 year usage cycles but now that has grown closer to ten years.
My 13yo Mazda drives as good as new and my 6 year old PC is still more than fast enough for what I throw at it.

Pariah posted:

DukeofNuke posted:

prices too damn high

And cars are lasting too long. The life span of a car has doubled in the last 40 years. Time was that cars used to really start showing their age around 60,000 miles, now it is very typical for a car to run very well till 150k and longer.
Kinda like how the desktop PC business was great with 3 or 4 year usage cycles but now that has grown closer to ten years.
My 13yo Mazda drives as good as new and my 6 year old PC is still more than fast enough for what I throw at it.

That's why new computers have PCs built into the front.

dv posted:

Pariah posted:

DukeofNuke posted:

prices too damn high

And cars are lasting too long. The life span of a car has doubled in the last 40 years. Time was that cars used to really start showing their age around 60,000 miles, now it is very typical for a car to run very well till 150k and longer.
Kinda like how the desktop PC business was great with 3 or 4 year usage cycles but now that has grown closer to ten years.
My 13yo Mazda drives as good as new and my 6 year old PC is still more than fast enough for what I throw at it.

That's why new computers have PCs built into the front.

i beg your pardon?

I'm guessing he meant cars with tablets built into them. Otherwise, nothing else would go obsolete fast enough to warrant buying a new one.

TOS posted:

dv posted:

Pariah posted:

DukeofNuke posted:

prices too damn high

And cars are lasting too long. The life span of a car has doubled in the last 40 years. Time was that cars used to really start showing their age around 60,000 miles, now it is very typical for a car to run very well till 150k and longer.
Kinda like how the desktop PC business was great with 3 or 4 year usage cycles but now that has grown closer to ten years.
My 13yo Mazda drives as good as new and my 6 year old PC is still more than fast enough for what I throw at it.

That's why new computers have PCs built into the front.

i beg your pardon?

maurvir posted:

I'm guessing he meant cars with tablets built into them. Otherwise, nothing else would go obsolete fast enough to warrant buying a new one.

wot 'e sed.

It's a conspiracy.

ah, gotcha

A CONSPIRACY I TELLS YA!

yes, yes, a terrible conspiracy

:: pats head ::

https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/10/bmw-carplay-outage/

Quote:

BMW owners in both the US and UK have been locked out of Apple's CarPlay interface on their vehicles due to system-wide outages of ConnectedDrive. 9to5Mac reported that complaints from drivers on both sides of the pond began racking up on social media earlier this week. The German car company's subscription-based connectivity service lets drivers to connect to Apple's CarPlay, which manages everything from navigation to phone calls. With ConnectedDrive being down, cars are unable to confirm that drivers have paid for the CarPlay options in their vehicle.

You want to make good publicity on this: provide this niche service for free, as a technological proof-test. But who am I kidding, it's BMW. PAY!

... What? Pay a subscription to access hardware features that don't rely on your servers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-7b1waoj9Q

EVs are the future, Tesla is a bunch of nincompoops.

Did he just try to sell me a wallet?

C. Ives posted:

Did he just try to sell me a wallet?

I didn't watch it, but just in case, you should also subscribe and hit that bell.

Youtubers get very little money from google these days, so yeah, they're all trying to sell you human waste as part of their videos (and you can't adblock that).

-and I don't care about anything, I still want a tesla [/geek][/fanboy]

C. Ives posted:

Did he just try to sell me a wallet?

Yes. Skip that and go to the computer nerd part.

Driving a Tesla Across The Loneliest Road in America

It's 51 minutes long, but it's still well edited, entertaining, and informative about the Tesla model X (it's not an ad, really), and long distance driving through the american west/desert.

ford to shed 10% of its workforce as it shifts toward evs

Quote:

Ford revealed details of its long-awaited restructuring plan Monday as it prepared for a future of electric and autonomous vehicles by parting ways with 7,000 white-collar workers worldwide, about 10% of its global salaried workforce.

Quote:

The layoffs are coming across a broad swath of the company including engineering, product development, marketing, information technology, logistics, finance and other areas. But the company also said it is hiring in some critical areas including those developing software and dealing with self-driving and electric vehicles.

gm laid off 14,000 people in the fall for similar reasons

talk about disruptive, eh?

evs don't need all of those workers?

must be an excuse.

user posted:

evs don't need all of those workers?

must be an excuse.

They don't. Instead of designing and building their own engines, transmissions, drivetrains, etc., they buy motors and batteries from vendors.

Way of the future.

They still need all of those guys to deal with the rest of the car.

I wonder if there'll eventually custom system integrators who will build your car from off the shelf parts, like in the PC world. Or enthusiasts will buy the case (the body), the motherboard and CPU and the drive train from select vendors and put it all together in their own garage.
There will be gaming cars, business cars, work cars etc. Enthusiasts will benchmark them in virtual drive-offs as well as on tracks. Self-driving fan boys will get into flame wars with rivals. Aftermarket RGB lighting will separate the enthusiasts into fan-boy camps.

So, no real difference than now.

user posted:

They still need all of those guys to deal with the rest of the car.

take away the drivetrain and you take away a huge percentage of manpower requirements

that's just math

note the jobs listed for layoffs ... logistics, marketing, etc

yes, they will still need logistics and marketing - probably even more.

analyst: ford might need thousands more layoffs

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... anley-says

As long as we continue the CEO bonus structure and shareholder dividend payment schedule...

the article points out a serious decline in sales in china, which has stopped being an engine of sales growth

Ribtor posted:

I wonder if there'll eventually custom system integrators who will build your car from off the shelf parts, like in the PC world. Or enthusiasts will buy the case (the body), the motherboard and CPU and the drive train from select vendors and put it all together in their own garage.
There will be gaming cars, business cars, work cars etc. Enthusiasts will benchmark them in virtual drive-offs as well as on tracks. Self-driving fan boys will get into flame wars with rivals. Aftermarket RGB lighting will separate the enthusiasts into fan-boy camps.

So, no real difference than now.

I have been thinking along the same lines. The simple drive train of an EV seem like it could bring us back to the days of custom coach builder like in the 20's and 30's..

Pariah posted:

Ribtor posted:

I wonder if there'll eventually custom system integrators who will build your car from off the shelf parts, like in the PC world. Or enthusiasts will buy the case (the body), the motherboard and CPU and the drive train from select vendors and put it all together in their own garage.
There will be gaming cars, business cars, work cars etc. Enthusiasts will benchmark them in virtual drive-offs as well as on tracks. Self-driving fan boys will get into flame wars with rivals. Aftermarket RGB lighting will separate the enthusiasts into fan-boy camps.

So, no real difference than now.

I have been thinking along the same lines. The simple drive train of an EV seem like it could bring us back to the days of custom coach builder like in the 20's and 30's..

well that's a serious concern among carmakers

seeing as the batteries and drivetrains will almost certainly be shipped complete from asian manufacturers, they basically are going to become glorified coachbuilders

no wonder they're panicking

TOS posted:

Pariah posted:

Ribtor posted:

I wonder if there'll eventually custom system integrators who will build your car from off the shelf parts, like in the PC world. Or enthusiasts will buy the case (the body), the motherboard and CPU and the drive train from select vendors and put it all together in their own garage.
There will be gaming cars, business cars, work cars etc. Enthusiasts will benchmark them in virtual drive-offs as well as on tracks. Self-driving fan boys will get into flame wars with rivals. Aftermarket RGB lighting will separate the enthusiasts into fan-boy camps.

So, no real difference than now.

I have been thinking along the same lines. The simple drive train of an EV seem like it could bring us back to the days of custom coach builder like in the 20's and 30's..

well that's a serious concern among carmakers

seeing as the batteries and drivetrains will almost certainly be shipped complete from asian manufacturers, they basically are going to become glorified coachbuilders

no wonder they're panicking

If only they hadn't bribed Congress all these years to stop incentivizing EVs...

I got to thinking about Tesla cars so I went to browse thru the Tesla Motors site and looks like I would never buy a Tesla for something that has nothing to do with them being electric.
Unless I missed something it looks like every Tesla comes with that transparent sky roof and I would never in a million years buy a car featuring a see through roof. My car has a sunroof and the best feature of that sunroof is the solid panel I can slide over it to cover it up.
I stick fiddling HATE having the sun beating down on me in when it is high in the sky. The only time I open my sunroof is in the evening or night time. But during the day it is closed off so I don't have to deal with the suns glare during the day.
My glass in my sunroof is quite darkly tinted but even with that it is unpleasant during the day.
I was kinda disappointed about the roof situation with Tesla cars. They are nice but I could never buy one as they are.

Pariah posted:

I got to thinking about Tesla cars so I went to browse thru the Tesla Motors site and looks like I would never buy a Tesla for something that has nothing to do with them being electric.
Unless I missed something it looks like every Tesla comes with that transparent sky roof and I would never in a million years buy a car featuring a see through roof. My car has a sunroof and the best feature of that sunroof is the solid panel I can slide over it to cover it up.
I stick fiddling HATE having the sun beating down on me in when it is high in the sky. The only time I open my sunroof is in the evening or night time. But during the day it is closed off so I don't have to deal with the suns glare during the day.
My glass in my sunroof is quite darkly tinted but even with that it is unpleasant during the day.
I was kinda disappointed about the roof situation with Tesla cars. They are nice but I could never buy one as they are.

Pariah posted:

I got to thinking about Tesla cars so I went to browse thru the Tesla Motors site and looks like I would never buy a Tesla for something that has nothing to do with them being electric.
Unless I missed something it looks like every Tesla comes with that transparent sky roof and I would never in a million years buy a car featuring a see through roof. My car has a sunroof and the best feature of that sunroof is the solid panel I can slide over it to cover it up.
I stick fiddling HATE having the sun beating down on me in when it is high in the sky. The only time I open my sunroof is in the evening or night time. But during the day it is closed off so I don't have to deal with the suns glare during the day.
My glass in my sunroof is quite darkly tinted but even with that it is unpleasant during the day.
I was kinda disappointed about the roof situation with Tesla cars. They are nice but I could never buy one as they are.

dude you know i love you but sometimes you sound so damn cantankerous