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Honda says making cheap electric vehicles is too hard, ends deal with GM
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Crazy to see how far behind Japanese car manufacturers are getting these days. Japan disrupted the auto market and made small, fuel efficient, cars popular. Now Honda and Toyota are starting to feel like 70’s Detroit.
Meanwhile Hyundai and Kia are absolutely smashing it (in Europe and Asia) with their cheap, reliable cars
can't really agree with the "reliable" part but yea, they are affordable.
2013 Hyundai Elantra here. Despite full synthetic oil changes every 5k miles and new filters every year, my engine has now failed for a second time in 100k miles. The mechanic is telling me it needs a new engine, which is going to basically exceed the value of the car.
But at least it was cheap!
Former 2012 Forte owner here - first engine made it to 90k, second one was knocking already about 2k in. Basically walked from a freshly paid off vehicle and bought a Toyota.
And easy to steal
Edit: Downvote me all you want, I got mine stolen this year in Bulgaria, and if you check the news there's a lot of Tucsons stolen like every week. Along with the recent callback of models that risk getting on fire, Hyundai has a pretty shit reputation lately and I wouldn't buy one again even it was free.
I thought only the American models were easy to steal because they left out some critical antitheft features on the lowest cost models? Didn't think it impacted other countries.
Pretty sure their refering to the fact that certain Kia(?) models could be jacked using a screwdriver and USB. Basically the engines power button was shit. This is also why I dont fucking trust cars that use startup buttons, atleast if someone hotwires the car they had to work for it.
It only affected key start cars, if it was push button start, it was immune to the attack you describe.
I was going off of something I vaguely remembered. But now my question is why the actual fuck was the key start system setup so badly.
My understanding is it doesn't actually verify the chip on some models and the mechanism to start happens to be roughly the same size and shape as a USB plug. They took a risk and now they're paying for it with a full recall
That's a damn good question, when chip-keys were fairly common in the 90's already.
Not in Europe. That fiasco only happened in the US.
Because the US doesn't make engine immobilisers mandatory like the rest of the world does
Hyundai knowingly left an easy exploit to hotwire their cars in for several years. The redesigned a few cars to try to rebrand after fixing it, but they cut corners there too, and now they're in the middle of recalling the Tuscan for exploding batteries.
Sorry, Hyundai isn't a role model here.
He is referring to the EV cars as in the topic.
He's also shifted from NA to Europe. So...
But a Hyundai isn't going to easily go 200k miles with easy to source parts (have Hyundai cars in my family).
Hyundai and Kia are disposable cars. Not a model I can get behind.
Tradeoffs, it's always tradeoffs.
They are only disposable to those that don't take average care of their cars. My parents Sonata is at 235k and it will soon become my kid's car. Runs fine with no issues because my parents take care and of their cars.
I mean my mom had a Hyundai that got it's regular maintenance, still died when it had costly transmission issues
Kia and Hyundai are the most stolen cars in North America due to missing basic security measures like steering wheel locks and the ability to spoof the key fob with a cell phone. You could also take a Hyundai or Kia that is near it's fob and just drive off in it. There was no proximity shut off until a recent OTA update, and it didn't work on every model
They're cheap in NA and they're likely to stay that way until they add proper security measures. In response, both State Farm and Allstate have raised insurance rates on Hyundai and Kia made after 2015. They're cheaper because they cut corners, and the end customer foots the bill on the insurance side
Prius anyone? Still a better approach than a full electric.
Debatable in today's world. At least in Europe and north America
PHEV's are getting reclassified/re-regulated by the EU, because:
The stated average emissions are based on actually plugging in to charge, which most owners don't bother with, considering electric propulsion only accounts for like 1/15 of the cars total range
It has been regulated in a way that gave the manufacturer only small emissions penalty for increasing the motor size & weight of the car - because it was still considered to be electrically powered.
The design itself leads to a heavier car (having 2 propulsion systems)
Meanwhile, the full EV market has been more self-regulating in the sense that they have kept the weight/energy requirements down in order be competitive on range.
I would not say a better approach, but it is a workable one. We have one already and will be getting a second one in the next few months. Our next new car will be an all electric, but that is a few years down the road.
No it's not.
Last I looked into it, Toyota was still supposed to have some of the most efficient combustion engines out there, with something crazy like 40%(?) thermal efficiency.
As far as I know Mazda are the highest with their gas engines that have diesel compression ratio.
Wow, 56%, impressive, although they seem to be roughly in-line with the competition for MPG anyway.
I know, that's what I find weird about it, in the end fuel economy isn't that much better... I haven't checked peak power vs competition though, but I think they have more torque than most? 🤔
It's because fuel economy is heavily driven by vehicle weight, since start from a stop kills efficiency. Cruise effeciency is more about aerodynamics than weight (ask anyone who's ever towed anything - you can really feel the drag above 45mph).
And oddly enough, today's cars aren't really significantly lighter than 30 or 40 years ago. We've just moved the weight from the frame/body setup to unitized body/frame (lighter but safer... And cheaper to manufacture), more safety systems (airbags/computers) and things like heated seats, etc.
Today's 4+ seat SUV often weighs as much as a 1970's 4+ seat station wagon...but with less space inside.
Yes it's about aerodynamics and rolling resistance and weight and you need X torque to overcome all of that at Y speed, but if you are able to generate that amount of torque from less fuel because your engine manages to extract more energy from the same amount of fuel, you would expect the car to have better fuel economy than its competitor with an engine that has worse thermal efficiency... So unless Mazda is doing something really wrong or the return diminishes greatly past a certain point, I don't understand why they don't have much better fuel economy numbers with an engine that has 56% efficiency (compared to as low as 20% for gas engines just 20 years ago!)
How do they pull that off?
16:1 with the latest generation of engines, direct injection does miracles!
How efficient was the Flying Scotsman? That must have had a pretty efficient engine.
At a quick google steam locomotives generally top out at 10%, due to discarding the steam without recovering any of the heat.
I mean I drive a Prius Prime and I love it. I'm surprised they're not pushing harder on PHEVs. I just put 900km onto the darn thing on a road trip - a few evening charging sessions (the motel had a charging station across the street) for like $3 total plus $35CAD of gas for the whole trip.