Only thing that goes on my head, but I like the car. :)

Wake me up when a manufacturer finally commits to making an EV that everyone can afford and isn't a cloud-connected privacy nightmare.

I mean, that's pretty obvious, a 2-seater with cabriolet Beetle vibes it's clearly aimed at people with enough money in their 50s and 60s. It's a toy for grown-ups, it doesn't solve any practical need.

The Cerice is lovely but if you have a high-speed crash with another car in it you're in big trouble.

I have an unusual EV made by a relatively small company of which only a handful got to private customers, so if I want to fix something, I have to reverse-engineer it first. Most of the time, I will find out that the components used in my vehicle were also used in other cars.

Regarding the difference between EVs and ICEVs, only the powertrain components are relevant and between those, some are more exchangeable and some are less so.

As with ICEVs, most manufacturers have "platforms" that are shared between multiple makes/models. Having shared components with other vehicles of the same platform is the rule rather than the exception.

In the cars I have seen, the whole battery often only fits that specific model, sometimes also for other cars within the same platform. The modules that make up the battery are often exchangeable with other cars made by the same company/group. The cells that make up the modules are almost always generic, but very hard to replace. The battery management system is usually specific to the battery.

I don't know about the current state, but for early EVs the motor and inverter (which converts battery DC to AC for the motor) were often made by external suppliers. Especially EV variants of otherwise ICE-based vehicles like the Fiat e500, VW Golf/Jetta, and some french cars all use the same motor and inverter made by Bosch. If an inverter is connected to a different type of motor, it needs to be tuned for it which is not trivial.

Onboard Chargers (OBCs), that convert AC line voltage from AC chargers to battery voltage are often quite generic and developed and manufactured by suppliers. They are almost always interchangeable within the same platform, but I haven't yet seen completely unrelated OEMs use the same OBC. The same applies to fast charging communications equipment, which is often integrated into the OBC.

DC/DC converters (the alternator equivalent) are rarely separate components anymore and often integrated into either the OBC or the inverter.

Voltage-wise, all these components are often surprisingly flexible and can be used with much lower voltages than their maximum rated voltage.

Other components like contactors and connectors are very generic and I haven't yet seen one that only one OEM would use. There are likely exceptions to this. Often, the base components like the OBC or the inverter are almost identical, only using other (also generic) connectors.

While technically all these components could be replaced in the "old school" style, almost all of them require either coding the components to the specific vehicle, or flashing an OEM-specific firmware. While the former is only doable with OEM-specific software (that is far too expensive for both indiviuals and most independent workshops), I haven't yet seen any example of the latter, at least not for swapping components between unrelated platforms.

As of now, there are almost no "official" aftermarket replacements for these major components. I don't know of any major supplier that will directly sell parts in small quantities and OEMs likely won't sell you as an individual replacement parts either. For DIY repairs, finding used parts from wrecked cars and coding them with cracked software or having it done in an authorized workshop (if even possible) often seems to be the only option so far. Also, everyone will discourage you from working on your EV for "electrical safety" reasons (actually, it's more profitable if they do the work). Working on an EV is quite safe, if done right (which is not hard).

Most of these limitations do not only apply to EVs, but to almost all modern cars. Often, the necessary work of reverse-engineering and cracking software has already been done for ICEVs for tuning purposes.

https://afdc.energy.gov/vehicles/electric-basics-ev https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/4249

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772#Signaling

There are car enthusiasts and Cubertruck owners. There is little overlap between these two sets.

Why are you guys ignoring that part of the equation and only talking about $44k as though it's the same as the $44k everyone else spends on that Hyundai that they actually need to be useful and haul kids and tools and furniture around a country that's bigger than the Netherlands all day every day like a mule?

Those are two entirely different $44k.

However, those ECUs are more closely related to embedded programming than digital dial outs and SIM Card loaded cars with a internal network canbus these days. Analog / Digital Inputs and outputs as a closed loop controller.

I guess the main appeal is "paint protection". Seems redundant to me, but people do like to apply screen protectors to their phones, which is another thing I don't fully comprehend so you know...

They both wrap their vehicles or get custom paintjobs. How can they be differentiated by vehicle appearance alone?

There's a stink around everything he touches that is repugnant to me.

Cars should be independent, local only devices. Having cloud dependencies is just reckless and stupid.

Given that, I hardly think that 'decoy sims' are much of a stretch.

It is everyone's information that they value, not that one guy who goes to the trouble of killing the radio.

Figure 5yr between "developing" and "fielding". And if you ignore the Plymouth Prowler exercises in putting cutting edge tech into low volume models to get practice doing so it adds another few years depending on what the item is and how bad the OEM wants it in the field.

In any case, by the 1990s these are computers comparable in complexity to the bare minimum it takes to run an oven from 2010 that has a digital timer and some automatic functions. They read inputs and implement simple if-then and timer logic. They don't do any communicating with other systems, and if they do they pretend to be a simple sensor or actuator (depending on which end of the connection they're on). The closest thing you're gonna get to a "bus" is a shared ground or a shared reference voltage circuit.

Take for example a hypothetical 1995ish Ford (EEC-IV, which was pretty advanced for its time) that combines every possible module you can have across the whole lineup. At best you're gonna get is five computers. ABS module reads vehicle speed (VR sensor) and does it's thing. It then sends out approximately the same voltage/frequency signal it got in to the transmission controller or ECU which does the same thing and sends the signal to the digital odometer. The ECU directs the ignition module, but the ignition module isn't really a computer, it's a bunch of solid state circuitry that implements essentially one function which is turning on and off high current in response to a low current signal but with some automatic loops in there (it's broken out from the ECU for cost reasons, on some models it's integrated). You also have a body control module but once again, just simple dumb logic that people the world over implement with analog controls every day, "if engine off then door close wait 30sec before headlights off"

At no point is there bidirectional communication nor is there any sort of bus anywhere. When there is complex feedback where A tells B to do something and then cares about the result, it's architected such that B isn't implementing any logic, it's pretending to be a sensor and an actuator, taking a "do things" signal and returning a "I did things" signal (voltage change usually).

These are not in any way comparable to a modern car where everything shits messages onto various buses and things actually listen for messages, ignore what they don't need, output messages when they've done things, etc, etc.

The only people using CAN in the 90s were Ze Germans, because they're who invented it.

>Was Toyota controlling its windshield wipers with a 4004 in 01974? Was Nissan controlling a speedometer with an RCA 1801 in 01973?

No. Toyota was using analog circuitry for that then and Nissan kept a physical cable at least into the 90s.

It's another thing to claim all of them are obviously corrupt.

You do you.