You could restart it, but it would not be as profitable as whatever they're doing now and it would eat into the market share of the rest of jeep's lineup. Even if you made a competitor, you're competing with a product that has better margins than you and more access to capital. It's competitive in terms of consumer demand, not in aggregate profit.
Company A netting $1 from 50 happy customers is nowhere near as profitiable as Company B netting $10 from 10 miserable customers. Consider that Company A and B also compete for capital and manufacturing capability and such, not just customers. The market has chosen Company B as the most efficient vehicle to extract wealth from customers.
In fact the more Company B (and companies like it) succeed, the more capital they collectively soak up and the fewer competitors they'll have. The less leverage these miserable customers will have.
It's like the market-driven spread of some technology, like shipping containers. Except instead of a cost-cutting technology it's a price-inflating technology. Like movie theaters choosing to add massive markups to their snack bar. If you're a movie theater and you don't extort your customers for snacks, you have to raise ticket prices or lower profitability and you can't make ends meet or be as capital efficient as competitors.
I think there is some solution to this that isn't just heavy-handed regulation that companies will shoot loopholes in and run laps around. Maybe some type of stakeholder capitalism where consumers have more power than shareholders. Crowdsupply is one such example.
Probably not very well if the drone is the typical (quad)copter type since the shield will likely obstruct the airflow from the propellers reducing lift. The added weight of the shield is also likely to be a problem in small drones as most are already weight constrained. Although in small electric copters like those used in Ukraine, I'm not sure how often thermal imaging is used as a primary detection vector (due to size, distance and daytime thermal delta from below).
Thermal is definitely a primary vector in detecting larger drones like the Reaper due to large combustion or jet engines, but in that case the challenge isn't cloaking the drone, it's cloaking the heat of the vented exhaust that's likely leaving a thermal 'contrail' across the sky.
They still are I think. If I had to guess what women want in a car, it's probably something easy to maintain, quiet.
I think what's unappealing to women about EVs is the unreliability with respect to range and charging availability. I struggled with my mom to charge an EV she rented for an inter-city trip and she swore off EVs for a while.
Slate truck is a good example, I saw that ad where it is like decal'd for a flower shop for example. It's pretty small and cute (I suppose electric cars are easier to customize aestheticially in terms of shape as long as you stick to the skateboard format), and the fact that it is quite different-looking than most trucks left some wondering who it's for. Mostly women I think.
Whereas men buy more trucks, and usually there is sort of a power aspect to it where they want something that feels and sounds powerful (and being a gas car is part of that), so they can race it or can pull a toy hauler or something. Women want more of a commuter, but not like a sedan, usually something more bulky like an SUV that makes them feel safe. And then like bachelors and gay guys want like a 2D coupe or a roadster or something.
But it is interesting how these niches influence the market.
It's like most of the money in every market these days is made by cornering the market a certain lifestyle and increasing markup rather than trying to produce some ultra-efficient everyman vehicle. The innovation is all in advertising and consumer control, that's how I feel about every market these days.
If GE cemented the electric car as a must-have for women of the time, then we would have seen advances battery tech and EVs decades earlier. It would eventually have become mainstream with men as well (think of how the wristwatch was originially seen as a women's accessory, back when men had pocketwatches). The real innovation is in controlling consumer sentiment.
Apparently electric cars are for women and men secure enough in their masculinity that they don't require a truck with its own zip code? This is some post.
And then some of us scratch both itches at the same time. I daily a Tesla M3P but I also bought an F150 Lightning. Which, ironically perhaps, my wife daily drives. I don't know that it qualifies for it's own zip code, but it has all the upsides of a truck with all the upsides of an EV.
Thats cool I think, the electric cars do have a lot more torque and I can see that being useful in a truck. But the F150 production was halted because it was a largely unsuccessful.
And now that it's out of production, the parts are gonna be scarce. Speaking as someone with a chevy volt that has a screwed up battery. Unless you go with a prius or a tesla something you're not gonna get a reasonably-priced battery replacement. There really ought to be a standard battery form factor for EVs...
I think if you look at something at aptera, it's really the lightest vehicles that can take advantage of electrification. I mean, they are proposing 1000-mile range, with solar panels on the back that can recover as much as 40 miles of charge a day. It would be incredible if they can pull it off.
> Seems unlikely to happen since the battery is part of a space optimization problem.
I agree, in general, but the Lightning is a counter example. It uses modules, which do not maximize usage of available space, but do make it way easier to replace just one part and not the whole pack. And it is way more plausible that replacements could economically be made in the future that fit the same footprint. Maybe using entirely different battery chemistry.
The F150 production was halted because Ford had a constraint on aluminum that capped how many F150s (of any variety) they could produce, and the Lightning had the tightest margins. It was the best selling electric truck when they pulled the plug. And Farley could see the writing on the wall -- we were headed into a (minimum) four year period where the federal government was going to actively punish anybody making technology perceived to be 'green'. Easier to switch over to something less of a political target and give over the future of cars to the Chinese. Farley drove a Chinese EV for some time as his daily driver and he knew the US manufacturers were cooked. Take a look at Australia now, that is where we are headed.
> chevy volt
Yes, GM screwed you over on that. Best case is it failing under warranty and them buying back the car. The nice thing about the battery in the Lightning is that it isn't really a bespoke pack. It's a big sealed case with 9 battery modules wired together inside. So they don't have to spin up a custom production line to make more, they just need to build boxes of the same dimensions and compatible voltages, or update the BMS calibration. This is a way easier lift than making a custom one-off battery pack for a Volt.
> if you look at something at aptera
I see a tricycle, not a car, with a small number of die-hard enthusiasts who are slowly recognizing that it is DOA. Best I can tell, it's just a grift at this point. They've been making big promises since 2006, been liquidated once already, and still haven't delivered anything. They've narrowed their definition of success to "up to 40 cars for the most enthusiastic customers", maybe in early 2027 ... if they get the funding. Riiiiight.
Well you would think so where I live. I'm the only guy I know who drives a hybrid let alone an EV, other than my friend who has a beater crz (mild hybrid).
Charging your own electric car from the wall is also a challenge here in the country unless you own your own house or are willing to pay higher-than-gas prices.
"here in the country" people don't already have outdoor 240 outlets for RV hookups and welders? "here in the country" people don't run power to their sheds and outbuildings? "here in the country" people aren't resourceful enough to run an extension cord from their dryer plugin out a window?
This is gonna be boring as hell, especially if you can download justdance.exe to your brain.
>get laid
It's not possible or desirable for many thanks to the current state of sexual involution. I suspect that the hyperintelligent sex robots might also may make this inviable as a source of human-human connection.
>Grow some vegetables, build a castle, anything
You need land ownership, which, as one of the few limited things in a post-scarcity society might just explode in value. But I admit it would be pretty cool if the post-scarcity world is basicially just like minecraft creative mode do whatever you want type of environment. Still, with some limitations still in place, I imagine it will look more like 2b2t.
> especially if you can download justdance.exe to your brain.
A lot of Singularity fiction was babbling about life extension technologies and mind uploads long before LLMs existed. I've always been skeptical - maybe there's just fundamental biological (and in the case of stuff like cheap fusion or FTL travel - physical) constraints that will keep even a superintelligence from inventing magical Clarketech.
I think you make a good point. If BCI is limited or impossible then then the future may be very intricate - perhaps Dune-like in the sense that natural human capability becomes the measuring stick for achievement. Humanity will become a beautiful anachronism like mechanical watches or bonsai trees or something. We will become dedicated to the art and science of our own self-cultivation.
On the other hand, If BCI is possible and useful, life will be miserable and we will borg ourselves just to keep up with the cost of living. We will be brains in jars on server racks solving captchas or something. We'll be the solution to AI hardware prices- the paperclip machine will be capitalism and nature itself.
Company A netting $1 from 50 happy customers is nowhere near as profitiable as Company B netting $10 from 10 miserable customers. Consider that Company A and B also compete for capital and manufacturing capability and such, not just customers. The market has chosen Company B as the most efficient vehicle to extract wealth from customers.
In fact the more Company B (and companies like it) succeed, the more capital they collectively soak up and the fewer competitors they'll have. The less leverage these miserable customers will have.
It's like the market-driven spread of some technology, like shipping containers. Except instead of a cost-cutting technology it's a price-inflating technology. Like movie theaters choosing to add massive markups to their snack bar. If you're a movie theater and you don't extort your customers for snacks, you have to raise ticket prices or lower profitability and you can't make ends meet or be as capital efficient as competitors.
I think there is some solution to this that isn't just heavy-handed regulation that companies will shoot loopholes in and run laps around. Maybe some type of stakeholder capitalism where consumers have more power than shareholders. Crowdsupply is one such example.
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