Are Electric Vehicles the New Quartz Watches?

So, a series of awful circumstances lead me to owning a Tesla. The INSANE rebates and Tesla’s discounts made this car cost me less than $24k new. Honestly, I think that is exactly what it is worth. For note: Elon is awful and I kind of hate myself for owning this car. However…it is amazing. I am not a car person. I don’t drive fast. I just need a reliable way to get to work. There is no romance about cars for me…usually. This basically runs on a upscaled version of my toothbrush. It runs on software that looks like my 2017 Android. But it is an amazing car. I love my Speedy, but it makes no sense as a watch if you don’t love watches. A smartwatch costs 1/10th the price and is massively more functional for most people. A Timex is 1/100th and equally functional. Are we about to enter a period where EVs become stupid cheap to build (Imagine a car version of a $500 Amazon Ebike. $7-8k easily.)? Will we romanticize a gas engine the way we do a mechanical watch? My thoughts? Absolutely.

  • BeeLuv@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    It’s an interesting thought. I like mechanisms. I like elegant engineering. My cars have always been stick-shift, I prefer my acoustic bikes to my ebike, prefer hand powered coffee grinders and can openers to electric ones.

    But I am enamored with solar quartzes.

    Dunno what the theme would be. Elegance, simplicity, accuracy, independence, least tech required to do the job right?

    I can see electric cars replacing petrol cars. Certainly in areas where people can throw solar panels on top of their garage and charge their car off-grid. (Micro-grids are the future in any case.)

  • timestudies4meandu@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Just like the swiss time trials when Seiko took over the accuracy on mechanical swiss, Ev’s have destroyed ICE vehicles

    • Prisma_Cosmos@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Wouldn’t EVs be more like the Swiss quartz movements that beat the Japanese and Swiss mechanicals (which would be ICE)?

    • M3Core@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      I think you’ll be surprised in the next 20 years at where the auto industry is going. EVs are not sustainable.

      There’s a reason Toyota is sticking with Hybrid and not going all-in on pure EV, and it’s not because Toyota isn’t keeping up.

  • Background-Carpet645@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Interesting to think about how ICE cars’ marketing could shift to focus on the romance/longevity of mechanical operation. Maybe they will transition completely away from the use of electronics in order to appeal to owners who want to be able to tinker.

    • KickFacemouth@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Maybe they will transition completely away from the use of electronics in order to appeal to owners who want to be able to tinker.

      Unfortunately, that would be impossible due to safety and emissions regulations. That would also set them back immensely in terms of reliability.

  • M3Core@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Actually I think that’s a pretty good comparison right now. So many EVs are built very cheaply, and might be technically more efficient at getting you from place A to B, but the romance, excitement, quality, and heritage are almost always an after thought.

    I know there are some Tesla-truthers that will find that offensive, but after getting the chance to drive their newest Tesla for an entire day up to the S P100D, and riding along in a friend’s Rivian, I’m always happy to get back into my ICE cars I’ve owned over the years.

  • kickstartdriven@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    Look to Porsche who is investing in synth fuels to keep their ICE cars on the market. Analog cars will only get cooler with time.