They are real technology, in the sense that this is where over 100 years of optimising every aspect of ICE has got us to. Fascinatingly complex, extremely well engineered, and depending on the brand still relatively likely to break down within the first few years.
The engines are also longer designed to be maintained without special processes, and are increasingly designed around emission regulations. To the point where a lot of the complexity is in emission systems and the cars are choked by their own extremely lean fuel maps.
Electric motors on the other hand are still relatively unoptimised and the potential in things like torque vectoring is amazing. I'll miss driving manual, but it's getting just about impossible to buy those now anyway.
> Electric motors on the other hand are still relatively unoptimised
Electric motors have huge applications across most industries for longer than combustion engines. Calling them unoptimized is quite a stretch. There're some car specific optimizations to be done, sure, but it's very mature technology, with little potential for breakthroughs.
Those applications generally haven't been focused on putting ridiculous horsepower in a tiny format and then running a highly variable load while dissipating heat.
For example Axial flux motors are still very much being developed with a steady flow of breakthroughs (Magnax, Emrax), and have mind bending power to weight ratios. A lot of the current issues seem to be around heat dissipation, which is where I am hoping some of the next big wins are.
I'm a bit sad that currently easily available motors are currently not in the same league as Tesla (I have a 50kw Me1616 and Sevcon 4 sitting on my bench) but it looks like that is slowly changing.
> And you better be 100% certain of each customer's lifetime value, otherwise you'll have a problem.
This resonates with me. When i was younger I used to get ignored a lot at certain kinds of store. Now I have more money I still avoid them on principal.
This argument is more akin to saying its the builders responsibility to decide whether a bad architectural decision should be built or not. They might bring it up, but it's not really expected that they get to decide.
I would consider myself a car person, it has always saddened me when I see very expensive cars being driven badly by people that don't actually care about driving.
Running red lights, getting stuck in intersections, doing 20kmh under the speed limit in the fast lane, drifting between lanes without indicating or looking first, speeding when there's an overtaking lane and then slowing back down when it's finished. The usual.
I would pay a good amount of money ($ iPad Pro) to have an AR display+mobileCPU that was a good desktop/terminal and smaller/lighter than a laptop--preferably running a full OS (not iOS/Android).
This is a viewpoint centered around seeing art as a commodity. To me that's like saying we only need so many scientists. Is perceived value the best metric?
There's a lot of art out there in the world. A whole, whole lot.
If you want to make something artistically creative for people to watch, listen to, or read, you are competing with Mozart, the Beatles, Edgar Allen Poe, Tolkien, and countless other prodigies. Artistic creations made by individuals are a winner-takes-all market where a small fraction of the creators enjoy the majority of the revenue. Artistic creations made by large groups are somewhat fairer (but still often on the low end) in their compensation, if you manage to out compete other job applicants and get the job.
Regardless of whether you as an individual treat art as a commodity, you have to square your viewpoint as a artist with the fact that you have to put bread on the table. Society will very likely reward you very poorly for your artistic contributions.
Job is one part of life. A human is not like a variable in program that can be refactored into another class as needed.
What you are saying would work perfectly for a young college graduate, without much family or friends, who has no dependency or no one dependent on them.
Now imagine a young single mother or father that depends on their family for babysitting or caring for the child while they try to become functioning member of society.
Imagine someone with some health condition that needs access to certain medical facilities.
People live in cities and migrate to cities because they can access schools, colleges, entertainment, public transport, medical facilities, better opportunities, parks etc etc. They can't just pick and move and uproot themselves.
I think people who work in technology do not have enough exposure to the poor and struggling members of the society. I grew up in a really really poor family and when I talk to my coworkers it is very apparent that they don't understand poor people.
Even moving somewhere else within the same city is a lot less hassle if you are less concerned with immediately having the work part of the equation figured out.
I am not a young graduate, uprooting now would be a big deal for various reasons. Neither are my friends in their 30's raising families - some of which are living with their parents for the kind of reasons you describe.
My point is that without being so close to the financial edge all the time, even less well off families can take a step back and make decisions that work best for the future. The stress associated with risk (like quitting a job) results in a scary amount of lock in for many people I know.
I'm sort of from the middle but have recently been more frontend by dint of doing a lot of frontend. We are a design studio so getting design right is also pretty key. That said I built and maintain a large RoR ecom app with heavy customisation and a purpose built integration framework written in node.. and I enjoy it just as much, even if I might not be as expert tier as someone who does nothing else. All of one would be boring for me, do what makes you happy.
A de facto monopoly doesn't mean that other options don't exist. Microsoft had a monopoly on the PC operating system market, despite other options existing.
It seems like there's a real chance everyone will be exposed to this pandemic sooner or later. My take is calculate the risks and act accordingly. Arguing moral priors first and statistics second is best reserved for when people aren't already dying in droves.
They are real technology, in the sense that this is where over 100 years of optimising every aspect of ICE has got us to. Fascinatingly complex, extremely well engineered, and depending on the brand still relatively likely to break down within the first few years.
The engines are also longer designed to be maintained without special processes, and are increasingly designed around emission regulations. To the point where a lot of the complexity is in emission systems and the cars are choked by their own extremely lean fuel maps.
Electric motors on the other hand are still relatively unoptimised and the potential in things like torque vectoring is amazing. I'll miss driving manual, but it's getting just about impossible to buy those now anyway.