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- Hacker News
- why is everyone on hacker news always so butthurt about cars lolby b0rtb0rt
- well of course it is: it's for rich assholes who need to separate themselves and say "look, I'm an asshole with so much money and so little care, I can purchase a gas powered vehicle and ignore all the rammifications".
Dude is on point to his audience, gotta applause that.
by cyanydeez - So where’s your line? Do we all need to drive a Prius?by stahtops
- Guess only rich people can afford carbon taxes in the future.by feverzsj
- There are only ~420 refineries globally still operating. ~21% of global oil refining capacity (101 out of 420 assessed sites) is at risk of closure by 2035 due to rising carbon costs, environmental policies, and a long-term drop in gasoline demand. [My note: this is less than 10 years away]
I used to think "We're never going to run out of oil, meaning we'll never move off of it." and I was mistaken. After more research, I've come to the conclusion that while we might never run out of oil, refinery capacity will only decline into the future, creating supply chain death spirals over time in various parts of the system. If you want to end the use of fossil fuels, refineries are the weakest link in the chain. No new ones will be built due to the risk of stranded capital and the time to build them considering the forward global oil demand trajectory. [My note: China destroys 1M barrels of daily global oil demand for every 24 months they produce EVs, at current run rates, and has enough EV manufacturing capacity for global demand]
TLDR If rich people are going to burn petroleum instead of biodiesel (used vegetable oil for diesel like engine use cases) or alcohol (top fuel dragsters), good luck refining it yourself or importing it. Similar to how if the end of the world arrives, and you need pharmaceuticals to survive, you'll only last as long as the supply chain for said pharmaceuticals survives if you cannot make it yourself.
Global refinery closure outlook to 2035 - https://www.woodmac.com/news/opinion/global-refinery-closure... - March 31st, 2025
(think in systems)
by toomuchtodo - YASA motors makes a 30lb electric motor the size of a Roomba that outputs 1000 peak horsepower. The future of many supercars will be hybrids with the electric train doing the brunt of the work.
https://www.arenaev.com/yasa_makes_a_1000hp_electric_motor_t...
by ortusdux - It's like Swiss watches. Sure, a digital watch would be better but if you're really into mechanics and engineering a fancy hand-made swiss watch is your thing.by comrade1234
- Imagine if the watch made a loud gurgling sound, that everyone can hear, every time you checked it.by yostrovs
- >loud internal combustion engines and emotional appeal.
VW ran the numbers and realized they cant compete with Chinese $100K 2000HP EVs accelerating in 2.5 second and beating any supercar.
by rasz - 20 years ago bugatti released 1000hp vehicle. Now it’s not even impressive anymore. Chinese moved to megawatt scale.
Of course in some markets ICE engines will remain mainstream, and in some they are seen as absolute cringe.
by dzhiurgis - The manufacturers certainly want the future of supercars to be combustion engines. Combustion engines are their moat; without them, there is little unique about their vehicles. But BMW felt the same about regular gasoline cars & hybrids. That didn't turn out too well for them.by Stevvo
- It's obvious, now that we have fast, flashy, quiet cars, that part of the appeal of supercars has always been the sound of the engine.by slices
- I think that's not obvious at all, and quite a personal preference. There's lots of assholes in the area with extremely loud cars who seem to think that way. I have never thought the sound of a engine is cool, pleasant, exciting, impressive, or anything remotely like that. I do like adrenaline and driving fast in almost every form of vehicle, but if I could have a silent maglev sportbike that drove just like a combustion based bike I would choose it in a heartbeat.by SpaceNugget
- What he actually believes about the future of cars is not the really the point of this statement. The point is to position himself now, today, in the minds of his target audience. EVs are not cool today and nostalgia-driven grievance against them is.
So: the future is the past! Specifically all the stuff you thought was cool when you were 17. But now, you have the money to pay for it.
by snowwrestler - Feel like Ferrari Luce was designed specifically to turn people away from the idea of electric super cars.by Stevvo
- The future of supercars is to outlaw them to make any engine noise on the road. There is no reason to have engine noise other then that not having engine noise is not possible at a given price point. This is obviously not the case with "supercars".
If you want to buy a toy that makes noise, get a non street-legal car for the race track. There is no reason why 99.9..% of the population should be required to tolerate more (street-)noise than necessary.
by Sweepi - Pollution too. Puffing smog into your kids face is insane. Especially bad in places where old diesel cars got absorbed.by dzhiurgis
- Tell us what appliance you drive that makes you an expert on future supercarsby 4d4m
- Supercars aren't the excessively noisy ones. Those are the modified cars. Many have quiet modes that run off battery so you don't wake up your neighbors.
IMHO, pollution is way worse.
I'd rather a tax on gas so high that commuter ICE cars don't exist anymore. Let the enthusiasts who actually enjoy driving burn gas.
by turtlebits - This but for motorbikes. I can’t stand people riding them through residential areas in London late at night, revving their engines.by mimischi
- I don't think you even need to outlaw them. Just add aggressively progressive taxes on externalities, like Norway does (not for noise, but CO2 and NoX emissions as well as curbe weight; adding noise as well shouldn't might be an idea).
Of course you can regulate thresholds that can not be exceeded as well, but generally I think we should tax externalities more rather than outlaw things whenever possible, and do it much more often. Amp those taxes until the perceived problem goes away, whether because sufficient numbers of people won't pay them or because they're high enough to mitigate the negative effects.
When it comes to supercars, I suspect most of them will end up not being on the road much as the proportion of EV cars gets to a point where it starts to reduce the density of places to fill the tank anyway so to the extent they're a problem it will increasingly limit itself and so it's not really worth wasting time on.
by vidarh - Engine noise from traffic is so normalised that it can be hard to picture how it can not exist.
I only got the feeling of how much calmer it felt without engines revving all around after visiting Guilin, China a couple of years ago. Most cars, trucks, scooters were electric and the only noise I'd hear were tyres rolling, the odd ICE vehicle sounded like a banshee among the rest.
by piva00