the reason crank windows are no longer even an option is because any changes to the cockpit require extensive testing of airbags and restraint systems in order to ensure that the handle sticking out of the door doesn't interfere. it's not cost effective to have both options.
You'll find most the design decisions car manufacturers make are due to regulations. The other unpopular choices for the computer controlled everything is due to them making money post-sale on tracking you. I'd bet less than 5% is based on satisfying customers.
I might be too hard on them. Engineering is all about compromises. Everyone would love a 500hp, AWD Beast, with spacious cargo room, excellent handling, gets 120mpg, and minimal maintenance for the first 300K miles. I'd like all that for under $20K, under $10K even better. It'd be great if I wasn't insta-killed in a wreck too.
The regulations thing stick. Newer car longevity issues are directly linked to the constant push for fuel efficiency. We're way past the point of diminishing returns. They keep tightening tolerances and thinning the oil, so even Toyotas will grenade themselves at the first hint of a problem; all for an extra 1 mpg (under simulated driving conditions).
At what speed is that an issue in your car? I know one of my cars when I was young and dumb would do that if I was going 90+mph on the highway, but just cracking a rear window while my drivers window was open fixed that. That really seems to be an issue with the car’s aerodynamics and speed, that doesn’t ever seem to happen unless a car is driving too fast or is boxy and poorly shaped.
It’s going to happen with anything when you have the window cracked just the right amount.
It’s called Hemholtz Resonance. A small amount of air shears off and pumps into the car, which increases cabin pressure and then gets pushed back out the same window by the pressure change. This happens over and over and over until you do something to equalize pressure - like open another window.
Blow across the top of an open bottle and the same effect happens.
I drive rentals for a living. It depends on the vehicle. Mazda Speed 3 is SO bad with this, but a Civic will be fine. You can tell how bad your ears will pop by how warbly the air is when only one is cracked. I find the best mitigation is to have it barely cracked, or as you said, crack another window just a bit
I don’t think there’s been a new vehicle for sale in the past 20 years that doesn’t have electronic locks and windows. I can’t think of one at least; maybe a totally stripped down, basic model Nissan Versa m.
The Dacia Spring (European budget EV) uses hinged pop-out windows instead of roll up for the rear passengers for the exact reason the poster above mentioned.
And it still has both types of parts on the same car since the front windows are electric.
The wires, sensors, and microprocessors in ICE cars actually replaced a LOT of mechanical components in cars, specifically two that were prone to having issues.
Have you ever had to open a distributor cap to file your points or adjust your spark advance? Have you ever manually set the idle speed on a carburetor? Have you ever tried to tune a car with a carburetor and mechanical spark distribution? Because they need to be re-tuned, regularly. Are you aware of how poor fuel economy can be on such vehicles?
Fuel injection and computer controlled spark distribution has made engines far, FAR simpler and far more fuel efficient. Many of the modern performance and fuel economy tricks can't even be done with old school cars.
Now, what we don't need are the tablets and entertainment systems and whatnot, although, when the radios available are basically designed to work in a tablet, and the screens do clean up the look of the dash.
Even your gas pedal and shifter these days are lies: the gas pedal just has an angle sensor that sends a signal to the computer to open the throttle, and the shifter isn't connected to anything. Heck, your hybrid doesn't even technically have low gear or a neutral, which is why Toyota just gives you a little dial. Technically, they could build the car without a shifter at all - just have a break hold so that if the car is at a complete stop, it doesn't move until the gas is tapped, then have a reverse switch.
I agree that some things are improved and simplified with updates, but not everything is.
But also to your point, I promise you I can take apart, rebuild, and run a motor from the 60’s a lot easier than anything with modern computers. Those sensors and gadgets are needed as the engines have become more complex. Can there be improvements and upgrades? Absolutely. But there is not a person who has ever touched a car engine in their life that will tell you modern car is simpler to work on than an old non-computer driven vehicle.
Simpler and fewer parts counts isn’t always better in performance or interface, but it still remains simpler and less complex without question.
Those sensors and gadgets are needed as the engines have become more complex. Can there be improvements and upgrades? Absolutely. But there is not a person who has ever touched a car engine in their life that will tell you modern car is simpler to work on than an old non-computer driven vehicle.
Look, I don't tune cars for a living and I don't mess with them too much for a hobby except for what I have to do for my own car. That said, I have messed with mechanical distributors and carburetors on an old NSU) and... I would rather not ever have to again. The sentence, "Sorry, we have to rebuild the carburetor" costs a few grand and takes three or four days.
I know people who do (thank goodness!), and I know several who would much rather slap a laptop onto an OBDII port, pull down an engine mapping, and set up a tune for an engine that way. Airflow and exhaust sensors aren't rocket science, and there are even aftermarket, open ECM's you can get if you are engine swapping a car.
I've toyed with the idea of getting an old, classic VW Beetle (the air cooled, rear mounted boxer is a cool design) then putting a turbo on it, but if I did I'd be replacing the fueling and spark distribution system with something more modern and reliable, so that I could get the most out of the turbo.
But again…. Adding complexity is what you are doing.
“Slapping a computer on the OBD port” is great to find stuff… but it doesn’t FIX anything.
Replacing the carb is four bolts on top of the engine. Maybe a wing nut for the air filter. Replacing a faulty fuel rail or O2 sensor wiring harness might literally take removing the engine. You can’t even replace spark plugs on some new cars without an entire day of dissembling the motor to GET to the plugs.
That OBD plug won’t replace a fuel rail for you. Clear a clogged MAF sensor, or anything else. It just tells you what’s wrong. And it all takes more tools, training, and everything else involved to fix the task afterwards.
It is the exact opposite of simplicity.
Can it be better, last longer, be cleaner, quieter, smoother… 100% But it will never get simpler.
I wasn't talking about fixing shit, I was talking about taking a car from "running" to "running well, at the peak of what it can."
Sure, you can slap on a new carb, if that's what you want to do, but the right fix is to disassemble the one you have, replace the seals and gaskets, clean it with a wire brush, then reassemble. That's a few hours to a few days, depending on how large and complex it is.
And then let's say you are idling high, or having issues with cold starts, or you want to tune things to get a bit more power out of the engine. With a laptop, that's literally a few minutes to tweak an engine map. With a carb, you are going to be adjusting one of about 30 set screws a quarter turn at a time, or possibly taking the whole thing apart to replace a nozzle or drill out a nozzle (and then OOPS you went to far, time to buy a new one and wait three weeks for it to ship).
If you want to adjust your idle speed on a modern engine, you... just set the idle speed a little higher. Or lower. Want to swap fuel to E85? Cool, your car likely has a mapping that someone has done for that. Want to re-tune for racing fuel? Cool, you can do that too.
It's not like the bad old days where you had guys relying on their addled memories of what they learned 30 years ago in an automotive class, and then guessing. We have the internet, you can look stuff up including service manuals. That stuff used to be sort of... magic, almost - knowing what to adjust and why is solvable with the right information, of course, but not everyone had easy access to that.
And the number of times I've watched automotive youtubers that mess with old cars try to clean up distributors and force them to work, it's like... nah. If I get into cars as a hobby and get a project car, it's either going to be something from the 1990s, or it's going to be something older and get a big upgrade with an aftermarket ECU.
It’s not a preference thing, or a right and wrong thing, or a performance thing. It’s not what you like better or what works a certain way.
The point was SIMPLICITY.
A modern car has, on average, 30,000 components. A car from the 80’s? Less than half that. For the engine alone, a modern car has between 2,000 and a 3,000 individual components. An engine from the 80’s? 200-300.
Literally 10% of the parts.
If you still think you can argue against the SIMPLICITY of that, then there is no point to continue the conversation.
People forget that mechanical stuff also breaks... Electric windows are a no brainer nowadays with how many times you also have to open your window to get a parking stub and things like that and you already have the wires in the door for speaker and central lock so those manual cranks are the more complicated design definitely
But what if you don’t have speakers in the doors and the lock mechanisms are in the door jams and not the doors? Zero wiring in the door. Less things that can go wrong.
And a crank can break, sure. But so can sensors, wires, fuses, buttons, motors, etc. And a crank has a heck of a lot less links in the chain.
To be honest, crank has a lot of things that can go wrong, its also more difficult to seal the whole mechanism from water (it gets in the door) and these mechanisms are now rare, while electric motors are better than ever and cheap to boot. If the lock mechanism is in the door jamb then so is the handle which is stupid design because how would you pull on the door to open it?
Are you for real, dude? Or just being obtuse? Also, why no speakers? Even the most basic fiat panda has speakers
Every single part of a crank window is also part of an electric window… except the handle. A power window just has a motor that spins that crank assembly instead of a handle.
And if you don’t understand that basic concept, then it’s laughable to continue on about anything else.
Tell me you've never even removed the door card without telling me.
How about the crank? Is that a part of the electric window, huh?
Electric motor is sealed and it's very easy, with the crank you have to transfer the torque from the crank to the window mechanism. electric motor sits below the window, directly applies force to raise the window, the crank is removed from the window, you have to transfer this torque somehow.
It's funny how you have little knowledge about mechanics and engineering, hell, even basic car stuff, but you want to say this about me. That's called projection. Go back to cranking windows and having door locks in door jambs, silly man, your insecurity is showing.
Enough to body it and put it out of business before anyone gets a model?
Or enough to help it succeed?
Because I do not believe at all in the latter.
Teslas are cheap made out of cheap plastic and obviously Garbage yet they cost a lot of money. If you've ever gotten inside a Tesla it feels like getting inside a Little Tikes toy.
A truck that literally brags about being made out of the cheapest shit possible and using no automatic buttons but is still close to $30k retail is exhaustingly ridiculous and obviously a scam to front money.
It does not cost $30k to make basically a 1993 Ford Ranger. This is a scam.
Slate is a scam. It’s larping as back to basics. They’re not even giving you a radio in the base when it costs almost nothing to put one in, but then they can give you AC in the base price which is more expensive to manufacture? You can get a Ford Maverick for slightly more, with better quality and capability of a truck with access to dealers and repair centers that aren’t 700 miles away from you. It’s so much less of a headache. It’s what sucked about Tesla for years as they started. Not to forget residual values. People regardless of what they claim, do not keep their vehicles long. These niche manufacturers get killed on that, plus it’s an EV. Factor value into ownership and the state is more expensive to own than the maverick almost off the lot.
You can get a Ford Maverick for slightly more, with better quality and capability of a truck with access to dealers and repair centers that aren’t 700 miles away from you.
If Slate is truly supposed to be back to basics, you shouldn’t need a dealership mechanic to keep the thing on the road.
Outside of recalls or warranty work, you shouldn't be taking a car to a dealership unless you enjoy getting bent over. One of the biggest problems with modern cars is that manufacturers have turned serviceable machines into mobile versions of shitty appliances overflowing with proprietary tech, goofy electronics, shitty software, and "specialty parts" that push you back toward the dealer.
If Slate actually was going to deliver on their promise of simple, repairable vehicles, the lack of a massive dealer network should matter a hell of a lot less.
When I was a kid, my father drove an ’84 Camry Turbo Diesel that he bought used in the early ’90s. He wasn’t a mechanic, but he had the service manual and did all the repairs himself.
I’m not saying everyone should be doing that. My point is that cars should be serviceable by any capable mechanic or individual , without requiring proprietary computers, specialized dealer only tools that require a trip to the dealership every time something goes wrong.
But EV's are simpler than a modern (comliant) IC engine. For one thing, EV's have fewer electric motors. For a gas engine to run, the electric motor called a fuel pump must run, at the least. Starter motor, radiator fan, throttle bodies. Computers too - the engine management on any engine is plenty complex to pull off without software - we're not tuning carbs and points these days nor in recent decades.
I'm going to say no. IC is a type of, or refinement of, earlier computing tech, which had generally been too complex and unreliable for cars. Computers like the guidance computer aboard a V2 rocket though, wow.
One of the other reasons is manufacturing costs, if you have a cheap winder version and a higher spec with electric you need different door cards, injection moulding tooling, training, warehouse space, mechanisms, suppliers/supply chain and hundreds of other things. If all models use the same part it’s much cheaper!
Well, the Dacia Spring (their small electric model) has crank windows in its base configuration for front and back. The mid-price configuration has electric windows in the front and crank windows in the back. At least last years version did, haven’t looked at the newest one that was just released.
No, it's not that. It's because the mechanisms are completely different for electric windows, and so would require a complete redesign of the door to have a manual option. And the mechanisms for electric windows are really quite simple compared to the manual mechanism, and easy to install, saving money in assembly.
it depends on the design of the regulator. there are designs that totally have allowances for both motor drive and hand crank and we have had them for a while. it can be done, but the economics of not doing it makes it the more attractive option for a business.
source: i used to work as a quality engineer for a 1st party supplier of window regulators to GM, Chrysler, VW, and Honda.
In reality, no. No one's used the old-style regulators in decades because they're so bad and inefficient and unreliable. All modern cars have the kind that are electric-only.
You're thinking of the old scissor-style regulators, which were used on hand-crank windows; when they came up with electric windows, they just replaced the hand crank with an electric motor. It worked, but they weren't very good; there's good reasons modern cars dumped those and went to the much simpler modern version.
older scissor regulators are not as bad or as inefficient or as unreliable as you suggest. yeah they are heavier but in the context of a car you can probably get similar weight savings by cutting soda out of the diet. and i will concede they do take up more space, reducing space in the door for stuff like crash structures, sound deadening, wiring, etc. but that's a problem for the other departments that want to stuff crap inside the door i suppose. i imagine one of the biggest reasons cable drive regulators have come into prominence is that cable drive regulators are an order of magnitude easier to deal with on the assembly line due to their slender, and floppy/compliant nature.
i do get how cable window regulators can look sexy compared to scissor style units. but from a design/quality perspective, there's a lot more that can go wrong once a cable operated regulator is sent out into the wild (which is only like 1/10th of what can go wrong on the manufacture/assembly side). the braided cables can stretch which can lead to poor window sealing (causing neat whistling noises at speed). if the cables stretch enough they can jump the pulleys or get miswound on the drum stopping the regulator from doing its job at all. the pulleys can get misriveted and be unable to turn freely leading to excess friction where the cable can saw through the pulley or drum housing. the cable sheathing has to be sound-deadened because they slap against other infrastructure when you close the door (general motors tries REALLY hard to make their cheap doors sound less like cheap doors).
this isn't an invitation for you to argue with me, just making the case that cable operated regulators didn't bring improvements to EVERY aspect of their function and reliability when they replaced scissor lift regulators.
*also the chevy express van is still in production and STILL uses scissor lift regulators. GMT610 LIVES. (i know it's an mid 90's design, but i'm counting it because screw you).
It would be very expensive to have a lower make of car with the hand crank in it. And the electrical crap is super cheap now, so you are certainly correct.
It is weird that China can make a car for $8k USD. And Tesla, here in Canada, dropped their prices by $20k because it made very little sense to buy them here.
Not really, those cars simply don't meet US/EU safety standards. In the UK, BYD sells a Dolphin Surf which is a city car for 18,675 pounds, which is equivalent to $24,600 USD, for a car with a range of only 137 miles. (the regular Dolphin has longer range)
An EV in that price bracket would be an excellent addition to the US car market. But, it is literally 3X the price of the BYD city car in the link you posted.
It is weird that China can make a car for $8k USD.
Not really. When the government pays to build your entire 800 billion dollar factory complex and sells you power at cost, meanibg you can sell the car without having to build in debt payments...
Its pretty easy to sell your car for cheap.
You're not paying tens of billions a year in payments on your factory, youre paying 10% of what other companies pay for power, etc.
That's the point tho... a touchscreen is cheaper than an interface of buttons. You write some software and mass produce 1 screen. It's cheaper than the buttons
Exactly. Fancy schmancy tech can 'evolve' all it wants, but our bodies cannot. We still have hands and fingers. We like to touch and manipulate and move physical buttons, knobs, sliders, etc. especially when driving.
Tactile feedback is important if you want to work controls without having to look away from the road.
When you can navigate your dash and center console by feel, you won't have to look away. Touchscreens make that entirely impossible because there is no positional feedback for the brain unless you look. Once you're past the edge of the screen, everything feels the same.
Yup put in 1 screen and add tons of software to justify your price hikes. The software isn't really responsible for the price hikes it's just a nice excuse they can justify it with
Not necessarily: economies of scale can make real buttons pretty cheap when you're making millions of units. The big factor is that the "buttons" on a touchscreen can be changed at any time by software, so you can make UI changes whenever you want, and don't have to lock down the design and make molds for button panels far in advance of production; you can make last-minute changes if you want.
Yes, and that's exactly why this post is non-sense. Cars aren't more expensive because of all that fancy tech. I am not sure what the actual reason is, assuming that it is true that they are more expensive. One thing I definitely noticed is that lower segment car brands like Hyundai moved up to mid segment, and now there isn't really any car manufacturer that's on the low segment (except Dacia) outside of Chinese cars.
i actually have zero clue how an electric motor on a gear would be cheaper than a hand crank on a gear but possibly? maybe to manufacture the actual handle crank would cost money but still that would be the only thing that would possibly be original. motors are inexpensive and so is a switch but i genuinely cannot see how a hand crank could possibly cost more.
Hand cranks have to be quite durable seeing as they must not rip if children pull on them with full force, suitcases fall on them from the backseat or whatever.
The electric motor needs to deliver the exact same fixed force every time. Electric motors bought in large quantities by a car manufacturer are basically a few cents each (might be exaggerated but the cost is literally nothing on the car scale)
True but I mean still just a mechanical arm and gear set sounds way simpler than designing a whole motor bracket and where the switch goes. I do believe it’s probably so cheep it doesn’t matter but I’m struggling to see how it would be cheaper than a hand crank unless the crank itself is just that much more expensive.
It wouldn't be cheaper strictly in manufacturing costs of the final parts. But the upfront costs of potentially having to retool a line to make manual crank components, R&D to design or integrate/update a manual window system, as well as potentially design and manufacture a separate door trim, as well as crash impact testing for door panels and interior components would mean that they would have to sell a lot of manual crank windows to offset the initial upfront costs and the demand for manual windows isn't high enough to reliably recoup those costs, so manufactures have stopped offering it.
In terms of numbers it is likely in the neighborhood of $10 cheaper per window system in final manufacturing costs, and they would potentially be trying to recuperate hundreds of thousands or even millions in upfront costs.
I agree with your conclusion that it doesnt make economic sense, but the design is not the same between the two. One has switches in the door panel, the other has a protruding crank. One has a motor mount built into the window regulator one does not. Often times a motor driven window regulator is cable operated and a manual crank window regulator is a scissor type. There is different safety testing required for a manual window than an electric window because of a protruding interior handle as well as door frame deformation testing due to differing levels of torque a manual crank can apply versus a rated motor. The parts, even if somewhat similar still need to be designed and new tooling needs to be made/changed to manufacture.
One has panel with switches. The other missing functionality cover. One has a crank, the other has a hidden hole. One has power regulator, the other has manual one.
I assure you, when this choice was common, for most of the time, the most of the door parts were the same and designed upfront for both options. The needed parts were installed on the same production line using the same tooling by same operators.
You seem to be limiting your perspective to only the R&D of the door panel and assembling the door at the vehicle assembly line. That was literally only one of my points and even that point I specifically said potentially, because yes you could have commonality in design of that component and rely on blanking panels. I am also talking about factoring in costs in OEM manufacturing and final testing. Of course you can say there isn't any design and tooling costs when your perspective is the window components are already designed and manufactured.
Standardisation. As you said motors like those used for windows are dirt cheap especially in numbers. The small pcb for the buttons costs next to nothing aswell. There is no standard provider of handcranks and the rest of the manual mechanism, atleast not anymore. So there’s definitely a lot of additional up-front cost for making the new handcranks instead of electric windows. But that’s just my guess.
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u/Bub_bele 17d ago
I‘d guess electrical windows are maybe even cheaper nowadays