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@exodus#16520 do you see the rounded wedge (honda prelude, porsche 911) coming back around or no?
I think there's always going to be an audience for long, low, traditionally sporty-looking cars. I also think that among people making cars for a living, that sort of thing is more interesting than making another midsize crossover, so I think they'll survive, even if they're just a niche. But I think the reality is that, culturally, a lot more people are excited by a car that is "big" and "tough" looking. You could spend all day analyzing the psychology of this but I don't think you'd learn anything that wasn't extremely depressing...
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@exodus#16520 why are hondas so rarely featured in racing mags etc in japan, which seem to be toyota focused with some mitsubishi and subaru thrown in?
Racing isn't really my specialty, but maybe it has something to do with the fact that Honda doesn't have a history of mass-market RWD cars? There was the S2000 but that was kind of an anomaly. With Toyotas you have a whole family of cars with similar engines and drivelines, which are now very cheap, so they're easy to modify and keep running. Would be my guess.
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@exodus#16520 what factors into something like the Honda e having such a short max travel distance? are the majority of folks just not that into longer trips?
Very good question, and the Honda e is a good illustrative example of why a lot of EVs are the way they are.
EV development is driven by very different factors than conventional mass market vehicles, which is why what comes out of the big auto makers is sometimes so... weird.
Speaking of the Honda e, it's worth remembering that this thing exists:
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/su9YVtk.jpg]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/su9YVtkh.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
This is a 2-seater coupe concept based on the concept which later became the Honda e. This is a _concept__ car, but one thing I have learned from being on the inside is that it's very rare for anything to be "just" a concept car. I know that where I work, we don't usually display a concept car at an auto show if we aren't actively developing something related to it. Whether it'll make it to production is another question, but who knows, maybe you'll be able to get an EV to replace that Prelude in a couple of years?
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@whatsarobot#16548 I’m wondering whether you chose to work for a Japanese auto manufacturer specifically, or whether the Japan aspect was a secondary concern. Also, how would you compare Japan’s current status in the world of auto production vs some other nations?
I was already in Japan and looking for a change of careers (I used to mix English teaching and translation jobs). I was lucky enough to have some support and connections so I could go to graduate school, and the lab I ended up assigned to was working on EV-related stuff. That, and being able to work in English and Japanese, was good enough to get me in the door where I am now.
Japanese auto makers, I think, realise that they have a top-quality product, but that they aren't going to be able to compete on that much longer. 20 years ago, Korean cars were a joke. Now they're indistinguishable from Japanese cars, except they're often cheaper. In a decade or so we'll probably be able to say the same thing about cars from China, and they make orders of magnitude more EVs than we do, which is going to be a big factor once regions start banning fossil-fuel vehicles. Long-term, the days of us building cars, selling them to people and then hoping they come back in 8 or 10 years time to buy a new one are probably numbered. So we spend a lot of time thinking about how to leverage the position we have now to make a business that's sustainable in the very long term. Toyota's [smart city thing ](https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/ces-toyota-big-smart-city/index.html)is a good example of where Japanese auto makers see their business going in the future.
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@kory#16625 I really would like to get an EV, but I’m still in a bit of a holding pattern. The infrastructure is still not great (even in this relatively suburban part of NYC) and the best option seems to be Tesla, though I have misgivings about the product and the company. I’m curious to see if anyone else on the forum has experience owning or driving EVs
I'm An EV Engineer, Ask Me Anything!
The infrastructure question is one that a lot of people get hung up on, because it's hard to imagine the drastically different way that you use an EV day to day. You have to think of it less like the car you have now and more like a phone. You don't run it down to 5% and then go and find a socket, because even if you found one you'd be tied to it for the next hour or more. You do your daily whatever on it, and then you plug it in when you go to bed, right? EVs work the same way, so they are incredibly easy to live with _if_ you have fairly regular driving routines and somewhere to install the charging equipment at your home.
