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Comment Re:And yet (Score 1) 38

I'm okay with it being buried deep in the settings. It needs to be harder than just a checkbox, because bitter experience has shown that otherwise people just don't install updates. Then they get hacked and become part of a botnet that attacks you.

I can live with an extremely mild annoyance if it means a huge reduction in exploits of people's browsers.

Comment Re:Planned economies (Score 1) 148

How is competing hard not operating in good faith? Did the US not bail out its own auto industry multiple times, and subsidize the transition to EVs? Wasn't Tesla part of a government investment scheme?

We should thank China for doing that which we apparently couldn't, but which the world needs. They advanced battery tech rapidly and accelerated the transition away from fossil fuels.

Comment Re:I've got a much better idea (Score 1) 75

Human beings are fallible, they make mistakes. Designing a system that relies on people not making mistakes is a terrible idea, and doomed to failure.

This seems completely reasonable. 5 seconds to 100 kph is still pretty rapid, but limits the damage that can be done by the classic "carpet stuck on the accelerator" or "pushed the wrong pedal" mistakes. The act of disabling that limit presents an opportunity to display reminders to check the carpet, and for the driver to make sure they are ready for it. 99.9999% of the time it has no baring on the drive, there is no need to disable it.

I do dislike some of the safety features, like the automatic speed limit detection stuff that never works right, but this one seems completely fine and sensible.

Comment Re:EU alternative? (Score 1) 22

And a few years behind Huawei. It will be the same as it was with 4G and 5G. Huawei first to market, each generation the lead extends, and later Western companies come along with their knock-offs and rely on national security concerns to get into the market.

Germans will have to wait for 6G, or maybe Nokia can do a deal to rebadge Huawei gear, stick their own OS on it or something.

Comment Re: So why are they renaming it? (Score 1) 17

They are low enough that even if they did cause major pollution, it should mostly clear itself inside a decade.

The bigger worry is pollution. Burning up so many satellites in the upper atmosphere is something that hasn't been studied enough, but the work that has been done suggests that it's bad for greenhouse effect and for general air quality.

Comment Re:Good Idea (Score 1) 75

It's actually a terrible idea.

As someone with an SCCA license used to driving racing cars that have much higher performance than nearly everything on the road (including your Tesla), I can tell you that no mass-market road car is hard to drive. The problem is never the car, it's the driver, or more accurately their lack of ability.

To properly solve a problem you need to attack the root cause, not one of it's symptoms.
If there are people out there that can't truly can't handle jthe acceleration of a car or type of car then they shouldn't have been legally allowed to drive it in the first place.

Except for the first time in basically automobile history, cars have broken acceleration records to the point it's physics limiting acceleration and not the vehicle.

ICE are slow and laggy - they take a while to get up to speed, which generally has limited acceleration for normal vehicles.

These days production EVs are easily able to get beyond those limits way too easily, and getting 0-60 times in 3 seconds isn't unusual. (a 0-60 in 3 seconds used to be the holy grail, and now production EVs are beating it on a regular basis).

I'm guessing China probably saw a bunch of rear-enders where some EV driver ran into the rear of the car ahead of them because the EV out-accelerated the car in front. And chances are everyone is close to everyone else so if you're a bit too enthusiastic with the pedal you might not be able to hit the brakes in time.

Comment Re:What about top speed? (Score 1) 75

Also, the only realistic way to create a true "unintended acceleration" without pedal misapplication is something getting stuck in the pedal or the pedal getting stuck down, which is not actually a subtle thing (again, these things have happened, but they're dwarfed by how often people hit the wrong pedal). Just sensor readings alone don't cut it. As a general rule, pedals have multiple sensors reading the pedal position (typically 2-3). They have to agree with each other, or the target acceleration is set to zero. A sensor failure doesn't cut it. Also, Hall-effect sensors are highly reliable.

Oh, and there's one more "failure mechanism" which should be mentioned, which is: creep. Some EVs are set to creep or have creep modes, to mimic how an ICE vehicle creeps forward when one lifts their foot off the brakes. If someone forgets they have this on, it can lead to "unintended acceleration" reports. There have been cases where for example the driver gets in an accident, but not intense enough to trigger the accident sensors, and the car keeps "trying to drive" after the accident (aka, creep is engaged). People really should not engage creep mode, IMHO - the fact that ICEs creep forward is a bug, not a feature.

Comment Re:What about top speed? (Score 3, Informative) 75

All the person in these "runaways" had to do was lift their foot off the accelerator. Or even leave their foot on the accelerator and just press the brakes, as the brakes can overpower the motor (think of how fast you accelerate when you slam on the pedal at highway speeds vs. how fast you slow down when you slam on the brakes).

Regulatory agencies the world over are constantly getting reports of "runaway unintended acceleration". Nearly every time they investigate, the person mixed up the pedal and the brake. When the car starts accelerating, in their panic they push said "brake" (actually the pedal) harder, and keep pushing it to the floor trying to stop the car. In their panic, people almost never reevaluate whether they're actually pushing the right pedal. It's particularly common among the elderly and the inebriated, and represents 16 thousand crashes per year in the US alone.

If your car starts accelerating when you're "braking", get out of your panic, lift your foot up, then make sure you *actually* put it on the brake, and you'll be fine.

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