We should get back to communist block methods of car manufacturing imho. Build them extremely cheap and sturdy. If your car isn't made of cotton and doesn't last thirty years without maintenance, I am not interested
The same should be true for trains, bicycles, houses, computers and even smartphones, now that I think about it
A rational economy would be built around covering everybody's needs as cheaply and efficiently as possible. The best way to do that is to make things that last long and are easy to repair.
It's compleltey irrational to build an economy around artificial wants and needs. Like forcing people to buy a new smartphone every two years and a new car every five years. This is not normal and we should stop
@schratze the trend to regularly change cars is pushed by the finance/leasing companies (although it means that a decent 5 year old car can be obtained at a good price, although you have to put slightly more effort into maintenance and finding good/trustworthy independent garages..)
@saper @vfrmedia the west was able to build good cars. I still see VWs from the 70s and 80s driving around without any problems. That should be the norm. But over time, these things have become overengineered, super-heavy, impossible to repair and extremely expensive. And they churn out new models every other year. This is messed up and it should stop
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@meena @schratze @saper @vfrmedia but afaik you cannot just "upgrade security" on an old car from 80s; it would require redesigning the entire chassis?
For example, there is no way to add crumple zones to soviet cars, without making the car 2x larger (by basically embedding it into something else)?
Which would be pointless anyway because 90% of these cars went rusty all the way through in their first 5 to 10 years.
(Which reminds me that in Russian cars were colloquially referred to as "rusty buckets with bolts")
@IngaLovinde @meena @schratze @saper @vfrmedia
Soviet cars didn't need crumple zones because they were built on a frame, and chassis was like 2 mm steel. Among western cars only true 4x4 (not SUV) and lorries would have equally heavy construction, which was a benefit when you crash into something but also results in like 15-20 liters per 100 km gasoline consumption.
Believe me, my first car was Uaz 452 and second - Gaz 69 ๐
@IngaLovinde @meena @schratze @saper @vfrmedia
My point was that Soviet passenger cars were constructed using the same design principles as trucks, and generally any ideas of upgrading them were quite unrealistic. Certainly not saying we should return to these design principles.
@unfa that requirement didn't fit Soviet blueprints, for any project
@kravietz @meena @schratze @saper @vfrmedia ah yes, and driving an armoured personnel carrier is even safer for the driver and passengers.
(And I'm not sure how "this is 2mm of a solid steel on a steel frame" is a benefit? I'm not a car owner but isn't the entire point of crumple zones to dissipate the energy, so that the vehicle is damaged rather than its driver? And having solid steel chassis would have the opposite effect?)
Also a bit odd to mention trucks in a discussion about ordinary cars, and to compare these trucks to the ordinary western cars.