@sirstuck said in Game: What is your taste ?:
"Volvo and Polestar have joined Tesla and VW in favoring rwd over front-wheel drive for base EVs"
https://www.autonews.com/cars-concepts/volvo-polestar-join-tesla-vw-others-rwd-focus
That is good news indeed! It must be simpler, too. Designing and building front wheels that propel and also steer must involve considerable extra complexity and vulnerability to breakdowns. One of the disadvantages to rear wheel drive has always been the hump on the floor to accommodate the shaft, and electric cars can probably dispense with that as well. Although his own car at present is traditional gasoline-powered, one of my friends who knows more about engineering than I do is very impressed with the essential simplicity of electric cars. They need much fewer moving parts and should therefore be low-maintenance and durable, although batteries are still a challenge.
I'm certainly not indifferent to environmental and climate-change concerns, but isn't it strange how you seldom hear about the environmental impact of the heaps of worn-out electric car batteries with toxic chemicals that will inevitably accumulate? Some of the obsessives have tunnel vision and one-track minds. It probably goes with the territory. They easily become fixated on one or two sub-issues, and the gestalt is something they'd rather not think about.
Consider, too, that electric cars can operate almost silently, which is a threat to pedestrians, so noise must be simulated with speakers for safety's sake. Owners and drivers should be able to have a choice over which kind of noise to produce, and there's no reason that the sound of a traditional engine shouldn't be among them and wouldn't be the most popular option. Our little community is nothing if not imaginative! Maybe in the right circumstances, it won't be too bad.
What worries me much more on several levels is self-driving cars. If they should become standard, the possibilities for surveillance and social control straight out of Orwell quickly become unlimited. How long do you think it will be before they are required, before starting out on any specified destination, to phone home for approval, ensuring that the location is not on the occupant's personal state-mandated no-go list?