Comment by bartread
4 hours ago
> I doubt a sub-1 tonne car is going to be pleasant to drive at highway speeds
Why would you think that? Well, you sort of explain it, but you don’t have any evidence or experience to back it up, so I’m still not sure why you think it?
Back in the day (think 1990s) plenty of small European hatchbacks weighed less than or around 1000kg, and noise at highway speeds was not a problem: Peugeot, Citroen, Renault, VW, Fiat, and others all had small hatchbacks that were absolutely fine, and perfectly comfortable, at motorway speeds for long distances.
My first car was a used 1998 Renault Clio: depending on which engine and trim level you bought they either weighed a bit less than 1000kg, or a bit more. I looked mine up and it weighed 1050kg.
I did about 50,000 miles in that car, including lots of long journeys. Back then I had a far too heavy right foot - which eventually got me a speeding fine - and even then noise wasn’t an issue on the motorway.
There’s so much more to how noisy a car is inside than merely sound insulation. Aerodynamics are a huge component, but so are shut lines, seals, and panel gaps. Materials and surface finishes also matter. Even things like the shape of the wing mirrors, or how the shape of the front corners and headlights direct air around and past the wing mirrors[0], can have a massive impact on whether or not a car is noisy at speed within the cabin.
This is Hacker News. We all to a greater or lesser extent work or dabble in incredibly detail oriented disciplines. Why would you assume disciplines outside those in majority representation here aren’t equally, or even more, detailed?
[0] I want to say either the Nissan Note or the Nissan Leaf had nobbly protrusions on its headlights specifically to reduce cabin noise by changing the way air flowed around the wing mirrors.
Since this is Hacker News, perhaps we can acknowledge that psychoacoustics is also an incredibly detailed discipline. Perceived noise isn’t simply a matter of decibels. Expectations change, and we find some sounds more tolerable than others. Engine noise can mask wind and tyre noise, for example, so removing it can make a quieter car subjectively less pleasant. It’s almost as though there’s more to acoustic comfort than remembering that your 1998 Clio was fine.
Yes, and if you’d read my comment properly you’d have realised I briefly surveyed some of the factors that influence cabin noise perception (though by no means all of them), and I also mentioned that many other manufacturers were making similar vehicles that performed well at motorway speeds, so I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say here.
> Why would you assume disciplines outside those in majority representation here aren’t equally, or even more, detailed?
Because there's literally a market carve-out for city-driving electric cars like the Leaf and the BMW i-series. As much as I would love for a group of engineers to go hard on specs out of passion, I also believe that corporations are run much more by MBA-brained types than engineers now and any over-engineering outside of strict business criteria will be immediately vetoed and dumped
> My first car was a used 1998 Renault Clio
And these days the over-reliance on plastics for structure and cost reduction in combination with large scale production sourcing issues that are hangovers from a global pandemic and an increasingly aggressive imperial trade regime by certain bad actors means there's little chance you are getting similar quality standards like those from 20+ years ago
Enshittification is a real thing and I'm not the kind of corporate brand loyalist who still believes these companies are going out of their way to make a car better than it needs to be
I've had 700 kg cars that rivalled sports cars for grip and ability to accelerate. To say that sub 1 ton cars are going to be unpleasant to drive at highway speeds is a statement that does not jive with my 43 years of driving experience on three continents and in many types of vehicle and road conditions.
What is far more important than total mass is mass distribution, width of the tires (which can be an advantage and a disadvantage depending on the conditions) and traction model. Noise is a function of isolation and shape of the body and road contact and here lighter cars have the advantage: substantially reduced tire noise.
I don't think it's impossible to have a small car that drives great - I drove a CR-X as a starter car and upgraded to a 00's Celica. I think the likelihood of a sub-1-tonne EV being specced outside of it's intended market niche at this price point in this stage of corporate wealth hoarding is extremely low. If it does turn up that the car is well-suited for highway driving, I'm happy to eat crow but that doesn't mean that I won't still think the probability of the inverse is higher until that point.
> like the Leaf and the BMW i-series.
I don't know about the i-series but the current Leaf is not a city car. Nissan's small city car is the Pixa.
The Leaf is mid sized and well designed for longer distance travel with a range of 387 miles.
> Because there's literally a market carve-out for city-driving electric cars like the Leaf and the BMW i-series.
And? Do you think these cars are incapable of highway driving? What do you think happens when manufacturers release cars that are terribly noisy in the cabin at highway speeds?
I’ll tell you: what’s always happened. Reviewevers and consumers will slag them off and people will vote with their wallets.
A lightweight car is not a car that inherently has to be unpleasant to drive at speed.
And you think cost cutting is new? Robert McNamara and his “whizz kids” near ruined the reputation of the Ford Motor Company due to quality issues stemming from his relentless cost cutting in the 1950s and 1960s. What he and, really, what the rest of Detroit were doing enabled the success of Japanese manufacturers in the USA because they made a higher quality product and charged less for it.
> And these days the over-reliance on plastics for structure and cost reduction
People have been complaining about this since the 1980s. Plastics have been used extensively in cars for decades, including in ways that compromise the durability of critical components and sensors. This is not a new problem.
It is sheer ignorance to claim that any car weighing less than a ton will inherently be unpleasant to drive at highway speeds.
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