So eloquently put & efficiently communicated, I only wish I could be that articulated with words.

They textured instead of polygoned/tessellated/bumpmapped. The 2D doesn’t logically match the 3D. Idk, it’s weird, like a hasty remaster where they applied some general rules/scripts instead of doing the work.

Lol, they fucked a perfectly fine river :(

to shrink reliance on Big Tech

Right there in the title

Finally AI in my favourite code editor!

/s (both)

Sorry, but what sort of conclusion is that? I don’t understand, it’s divergent things.

Lots of tech that cars offer I can also have at my house, like a sound system or massage chair.

Car prices don’t reflect constriction costs.
Cars won’t be more or less expensive bcs of 200$ of solar panels.

Also people with budgets constraints dont buy new cars, why would they?

In a free market and under current western capitalism the final consumer price (or entire consumer market supply for that matter) isn’t directly linked to features.
Ie they will sell you at max price as little as they can, not at a cost based price.
(Anyway, a cars worth of solar panels is such a negligible cost in relation to cars base price or options lists that it doesn’t matter that much)

And I don’t ever think you need any kind of prototype or testing to show how much solar energy can a surface of a car produce and how much travel distance does that represent - to ballpark it that is just a simple online search (you have enormous quantity of solar panel efficiency data, per latitude, as well as actual electric car consumption rates).
Bcs of that obvious common sense & various types of other solar cars out there I really doubt anyone is getting deceived here on solar mileage. The company does not claim they invented any revolutionary new solar panels (I doubt they hide the wattage spec they intend to install), nor hide the car (it’s a design 10+ years old, the point of which is that it has about a 0.1 drag coefficient, so about half of that of the sleekest other cars today). Their goal here is to put the existing design into production, so more of a logistical challenge - their prototypes need to prove they can build cars (to establish a production line), not to prove any overall concept of a solar car itself.
Additionally you can already get Hyundai Iconiq 5 with a solar panel sunroof for years now, it ads a mile/kilometer per day in real life (for people with a couple of miles/kilometre commutes that’s actually noticeable). But for decades you could get some car models (Toyota & Audi at least) with a solar panel sunroof, mostly they just powered the 12V battery with it to run auxiliary systems (like ventilation, AC).

I think you might have jumped to the conclusion this company is trying to sell solar cars with unlimited (outside?) range.

Oh, I agree with you there (well, not in the tech itself, why not both, have panels on buildings and on some cars – plenty of people drive only a few thousands of kilometres/miles per year & still need a car).

I’m just saying that as engineer I would start testing them separately, in lab conditions first to get the basics & correct obvious initial faults, then separately outside.
As management I however would insist that engineer has to find a way to glue whatever solar panels they can find to the prototype if there is gonna be a press release.

I didn’t read much what they are doing/going for tho, so can’t say much about that.

Im not saying it isn’t, but fitting custom curved prob special solar panels on a test vehicle does not sound cost efficient, especially when you can test the solar panels separately perfectly fine.

Cars are complex to construct properly even without drivetrains, plenty to test there.

Imagine a lil tiny ornamental CD drive that just pops out!

Well, it would be

• more confusing if they shaped it like an iPhone,
• more unstable if they shaped it like the magic mouse with the power port at the bottom,
• super cute if they kept the exact mac pro tower design but super smol,
• actually useful as a vase of they used that cylinder mac pro design from 10 years ago