I think there's room in the market for a back to basics car company that takes out all this bs, goes back to crank windows and all that crap and sells new vehicles for an affordable cost with a good warranty.
It would probably crush today.
Edit: I got like 400 responses saying "slate" ok I get it you can stop
the reason crank windows are no longer even an option is because any changes to the cockpit require extensive testing of airbags and restraint systems in order to ensure that the handle sticking out of the door doesn't interfere. it's not cost effective to have both options.
At what speed is that an issue in your car? I know one of my cars when I was young and dumb would do that if I was going 90+mph on the highway, but just cracking a rear window while my drivers window was open fixed that. That really seems to be an issue with the car’s aerodynamics and speed, that doesn’t ever seem to happen unless a car is driving too fast or is boxy and poorly shaped.
It’s going to happen with anything when you have the window cracked just the right amount.
It’s called Hemholtz Resonance. A small amount of air shears off and pumps into the car, which increases cabin pressure and then gets pushed back out the same window by the pressure change. This happens over and over and over until you do something to equalize pressure - like open another window.
Blow across the top of an open bottle and the same effect happens.
I drive rentals for a living. It depends on the vehicle. Mazda Speed 3 is SO bad with this, but a Civic will be fine. You can tell how bad your ears will pop by how warbly the air is when only one is cracked. I find the best mitigation is to have it barely cracked, or as you said, crack another window just a bit
Slate is a scam. It’s larping as back to basics. They’re not even giving you a radio in the base when it costs almost nothing to put one in, but then they can give you AC in the base price which is more expensive to manufacture? You can get a Ford Maverick for slightly more, with better quality and capability of a truck with access to dealers and repair centers that aren’t 700 miles away from you. It’s so much less of a headache. It’s what sucked about Tesla for years as they started. Not to forget residual values. People regardless of what they claim, do not keep their vehicles long. These niche manufacturers get killed on that, plus it’s an EV. Factor value into ownership and the state is more expensive to own than the maverick almost off the lot.
One of the other reasons is manufacturing costs, if you have a cheap winder version and a higher spec with electric you need different door cards, injection moulding tooling, training, warehouse space, mechanisms, suppliers/supply chain and hundreds of other things. If all models use the same part it’s much cheaper!
Well, the Dacia Spring (their small electric model) has crank windows in its base configuration for front and back. The mid-price configuration has electric windows in the front and crank windows in the back. At least last years version did, haven’t looked at the newest one that was just released.
That's the point tho... a touchscreen is cheaper than an interface of buttons. You write some software and mass produce 1 screen. It's cheaper than the buttons
Exactly. Fancy schmancy tech can 'evolve' all it wants, but our bodies cannot. We still have hands and fingers. We like to touch and manipulate and move physical buttons, knobs, sliders, etc. especially when driving.
Tactile feedback is important if you want to work controls without having to look away from the road.
When you can navigate your dash and center console by feel, you won't have to look away. Touchscreens make that entirely impossible because there is no positional feedback for the brain unless you look. Once you're past the edge of the screen, everything feels the same.
Yup put in 1 screen and add tons of software to justify your price hikes. The software isn't really responsible for the price hikes it's just a nice excuse they can justify it with
It would be very expensive to have a lower make of car with the hand crank in it. And the electrical crap is super cheap now, so you are certainly correct.
It is weird that China can make a car for $8k USD. And Tesla, here in Canada, dropped their prices by $20k because it made very little sense to buy them here.
i actually have zero clue how an electric motor on a gear would be cheaper than a hand crank on a gear but possibly? maybe to manufacture the actual handle crank would cost money but still that would be the only thing that would possibly be original. motors are inexpensive and so is a switch but i genuinely cannot see how a hand crank could possibly cost more.
Hand cranks have to be quite durable seeing as they must not rip if children pull on them with full force, suitcases fall on them from the backseat or whatever.
The electric motor needs to deliver the exact same fixed force every time. Electric motors bought in large quantities by a car manufacturer are basically a few cents each (might be exaggerated but the cost is literally nothing on the car scale)
True but I mean still just a mechanical arm and gear set sounds way simpler than designing a whole motor bracket and where the switch goes. I do believe it’s probably so cheep it doesn’t matter but I’m struggling to see how it would be cheaper than a hand crank unless the crank itself is just that much more expensive.
It wouldn't be cheaper strictly in manufacturing costs of the final parts. But the upfront costs of potentially having to retool a line to make manual crank components, R&D to design or integrate/update a manual window system, as well as potentially design and manufacture a separate door trim, as well as crash impact testing for door panels and interior components would mean that they would have to sell a lot of manual crank windows to offset the initial upfront costs and the demand for manual windows isn't high enough to reliably recoup those costs, so manufactures have stopped offering it.
In terms of numbers it is likely in the neighborhood of $10 cheaper per window system in final manufacturing costs, and they would potentially be trying to recuperate hundreds of thousands or even millions in upfront costs.
Standardisation. As you said motors like those used for windows are dirt cheap especially in numbers. The small pcb for the buttons costs next to nothing aswell. There is no standard provider of handcranks and the rest of the manual mechanism, atleast not anymore. So there’s definitely a lot of additional up-front cost for making the new handcranks instead of electric windows. But that’s just my guess.
I travel to Europe for work on a regular basis and one of my favorite things to do is taking pics of random Sanderos on the road or in parking lots and texting my friend "Good news!"
I had a Dacia as a rental in Martinique, and the rear windows were crank windows. It was a cheap car, but nice to drive. I would certainly buy one as a commuter, for sure.
Those Dacia Sandero were amazing, up until a few years there were lot's of them still in the streets of Bucharest with over 1 million km on the pedometer.
I recommend looking at Euro NCAP rating and crash videos of any Dacia car. I value my life more than the price difference to any reputable car company’s cheapest acceptable option.
I have had plenty of cars where the crank window failed and they can be a pain to fix. Not that I don't wish they would bring crank windows back or anything like that.
While I do love the ventilation those provide, they also provide an easy way for burglars to break into your car.
I had those on one of my cars decades ago and somebody used a screwdriver or maybe a Slim Jim and wedged it into the gap and flipped the lever to open the wing vent.
Then they reached thru and opened the door from the inside, which completely bypassed the fact it was locked. Then they proceeded to remove my new aftermarket radio while scratching and denting the dash around it.
To make it hurt even more, I had put the radio on my very first credit card and hadn't even made my first payment on it yet. So I ended up paying the credit card company for a radio I no longer owned.
Honestly I don't know if this would be an issue these days. If you're worried about someone robbing your locked car they're just going to break your window to get in. They're not going to waste the time to do all of this to get in without damage. Even then you likely need to have something visible worth stealing; otherwise they're just going to move on to check other cars.
Most theft these days is just about opportunity and speed. Stealing a radio just isn't worth it these days in most cases as they're relatively cheap and EVERY fucking car uses a different propriety system. Most of them aren't even easily removable without pretty major disassembly. Even IF you stole one you'd basically have to own a shop that sells them or know of a shop willing to buy stolen radios; otherwise good luck selling it for basically anything.
Back in the day every car could use essentially the same aftermarket radios and every electronics shop sold them. It made sense as an easy item to steal and resell, especially since they were actually expensive. These days you'd probably be better off stealing the tires or siphoning the gas out of a car.
I dunno- on my Audi S4, they just tossed a bowling ball through the passenger window.
It mighta been cheaper if there was a wing window for them to pop open.
This exact same thing happened to me except my car didn't have a wing window, just a triangle glass panel that they smashed to open the door from the inside. Took my radio, dashcam and work toolbelt.
No joke, I used to be able to unlock and open my 90s jeep xj with two butter knives, one with a 90° bend in the last couple inches. I was so quick at it that it was often quicker than unlocking my door with the keys.
Crank windows are usually the cheap option, and the components reflect that.
Power window stuck because of ice in the track? It will activate a sensor and stop before it breaks anything. Manual? Driver thinks it's close to opening and reefs on on the crank a bit too hard. Snap goes the plastic linkage. This does free the window from the ice, but there's nothing holding it in place now and it drops inside the door frame, never to be seen again. Your winter commute just got really fun.
A good chunk of cars can't even be locked if the battery is dead, which is just as problematic especially if you live in a rougher part of town, as I do.
I've had both and the only issue I ran into with ice was the power windows not opening. Sounds like a shitty car in general if the crank breaks from ten or twenty pounds of pressure.
Plus on a planet that it does break I actually know how to fix those, but I am not an electrician, I can't fix power windows
Sounds like a shitty car in general if the crank breaks from ten or twenty pounds of pressure.
That's kind of the point I'm trying to make. If you're buying one of those base model 10-grand Micras that were briefly on the Canadian market in the mid- 2010s, you're buying something that rolled off the line as a shitbox. The whole point is to be the cheapest possible car.
Maybe but I live in Minnesota, drove plenty of shit boxes, the crank never broke from ice. I've totalled a car because of an ice storm but never once snapped a crank
LOL—crank windows can absolutely fail. Then you’ve gotta be the eight-year-old in the backseat trying to pull the window up by its edge every damn day on the way home from school because it slowly slides down.
Oh man you have definitely never worked on cars before lol. Old cheap crank windows are way less reliable than modern electrics. I've replaced dozens over the years just on my own personal project cars.
It’s kinda the way things go these days. My assumption has been that prices are driven up mostly due to shareholder/capital pressures. You’ll see a new mark come into the market with no-nonsense models at very reasonable prices, often using easy-to-source generic parts, and they gradually increase the prices on the base models over time to catch up with (or pass) everyone else. Happened with the Japanese brands, when civics and Camrys used to be extremely affordable, then we saw a similar progression with the Korean makes. GM famously made the Saturn more expensive and lower quality before ultimately killing the brand altogether. It’s just the same story of squeezing costs and raising prices for stock price gains.
As a subsection to this, my assumption is that it's not that all of the unnecessary features of a car cause the price to go up, it's that shareholders wanted prices to go up, and they're adding all of these features to justify the price increases to consumers.
I know 10 years ago when I was shopping for a car, you could get an aftermarket remote start system installed for less than $200, but if you wanted it included in the car at the dealership it was an extra $3000. Now the remote start is baked into the price of the car, and then locked behind a $20/month subscription.
Add "subscription based amenities" to the list of things I will never, EVER pay for. I will white knuckle an ice cold steering wheel in February out of 100% pure corporate spite
Same, I got 90 days "Free" from Chevy for their app when I bought a car from them back in 2018, but the second that trial period was over I deleted the app from my phone.
Funny thing is that I still got "service" alerts from the app to my email for months after the car got totaled in an accident(I got T-boned by someone running a red light). It was kind of funny getting "low tire pressure" alerts, when the car was missing two tires.
Seems like the Asian makers are always the first to offer premium features at affordable marks, and then the American and Euro makes have to keep adding more features bloat to justify charging higher prices for the same shit Hyundai has
Jep... i'm glad to have a car from the last generation with a hard switch for the speed beeping. U can hack newer ones, but u loose ur isurance because u leave proof in the car.
Yup, thanks to the new EU laws on cars (GSR 2 (or general safety regulation 2)) , Renault/Dacia have to be basically the same car underneath the badge. And sadly, as someone who have to scan cars cameras in my line of work, it's really bad as shit tons of errors and usually linked to ABS even when really recent.
On older Peugeot (by that I meant like the phase 2 308 or 3008 etc) the cameras which was decently reliable and not prone to failures are starting to feel the weight of the time (and sun cooking and feeling frosty below some snow ngl) and guess what, it's expensive af to replace (even tho it's easy af too) so... GL with the used car market in some years. Lol.
Dacia Sandero is the most sold vehicle in Europe so far in 2026. It's the basic B-segment car (which is the everyday car for M. anybody, supposedly an urban mid-sized car but people also use to hit the road).
Wait til Americans find out how much anything foreign costs in their country because of their own choices
And not just foreign products... plenty of American products cross the border with Canada many times during production - and each border crossing adds some tariffs
I was over at my folks today and they just bought a 10yr old Duster. They're really impressed that it recommends gear changes and calculates MPG in real time. Not sure what they'd think of my Enyaq if they got in it 🤣
They kinda went away from the very basic models theast few years. Cars got nicer, but also way more.
Until 2018 you could get them new in very base trim for like 7k€ after taxes and everything. Now they start around 13k , but already have more stuff in them.
My Dacia is two years old, was very affordable, seats 7 and has room for bags has distance sensors all around, parking camera, dead zone warning and a head display thats "dumb" it has a radio and all settings, but stuff like navigation and such is with Carplay.
I love my dacia duster essential, runs on lpg that is currently half the cost of gasoline, no uselless bullshit, reliable and reasonable prince, also it is BEAYTIFULL!
2.8k
u/burge4150 9h ago edited 3h ago
I think there's room in the market for a back to basics car company that takes out all this bs, goes back to crank windows and all that crap and sells new vehicles for an affordable cost with a good warranty.
It would probably crush today.
Edit: I got like 400 responses saying "slate" ok I get it you can stop