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.
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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