• melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    7 minutes ago

    America made cars so big and expensive that nobody can afford to buy them anymore. We need more electric sub-compacts that won’t break the bank. Why would Europe even want those behemoths?

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      38 seconds ago

      The best part is that material costs are often some of the lowest costs in making a product. Think about how much more metal and plastic is actually in an SUV compared to a small car. Yea the envelope is bigger but it’s mostly air, and those engines aren’t actually that much bigger. SUVs do not cost more in advertising, employee payroll, safety testing, or R&D and yet will cost 50-100% more than a smaller vehicle because “reasons”. And people will buy them also because “reasons”.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    About nobody wants those cars here in Europe. They are too big for the roads, do not fit in any normal parking lot, and they guzzle gas as if it cost nothing.

    That some of those cars are actually not considered road-worthy here for some very good reasons is just the icing on the cake.

  • naeap@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    In return the US buys European trains, that won’t fit their rails?

    Then we would exchange stuff, we can’t use.

    Trump is such an idiot, that he drops out of the IQ scale

    • e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 days ago

      Judging by the amount of pickup trucks that started to infest the streets around here the answer is probably yes.

    • Humanius@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Judging by the increase in F150 trucks on European roads… yes.

      They are not officially sold here but there are ways to import them legally and “affordably”.
      There is a subset of the population that will import these cars regardless of whether they are suitable for the environment.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Luckily, they are a small subset. It’s still annoying when they take their monster for shopping and block three parking lots.

      • Blaster M@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The Ford F150 is a work truck. It was designed for (prototyped with) hauling duty in construction and mining ops. It’s meant to carry lots of big things that won’t reliably fit in a van.

        However, using an F150 as your daily driver / shop runner is ridiculous, and you need money to support that fuel economy it doesn’t get.

        This coming from an American, in a state where it’s culturally required to drive monster trucks as commuter cars.

        • Humanius@lemmy.world
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          19 hours ago

          Cool. I’ll think of that when another F150 is parked both on the sidewalk and bikepath because it can’t fit the parking spot.

          These things are simply too large for European roads. And that is not even mentioning the road safety concerns.

          A work truck does not have to be such a behemoth of a vehicle in order to be a practical work vehicle. You can get safer and smaller pickup trucks that can haul the same amount
          (Or at the very least those used to exist)

          • Blaster M@lemmy.world
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            17 hours ago

            It’s all about what fits the job. Minitrucks are super popular in the USA now, and the Toyota Tacoma (a little smaller than the Hilux) is worth so much used it has almost no depreciation even at 200,000 mi. Though the kind of work the F150 is meant for involves large things (wood beams, bulky equipment, looooong items, and so on) that are probably sized differently in Europe or are trailered instead, which makes it overkill over there to have an F150 if your stuff fits in a small van.

        • Humanius@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          To my knowledge those are not road legal, since they are too large/heavy to be driven with a regular driver’s licence
          The F150 is just shy of the maximum allowed size/weight-limit

      • sucius@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I’ve yet to see to see one. Where have you seen them? Is it Germany or the Netherlands?

        • Humanius@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          They’re quite common in Belgium (from what I’ve seen), and I’m seeing them a lot in the Netherlands as well.

          To my knowledge, in the case of the Netherlands, people are using a tax-loophole to import them into the country without paying the appropriate vehicle import tax. This is done by importing and registering the vehicle as a company vehicle, but using it as a personal vehicle as well

          Importing an American pickup truck this way is still expensive, but not nearly as expensive as if they had to pay that tax.

      • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        The road in front of my house isn’t getting any bigger, 2 big trucks are not going to fit and I will sit and laugh as they try.

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      They’re very incompatible with infrastructure and environment.

      When international companies build cars with the US in mind, they ensure they make sense in the US.

      American cars are not tough enough for off-roading in most countries. They’re too big and inefficient for on-road and urban. Where they do fit in, there’s already many much better options and maintaining those fit-fir-purpose cars through their lifetime is much easier and cheaper because of after sale support and part availability.

      You can improve a US car with modification, but it also isn’t cheap and easy.

      US car manufacturers can’t compete with European and Asian manufacturers. They barely pull it off domestically. Only Ford has managed with its appeal to commercial fleets and some cars you can’t even get in the US—that’s how it’s done if you want your shit bought.

  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    Fucking try it, my wall is a lot cheaper to replace than your car door. Bit of mortar, maybe a replacement brick or two.

    • Womble@piefed.world
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      2 days ago

      “AI helped me make this graph” Could just mean they got AI to write some matplotlib to plot real data. Though it is pretty slapdash to just state that with no further explaination.

      • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        Probably knowing that the nature of LLMs is to generate output based on statistical associations, and that they don’t have the ability to look at data and understand it.

        It’s also so fucking lazy to do that and then turn around and beg for people to pay you for it.

        • Kuinox@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          LLMs generate theses kind of graph by writing a python program that plot a real dataset.
          I don’t see the issue you have.

          nature of LLMs is to generate output based on statistical associations

          that’s also the nature of humans.

          • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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            2 days ago

            LLMs generate theses kind of graph by writing a python program that plot a real dataset.

            Assuming it even correctly does that. And why is that even necessary? People were able to make graphs before AI. It isn’t hard to do, and the piddling amount of data on display hardly needs a custom python program to plot it.

            that’s also the nature of humans.

            Thoughts are more than statistical associations, and anyone telling you that you can make a humanlike consciousness through a glorified autocorrect is a scam artist.

            • Kuinox@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              People were able to make graphs before AI.

              The times, and skill level required to make this graph dropped significantly.
              Before, you may not even had this graph.

              Thoughts are more than statistical associations

              Do you even know -how- you think ? Anyone telling you they know how thought process works in the brain is a scam artist, you can’t make any comparison between how work the two because we don’t know how both operate to produce the output.

              PS:

              a humanlike consciousness

              Does consciousness exists at all ? I can argue it’s an illusion born from the ability of self reflection.

              • jonion@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                Does conscipusness exist at all?

                Yes. The entire physical world may be an illusion for all I know, but the only thing I can be truly certain of is my conscious experience of it. There is simply no way for me to doubt my own consciousness as such, but I can doubt what I am conscious of.