Comment by olyjohn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olyjohn | Hacker News Reader

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Meh. I feel like that's a scapegoat that they like to use. Honda packed all that into the Fit (Honda Sensing), and it wasn't a $50,000 car. It was reasonably priced, and an excellent, economical car, with a top safety rating. It's literally the exact same tech used in their top end cars.

But what they did was, they killed the Fit in the US. So now the cheapest Honda car you can get is the Civic. Which isn't the small car it used to be.

I mean also, how much does this tech cost really? A backup camera? You really gonna claim that cars are unaffordable because of a $20 LCD and $10 camera installed into the bumper?

Pre-collision warnings, blind spot monitoring, it's all 20 year old tech now. And it comes in everything.

I bought my Honda Fit in 2014 for 16k. It has a back up camera, but no other sensor/parking tech. I’ve put almost 200k miles on it without anything more than regular oil changes and brakes. I could afford a much more fun and feature rich vehicle, but there’s something to be said for the simplicity and functionality of this modest hatchback.

Europe is still full of cheap base models with manual transmissions. Americans just go for luxury and it shapes the market in that direction.

So your argument on a software development site is that feature creep isn't a thing?

>> unaffordable because of a $20 LCD and $10 camera installed into the bumper?

Yes. An automotive-grade LCD that will last years, plus a camera that will survive the elements, not mention the unreliable power supplies on which these must operate. Then 10+ feet of cable. Then the dozen little plastic clips to keep that cable secure. Then the manpower to install all of this. Yes. That camera system is more expensive than an injection-molded mirror bolted to the exterior of a car or glued to a windscreen. Multiply that by dozens of similar little things and it does result in more expensive vehicles.

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