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Chrysler is betting millennials will want to be as connected in their cars as they are at home with a new concept car that mixes high-tech gadgetry with a head-turning design.
The Portal concept was unveiled on Tuesday at CES in Las Vegas as Chrysler's proposal to the millennial generation and is designed to be a comfortable "third space" for a generation that is just as much at home in a coffee shop as they are at home or work.
[...] On the tech side, the Portal hits all the right notes when it comes to the current crop of concept vehicles: A large sweeping digital dashboard with many of the internal surfaces doubling as flat screens, and internet connectivity throughout.
There are an impressive 10 gadget docks so the six passengers will never be fighting over who gets to charge their device, and Chrysler said speakers direct audio to each seating zone so it's possible to each listen to their own music.
[...] The Portal is a battery electric vehicle with a 250 mile range, and supports fast-charging that can deliver a 150-mile charge in 20 minutes.
Setting aside its intended market, the car has good features that would appeal to a lot of customers.
[One thing to note is that this is a concept car, not intended for production - Fnord666]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday January 05 2017, @01:46PM
If only millennials had any money left after their art history degree left them working at Starbucks and $100K in debt, while they live the urban dream of $5000K/month luxury condos and spend kilobucks on a new phone and macbook every year. Oh and their urban hellhole condo doesn't have parking, so where do they park this thing?
Yeah sure whatever life is good for the equiv of the 1%er who is working in SV for a startup that got purchased and ageism hasn't kicked in yet etc. I'm sure they could sell tens, maybe hundreds of vehicles to those people. But they're trying to sell cars to the millions of masses not just the rich, so how is that barista supposed to afford this beast of a vehicle?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 05 2017, @02:14PM
I don't think that financial profile is exclusive to people who got degrees in art history any more. I know plenty people with law degrees, medical degrees, and technical degrees who have trouble with their debt-to-income ratio, too.
That aside, a whole lot of people still live in suburbs and exurbs and would do fine with a car like this. Its range is much greater than what all but a small fraction of people in those areas drive everyday. Keeping it charged piggybacks on the same muscle memory that people use to keep their smartphones charged, so it feels easier than filling up at the station.
At the end of the day it's a concept car, but it's good to see the automakers re-thinking mobility after what felt like a long stretch of creative stagnation.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Thursday January 05 2017, @03:08PM
I don't think that financial profile is exclusive to people who got degrees in art history any more. I know plenty people with law degrees, medical degrees, and technical degrees who have trouble with their debt-to-income ratio, too.
It isn't. One of the most common complaints I get from women my age when dating is "why do you spend so little when you make so much money. People making as much have you have $expensive_lifestyle yet you don't".
There is general social pressure to spend spend spend "Conspicuous consumption", so a lot of people go into debt even if they have decent salary in order to "keep up with the Joneses" and appear richer than they are.
I refuse to do that, so apart from a mortgage I am debt free (actually managed to pay off my student loan early). However it does mean my quality of life is equivalent to someone who earns less than me. Me being debt free gives me security and peace. Not being stressed about interest rates, or having to work a crappy job because I have to make payments on loans is quite liberating.
Women in particular expect me to have brand new cars every 2 years, brand new phones ever year, expensive holidays, always latest and newest shiny. People can do it, but they lease it all, or use credit cards, and have large monthly costs. I own my stuff outright, so if I don't use them, they don't cost me anything. It does mean I am prudent and will not buy something unless I consider it a good deal.
I guess it explains why I am still single, lol.
That aside, a whole lot of people still live in suburbs and exurbs and would do fine with a car like this. Its range is much greater than what all but a small fraction of people in those areas drive everyday. Keeping it charged piggybacks on the same muscle memory that people use to keep their smartphones charged, so it feels easier than filling up at the station.
At the end of the day it's a concept car, but it's good to see the automakers re-thinking mobility after what felt like a long stretch of creative stagnation.
IMO cars with this kind of range would make good commuter/city cars. Most commutes are around 30 miles max round here. Well within the range. One place where ICE cars are awful is traffic. Sitting there, doing nothing but consuming fuel, generating heat and noise. EV's consume very little when not moving, so they are ideal for traffic.
I live in a dense urban environment (not by choice, just very poor public transport outside of the city) so I just use public transport. I don't have the mentality to spend an hour doing 1.5mph to get to work, but if others like that kind of thing, EVs are the go to vehicle for that niche.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:22PM
Interesting post. I too am a millenial in a similar situation to you: no college debt, job in a high tech sector, modest lifestyle.
Do you suppose that people with expensive lifestyles like you mentioned save for retirement? That in itself is not cheap.
I don't feel like I have the energy for a relationship, and I definitely do not want children, so I haven't been dating. I drive a 2002 saturn, and I'm quite happy that it is not anywhere near as "connected" as the car featured in the article. I would like to get an electric car eventually for the higher energy efficiency and lower maintenance, but the total cost of ownership will have to come down before I do that. Hopefully they have better cold weather performance by the time that happens.
I bought a $100 smartphone online to hook up to a bring-your-own-phone plan. At the cell phone store setting up the plan, a college-aged guy comes in to buy a new iPhone because his last one broke; it cost $800. I asked the attendant who could spend that much on a phone, and he pulled out his iPhone and explained, "I bought it on a plan, so I only pay $25/month." When I asked what happens if it breaks before he owns it outright, he replied, "Oh, that's why I pay for insurance; it's only $10/month." I didn't say anything else, but the whole situation made me thankful that I deal with numbers at work and can see why that's a bad deal...
The same attendant was also paying for a very large data plan, maybe 20 or 40 Gb, and when I asked how anyone could use that much data, streaming video was the main answer. I'm usually near wifi and have no need to stream anything when I'm not near wifi. Again, the experience was surprising. The cellular companies have great customers, I guess.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday January 05 2017, @10:21PM
Do you suppose that people with expensive lifestyles like you mentioned save for retirement? That in itself is not cheap.
No, I don't think they do. I asked some of them, and the idea of retiring and growing old is not on their mind. To be fair, they just upped the retirement age round here to 75, so I guess most people my age don't except to ever retire. The general mood is one of resignation and "screw it, the economy will collapse before I retire, lets just party!".
To be fair, I don't officially save for retirement either, for pretty much the same reasons. Apart from the amount I am forced to put aside for retirement by law, I don't put in extra. This is because I don't suspect my pension plan will actually be able to provide much for me when I need to retire, if it exists in future at all (which seems unlikely). All the money put in, and in the end you get so little out, thanks to inflation.
So I have taken to buying property, including property abroad in an effort to diversify and spread my risk across asset markets. Now looking at a nice house by the beach. I can rent it out as a holiday home, or use it for my own holiday home, plus if I feel like it, it would make a lovely retirement place one day. Unlike a pension plan, it can earn me money now, I can sell it, or rent it out, if needs be. Can't do that with normal retirement savings.
I don't feel like I have the energy for a relationship, and I definitely do not want children, so I haven't been dating.
Fair enough, when I was in my early 20s and first went into work, I was all eager and keen, so ended up working really long hours. I never had energy for anything, even relationships. In hindsight I am not sure it was worth the sacrifice for money, but hindsight is like that. Part of me wishes I was more normal, and instead of tinkering with electronics, computers and working long and hard, I actually went out and enjoyed the company of girls in my youth.
I do want kids, so made a decision to switch down into a lower paying field, but now I can walk to work, and can show up at the office literally any time of the day I want (some people come in at 2pm) and generally have amazing flexibility, so decided to actually make time for myself, my health, and dating. If I was up to the eyeballs in loans I would not have been able to take a pay cut, because of my monthly outgoings for all the credit would have prevented me. That is the trap people put themselves in with credit. They are locked in a cycle of having to work harder and harder to pay off loans for things that happened so long ago they may not even remember what the original debt was for.
I drive a 2002 saturn, and I'm quite happy that it is not anywhere near as "connected" as the car featured in the article. I would like to get an electric car eventually for the higher energy efficiency and lower maintenance, but the total cost of ownership will have to come down before I do that. Hopefully they have better cold weather performance by the time that happens.
Nice, I have three cars atm (all of them sports cars, now that I think about it), one from 1982, one from 1993 and one from 2001. The '82 is really easy to maintain, I have taken it apart and put it together at least once so far. It's mileage isn't too bad actually, because the lack of modern safety requirements mean the car is really light. It doesn't have a lot of power, but it is fast due to said light weight.
The 1993 is already more complicated. Has ABS/airbags/etc... and Mitsubishi's version of CANBUS, lots of little ECUs all over the place, and electrical gremlins that I am sorting out. However still not connected to the Internet, but already getting harder to deal with.
The 2001 is about as complex as the 93, but it is far more integrated, every little part has its own chip, and when a transistor fails, the whole thing dies so have to replace the part (at least the third party aftermarket is healthy). Newer cars are even worse, they will refuse to do anything until you go and buy an original keyed part to fit. It is like a rehash of the inkjet printer hell, where they use some form of DRM to rip your wallet to shreds.
The 2001 is the newest car I have, and I doubt I will be buying anything newer. Not sure how long I can keep running cars from the 80s and 90s, but should be good for a while yet. Plus unlike normal cars, they are appreciating in value rather than depreciating.
I admit I am biased towards ICE, but I just love mechanical things, and heat engines are wonderful things to me. So I will probably stick with them. Partly because I know and understand them, and partly because I know how to synthesize fuel for them myself. It is within my means. Give me a decent workshop with some machine tools (lathe, mill, etc...) and I will be able to build an ICE, and the infrastructure to create fuel for it as well. I can't do that with EV machines. While I could create the mechanical parts (like the motor stator/rotor/coils) the lithium batteries and all the ECU's to control it will be much harder, if possible at all. I could make my own lead acid batteries in theory, but the weight to power density means the car will be pretty useless range and carrying capacity wise.
The cold weather performance can't really be solved, it is a function of battery chemistry. What they can do, is provide better insulation for the battery pack. So I think in future (or even now, if you buy some of the more upmarket EVs) you should get better performance. Still the TCO is still too high for me, for less practicality than the competition, more worries, more security holes, less repair ability by myself, and less control for me. To not even mention tracking and monitoring in these computerised cars.
I bought a $100 smartphone online to hook up to a bring-your-own-phone plan. At the cell phone store setting up the plan, a college-aged guy comes in to buy a new iPhone because his last one broke; it cost $800. I asked the attendant who could spend that much on a phone, and he pulled out his iPhone and explained, "I bought it on a plan, so I only pay $25/month." When I asked what happens if it breaks before he owns it outright, he replied, "Oh, that's why I pay for insurance; it's only $10/month." I didn't say anything else, but the whole situation made me thankful that I deal with numbers at work and can see why that's a bad deal...
The same attendant was also paying for a very large data plan, maybe 20 or 40 Gb, and when I asked how anyone could use that much data, streaming video was the main answer. I'm usually near wifi and have no need to stream anything when I'm not near wifi. Again, the experience was surprising. The cellular companies have great customers, I guess.
I think both of us have the ability to understand numbers, so we can work out if we are being screwed by bad deals. I suspect this is why there is a general push in the education system for people to not learn maths. It is really useful, and you want more idiots in the world, because they are easier to manipulate and milk for money. Just like I don't think people realise how bad interest on debt can be, especially on credit cards, and things like compound interest they don't understand until it traps them in a cycle of debt.
I buy my phones second hand, and rip out all the Google stuff and put CM on it (at least used to, now they are a closed shop), but that is getting harder. If it wasn't for the fact friends and family use chat apps like viber, I would probably get a dumb phone. I just need the phone for phone stuff, and music.
I considered getting one of those 24 month plans for a Samsung Note 4 at the time. When I did the math, it was cheaper for me to just buy the phone outright and get a monthly rolling sim-only deal, which is what I did. Not including the insurance cost, which would be a good idea to get, as these phones tend to have screens that easily break. I don't know why other people didn't do this, I suspect because they don't calculate the TCO, and see "oooh a new iphone for just 25 a month". Again... math skills lacking.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday January 06 2017, @12:22PM
Women in particular expect me to
My old guy advice having seen some stuff and seem some coworkers lives is those chicks can be fun when you're both young but when they hit the wall "red pill" style around 30s they become as toxic as concentrated boiling hydrofluoric acid. Not exactly marriage material or mom material, in fact the opposite, so pump and dump. Be super careful. Treat them like a plutonium a-bomb core, really cool to look at and fun to stick things into but their half life isn't infinite and when they blow up its a hell of a mess. Nothing inherently wrong with playing with fire, but ...
I lived in the same bachelor pad as a starving student and for a few years with a "real job". Went from "gonna be tight paying the rent this month can't fix my car till next month" to not a care in the world zero stress. Its nice!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday January 05 2017, @04:26PM
Except that the stereotype about millennials studying art history rather than something useful isn't actually true [ed.gov]. When you look at that table, where you see the biggest jumps isn't the arts at all, but in business and health care. That suggests that millennial students are studying professions that actually might make them some money.
Now, you're right that STEM is still lagging, but I suspect that has more to do with the fact that many people manage to graduate high school in the US without having a solid understanding of mathematics.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @06:33PM
Math is the worst taught subject, if there ever was a field that needed flexibility that is it. Currently you learn some basics, then move on and never cover them again except when they are used in a lesson 2 years later. I think a lot of schooling would be improved by having kids learn through adaptive courses that let them do more exploration to learn things. Once they have a good grasp of more material they could then return to topics that stumped them previously. Sort of like leveling up your character before finishing all the achievements / side quests.
Of course this would all be guided by actual teachers, and ideally teachers should not have more than 15 students at any given moment.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday January 06 2017, @12:12PM
I would agree with your factual data barring any actual counterexamples, but the bigger issue is "older than me" which is pretty old meant get any old random degree and then get a great job. After all if a mere HS diploma got you a sinecure on the factory floor, "any degree" should get you a nice job for life in cubie-land. All those jobs having gone to China thanks to intentional US Govt policy, life is different for folks in my generation and younger where either only special degrees or no degrees at all can lead to "the good life".
Meanwhile the boomers retiring at work THINK they're gonna sell their $750K boomer mcmansions to my generation which can barely afford $250K houses or maybe immigrants cutting lawns. Yeah they're in for a big surprise. Once the boomers rotate out of the burbs and the prices collapse by a factor of ten because thats all the money there is, the burbs will go back to being places for young people to raise kids. But with $100K in student loans and very few jobs out there, the youngsters won't be buying houses or cars...