Truck with a ridiculously large windshield? Nobody has ever done that before.
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( funny until he’s pouring gasoline into a trashcan. what the heck!? dangerous not to mention illegal )
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Jeremy is apparently a bully and a bit of a toxic person to work with but I would still wager that that bit was faked for laughs. There’s a lot of stuff on that show that isn’t really what it’s portrayed as being, just like any “reality” show.
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i doubt it’s legal, but id guess their solution is cameras.
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If I was a tech bro coming up with needlessly complicated solutions to basic problems facing all car designers, I would probably install an always-on rear facing camera that just had a live video feed to a small screen mounted where the rear-view mirror usually goes.
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All new vehicles sold in the US require back-up cameras whether they have a rear window or not (which IMHO is silly for a car like a Miata, but whatever), but a rear window is not legally required and hasn’t been historically mandated here if you’ve got side mirrors. Plenty of vehicles have no rear window, like every single u-haul box truck, for example.
But just because they can doesn’t mean they should, obviously.
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interesting. didn’t know that. i always assumed it was a difference between commercial vehicles and passenger ones.
i think cameras would actually be safer in most cases but windows are nice backups ( no pun intended )
for me, id actually like some sort of augmented hud over the windshield/s - especially for night driving and rain - rather than this focus on autonomous vehicles
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By thinking “move fast and break things” is the perfect ethos to bring into the field of automobile manufacturing, I guess.
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or an always on rear camera that they showed 2+ years ago and that every GM Bolt has currently?
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Ah, but Musk has a specific, bullshit design that must be adhered to, and everything else needs to follow from that (even if it fucks up the functionality of an automobile in ways that, you know, could get people killed). This isn’t the first time he’s done something like this with the vehicles.
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That’s a pretty damn clever solution.
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That rollaway bed cover is a great example of a “who the heck is this thing designed for, anyway?” feature. Trucks are supposed to be sturdy, reliable, utilitarian machines. You shouldn’t have to worry that throwing a couple sacks of mulch and some cinder blocks in the back might bend some panel out of place or foul up a closing mechanism.
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Powered tonneau covers have been a thing for ages on pickup trucks.
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I like that large windshield (and the short, sloped hood). It would cut down on incidents like this…
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With the amount of angle the windshield has it makes me wonder if anyone has actually driven it at night, in anywhere with street lights. Unless they have treated it with some kind of anti-reflective coating it is going to have terrible glare issues at night.
I also feel like those vehicles were auto piloting around that course. They stayed inside the white lines, but the entry into the curves arced rather high and the correction was jerky.
Which leads me to wonder, would cameras be allowed to replace mirrors? Not just rearview, but both side mirrors. Perhaps a 3-camera array, two at the rear corners and one in the middle. Displayed on a screen in the same place the rearview is mounted. Seamless very-wide view as default, with some sort of steering wheel-mounted control for other views.
EDIT: I see @Brainspore beat me to it. Probably others. Mine has three cameras so is better. Like any idea I think up, as soon as I complete writing it down, I start to think “If I thought of it, it’s obviously simple enough that it’s already thunk up by many others”.
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Seems to be the intention here.
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I’m surprised they didn’t implement a squeegee-wielding drone that continuously hovers over the windshield as the vehicle is in motion.
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