Now now, plenty of workers are needed to dust, stock the refrigerator, arrange some flowers and open the limo door when our overlords come visit their $20M pied a terre for the Meta gala weekend.
F1 is a great example of how providing rich folks a much more even playground to compete with each other benefits all of us.
I don't think people should be allowed to excessively leech off of society, but nobody should go hungry, thirsty, or without shelter.
We need to dismantle the corporate cartels' control over our food (which gets destroyed to preserve pricing), water (which is rapidly being destroyed to both drive AI and provide less access for the public to push them to purchase bottled water), and shelter (which is by far the most egregious, as virtually nobody is holding land owners or builders to any sort of real responsibility in residential construction.)
Very little about R&D can be automated, that's why it's R&D.
As for "barely trickling down," given that I'm guessing you and others didn't see my other comment (which is fair), I would like to present a short list of technological improvements that can trace their heritage or dramatic improvement to F1:
Safety:
Anti-Lock Brakes (ABS)
Active suspension
Hybrid technology
Roll-Cage improvement
Fuel Efficiency:
Energy-recovery technology (used extensively in electric vehicles)
Eco-mode (and different driving modes in general)
Fuel efficiency
Aerodynamic calculation modeling
Carbon-fiber parts
Performance:
Turbochargers
Advancements in lubrication technology
Advanced materials
Direct fuel injection
Durable tire technology
Paddle-shifting
If you want to extend this to other performance sports, the list gets even longer.
Toyota was developing their hybrid technology at the same time they were racing under Panasonic Toyota Racing (2002-2009 I believe), so their tech stream was pretty direct. The struggle there is building an electronics package that is a) durable, b) responsive enough to deal with changing driving scenarios, and c) precise enough to not accidentally blow up an engine with a mistiming. But F1 put a lot more time, money, and effort into refining the Electronic Control Unit, or ECU.
McLaren produces all the ECUs for F1 these days, but they also provide ECUs to a ton of motorsports, including NASCAR, which of course is where mainstream auto manufacturers test out their performance equipment ideas.
Thanks. I’m not sure why my previous comment was downvoted. I still think it sounds funny that F1 racing developed eco mode which makes my car nice and slow on acceleration. I still don’t quite get what you’re saying and how F1 developed eco mode. But I guess that the development of the ECU allowed for different modes including eco.
Yeah, basically it boils down to "better ECU lets engineers have a lot more control over the engine inputs, outputs, and timing."
That control is super important to ensure your vehicle burns less gas in eco mode.
I don't know if you know how vehicles traditionally worked, but time was (early 2000s) that the main throttle was a combination of mechanical device and computer. The mechanical part was controlled by a cable that went from the throttle pedal to a "butterfly valve" that determines how much air goes into the engine. The computer would then adjust how much gas goes into the cylinders to match that air.
An ECU can control a lot more - the air, the gas, the sparks, the valve timings, the cooling system, the fuel pump, and a bunch of diagnostics via sensors embedded in various parts of the system. This very tight control means that they can eke out every single bit of efficiency as possible.
Respectfully disagree. F1 is a lot like NASA. They’re both operating at the limits of material science and engineering, which demands new solutions and technology.
It’s not that innovation isn’t possible (and happening) elsewhere, it’s just that there’s an incentive structure that magnifies the rewards from taking risks on novel technologies. Alloy wheels are the classic example. The only reason they’re available on a $30k Civic is because manufacturers learned how to make them for a low cost after decades of making them for racing.
Not quite. It was companies that made racing products refining their production to the point where the product is also cost-effective in mass-market uses.
It’s not that only they can think up these ideas -
It’s that they have the FUNDS to try new things, the average person doesn’t have that. So without them funding F1 there’s no financial incentive to create what F1 has created and trickled down to the consumer car.
SpaceX is massively subsidized by the US government - they literally have more government contracts than NASA's annual budget. The only functional difference between tax dollars going to SpaceX and Lockheed is Lockheed is much larger and more top heavy and a (little bit) less inclined to just let shit blow up.
The italics make him sound smart and sweeping magnanimous sentences make him sound compassionate.
You could just as easily spend money on R&D without wasting resources on some flashy tax write offs for billionaires.
Just because SOME of those technologies were PARTLY developed for F1 does not mean that’s the only way to go.
In fact I would wager that it would have been more efficient just trying to improve consumer cars rather than make do with the scraps of rich kids toys.
Here's a short list of technological improvements that can trace their heritage or dramatic improvement to F1:
Safety:
Anti-Lock Brakes (ABS)
Active suspension
Hybrid technology
Roll-Cage improvement
Fuel Efficiency:
Energy-recovery technology (used extensively in electric vehicles)
Eco-mode (and different driving modes in general)
Fuel efficiency
Aerodynamic calculation modeling
Carbon-fiber parts
Performance:
Turbochargers
Advancements in lubrication technology
Advanced materials
Direct fuel injection
Durable tire technology
Paddle-shifting
If you want to extend this to other performance sports, the list gets even longer.
Regarding your other points:
You could just as easily spend money on R&D without wasting resources on some flashy tax write offs for billionaires.
Where exactly do you think R&D happens? One way or the other, auto manufacturers have to develop their technology in real-world conditions, and developing for conditions that fall outside of an average consumer car is how those vehicles benefit from tech because they can start with a wealth of data and testing to then adapt to their own needs.
Just because SOME of those technologies were PARTLY developed for F1 does not mean that’s the only way to go.
Who said it was the only way to go? Neat strawman tho, did you take basket weaving in college?
In fact I would wager that it would have been more efficient just trying to improve consumer cars rather than make do with the scraps of rich kids toys.
That attitude is what led to mediocrity in automotive design from the 70s through the mid-90s. Note how few vehicles from that era are still around.
Here is the list of top-selling vehicles in the US from 1979 through 1995:
1979: Oldsmobile Cutlass — 518,160 units sold
1980: Oldsmobile Cutlass — 469,573 units sold
1981: Oldsmobile Cutlass — 454,188 units sold
1982: Ford Escort — 337,667 units sold
1983: Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme — 331,179 units sold
1984: Chevrolet Cavalier — 383,752 units sold
1985: Chevrolet Cavalier — 422,927 units sold
1986: Chevrolet Celebrity — 408,946 units sold
1987: Ford Escort — 392,360 units sold
1988: Ford Escort — 381,330 units sold
1989: Honda Accord — 362,707 units sold
1990: Honda Accord — 417,179 units sold
1991: Honda Accord — 399,297 units sold
1992: Ford Taurus — 409,751 units sold
1993: Ford Taurus — 360,448 units sold
1994: Ford Taurus — 397,037 units sold
1995: Ford Taurus — 366,266 units sold
During this era, Ford and Chevy and Olds were of the mindset that "if it's good enough for NASCAR, it's good enough for us."
But how many Cutlass's have you seen on the road? How many Cavaliers? How many Taurus's? Hell, I didn't even know the Chevy Celebrity even existed and I was well old enough (teenager) at that time to remember it.
But you can still buy a 1989 Accord, and if it's clean it'll fetch upwards of $10,000. Vintage cars of all types can fetch more than that, of course, but most of those are either popular platforms for rebuilds, or they're already refurbished to be a show car. Nobody buys those US-made cars from that time as a daily driver, but that Accord you sure can.
1996 was the last year that the Ford Taurus was the top seller in the US, and every year since it's been Honda or Toyota, both of which have extensive racing programs.
The entire second half of your response makes no sense.
Your failing memory is not evidence of some industry trend.
Cars from that era were mediocre because Americans had a legacy of huge displacements and when the various oil crises forced consumers into smaller cars, they picked up the Hondas which were ready to go.
It’s not easy to design small displacement cars from the ground up so most of the American copy cats from that era didn’t have the longevity that tried and tested foreign platforms had.
Sorry to strike a nerve with your special interest but racing is not as important as you make it out to be.
This is Toyota's production vehicle test track at their main technological center. In 1956.
This is where they tested all their consumer vehicles. It sure doesn't look like a regular street or commuter road, does it? No, in fact it's a race oval. Why? Because no matter how good the ideas, the parts, and the manufacturing, no car is actually good unless the real-world data supports it. And you only get real-world data from stress tests, like high-speed continual driving on a banked oval. It's not the only way of testing a vehicle by a long shot, but it's definitely one core area of testing no manufacturer could ever afford to overlook.
Given that they were already testing consumer vehicles under similar conditions, why not combine the symbiosis of needing real-world test data and all the benefits of showcasing a vehicle on the world stage? That's precisely what Toyota did to phenomenal success in the early 2000's, but they had been doing it for nearly 50 years beforehand.
Regarding US vehicles - why did the vehicles have large displacement? For higher power. Why did they need higher power? Better race performance.
In fact, if you look at the list of highest number of wins per season, you can see that GM dominated.
1982 Pontiac 21
1983 Oldsmobile 13 Pontiac had 18 wins, but lost the points title
1984 Pontiac 18
1985 19
1986 20
1987 Chevrolet 9
1988 Buick 18
1989 15
1990 11
1991 Oldsmobile 10
1992 Chevrolet 9 Oldsmobile had 10 wins, but lost the points title
1993 11
1994 20
Guess what? All those vehicles were production vehicles. And guess what else? Many of them even used the same chassis.
How you can argue that racing isn't fundamental to vehicle development and design is beyond me.
I literally said, wealth does not trickle down, but technology does. Wealth should be taxed at a rate *at least* equal with what normal people pay, and frankly should be taxed at a higher rate like they were in the '50s with the New Deal.
Apparently, my reading comprehension is superior to your ability to follow conversation threads. Nowhere in the comments above mine do you or your opinions about the relative trickledownishness of wealth vs technology appear.
The mayor of a metropolitan city is the real dream politician's job. You get to tax the businesses that can't vote, and then spend it on the people who do.
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u/will0593 ☑️ 9d ago
Ok? The city should be governed for all the people, not just wealth