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America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

bloomberg.com

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Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#421

Post by madengr »

rxhernandez wrote: post #136
komali2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people should generally be driving day to day, but as a passionate driver and motorcyclist, it does make me sad to think that I won't be allowed to tear rubber up and down, say, Highway 1 sometime in the future. Tracks are great and all (and where the real speed belongs) but nothing beats bendies next to the ocean.

I truly hope they don't ban motorcycles. Motorcycles will be much more fun once we no longer have to risk getting killed by an irresponsible driver on a commute.

Though I often see idiots on motorcycles; exclusively on sport bikes. I just call them "organ donors", not that there'd be much left to scrape up.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#422

Post by mavhc »

falsedan wrote: post #378
mavhc wrote: post #152

I try to drive as little as possible to stop destroying the planet, no need to travel 100s of miles, there's lots of interesting things close to you, and if you walked to them you'd live longer too

Nice intention, but have you been to suburban america? There's nothing there.

Sounds like a good place to not live then.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#423

Post by conanbatt »

azinman2 wrote: post #325
conanbatt wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is applicable to alcohol, unhealthy foods, lack of exercise, improper sleep, smoking, etc. Should we ban all those too?

At some point unhealthy foods might get banned, or other mechanisms like the soda tax put in place to help push things in the right way. You can't take an all-in or all-out approach to things. Each case is its own contextual matter that must be independently considered. If you want to see an example of where anything goes, the world has many examples of lawless societies. Not somewhere I'd want to live.

> You can't take an all-in or all-out approach to things

Sure, but its important to notice that the grave inconsistency with the which we apply policy has to be a consequence of systemic failures.

For example, cigarettes have to show pictures of diseased people, but cheese doesnt have to show pictures of obese or diabetic people. Cars dont have to make a diclosure that "you might kill people with this" and show you pictures of that. The picture policy on cigarettes is pretty morbid to me.

And then the defense for it is that "its good for people". Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons does not provide me satisfaction.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#424

Post by Filligree »

Someone1234 wrote: post #146
DamnInteresting wrote: post #73

A few weeks ago I bought a Chevy Bolt EV...according to the dealer it was the first one sold in my state (Utah). I'd been on a waiting list for almost a year. Sure, ICE engines are getting better, but EVs are rapidly gaining and will soon surpass. The Bolt is a bit expensive for a car of its body type, but "gassing up" at home is amazing, the 200+ mile range is great, and the sharply reduced emissions are a weight of…

Electric vehicles are a tough sell now though. The Chevy Bolt EV has a 60 kWh Lithium-ion battery; to charge that fully costs $8.7 in Utah (14.5 cents per kWh). Per the EPA's measure that gets you 238 miles. Gas costs approx $2.24/gallon in Utah. A Prius has a 11.3 gallon tank and a 540 miles range (again, EPA standard). That means that $11.15 would get you the same distance as a full Bolt EV charge in gas. Now, befo…

> In general people buying electric vehicles in 2017 are buying them for non-economic reasons. They lose money. Hybrids are likely the best bang for your buck, and may remain that way even after Tesla ship their $36K competitor (since no other major metric in the equation changes, electricity is still very expensive, and gas very cheap).

That may be true in America. Here in Norway, fuel costs 1.7 euros/L; that is, $7/gallon. The calculation comes out rather different.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#425

Post by Neliquat »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #405
MertsA wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I never have to change the oil. Well yeah, you kind of do need to change the oil if you don't want the gearbox to die an early death. There's also still coolant that needs to be changed regularly as well. EVs have significantly less maintenance, but there's still critical maintenance that must be done on time if you don't want to damage your car.

What are you talking about? Here's the official maintenance interval for the Bolt: http://i.imgur.com/gU4FfdY.png It calls for tire rotations every 7,500 miles - not a lot you can do about that, and I suspect tire wear will be worse in a torque-happy EV. Skipping them will only reduce your traction, which I suppose could damage you and your car. And of course you have "required services" like brake pads when those we…

My toyota has lifetime trans fluid, which smart owners change every 100k. Chevy iirc was the 1st to try this in the corvette transaxle. It makes maint a lot harder if you keep a car more than a decade. No fluids additives can last that long. You will just end up replacing whole components instead of servicing them.

And all ecars have at least a differential, and many have gearsets, even if they do not shift. These are mostly heilical/hypoid style gears. That fluid uses shear additives that need to be replenished to abate wear. If you have not changed your trans/diff fluid in over 100k, now is the time. Your jeep, having a solid axle, is tremendously more simple and overbuilt than a normal car too. Extrapolating from that is not accurate.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#426

Post by Neliquat »

YZF wrote: post #263
darrylb42 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In Vancouver in CDN$ $5.15-$7.72 to charge and $25.80@1.369 per liter to fill up. https://www.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/rates-energy-use/el...

And you get to go in the HOV lanes as well!

Until they get popular.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#427

Post by Neliquat »

maxerickson wrote: post #159
notatoad wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pedal-powered bicycle that dusts ICE cars at stop lights. For, like, 5 metres... Not only does it take a while to get all that machinery rolling, doing it quickly kills your gas mileage. Most drivers aren't drag-racing out of the stoplights.

It's the starting and stopping that kills mileage. Rabbit starts don't really matter (modern engines don't waste a whole lot of fuel anywhere in the power band).

Its more about the loss, and subsequent regeneration of momentum. Some evs do quite well at this. But the real solution is better civil engineering standards like roundabouts that concerve momentum rather than forcing stops. That would benefit all cars, drivers, and non drivers alike.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#428

Post by mikeash »

stupidhn wrote: post #389
mikeash wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Tesla S85 and recently had a Cadillac ATS rental for a few days. It was an interesting contrast, since the official 0-60 times of the two cars are almost the same, yet the Cadillac felt like an absolute slug by comparison. I think a lot of it is that there's a great deal of lag in traditional drivetrains, and we rarely do 0-60 in actual real-life driving. More typically we're doing 0-30 or 30-40 or 55-65. Onc…

> I own a Tesla S85 and recently had a Cadillac ATS rental for a few days. The MSRP on the Tesla is twice as much as the ATS, so I would expect performance differences. > and we rarely do 0-60 in actual real-life driving. Many people would be mostly satisfied with great handling over speed in daily driving, but don't know what that feels like in a car.

My point is not just that the Tesla performs better, but that it does so despite a similar 0-60 time. The price difference has nothing to do with that.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#429

Post by falsedan »

m_mueller wrote: post #402
falsedan wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atmospheric sensors have to be deployed at the location they're sampling, so step 0 is: cover the earth with air quality monitoring stations. Step -1 is convincing someone to pay for this (governments have limited funding for this, so choose their monitoring sites carefully & extrapolate from the recorded data). There's a few sites which aggregate the public datasources, like http://aqicn.org/map/world/

Isn't there a more scalable solution? I'm imagining reflective stripes at specifiv GPS positions, so satellites can target them with lasers and measure the reflection. Too much refraction?

The refraction doesn't matter, its the precision. Given a reading (of 02 ppm), how can you prove that it matches the reading a ground station would have made?

How could you filter out the noise from materials in the ~100km of atmosphere between the satellites and the targets? More pragmatically, could you explain it in a courtroom & convince the jury that it works?

I understand that you're disappointed that this extremely useful idea doesn't have a simple solution.

Re: America’s Cars Are Getting Faster and More Efficient

#430

Post by pythonaut_16 »

chiph wrote: post #412
r00fus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bolt EV 0-60mph is rated at 6.5s. That's amazingly fast.

Not any more. A 2017 Camry (family car) with the V6 is 6.1 seconds. http://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/toyota-0-60-mph-ti...

> with the V6

Are lots of people actually driving V6 Camrys? When I look at normal sedans the V6 engine is always a significant cost increase and completely destroys the car's MPG

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