Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range • Hacker News Board

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#161

Post by gehwartzen » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:33 PM UTC

allannienhuis wrote: post #105

justadeveloper2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drove cars without airbags for most of my life. I even still have a car without airbags. Whether it's a good idea or not is debatable, but your statement that it's dangerous doesn't resonate with me. Airbags are a false sense of security and may or may not help you and were originally devised as a way to help drivers who don't use their seat belts. Airbags certainly do run the cost and complexity of cars way up, ho…

survivorship bias. Yes, airbags can have faults that can cause injury. But having them is still safer than not having them. Just because you survived in a car without airbags and some other individual (even many) got injured or killed by an airbag is not evidence that people in general are safer without airbags. You need to assess risk/benefit based on a statistically valid sample size. The statistics are pretty easi…

"To get the rule, which was opposed by the auto industry because it would add cost to vehicles, Dole promised it would be rescinded if states that accounted for two-thirds of the population passed laws requiring seat belt use."

First time I had ever heard of the last part of that quote. A quick check shows 30 states have primary seatbelt laws. As these include all the big states (NY, CA, TX, FL,...) I would have to think we are at 2/3 of the population.

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#162

Post by j_s » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

javiramos wrote: post #58

interfixus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minority view: I dislike airbags. If it were legal - which it is not where I live - I would have them out of my car today. The rest of you are welcome to the damned things and the undoubtedly enhanced security they provide. Me, I shall never be thoroughly comfortable with a giant armed boxing glove pointed at my head. [Edit: typo]

My family had a car that was once very lightly rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light. No major marks or scuffing on the back bumper so my mom just drove away. Three months later, while driving on the highway, she drove into a pot hole that triggered the airbags. The airbags exploded (yes they explode) completely unexpectedly while driving at 70 mph. Thankfully she was not hurt but the experience definitely shoo…

Is there any way this can be checked as a part of routine maintenance at a mechanic? It sounds like it should be a standard part of the various state inspections.

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#163

Post by s0rce » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:38 PM UTC

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #108

aliston wrote: post #100

I've been looking at buying an electric car recently and was surprised that the list of electic SUVs is really small. There's basically the Model X and not all that much more. The Rav4 got discontinued. It seems to me that this is a huge market opportunity. The technology is right on the cusp of being very practical in terms of range. Soccer moms who commute to the grocery store and occasionally go on a trip to the m…

> Not quite sure why the car manufacturers aren't building these things. Because consumers aren't buying these things. The only people who seem to be buying full electric vehicles are electric vehicle enthusiasts, meaning it is a niche. Most enthusiasts will just buy a Tesla if there is a Tesla at the price bracket they're looking at, since Tesla is the most exciting brand in electric by far. For everyone else, full…

If you commute in the Bay Area an electric car can save you a lot of time and possible a lot of money on tolls, $3.5/day * 5 days/wk * 4 wks/month = $70/month saved, big chunk you can put towards the lease payment.

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#164

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

gehwartzen wrote: post #161

allannienhuis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

survivorship bias. Yes, airbags can have faults that can cause injury. But having them is still safer than not having them. Just because you survived in a car without airbags and some other individual (even many) got injured or killed by an airbag is not evidence that people in general are safer without airbags. You need to assess risk/benefit based on a statistically valid sample size. The statistics are pretty easi…

"To get the rule, which was opposed by the auto industry because it would add cost to vehicles, Dole promised it would be rescinded if states that accounted for two-thirds of the population passed laws requiring seat belt use." First time I had ever heard of the last part of that quote. A quick check shows 30 states have primary seatbelt laws. As these include all the big states (NY, CA, TX, FL,...) I would have to t…

The claim as phrased is somewhat suspicious, since it's a regulatory rule and the industry had no firm ability to prevent the department from issuing the regulation (they could lobby against it, or try to get allies in Congress to exercise a legislative veto.) Such a promise may have been a political effort to soften the blow, but I don't see any argument that, even if she was morally obligated to follow through on the promise while she was Secretary, it would be even morally binding on a later Secretary, especially in a different administration. And, legally, if the condition isn't in the regulation or somewhere else legally binding, a politicians promise of repeal is meaningless.

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#165

Post by yellowapple » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

webkike wrote: post #83

driverdan wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cool but it's kind of a gimmick. You can easily haul lumber on almost any vehicle with a roof rack. Many cars with fold down rear seats can fit 8' lumber too.

Yeah, but now with a roof rack and this thing you can haul twice as much! or perhaps just slightly more than you could otherwise

Not to mention that if you're in a rain/snow/sleet/hail/etc. storm and you need to keep your lumber (or some other very long moisture-sensitive thing, like one of those absurdly-long sub sandwiches) dry or otherwise protected while hauling it, you can now do so.

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#166

Post by yellowapple » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:44 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #122

manigandham wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize that it's your face that crashes into the airbag? It doesn't launch into you. Also your car's engine is a series of constant explosions connected to a giant tank of gas.

The airbag significantly reduced the distance between your face and anything else. In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well. I'd rather have a sore neck from driving into a wall at 35mph than have a concussion from bouncing my face off of a bag full of high pressure gas. Side curtain airbags are a much more useful technology than frontal ones. Edit: Fire needs thr…

"In all but the most serious crashes your face will not hit anything if the seat-belt fits well."

That's not really a good thing. Having something to catch your head helps prevent neck injuries. In a high-speed crash, the forces involved could actually be debilitating and/or life-threatening.

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#167

Post by camiller » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:45 PM UTC

tsuraan wrote: post #75

tyingq wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thread on doing this with a Nissan Leaf. http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=5792 From that and similar threads on Teslas, the caveats seem to be: - Need a sine wave generator vs the cheaper square wave ones. - Some cars allow you to adjust the current draw to match lower output generators, some don't. Cheap generators probably don't output enough current. - You have to tie neutral to ground and…

> - Need a sine wave generator vs the cheaper square wave ones. That seems really weird; I'd expect that the big charging station you install in your garage would convert from home AC into some high-current DC. Batteries don't actually charge on AC, do they?

I think some of the newer one have a high speed DC charging option. I think the Chevy Bolt has a DC option.

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#168

Post by yellowapple » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:49 PM UTC

davrosthedalek wrote: post #76

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every 2-door, V8, 4wd, long-box work truck ever made is a pretty pointless car . Towing power, ground clearance, an open bed, weight capacity, and most of the other things that distinguish these vehicles are utterly wasted and often counterproductive on a San Francisco street. But these utility vehicles are instrumental in getting real shit done at countless farms, industries, and construction sites across the globe.…

I'm pretty sure the 200 mile range goes out the window pretty quickly if you start using to tow stuff.

Indeed, much like how high MPG ratings also go out the window in those situations.

The internal-explosion-engine approach to solving this problem is usually to stick a much larger fuel tank in the vehicle to provide the added range. The most direct equivalent in the battery-powered approach would be to add more batteries, whether to the vehicle itself (lots of room in the front and back for a bunch of battery packs) or to the trailer.

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#169

Post by Animats » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:50 PM UTC

It's encouraging to see this. It's about time for electric pickup trucks. The price point ($60K) is going to be a problem for work trucks.

They talk about high speed, not low-speed high-torque. They don't say much about how the drivetrain behaves at low speed. Do they have locking differentials, or something that prevents wheel spin? It's a two-motor system. Does the motor control system know how to keep the front and back wheels in sync when traction is bad? You don't have a front-to-back differential; that's a software operation here. How good is very low speed, high-torque operation? There's no shifting, so you have to do low-speed control in software. With good software and differentials, this could be a good rock-crawler. Can you pull a stump with this thing? They should be able to do this, assuming they're using 3-phase motors like everybody else today.

Providing 120VAC power out is a nice feature. They don't say much about charging. It should carry a charger that can charge from 120/240VAC, so you could charge slowly from any power outlet if you have to. Or another Bollinger. You'd have a big charger at home base, but opportunistic charging is a necessity when you're far from charging stations.

Really needs air bags, and fewer sharp edges in the passenger compartment. Off-road that thing and you'll cut yourself on the door handles. Once they find a real manufacturer, they can clean up the interior.

Does it have a heater? That's a big problem with electrics, especially ones like this with no insulation.

[1] http://bollingermotors.com

Re: Bollinger B1: An electric truck with 360HP and up to 200 mile range

#170

Post by yellowapple » Fri, Jul 28, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #110

Wonder if they need a torque converter still to give it a little more oomph off road. Also: "It also bucks the high-tech trend of new cars in general. There will be a radio with an AM/FM receiver, Bluetooth connectivity, and an AUX input, but there’s no touchscreen." I hope this becomes a trend. Touchscreens in cars are horrible ux.

"Touchscreens in cars are horrible ux."

Indeed they are. When I'm driving, I need to be able to feel what I'm manipulating; I shouldn't have to take my eyes off the road (or if I do, it should be at an absolute minimum).

A screen on the dashboard controlled by physical buttons/knobs makes a lot more sense if a screen is really necessary. That way, even if I have to look at the screen, at least I can still peripherally see the road.