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Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

nytimes.com

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Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#291

Post by rpcope1 »

jakobegger wrote: post #203
ygra wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, apart from the fact that it's actually forbidden, no. Idle takes ages to warm up the engine, it's better to just start driving.

If you live in a cold climate, you often have to let your car idle for a few minutes to heat it up, or your windows will be all foggy and you don’t see a thing.

It's also really hard on the motor if the fluids are cold, as you're more likely to induce wear because of boundary lubrication and similar effects. Additionally, like on my truck, the synchronizers on the transmission are really cranky when they're cold, and it's hard to get it moving without warming up a little bit.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#292

Post by rpcope1 »

dx034 wrote: post #183
rpcope1 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of deaths is only going to get higher until the cars are built to turn the engine off under the right conditions. I assume implicit to this statement, is that some heuristic algorithm needs to be created to turn the car off. This seems like a grossly over-complicated (and failure prone) solution in comparison to just using a key for the ignition instead. If you can do something easily with a strictly mec…

Why not just start an alarm 10 seconds after the key is out of range? Or automatically shut off the engine if the key has been out of range for more than 5 minutes. That still prevents accidents while driving (there were cases where children threw keys out of the window) but should be safe otherwise. And programming that timer shouldn't be a lot of work. The detection already exists anyway.

All of this still sounds unnecessarily complicated and Rube Goldbergian in comparison to just using a regular physical key.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#293

Post by erikpukinskis »

WorldMaker wrote: post #272
monkeynotes wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still unsure how a country could switch from gas to EV. Could a city keep up with the power demands when everyone plugs in their EVs at night? I am assuming we'd have to build more power generation capacity, and what is the source? How do you transmit all the high capacity power to quick charge stations on the highway when you have 200+ cars an hour needing to quick charge? It all sounds like an enormous infrastr…

Most nations still have peak demand infrastructure setup for daytime industrial power demand, most of which already requires high capacity delivery. That demand hugely drops off in the evenings as factories shut down for the day and workers return home. Most new EV power demand happens in the evenings, "filling in the bathtub" (because the average demand graph looks like a bathtub) that the industrial demand curve le…

Street level charging and parking are only important if you think car ownership and not mobility services will be the way electric gains the bulk of its market share.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#294

Post by [deleted] »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #219
jablan wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why are you downvoted this much, this is such an obvious case of elephant in the room.

You can't just "not use cars". No matter what you need some form of transportation, and people will die on it. Any time someone says a huge class of deaths is totally avoidable, take it with a mountain of salt. It's a useless idea, completely disconnected from the useful realm of risk management .

[deleted]

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#295

Post by dx034 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #241
nkrisc wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason these sort of rules are absolute "never" are not because you'll end up with dangerous amounts of CO in 10 seconds, but because it makes it a simple rule to follow. Is 10 seconds OK? 15? 30? When does it stop being OK? Following an absolute rule eliminates much of the grey area where mistakes are made.

It stops being okay when you're not opening the door "at the same time". Such a rule has minimal gray area and shouldn't cause mistakes.

What if you open the door but the remote doesn't work? Then you go back inside and look for new batteries, meanwhile the car keeps running. Those cases will be rare but can occur. And switching on the car once the door is open costs at most 2 seconds.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#296

Post by erikpukinskis »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #219
jablan wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why are you downvoted this much, this is such an obvious case of elephant in the room.

You can't just "not use cars". No matter what you need some form of transportation, and people will die on it. Any time someone says a huge class of deaths is totally avoidable, take it with a mountain of salt. It's a useless idea, completely disconnected from the useful realm of risk management .

You could reduce your car time by half.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#297

Post by Dylan16807 »

dx034 wrote: post #295
Dylan16807 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It stops being okay when you're not opening the door "at the same time". Such a rule has minimal gray area and shouldn't cause mistakes.

What if you open the door but the remote doesn't work? Then you go back inside and look for new batteries, meanwhile the car keeps running. Those cases will be rare but can occur. And switching on the car once the door is open costs at most 2 seconds.

What if you already opened the door and you shut it for a reason or by mistake?

No plan is perfect. But opening the door a few seconds before is essentially equal in danger to opening it a few seconds after.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#298

Post by WorldMaker »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #293
WorldMaker wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most nations still have peak demand infrastructure setup for daytime industrial power demand, most of which already requires high capacity delivery. That demand hugely drops off in the evenings as factories shut down for the day and workers return home. Most new EV power demand happens in the evenings, "filling in the bathtub" (because the average demand graph looks like a bathtub) that the industrial demand curve le…

Street level charging and parking are only important if you think car ownership and not mobility services will be the way electric gains the bulk of its market share.

Even "mobility services" would need parking structures with chargers, and comprehensive street level charging would also be useful to them for just-in-time logistics.

Personally, I think that if there is a transition coming from car ownership to "mobility services", it's going to be a slow one, especially in America where personal vehicle ownership is seen so much as a rite of passage and requisite "freedom".

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#299

Post by mrguyorama »

schiffern wrote: post #281
mrguyorama wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying it's impossible to shut off the car while not in park? I find that odd, and will certainly have to try it on my mother's Toyota when I get the chance

>Are you saying it's impossible to shut off the car while not in park? Yes! The vehicle faithfully ignores you when you press the Start button, beeps softly, and displays a message: "SHIFT TO P POSITION."[2] As I said, in my experience there's a ~1s delay between shifting to Park and being permitted to turn the car off. You get the same error message, but it's already in Park. The result? Performing the same sequence…

Is this possibly a Prius only flaw?

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#300

Post by PhasmaFelis »

kss238 wrote: post #181
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be a special switch on the fob for that. Could beep every five minutes to remind you. Lots of ways to handle it that would save lives at the cost of only minimal inconvenience.

How is beeping every five minutes any different than what cars do currently? Cars with push to start are already required to beep when the key is taken out of the car. If you add a special switch, that increases costs. Why should car buyers bear extra expenses for less than 100 deaths a year? Should we require special bathtub sensors that beep when they detects still water because hundreds of people drown in bathtubs…

> How is beeping every five minutes any different than what cars do currently?

Would've saved this guy's life. That's different.

> If you add a special switch, that increases costs. Why should car buyers bear extra expenses for less than 100 deaths a year?

How much do you think a switch costs?

If you told me that, for less than a dollar, I could save 50 lives, I'd do it in an instant. It's weird to me that you wouldn't.

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