EV bubble top. Stick a pin in it.
DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
161–170 of 343 posts
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They could even do a stickshift EV if they wanted to, though most car companies seem to not think it's worth the complexity/maintenance, and I get the impression that electric motors are hard on transmissions. Electric motors have a wider power band, so there’s less need for gear shifting. They could get more efficiency with multiple gears, but it’s be a smaller benefit than in an ICE vehicle. One of the big early…
I wouldn't be surprised if at some point some manufacturer made a car with optional "stick shift" - with a stick that's just some switches and the effect on driving behavior/torque/... entirely done in software. (Right now electric is hot and new, so nobody is doing much to make an electric car pretend to be something it's not, but that could switch around when electric is the standard)
Electric motors have maximum torque from 0 RPM, which removes most of the need for a transmission. Think of it as a transmission being a patch for a limitation in a combustion engine. If you were switching from electric to ICE, you’d need to invent this patch.
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Offtopic but you seem to know a lot. I’ve been wondering do Tesla’s just have one regenerative braking force when you let off the gas? Doesn’t this leave a lot on the table? Wouldn’t you get more energy by having say gentle braking regen and harder braking regen?
You have analog control over the regen braking with the accelerator pedal. Push down to accelerate, lift up a little to maintain current speed, lift up a little more to start slowing down, lift off all the way for maximum regen. It takes a week or two to unlearn the habit of "popping" your foot off the accelerator anytime you want to coast without necessarily slowing down, but after that it basically feels like your…
I own two very different motorcycles, a Ducati Monster900 (a 900cc twin four stroke) and a Cagiva Mito (a 125cc single cylinder 2 stroke).
The Mito, you can let go of the throttle, have it snap back to zero, and you barely slow down at all no matter what gear it's in. There's practically no engine braking at all. If you want to slow down you have to grab the brakes.
The Monster, in lower gears, will skid the back wheel if you chop the throttle from 75+% of peak rpm. You can pretty much get that bike down to walking pace in a fairly short distance without touching the brakes at all. (Thats a game I sometimes play on it, see if I can get home from work without touching the brakes, just slowing down using the throttle and gears.)
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#164TBH I’m surprised Musk hasn’t bought them out yet and “released” a limited edition Model 3 with a DeLorian body kit for like $500,000... if Cyan can release a Volvo P1800 for 500K and you usually need to provide the 50 year old P1800 for them to convert and tune there clearly is a market for these things.
What makes the Deloreans so appealing? From what I’m told, it wasn’t very well made and on top of that it was underpowered. So I get the iconic aspect from movie lore. And I get the founder was very... idiosyncratic —and an underdog and ultimately spiraled into making very unfortunate choices. But other than that, what’s the appeal?
I don’t know, if I had the money to buy one as a show off car I don’t think I personally would, I would probably go for a classic Porsche thats more my taste.
But there is clearly a market for them and if people are willing to pay north of $500,000 for this https://www.cyanracing.com/volvo-p1800-cyan which in all honesty I like much more than the DeLorian there is clearly quite a bit of money to be made here.
I don’t think a DeLorian body kit for a Model 3 would be a particularly complicated engineering venture, and unlike the new Roadster you don’t have to design essentially an electric super car to make it appealing.
The Model 3 performance and range is quite attractive charge $450,000 extra for the nostalgia factor and if you make it a limited edition say 1000 units I can guarantee that they’ll be gone in a minute, heck at that price they might be able to even sell more than that.
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
What makes the Deloreans so appealing? From what I’m told, it wasn’t very well made and on top of that it was underpowered. So I get the iconic aspect from movie lore. And I get the founder was very... idiosyncratic —and an underdog and ultimately spiraled into making very unfortunate choices. But other than that, what’s the appeal?
I love how they look, everything about them from the doors to the instrument panel to the steel body. I honestly don’t like back to the future much, not more than any other movie, and it’s popularity from that has dissuaded me from buying one (not to mention the soaring prices due to the film.) Nor do I particularly care about the founder or his choices. For some, the design simply has a great appeal. An EV refresh w…
Modern car styling is about as exciting as a mud pie. Go to any parking lot and try to find a sedan built after 2000 that doesn’t look like the same boring bar of soap with wheels. Sure they may have different grilles or headlight clusters, but these days I can’t tell most models apart until I get clise enough to see the badge.
I’d buy an electric delorian just for the unique style. I love the cybertruck’s look too, and although I wouldn’t buy one because I have no use for a pickup truck right now, I’d like to see more of them on the road and fewer white, gray, and black soap bars.
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#166Random piece of history - John DeLorean got his start creating snowcats when he purchased the Logan Machine Company (LMC) brand. He quickly renamed it to DMC, and continued to make snowcats at the same time he was making the DMC DeLorean. I have one of the LMC snowcats from the mid 80s and it's fantastic machine.
I would characterize his early (and spectacular) career at General Motors as where he “got his start”.
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#167They'd have to ditch the famous stainless steel body or it wouldn't make it very far.
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't be surprised if at some point some manufacturer made a car with optional "stick shift" - with a stick that's just some switches and the effect on driving behavior/torque/... entirely done in software. (Right now electric is hot and new, so nobody is doing much to make an electric car pretend to be something it's not, but that could switch around when electric is the standard)
Electric motors have maximum torque from 0 RPM, which removes most of the need for a transmission. Think of it as a transmission being a patch for a limitation in a combustion engine. If you were switching from electric to ICE, you’d need to invent this patch.
And yet... for whatever torque the motor supplies at 0 RPM, you could have 4 times as much torque with a 4:1 1st gear.
As I see it, a manual stick EV would be pretty good in combination with a modestly-powerful drive system like what's in the Nissan Leaf, as opposed to something like a high-end Tesla (where you have enough power that shifting gears doesn't matter as much).
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#169> National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has completed a regulation permitting low volume motor vehicle manufacturers to begin selling replica cars that resemble vehicles produced at least 25 years ago. Congress enacted a DeLorean Motor Company-backed bill backed by the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) DeLorean Motor Company, and others into law in 2015, which streamlined requirements for…
> They could even do a stickshift EV if they wanted to, though most car companies seem to not think it's worth the complexity/maintenance, and I get the impression that electric motors are hard on transmissions. Electric motors have a wider power band, so there’s less need for gear shifting. They could get more efficiency with multiple gears, but it’s be a smaller benefit than in an ICE vehicle. One of the big early…
Program it like a video game stick shift, let the software do the shifting
Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot
#170[deleted]