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DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

newdelorean.com

271–280 of 343 posts

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their CVTs also use these simulated gears during normal automatic driving, presumably just to make it feel more like a traditional automatic (which it mostly does, to my untrained senses). Apparently this is important to the car-buying market, although I don’t understand why.

Car reviewers love to complain about how a CVT lets the engine rev up to high RPMs and just stay there the whole time you're accelerating. Which is of course the entire point, but some people apparently prefer that their car spend lots of time at suboptimal RPMs, probably so that they don't have to break the habit of flooring it unnecessarily.

It's completely subjective but it just sounds wrong. Like being in a car with a slipping clutch. Apparently enough people feel the same the it's easier to fake real gears than change the market.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#272
post #264
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that's the case all over Europe. That the US apparently or supposedly allows taking a car driver's license exam in your private car is.. extremely surprising.

In my state they roll a lot of safety inspection type stuff into the test. There are no standards for "how to engage the hazard blinkers" across manufacturers so the testing process verifies that at least one time in their driving experience all drivers turned the hazard blinkers on in their private car, and maybe they helped their kids or grandkids figure it out later in life. I've driven several manual transmission…

> I've driven several manual transmission cars and its always so awkward for the first couple minutes as there is no standard "feel". EU test inspectors must provide enormous amounts of leeway during testing. Every time I've driven a new manual car the very first time I let the clutch out is always at least somewhat unexpected.

That's true, but in my experience (France), the car being driven during the exam is one of your driving school's cars, which you are probably familiar with, since a number of driving lessons are mandated before the exam.

Plus, all these cars feature dual controls as a safety measure, not only for pedals, but for blinkers, honk, etc. If the inspector touches their break pedal, you automatically fail the exam.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#273
post #182

This is gonna suck for Tesla. More and more competitors are jumping at the EV market with their own unique brands. The idea that Tesla has an economic moat is laughable. GM also thought they were untouchable. Where are they now?

The battery factory and superchargers are the moats that Tesla has. The cars, they're just the providing a market for the above

well they are in big trouble because Samsung, Toyota have come up with superior batteries and they are now ramping up production.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#274

Earlier 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…

>> You could limit the initial torque in software, but that’d kill the joy of the EV. All electric cars are torque-limited. They simply have to be. A static electric motor, of the type needed for higher speeds, given full voltage would not only snap bits of the drivetrain but rip apart its own mounts. So they are all limited to various degrees. The limiting factor on low-speed power for EVs isn't the motor. It's the…

>All electric cars are torque-limited. They simply have to be. A static electric motor, of the type needed for higher speeds, given full voltage would not only snap bits of the drivetrain but rip apart its own mounts. So they are all limited to various degrees.

Electric motors are far, far, more forgiving to drive-train components than sporty vehicles with manuals and medium duty trucks of equivalent power levels because there is no clutch to dump. Sure it's not quite as forgiving as an automatic transmission but it's close.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#275
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure of the power curve for an electric vehicle, but if you add gearing, you introduce losses due to gearbox and you increase complexity. It's likely that it is not worth it in most applications. Only cars that used gearboxes in EV space (two speed) are usually intended to be able to hit 200mph so they need extremely wide rpm range from their electric motors. I know Rimac used one and Taycan (not surprising s…

Hybrids often use gearboxes. My wife's Prius was essentially an extremely heavy 70 HP equivalent EV. 0 to 10 it was a very fastest car although the acceleration curve flattened out fast and it was between hard and impossible to have enough traction to max it out. I don't hear much about prius transmissions being destroyed. Something interesting to think about, I wonder with demographic trends etc if 0 to 10 is a more…

>something interesting to think about, I wonder with demographic trends etc if 0 to 10 is a more useful measure of daily driver performance and experience than 0 to 60. My wife's car does 0 to 10 at every stop sign, and technically my car is faster at 0 to 60 but I only did that twice a day at most for the commute, for sportiness reasons I might prefer the worlds fastest 0 to 10 car over a theoretically faster 0 to 60 car.

Depends on how long the average on-ramp where you live is.

30-75 measured in distance instead of time would be a good measure where I live.

Being able to gracefully merge no matter how bad of a situation the idiot in front of me leaves behind would be far more beneficial for day to day use than off the line speed.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#276
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least here in Poland you can only take the exam in the car provided by the testing centre, you can't have the exam in your own car(with some exceptions like when you need to have a car adjusted to your disabilities)

I believe that's the case all over Europe. That the US apparently or supposedly allows taking a car driver's license exam in your private car is.. extremely surprising.

Why is that surprising. Presumably it's representative of the kind of car you'll be driving.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#277
post #264
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that's the case all over Europe. That the US apparently or supposedly allows taking a car driver's license exam in your private car is.. extremely surprising.

In my state they roll a lot of safety inspection type stuff into the test. There are no standards for "how to engage the hazard blinkers" across manufacturers so the testing process verifies that at least one time in their driving experience all drivers turned the hazard blinkers on in their private car, and maybe they helped their kids or grandkids figure it out later in life. I've driven several manual transmission…

>EU test inspectors must provide enormous amounts of leeway during testing.

In my experience, no. The difference is that pass rates are at 20-30%.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#278
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US drivers’ licensing is much less rigorous than Europe’s as I understand it. In Arkansas, where I live, I got a “learner’s permit” at 14 having passed a short written test. I got my full license at 16 after passing the road test, which consisted of driving for perhaps ten minutes with a cop in the passenger’s seat. I had to drive around the parking lot, navigate and park between traffic cones, then drive the testing…

WRT fatalities its not apples to apples comparison as USA highways are incredibly expensive with concrete barriers between oncoming traffic and in Ireland the highways between cities are literally two lanes no barriers much like USA farm roads yet with interstate highway levels of traffic. Meanwhile the cars involved in the accidents are often unimaginably small and lightweight in EU. Rolling a typical Irish car off…

I don't think you realize how Americans drive on undivided highways and rural roads nor how strong the cabins of all highway capable vehicles for sale in the US and Europe are.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#279
post #7

> 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…

Please bring back the 1970 'Cuda !!!

My uncle used to have a 1971 Satellite with the 440. I always loved that car.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#280
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Pretty much all the early DC and golf cart battery based EV vehicle conversions used manual transmissions for exactly this reason.
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