281–290 of 343 posts
I'm eagerly waiting for mazda to announce the electric miata with knobs, levers, and no autonomous bullshit.
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…
2) I've looked M4 and M7 in Ireland on Google Maps and they have two lanes each side with separation.
3) There is plenty highways in Europe with concrete barriers and few lanes each way.
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…
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)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. If the question is "How did John Delorean start manufacturing snowcats?", then I completely butchered the quote. If the question is "How did John Delorean get his start?" it seems to me like "at General Motors" is a better answer than "by buying LMC".
There was no question posed. I was simply injecting a random piece of trivia (which I acknowledged). Now that you understand my intent, why do you keep pressing? These are the types of responses that make people not want to comment on news.yc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure about that? Why would Tesla want to compete with Toyota and VW to produce the bottom tier of cars? When at that point they are competing with the best of the best at making the most affordable cars at the largest volumes? They could also maintain their brand image and sell their mid range luxury models achieving less volume at a higher profitability margin.
I think your definition of “best of the best” needs updating. Show me where Toyota has casting machines anywhere near the scale of what Tesla is using in Model Y, or board design, or AI chips, or even things like buying experience. Fundamentally “best” can be reduced to margins because everything else shakes out in a competitive market. Tesla has the best margins, and they will bring that margin advantage down to the…
Toyota has 10s of millions of happy customers, and has car after car after car on top 10 lists, every year. From everything I've read, the Tesla service experience is horrible.
>Tesla has the lowest depreciation
Source for this? Or do you believe they are appreciating, too?
>Tesla has the best margins
You know this stuff is dead simple to look up, right? Toyota has profit and operating margins higher than Tesla. So, no, they aren't "the best".
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Part of me wants to create a fake gearbox and clutch kit for an automatic car that does absolutely nothing, but looks convincing to driving examiners. You can just change "gears" when you feel like it without any actual effect and the clutch is just a dumb pedal.
Accelerating to a highway would be a dead giveaway to an examiner. Those who learn to use the clutch well enough in the mandatory 20 hours to do it as smooth as automatic gear are few and far between. And obviously they are the ones who wouldn't need to fake it anyway.
That said, as an American who prefers a manual, I'm not sure why Europe cares so much. It is a skill to learn, but it isn't that hard to learn: I've taught a few people. They have some rough starts (and avoid hills for a while), but the need to shift isn't something that affects how they drive once they get off my street.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Cobra The magic of the Cobra is the snorting, belching, bucking, roar of a V8 that's barely under control. As an EV, no thanks.
I feel like this can change over time and across generations. When I was a kid (80s/90s) I liked the sound of muscle cars, but gradually realized that what I really wanted was something secretly fast and generally quiet. I like cars that appear refined but carry a hidden punch. Now, brand-wise, yeah, a muscle car as an EV is just weird.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a big car maker volume and the efficiencies you get from that is a big deal right? That would seem at odds with a one off limited edition.
One of the advantages of using bent stainless rather than pressed & painted steel is that it can be done efficiently and cheaply in low volumes. A modern paint shop costs about a half billion; the forms & presses for pressing steel are also quite expensive. 750,000 preorders means that these low-volume production advantages are mostly moot, but perhaps Tesla will still take advantage of this to create some low volume…
I do wonder how accessible they'll be as even today with mass production getting the color, price, options you want has always been a bit of a hassle / compromise outside of ... cars I don't want ;)
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.
Obviously the exact numbers varies a bit from engine to engine.