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DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

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Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#311

Post by nickik »

f430 wrote: 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?

Wow, what nonsense. This is a very low volume car at best. This is not Tesla competition, VW is.

There are already tons of EV companies and all the big automakers are already producing EV as well. Just in terms of pure electric vehicle you have Rivian, Lucid in the US, there is Xpeng, NIU and others in China, and those are already valued in the billions.

Tesla skeptics have been saying 'competition is coming' for literally 6 years now. I literally read that story every single year. And in those 6 years Tesla increased its global market share every single year.

Comparing Tesla and GM makes no sense what so ever, GM was toppled like 100 years, like 30 years after it has peaked in sales. Tesla on the other hand is more like a startup growing year over year by around 40%.

Based on your other comment you have some believe that some other companies might simply show up with superior batteries and massively improve on what Tesla (and others have). This will not actually happen if you understand how the battery industry works. And even if it does, it would take year and year after the first car with a new battery is produced, to reach anywhere close to real volume production. (You seem to believe they are 'ramping up production now, which is simply false no idea where you got this from).

Go look at QuantumScape manufacturing plan and even if you assume Toyota or somebody will get there twice as fast (not very likely) the numbers will not actually be enough to be mainstream. Toyota has been talking about their solid state tech for years and no car with it will come out for years.

Tesla on the other hand has a 30ish% silicon anode battery going in huge volume production this year and the amount of silicon will grow every year after tat. And the main advantage of silicon anodes is that you can put them into traditional factory, you know all those 10s of billions of factories that are being built right now (compared to 10s of millions for solid state factories). That is why Tesla and many others, including just as many startups (SILA for example) bet on silicon anodes and not solid state.

My bet is that by 2030 the majority of EV produced will not be solid state, rather traditional but with a high silicon graphite anode.

Availability of batteries will be the moat and will continue to be so for many more years. Just in terms of material sourcing alone there is a huge bottle neck.

> Where are they now?

GM still exits and still produces a huge amount of cars, like millions, including electric cars. They are building a copy of the Tesla Nevada factory (ie 35GW per year plant)

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#312

Post by f430 »

nickik wrote: post #311
f430 wrote: 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?

Wow, what nonsense. This is a very low volume car at best. This is not Tesla competition, VW is. There are already tons of EV companies and all the big automakers are already producing EV as well. Just in terms of pure electric vehicle you have Rivian, Lucid in the US, there is Xpeng, NIU and others in China, and those are already valued in the billions. Tesla skeptics have been saying 'competition is coming' for lit…

I was not speaking specifically of DeLorean but the fact that more and more major manufacturers have begun testing the waters (none of the makers you listed I consider are major in anyway they will be crushed first along with Tesla). We are witnessing the calm before the storm which lot of Tesla fans seem to be be displaying myopia for.

You simply don't know what these automotive giants are planning (possibly colluding), have been planning but what is certain is that they signaled mass production of EV vehicles.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#313

Post by drewzero1 »

drewzero1 wrote: post #288
nitrogen wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would really love the first-gen Saturn to be remade as an EV. It looks like it's from an alternate future already, it just needs a more powerful and refined mode of propulsion to get it there. The Audi R8 is also a great candidate for post-ICE muscle, as its appearance in I, Robot showed.

Wow, I feel validated! Audi apparently agrees with me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25873095

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#314

Post by wtallis »

bluGill wrote: post #290
wtallis wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to physics an ICE is most fuel efficient at 90% throttle and low RPM. At high RPM, or lower throttle positions you lose efficiency. So if you want maximum fuel efficiency you need to put the throttle to the floor, but stay at low RPMs. Thus the CVT is not doing the right thing for fuel efficiency. (though I'm not sure if the difference is worth measuring) Obviously the exact numbers varies a bit from engine…

When you put the pedal to the floor, you're not trying for efficiency, you're trying for power.

Dropping to lower RPM for efficiency is what happens when you're done accelerating and ease up on the pedal. That's not what people complain about with CVTs. The complaints are about behavior and sound during acceleration, not after acceleration when you are merely cruising on low power output.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#315

Post by saberdancer »

VLM wrote: post #262
saberdancer wrote: post #217

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…

Hybrid is a completely different type of vehicle. Since they utilize an internal combustion engine, they suffer from the same power band issues that purely ICE cars have. This means that a hybrid does have a normal gearbox.

I'm no expert on Priuses but my quick Google showed that Prius has the electric motors "after" the gearbox. This means that electric motor can assist turning of the wheel and that it can regenerate energy but it is not using the gearbox.

One solution to this would be how diesel electric locomotives work. Internal combustion engine generates electricity that is then stored in the batteries and used to power the vehicle. These type of "hybrids" are not popular although I believe there is at least one available where it is used as a range extender.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#316

Post by elihu »

rlpb wrote: post #237
elihu wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> 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. There's no point. The tyres can't provide that much traction. My Leaf wheelspins if I put my foot down at 0 RPM (until the traction control kicks in to moderate the torque). I assume it has no gearbox.

That's actually something I've wondered about. It seems like what you're saying may be true, but on the other hand you have cars like the White Zombie. (I know it's builder, John Wayland; he's giving me advice in my own more modest conversion.) The car started out as about a 1500 pound 70's Datsun, and with a dual-motor setup and some expensive batteries it can supposedly do 0-60 in about 1.7 seconds or so. If the Leaf is already at the point where adding more power doesn't help because you'd just spin the tires, how do cars like the White Zombie get around that?

The Leaf is front wheel drive I believe whereas the White Zombie is rear wheel drive. That probably accounts for some of it. Maybe the WZ also has a limited slip differential and some kind of high-traction tires? I don't know; drag racing is pretty far outside my area of expertise.

(Another random anecdote about the White Zombie: according to John, he always wanted to have a transmission, but they kept breaking whenever he tried to use one, so eventually he just settled on direct drive.)

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#317

Post by sokoloff »

elihu wrote: post #316
rlpb wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There's no point. The tyres can't provide that much traction. My Leaf wheelspins if I put my foot down at 0 RPM (until the traction control kicks in to moderate the torque). I assume it has no gearbox.

That's actually something I've wondered about. It seems like what you're saying may be true, but on the other hand you have cars like the White Zombie. (I know it's builder, John Wayland; he's giving me advice in my own more modest conversion.) The car started out as about a 1500 pound 70's Datsun, and with a dual-motor setup and some expensive batteries it can supposedly do 0-60 in about 1.7 seconds or so. If the Le…

Part of the issue is that the LEAF has tires that are terrible for anything approaching spirited driving. They are low rolling resistance round blocks of approximately cast iron and slip at the slightest provocation as a result.

(And yes, the LEAF is FWD-only.)

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#318

Post by elihu »

Tor3 wrote: post #223
elihu wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully I don't have that problem. The Netgain motor is pretty big as motors go and it'll be close to the power steering unit, but still I think I've got enough room there. Most of the work so far has been making battery boxes. I've got one under each rear seat where the gas tank used to be, one in the front down low where the radiator used to be, a smaller one above it, and another that goes over the motor (which…

How do you plan to do heating? Even if it doesn't get cold where you live, but you'll still need heat (and maybe A/C) to avoid fogging the windshield when it's humid. An electric heater, powered by the same batteries?

I haven't figured that out yet. Probably an electric heater of some sort.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#319

Post by WorldMaker »

mrfusion wrote: post #252
chemmail wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a week you can judge pretty well. I use my brake pedal maybe once a week nowdays unless i'm driving alone and wanna feel some Gs.

Is it hard to switch back and forth between a normal car after that?

Hard? No. Irritating? Not surprisingly. I've had ICE loaners when my car is in for repair, and missing "one pedal driving" happens a lot, but it doesn't stop me from operating the ICE vehicle.

Perhaps weirdly the thing I think it makes the hardest is possibly videogames, which exaggerate controls in their own ways. I've gotten very frustrated with braking in most difficulty settings in the Forza series after driving an EV with "one pedal driving" capability for years now.

Re: DeLorean considering all-electric reboot

#320

Post by WorldMaker »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #238

Kind of fits the fictional upgrades doc Brown did in Back to the Future. If you have a flux capacitor, having a petrol engine makes no sense whatsoever. And to paraphrase him, if you are going to drive, you might as well do it in style. That kind of is the point of a DeLorean. Its engine never was the selling point; rather the opposite.

Yeah it is funny that Doc went with the Hover conversion in 2015 but must have cheaped out on the EV conversion (which would have been easily doable in our 2015), given parts of the plot in Part III.
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