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The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

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Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#681

Post by vel0city »

jebarker wrote: post #386
SoftTalker wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great now but when it starts to degrade and needs maintenance and replacement that's now entirely your problem, there is no utility with a huge staff of electricians and linesmen ready to deal with that on a sub-zero winter day or in the middle of a rainy night.

With this kind of setup you can stay connected to the grid. In the event that your solar and storage fail unexpectedly you can still pay for grid electricity.

The grid you've been refusing to pay to support for years, that grid is going to be your backup?

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#682

Post by vel0city »

_huayra_ wrote: post #169
IneffablePigeon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could say the same about a combustion engine, really. Battery packs last way, way longer than most people think because they analogise it to phone batteries which are quite different. The resale value of a degraded pack is also going to be higher than most people assume, I think. Unfortunately we have not had plentiful EVs with good battery packs for long enough to show this to the average consumer.

I guess the question comes down to how does one know if the battery pack is good? When I buy a regular used gas car, I can get all sorts of diagnostics about it out of the OBD2 port, pull a spark plug and stick a scope into the combustion chamber to see if there's any issues (e.g. on the walls). With an electric car, how can one tell if the pack has been charged all the way up to 100% all the time (vs. the much bette…

With my electric car, I can plug into the ODB port and get highly detailed information on the health of the battery. Far deeper insights than what I get plugging into an ODB port on an ICE.

Getting into the technician menus on Teslas is well documented, they also report a ton of data and can do a lot of diagnostics on the battery.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#683

Post by two_handfuls »

yftsui wrote: post #644
m463 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of the last generation of pro-level film cameras. They were expensive, but well designed and durable, yet ... who wants to pay in time and money to develop film every 36 pictures? I think some really good gas cars only make sense if you use them infrequently to haul heavy things or lots of passengers. Otherwise it is getting cheaper to run an EV - you might even charge it with electricity you capture yourself…

Develop film takes time, same as why somebody wait for hours and hours just to get an EV charged? The “last generation” can “recharge” to 450miles in 3 minutes at a gas station then move on.

The EV charges while you sleep. You always start your journey with a full tank.

If you can't do that then, yes, an EV is less convenient than a gas car that is true.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#684

Post by lowbloodsugar »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #545
acdha wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no 'regular pickup truck' in existence that gets 11 mpg Point but e.g. the 2024 Silverado gets 12mpg in city driving. Go to any office parking lot here and you’ll see a lot of that size truck which have clearly never been used harder than going to Costco - and even the better ones are barely approaching ⅔ of the mpg of the pickup my grandparents bought in the 1980s. I do agree that from a pollution standpo…

> they produce higher tire and brake particulates which are known to cause health issues Interesting you mention tire particulates, because there is nothing worse for this than - brace yourself - electric vehicles. https://grist.org/transportation/electric-vehicles-are-a-cli...

That’s comparing cars to cars. Trucks are worse.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#685

Post by acdha »

FergusArgyll wrote: post #377
jogjayr wrote: post #5

Money quote: “As automakers were profit maximizing during the supply chain crisis era, you are going to prioritize the bigger vehicles, the more expensive vehicles with their higher margins,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told me. “Now we just don’t have” these cheaper models.

Why did they just start "maximizing profit" recently? Did all the bad bad no good CEO's just read The Prince or something?

They’ve done it for ages but there were market constraints. The pandemic broke that in two key ways: the first was the chip shortage they accidentally created by breaking their supply contracts early on but the second was because so many people stopped using transit. That created a demand spike at the same time supply was limited, which they capitalized on by prioritizing the most expensive models for production since they knew many buyers would feel they had no ability to negotiate.

Higher interest rates and other inflation caused by profit-taking in other industries drove this to a head since consumers couldn’t just soak it up, but none of the manufacturers wants to be the first to lower their margins.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#686

Post by acdha »

epistasis wrote: post #334
Lance_ET_Compte wrote: post #309

Electric cars will not "save the environment". Their purpose is to "save the US automotive industry". The idea that billionaires and car manufacturers would be motivated by anything else is laughable. Support public transportation.

As somebody who wants less cars and more public transportation, I think your messaging is way off. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation where we need to pursue all options simultaneously. And there are huge swathes of our country that we will not be able to transition out of suburban sprawl into transit-friendly planning in the necessary amount of time. So in 2050, there will still be cars, and we can not build eno…

Co-signed. One really concept is the locked-in demand: every single internal combustion vehicle sold now means someone is buying gas for at least two decades, but even if you use entirely coal power an EV will generate fewer carbon emissions now and that will drop rapidly every time cleaner power is added to the grid.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#687

Post by stouset »

ghaff wrote: post #656
stouset wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with a hotel. The hotel is where I spend most of my time unconscious. Other than a few select destinations, why would I spend a fortune at a place where I’ll mostly be asleep?

My experience with trying really low-ball hotels is not great. I rarely stay in really luxe places but I do usually go for some midrange business hotel in a city.

Yeah, my point was mostly against luxe hotels as opposed to somewhere I know will be clean and comfortable to get a good night’s sleep, and close to the places I want to visit.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#688

Post by galvan »

numpad0 wrote: post #537
Kudos wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read most PHEVs tend to have really bad batteries that are unreliable, complicated and expensive to replace. It makes sense that they cut corners when there's a whole other powertrain to mask it.

It's Toyota cheaping out as always. They put a 1.5kWh NiMH pack in the trunk, and charge $5k for replacement. That's almost a big power bank capacity, and using that small of a battery strains it too. Cost for enclosures and control circuits don't scale with capacity so dollar/kWh figure is atrocious. It works. People hates it. The issues with it are mostly theoretical or matters of preferences. That's hallmark Toyot…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_au...

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#689

Post by cactacea »

jgalt212 wrote: post #659
sojournerc wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said. It's not about efficiency. Knock (pre-ignition) will destroy an engine. I have a naturally aspirated infinity, but with compression ratio around 13:1 it calls for premium. Believe me I wouldn't pay for it if it wasn't necessary. It's still cheaper than a new engine.

Knocking and engine efficiency are inter-related. That being said, unless you are constantly flooring the accelerator and / or doing a lot of track driving, it seems challenging to make a modern (and properly functioning) engine knock on a persistent basis (irrespective of octane).

This is a weird hill to die on man. Modern ECUs are smart enough to tune the timings in to prevent knock when the wrong fuel is used, at the cost of both efficiency and fuel economy. "Runs" is not the same thing as "runs well"

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#690

Post by kube-system »

pfdietz wrote: post #568
HPsquared wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most ICE car engines are massively oversized for highway cruising (so they have power for acceleration) and aren't running efficiently during said cruising. Huge amounts of engineering goes into trying to reduce this effect but it's always there to some extent. Hybrids use a smaller engine that is running in a more efficient operating range during cruising (i.e. not pulling a huge vacuum and moving lots of parts the…

Prius uses an Atkinson cycle engine, doesn't it? Inherently more efficient than a conventional engine, albeit at the cost of lower power. You can get that effect with variable valve timing in some power ranges, at the cost of more complexity.

Pretty much all mainstream hybrids run Atkinson cycle (technically not the original Atkinson design, but an otto-cycle engine that keeps the intake valve open longer, to produce the same effect)
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