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Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

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201–210 of 283 posts

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#201
post #48

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expensive cars are already uncool. except amongst oligarchs I don't think many would profess their love of car interiors from like.. Bentley and it's hand stitched unashamed whole piece leather interior? or the busyness of Porsche and it's thousand button centre console. It's all just so excessive, and excess is definitely uncool nowadays

I profess that I like nice things, and buttons inside cars. If anything is excessive in modern cars, it's the size and amount of touchscreens, not the amount of buttons.

a touch screen that's not up to automotive grade and cheap... it's anything but excessive; maybe only in the screen size.

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39065/tesla-claims-failing-tou...

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#202

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Honestly why stop there? I'm big on the Fred Flintstones foot-driven model. I'd even put my vote behind a political platform that has it front and center. I think cars make the world worse, but to the extent that we have them electric cars are significantly better than ICE cars in basically every way. I want less cars, but until then, they should be electric. Efficiency is higher, torque off the line is significantly…

> Honestly why stop there? ICE cars were a lot better than horse- and cow-driven carts (I should know about the latter, my entire childhood at my grandparents was spent in cow-driven carts on the way to the the hay-growing fields and back, think this [1]), while I don't see EVs better than ICE cars. Yes, on some technical parameters they are better, as you mention, but on many others they are not: the charging times…

EVS are already cheaper and the crossover price for up front cost has long been predicted to happen in the next couple of years.

So they'll be cheaper up front, cheaper to run and pollution will be taxed and regulated more making running an ICE less attractive.

The US had a decent attempt at forcing EVs to be only luxury vehicles, but the rest of the world didn't fall for that.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#203

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> As a general rule, if Tesla isn't doing it already I suspect it's either not economically feasible, difficult to manufacture, or otherwise has drawbacks they've judged signifigant. This company really has made Jobs' reality distortion field pale in comparison. Without comment on the specific innovation in the article, it's a _very_ weird assumption that all innovation in a field would stem from one company. That's…

I think the reticence is the old attitude that you basically had to drag the old car manufacturers to electric, then they insisted on doing design after design of the clearly inferior hydrogen alternative, it's hard to take them seriously now that they're just responding to stay relevant / alive. If they really "cared" about EV this would have come 20 years earlier given the sheer scale of endowed resources they had.…

Hydrogen was mainly Toyota, no German maker for instance made any serious commitments into that technology.

I suppose you mean that Tesla was the dragging force in the EV sector and all others were reluctant until they saw Tesla become successful?

If you look at the timeline of global auto makers putting EVs on the market, that claim is unsubstantiated, they would have been years later if that was true.

I get it though, Tesla is the first product of the American auto sector that is somewhat innovative, after decades of being behind all others. So it’s natural that many Americans are proud of Tesla’s success and will basically defend that pride with their lives. It’s a cult because they and facts the contrary will be seen as an attack.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#204
post #29

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call me a skeptic, I've worked in the auto industry as a heavy engine master tech for over 20 years, but the same luxury manufacturers who can't make a v8 that lasts longer than 60k miles without a recall or major defect are not qualified to skip class and start making Ev's. Mercedes rolled out the 250 largely because biturbo has been a loss leading qc dumpster fire for the last decade. Audi can barely handle infotai…

> Audi can barely handle infotainment that doesn't brick and reboot on a road trip This is a feature of all recent VAG cars. Nothing quite like your navigation and climate control freezing on a 1000 km road trip but there's no way to reset the computer so you have to wait a hour for it to fully crash and reboot.

If it’s like my 2019 polo, a long (30sec or so) press on the power button on the infotainment console will reboot it.

But yeah, just traded that car in for a Mercedes, and the infotainment is night and day. I basically don’t use CarPlay anymore because the built in stuff actually works better.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#205
post #171

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> Small boring self-driving cars, possibly collectively owned instead of big expensive individually owned cars often used as a proof of social status. So, a bus?

No not a bus, but maybe they could join together like a bus for long movements in the same direction.

This is how I see cargo transport going long term.

Even if the individual units only self drive enough to rearrange themselves in private areas before being driven on roads by an actual human, it feels like that could be a 'cargo container' type revolution.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#206
post #172

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What a bizarre post - the "old" manufacturers have pretty much all released excellent EV cars across the market, many better than Tesla offerings in many ways. Why the wierd goalpost moving of having to do this 20 years ago?

the "old" manufacturers have pretty much all released excellent EV cars across the market They are just about getting there as of last year, after 15 years of saying they were going to. e.g. look back at VWs claims about how they were going to be an EV leader back in 2013, vs how long it took them to actually get the ID3/ID4 done. e.g. "Volkswagen Group will be the world leader in electric and hybrid cars by 2018, it…

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Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#207
post #189
post #185

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Pub I can see, but drowning your sorrows alone in a club is an odd one

"Club" can mean both a private members club with various facilities, including a bar, as well as a place where people party and dance all night to loud music.

He meant the latter

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#208
post #88

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With regards to your general rule statement. There has been a lot of discussion/reporting around the manufacturing and design of Tesla cars that is way behind that of the likes of Toyota, Nissan and Honda. The computer systems are state of the art, but in with regards to the design and manufacturing of its chassis, Tesla has been historically behind the times. Just because Tesla doesn’t do it, doesn’t mean it’s not t…

That may have been the case 5 years ago, but these days it’s the opposite. Look at the Munro live Tesla tear downs on YouTube, particularly the megacastings structure, the battery packs or heat pumps. It’s night and day.

Tesla quality is still lightyears behind old premium brands. Panel gaps so wide you could use them as kiddie pools. Their scrap rates are testament of how crappy their production process is.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With regards to your general rule statement. There has been a lot of discussion/reporting around the manufacturing and design of Tesla cars that is way behind that of the likes of Toyota, Nissan and Honda. The computer systems are state of the art, but in with regards to the design and manufacturing of its chassis, Tesla has been historically behind the times. Just because Tesla doesn’t do it, doesn’t mean it’s not t…

Partly I agree and its the reason I have been disappointed specially in Toyota trying to protect it cash cow and supply chain. They are not really getting into electric cars. Even today they are trying to hedge with hydrogen fuel cars its as they feel hydrogen cars will require the least amount of changes for their supply chain.

They are the only ones trying to make hydrogen a thing, not „all others than Tesla“. And Toyota has lost the plot a long time ago like all other Japanese makers. The Koreans are eating their lunch.

But Toyota recently put an EV to market, it’s called BZ4X or something like that. It’s not good.

Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors

#210
post #122

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Toyota made the largest bet on hydrogen of any car manufacturer. They stubbornly stuck to it and were slow in developing EV's. They're playing fast catchup but will be a few years behind everyone else. What that costs them in market share is anyone's guess. I thought the laggard would be Chrysler/Stellantis but they're getting set to introduce a number of models starting next year. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/toy…

It seems to be a Japanese thing, I seem to recall that perhaps the Japanese government thought they might have some Methane Hydrate reserves under the sea and thought it would be strategic to pivot towards Hydrogen from this to replace gasoline. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Climate-Change... Not a totally crazy idea, but has probably temporarily held them back by distracting them from EVs.

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