Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
Quoted post unavailable.
No post body was provided.
Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
241–250 of 283 posts
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Pros are volume and weight and the con is probably primarily price. Lower weight and volume means you have a lot more options on where they go and where you can put batteries that you couldn't before. In the article they mentioned the Koenegsegg Regera which is a perfect example of where this motor works well. A two-seater with an 1100HP V8 and 9kWh of battery that also needs world class handling makes weight and…
I don't think they're building the roadster in any capacity - at least haven't seen any evidence of that. What makes you think so?
I should have said "designing" which there also isn't much evidence of but it seems fair to give them the benefit of the doubt that its at least real enough to drive category decisions for their other models.
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. VW was third in Europe by 2018 (or second, depending on how you view Renault-Nissan), and first by 2020, so... not _that_ huge of a miss, perhaps? The ID3/4 were their second generation; the eGolf and eUp, while far less ambitious, sold pretty well.
Fair enough. Yes by 2020 VW had sorted themselves out.
My point really is that the traditional manufacturers wasted a lot of time faffing about. Lots of glossy promises about the future and not many actual EV cars being made. Possibly internal power struggles. I'm glad things are happening now.
e.g. BMW had the i3 in 2013 which was good for its time, then closed the whole program down and didn't come up with anything new until (correct me if I'm wrong?) last year?
In the UK, until the Jaguar i-Pace launched in 2018, Tesla were the only manufacturer with a 200+ mile range EV. In the States you had the Bolt but that never came to the UK.
But there's a lot of good stuff happening now so I'm happy. FWIW I drive a kia.
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#244Earlier quoted context omitted.
You change tires, not the whole wheels between seasons.
At least here in Norway, you change the whole wheel.
Depends entirely on the car and the wheels. For cheaper cars with cheaper wheels it’s cheaper to have two sets of wheels instead of paying someone to dismount and mount your tires.
For a fancier car with expensive wheels, it’s generally going to be more expensive to buy another set of wheels than pay for 5 years of tire mounting.
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#245Current motors are enough for public road non-tow performance. I don't see practical significant advantage.
The weight reduction seems like a significant advantage
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
"Small." Buses won't work in a lot of the U.S. because of last-mile issues, in the way the suburbs were designed.
> Buses won't work in a lot of the U.S. because of last-mile issues, in the way the suburbs were designed.
Roads won't work in a lot of the U.S. because of tax revenue issues, in the way the suburbs were designed.
On a more serious note: there is no point in building unsustainable transit for neighborhoods that can't even support their own infrastructure. Suburbia will always be car-dependent for exactly this last-mile issue, but the fix is to shorten the last mile such that a bus actually makes sense. Because even to run an automated car you need a road that needs to be maintained and paid for from time to time.
edit: also, busses don't necessarily mean "20m long with capacity of 100 people". Here in Europe we have small bus lines operating with busses of a capacity of 20 people. In fact, Vienna already has the exact thing you propose: https://www.wienerlinien.at/eportal3/ep/contentView.do/pageT...
In Operation since June 2019. Results are mixed.
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thou…
I think you mean Honda rather than Toyota for hydrogen and fuel cells. Edit: or at least that was my perception. Doing some Googling it appears that they both have done things.
Hydrogen makes a bit of sense on in Japan.
You've got an island - people aren't driving their cars to other countries from Japan so you can build out the entirety of the refuting system with a smaller area (the long axis of Japan is comparable in distance from San Diego to Seattle - https://acme.com/same_scale/#41.30257,-121.06934,38.07404,13... ).
The second thing about being on an island is that importing oil is expensive.
So, the problem of energy storage for vehicles... plugins are one option. Hydrogen is another.
Hydrogen is still something that they're looking at for Japan and it makes sense in that environment.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/toyota-ramps-up-efforts-to-l...
I'll also point out in that article:
> Toyota started working on the development of fuel-cell vehicles — where hydrogen from a tank mixes with oxygen, producing electricity — back in 1992. In 2014, it launched the Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell sedan. The business says its fuel cell vehicles emit “nothing but water from the tailpipe.”
Consider where the high capacity battery technology in '92 was.
For cars the Galapagos effect on cars gives us a hydrogen fuel cell focus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galápagos_syndrome
I don't believe the research into fuel cell designs for Japanese car makers was a mistake and it likely is still a good idea for Japan and other island countries to have a hydrogen refueling system.
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I have a few more revolutionary ideas for this.
First off, we need to get this environmentally clean. Obviously, this must all be electric. For last mile, battery electric is the obvious choice; however I think for main routes and highways some kind of wire system would be ideal. This could also charge the battery needed for the last mile or at truck stops and stuff.
Next, we need to make sure that these self-driving units (SDUs) are always centered under that wire. Software would be an easy choice, but with the power delivery arm attached any failure would result in infrastructure destruction, so I'd propose a system of steel guards that force the wheels such that they can't escape the predefined envelope.
Come to think about it, rubber-on-concrete is ridiculously bad when it comes to efficiency, so maybe the SDUs should have two sets of wheels, one for last mile and steel wheels for the much more favourable friction coefficient. Then we should couple these units together, because the combined traction force equalizes loads across the whole chain and makes for better acceleration of the linked units resulting in less traffic.
Finally, we should equip these SDUs with a radio like GSM or something such that they can communicate with each other and drive in breaking distance, so we can increase the overall speed limit.
Gosh, I wonder why nobody has thought of this before.
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Waymo and others using LiDAR placed the wrong bet and now have nothing to show for it. Waymo launched their commercial robo-taxi service in 2017. It’s still running today. Open to the public [1]. Meanwhile, Tesla is phasing out their FSD program. Beta-testers, 98 safety score, $15K cost, whatever, current Tesla owners are pissed off. FSD is a sinking ship, just like the Tesla/Elon brand. They used to be cool. [1] h…
You obviously haven't seen the FSD upgrade that was released yesterday.
No post body was provided.
Re: Mercedes and Ferrari’s edge in the electric car age: high-end axial motors
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> ... the charging times will never come down to reasonable times unless we discover some new laws of physics...
Supercapacitor development continues apace, but even without, a wall connector gets you 40 miles per hour charged, and a supercharger gets you 200 miles per hour charged. So my question is, just how far are you going? If it's really far, consider a bus, train or plane.
> ... which in turn causes people like me, who live in apartment blocks, to not be able to have a EV (I'm not going to spend half an hour and more every few days at an electrical charging station)
You spend a half hour or more every few days at a gas station bud. Set a timer next time you go. Also, charge it at home?
> ... prices will never go to the same level as ICE cars (unless ICE cars become even more expensive thanks to new extra taxes imposed from top-down) ...
Of course they will, but remember, up front costs are only a tiny part of the picture. ICE cars will get more expensive if the oil and gas subsidies are removed - no need to add new taxes.
> ... the EVs are "dependent" on their computer OSs, I have very rarely met a computer OS that is easily updatable and maintainable after 10 or so years, as such, most of the EVs will become a pain in the ass to own after those 10 or so years (as it now happens to smart-phones after 3-4 years).
I suggest you check out what's going on in a gas car. BMW is/was selling CarPlay [1] and seat warmer subscriptions [2]. This has nothing to do with the fuel type and everything to do with evaluating new business models.
I'm not sure why advocating against all this needs a political party.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30139034/bmw-apple-carpla...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bmw-subscription-plan-for-seat-...