Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US Electric Car Sales Report

cleantechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 80 posts

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#61

Post by astraelraen »

r00fus wrote: post #51
astraelraen wrote: post #28

We own a 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid (PHEV) Cost after 7500 tax credit was comparable (slightly higher) than gas only variants with dealer discounts. Winter mpg(e) was fairly unimpressive, about 24mpg(e) combined. Chrysler programmed (?) the car to run heavy on the gas engine when temperatures drop. There are no settings or overrides like the Volt (my only other PHEV experience) As it is warming up mpge is climbing…

Was considering a Pacifica - does it not do pure-EV mode?

It does pure-EV. Advertised range in pure-EV is about 30-36 miles. We have only owned it since October 2017. The actual range we get in pure-EV has been about 20ish give or take a few miles either direction.

My comment related to the gas engine is under cold temperatures. Chrysler doesn't let you control any aspect of how the gas engine turns on or is utilized. From what I understand most the PHEV give you the ability to somewhat override the car. Ie set a preference for the gas engine to come on or tell the car that you want "max EV range." The Pacifica does what it wants to do in terms of gas/electric hand-off. It seems to be heavily temperature dependent. I'm sure Chrysler programmed it to use gas when its cold as its more efficient to warm up/heat the cabin when cold using the gas engine. I would say based upon one winter's experience. Anything much under 35/40F will result in significant usage of the gas engine no matter the electric charge.

When it was in the mid-20s here (not uncommon) my wife could drop the kids off at school and make her round trip commute (11 miles) and it would use the gas engine significantly during that trip to warm up the van.

That being said, we just did errands over the weekend and it used 100% EV until the battery was depleted - the temperature was 50+ outside the entire time.

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#62

Post by astraelraen »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #56
astraelraen wrote: post #28

We own a 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid (PHEV) Cost after 7500 tax credit was comparable (slightly higher) than gas only variants with dealer discounts. Winter mpg(e) was fairly unimpressive, about 24mpg(e) combined. Chrysler programmed (?) the car to run heavy on the gas engine when temperatures drop. There are no settings or overrides like the Volt (my only other PHEV experience) As it is warming up mpge is climbing…

> If Tesla made a van, I would have strongly considered it I'm certain the reason they don't is that it would either have a sub-100 mile range (like the actually existing Nissan NV200e electric van), or it would have a 10 000 lbs curb weight and cost well north of $200k. I mean, at highway speeds air resistance is what you're spending your gas/electricity on fighting against. For a Model S, measured drag coefficient…

From an engineering standpoint it seems like it is just a weight and packaging problem to me.

The Pacifica PHEV weighs about 5,000lbs depending on configuration. I think the only deficit it really has to the Model X is drag co-efficient but Chrysler was working with a given shape. Given a unique platform not shared with a gas variant they could design for a specific co-efficient as needed.

I don't really know the specs of the Model X, however Google says it weighs maybe 300lbs more than the Pacifica. Those aren't unsurmountable differences - especially if the price range is going to be 80k+.

I think the biggest difference is that Tesla knows it won't sell enough vans to make it worth their development time :)

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#63

Post by freehunter »

gregimba wrote: post #55
freehunter wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. If you're buying anything more expensive than the $13k Nissan Versa, you're buying features you don't need . So saying people don't need an electric car so there's no point in buying them is kind of a silly statement.

I think you are vastly underestimating what some people use their vehicles for. Where I drove today would have totaled a Nissan Versa. Trucks and other utility vehicles have their place.

Yes, and the wide variety of all-electric trucks and utility vehicles on the market prove that your use case is a direct and unquestionable comparison to what we're talking about right now, which is vehicles that are directly comparable to a Tesla or Bolt or Volt or Leaf.

You know, I think the Prius is really underrated as a pickup truck.

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#64

Post by WorldMaker »

jarjoura wrote: post #29
imglorp wrote: post #6

> large automakers aren’t even trying Despite the Bolt being MT car of the year in 2017, I found it very hard to get a test drive. Some local Chevy dealers pretended not to know about it, which is ludicrous: their business, and maybe their only value as middleman, is to know every vehicle in the catalog forward and backward and then to leap to get me what I ask for. When I pointed out they were sitting on MTCOY the r…

It might not be accurate to accuse GM dealerships of not wanting to sell Bolts, and don't forget that it's a specialty, low-production vehicle, either way you slice it. Specialty cars are usually handled by one person in a dealership, or only at a bigger dealership in a region. Since everyone else is still motivated to sell cars for their own personal commission, they get greedy and try to convince you they know what…

The argument here is that the Bolt shouldn't be a specialty, low-production vehicle. It has won major car awards, and priced right in a market sweet spot. Dealerships should have them front-and-center and should be talking up how awesome they are.

It might not be a "conspiracy" that sales people aren't hyping what is likely still a low margin, hard to sell car, but they should at least know what it is if people ask.

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#65

Post by oneshot908 »

greglindahl wrote: post #45
RickJWag wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you. I'm a car nut, and I'd love a bare-bones performance EV. The instant torque sounds amazing. Just give me something that's affordable, reliable, as light as possible and all-weather capable. It's fine to cut corners on interior materials and gadgets. Keep the electric windows, just give me the torque!

... that's what the Bolt and Model 3 are.

And this is why I listen to car people about cars, not techies. I drove a Bolt, I like the Bolt, but it's no sports car. To put this into perspective, do you make your SW/HW decisions based on the suggested content from Twitter/Facebook?

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#66

Post by WorldMaker »

greglindahl wrote: post #43
photojosh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> free charging for the car on weekends Interesting. Made me think of how now in Australia we have so much solar installed that wholesale electric spot pricing can go $10k+/MWh negative during some parts of the day. Wondering if one day they'll be willing to pay consumer electric sinks... EV charging is perfect.

Yes, any place with a lot of solar (daytime) loves having electric cars plugged in during the day, and any place with a lot of wind (which often blows strongest at night) loves having electric cars plugged in at night. And if the car has a big battery and doesn't need to charge to full all of the time, you can use solar or wind predictions to choose when to charge.

And with some "smart grid" upgrades that are proposed, a busy electric grid could even "borrow" power from that big battery of a sitting car (with nowhere else to be) in periods of high demand and then repay what it borrowed, plus "interest" once demand drops.

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#67

Post by semi-extrinsic »

astraelraen wrote: post #62
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If Tesla made a van, I would have strongly considered it I'm certain the reason they don't is that it would either have a sub-100 mile range (like the actually existing Nissan NV200e electric van), or it would have a 10 000 lbs curb weight and cost well north of $200k. I mean, at highway speeds air resistance is what you're spending your gas/electricity on fighting against. For a Model S, measured drag coefficient…

From an engineering standpoint it seems like it is just a weight and packaging problem to me. The Pacifica PHEV weighs about 5,000lbs depending on configuration. I think the only deficit it really has to the Model X is drag co-efficient but Chrysler was working with a given shape. Given a unique platform not shared with a gas variant they could design for a specific co-efficient as needed. I don't really know the spe…

> I think the only deficit it really has to the Model X is drag co-efficient

No, the projected area is also worse. Air resistance is proportional to drag coefficient multiplied by projected area. Since both are worse, the best estimates I could find is that the Pacifica has almost twice the overall air resistance of a Model X.

It's not as bad as the 6x difference between a Model S and a Ford Transit, but it would still mean almost half the range at a given battery capacity.

Conversely, an electric Pacifica with the range of a Model X would be about 1000 lbs heavier.

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#68

Post by WorldMaker »

oneshot908 wrote: post #65
greglindahl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... that's what the Bolt and Model 3 are.

And this is why I listen to car people about cars, not techies. I drove a Bolt, I like the Bolt, but it's no sports car. To put this into perspective, do you make your SW/HW decisions based on the suggested content from Twitter/Facebook?

Did you try its Sports mode?

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#69

Post by WorldMaker »

klondike_ wrote: post #25

I don't think electric car manufacturers are considering the huge amount of the US population that lives in the Midwest/Northeast part of the country. In the winter the decreased battery life (especially when running the heater) could be a deal breaker for many people. Also, most electric cars being manufactured are compacts, which would do a poor job of handling snowy roads even considering the increased torque of a…

GM has most of its EV facilities in Michigan (Detroit), so they have some skin in the game of supporting the Midwest winter lifestyle. Winter testing was very important to them when building the Volt, according to the documentary Revenge of the Electric Car.

Re: US Electric Car Sales Report

#70

Post by greglindahl »

oneshot908 wrote: post #65
greglindahl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... that's what the Bolt and Model 3 are.

And this is why I listen to car people about cars, not techies. I drove a Bolt, I like the Bolt, but it's no sports car. To put this into perspective, do you make your SW/HW decisions based on the suggested content from Twitter/Facebook?

The person I responded to did not ask for a sports car.
Post reply on HN