I don't know what laws need to change, or what needs to happen, but for the people in the southern united states, nearly every one of us would be a reasonably priced gas truck. There are no options. I had to buy a grossly overpriced F150 for double what I think it's worth because there's no other option. These fuel economy laws in the USA make no sense. While this truck is neat I guess, there's 0 use case for it for people who really need trucks in the USA.
A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
761–770 of 1001 posts
Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#762I like it. My wife runs a riding academy and we use a Honda Fit the way some people would use a pickup truck: we can fit 10 bales of wood shavings in the back. [1] We’re dreading when it fails because they don’t make the fit anymore and compact hatchbacks seem to be on the way out. Recent experiences have made me a bit of a Buick enthusiast and I can see driving a 2005-ish sedan except that I won’t get those sawdust…
Love my Honda fit - had to replace the transmission at 160k km (in-warranty!) only thing I wish is it had AWD and just a little more clearance for the snow
Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#763Earlier quoted context omitted.
Automotive industry is one of the biggest scams on planet earth. One of my favorite cases recently is how Suzuki Jimny is banned in Europe and US because of emission standards allegedly, so the little Jimny is emitting 146g/km but somehow there is no problem to buy a G-Class that is emitting 358g/km oh and surprise surprise Mercedes are going to release a smaller more affordable G-Class [1]. [1] - https://www.motortr…
Manufacturers must hit a level of CO2 emissions on average across their whole fleet. As such, Suzuki is choosing to discontinue the Jimny because of the tougher fleet average targets starting in 2025. Overall you’re right that it’s a bit of a fix; Mercedes ‘pools’ its emissions with other manufacturers/brands. It currently pools with Smart, but may also pool with Volvo/Polestar? [0] It’s such an obvious approach to ‘…
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Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#764Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Lack of good charge management and battery conditioning. Why should it lack that? That's a tiny piece of software in the charge controller, which on this vehicle ought to be some tiny microcontroller.
In car it requires liquid cooling and from conversations I've had with former Tesla engineers, exquisite control over power quality. Just ask a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt owner.
EV battery engineer here. It's not hard. Battery management systems are often over engineered but the state of the art is fairly straightforward and will allow battery packs of sufficient size last 200k miles or more easily.
Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#765Earlier quoted context omitted.
BYD could totally avoid the tariffs by making in the USA (well, they were planning a factory in Mexico, and tariffs on car parts will kill that if something doesn’t change). They already set up a bus factory in SoCal. My guess is that Chinese automakers are still hesitant about introducing their brands to Americans given politics (Volvo and Polestar are Chinese owned but I think the design is still mainly done in Swe…
Wouldn’t they still need to pay tariffs on all the parts they manufacture in china? Maybe I’m misunderstanding the tariffs but it sounds like Chinese companies would have to build completely separate supply chains to keep the US market
Before no, or at least not very high tariffs. Now I have no idea, Trump’s story changes daily. However lots of US made autos are using Chinese parts so they are all affected to some degree.
Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#766Earlier quoted context omitted.
Example #5621 that a simple carbon tax would be miles better than the complex morass of regulations we currently have.
That's overly reductive. 1. Poorer people tend to drive older vehicles, so if you solely encourage higher fuel economies by taxing carbon emissions, then the tax is (at least short-term) regressive. 2. You can work around #1 by applying incentives for manufacturers to make more efficient cars should lead any carbon tax 3. If you just reward companies based on fleet-average fuel economy without regard to vehicle size,…
TIL poor people can't pollute, so their market segment shouldn't be incentivized to cut pollution.
TIL that US car companies won't make smaller cars in the face of different regulations, even though they made larger cars in response to current regulations.
The only way to avoid perversions is to tax the problem directly. The market will adjust to all proxies in unintended and harmful ways.
Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#767Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - Lack of a mobile app. Minimalist design is great, but I still want an app to manage charging and be alerted to any vehicle issues. Noooooooooo! No apps, please ! Finally a car not tethered to and dependent on your phone, and we already have our first request to app-ify it! EDIT: Ughhh, according to the video that another user posted, it looks like there's an app, and yes, "updates" go through it :( > - Lack of go…
> Yes to a simple battery system! But you realize this will make cold-weather range suck and on-the-road charging suck, right? Preheating the battery and cabin on "shore power" is something EV buyers just expect at this point because that can consume 2-3kWh of energy (equivalent to 6-10 miles or 10-16 km). That's almost 10% of Slate's range (see below). Preheating the battery about 10-15 minutes before you arrive at…
Highway speeds are worst case scenario so maybe you're right but I doubt it.
Your charge rate acceptance number is surprising to me, I've never seen anything like this in my years of experience designing EV batteries. Preconditioning helps extreme fast charging but isn't necessary for 1-2 C charges at all unless it's very cold out.
There's some caveats to this depending on the exact chemistry but if anything the newer semi solid state NMC cells are even less dependent on this and can charge down to -20C.
Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#768Looks good. If it never beeps or dings or makes interior noises, I'm in.
Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#769Earlier quoted context omitted.
Manufacturers must hit a level of CO2 emissions on average across their whole fleet. As such, Suzuki is choosing to discontinue the Jimny because of the tougher fleet average targets starting in 2025. Overall you’re right that it’s a bit of a fix; Mercedes ‘pools’ its emissions with other manufacturers/brands. It currently pools with Smart, but may also pool with Volvo/Polestar? [0] It’s such an obvious approach to ‘…
I don’t see the issue in that though. If the target was to keep the average emission down across the entire country and if inefficient brand A decided to merge with efficient brand B to keep the average down that seems like it still adheres to the spirit of the law
Yeah it's not really "gaming" anything.
Re: A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
#770Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a simple carbon tax would be miles better than the complex morass of regulations we currently have Doesn't this just punt the morass into the magic variable of one's carbon footprint? How about this: fleet efficiency standards are stupid, anachronistic and counterproductive. Scrap them. Then, separarately, create a consumer-side rebate based on a vehicle's mileage. (Because a gas tax breaks American brains.)
> How about this: fleet efficiency standards are stupid, anachronistic and counterproductive. Scrap them. Then, separarately, create a consumer-side rebate based on a vehicle's mileage. (Because a gas tax breaks American brains.) It's a good concept that is also ripe for abuse with anyone who has some amount of "fuck your rules" money. Same reason why fines that don't scale with income/earnings in some form often do…
Scaling fines with income only works to hard stop behavior, at which point just make it illegal. Most fines are proportional to damages.
Criminalizing fossil fuels is insane. The fines should cover the externalities.