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MrYenko posted:Um... In fourteen F9/F9R launches, SpaceX hasn't had a launch failure yet. They even had a loving first stage engine EXPLODE, and still put the primary payload in the intended orbit. In fact, if NASA hadn't told them not to relight the second stage, they probably could've saved the secondary payload, as well. Probably because some people actually believe the hype and talk about how they're revolutionizing the world even though that's really not the case?
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Jan 15, 2015 02:00
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Cat Terrist posted:then Tesla with what is literally one of the best ever cars ever made on the road right now, let alone a hell of a EV This is a bit of a stretch really, put the drivetrain in something German and you'd be closer. Tesla is still working on perfecting things like seating, sunvisors and coat hooks, the main purpose of the big touch screen is to distract buyers from how low rent the rest of the interior is. I've spent a lot of time in one, this isn't based on internet pictures. The Germans are making GBS threads their pants, they'll catch up on the powertrain front, they're already better everywhere else. Once every manufacturer has an EV and there is no compelling reason to purchase a Tesla Elon Musk will shut it down or sell it to Geely and move on to something else. It's probably what he's been planning on the whole time, I can't imagine the guy spending the next 10 years perfecting his cars without getting bored. I hope they give him a nobel prize for getting the whole thing started though.
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Jan 15, 2015 02:41
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Not to get into a dumb pissing fight, but one of the things I really like about Tesla is that they have plans for an entire infrastructure, and not just "uh yeah you can charge it at home with a high power charger and then borrow an outlet from work I guess?" Automated battery replacement is also a much better way of refueling an EV than charging.
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Jan 15, 2015 02:58
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They're also taking on the auto dealers and deserve a lot of credit for that. It's hard to imagine buying a Corolla like you buy any other appliance (from amazon), but it'd be amazing.
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Jan 15, 2015 03:10
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sanchez posted:This is a bit of a stretch really, put the drivetrain in something German and you'd be closer. Tesla is still working on perfecting things like seating, sunvisors and coat hooks, the main purpose of the big touch screen is to distract buyers from how low rent the rest of the interior is. I've spent a lot of time in one, this isn't based on internet pictures. The powertrains in stuff like the BMW i cars are as good or better, the only thing they lack is range and that's mostly a question of how much of a loss BMW is willing to tolerate per car because batteries are expensive. In terms of design BMW is doing a lot more in terms of advanced composites, etc., all with an eye towards future utility versus just throwing money at the problem to give the illusion of solving it. The same goes for Teslas infrastructure plans. They're unscalable and economically totally unviable. Hell, even massively subsidized by their vc money they want $80 per battery swap (for a battery that probably costs in the neighborhood of $10k too). Just to start, the us power grid is already close to capacity in most places, and the low power density of lion batteries makes the idea or trucking them around or something laughable OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Jan 15, 2015 |
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Jan 15, 2015 04:29
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Mange Mite posted:The powertrains in stuff like the BMW i cars are as good or better, the only thing they lack is range and that's mostly a question of how much of a loss BMW is willing to tolerate per car because batteries are expensive. In terms of design BMW is doing a lot more in terms of advanced composites, etc., all with an eye towards future utility versus just throwing money at the problem to give the illusion of solving it. I'm convinced the swap tech was just a play to get more ZEV credits but they cancelled that credit condition and I'm pretty sure you won't see battery swapping happen. Also the way our grid currently works we actually burn off extra capacity at night (when most electric vehicles charge) since it is too inefficient to shut down plants and fire them back up before morning. In addition EV owners are more likely to own residential solar to offset their charging (I produce more than I take from the grid). I've owned 3 electric cars, driven over 75k electric miles and am a Tesla stock holder so I'm biased though.
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Jan 15, 2015 15:54
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sanchez posted:They're also taking on the auto dealers and deserve a lot of credit for that. It's hard to imagine buying a Corolla like you buy any other appliance (from amazon), but it'd be amazing. The margin on a Corolla is like $500. Not sure how much you would save ordering it. You still need to pay someone to get you license plates and a title. With the internet you should easily be able to pay less then invoice on any new car that isn't a unicorn. Also Tesla is amazing at having an incredible high P/E ratio and nothing else.
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Jan 15, 2015 16:58
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Tesla is pretty drat impressive for being a car startup that's actually making cars that aren't $1mil supercards and is moving further downmarket. How many of those have there been in recent memory?
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Jan 15, 2015 17:11
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sanchez posted:They're also taking on the auto dealers and deserve a lot of credit for that. It's hard to imagine buying a Corolla like you buy any other appliance (from amazon), but it'd be amazing. If nothing else, not having to play the "well let me go see what my manager says" game at dealerships would be great. The availability of information from the internet dealt a pretty big blow to that business model, now someone else just needs to finish it off.
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Jan 16, 2015 14:42
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Buy over email. It's great when everything is in writing. I had one salesman tell me he didn't want to email a price because it would be really low and he 'didn't want that getting out on the internet and forums and stuff. Once it's in writing you can't take it back". The dealership I bought from FedEx'd me the paperwork, which let me read it thoroughly while at home before signing. Much, much better than trying to skim it quickly. ...I'd still rather just order online from a website 
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Jan 16, 2015 16:41
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Advent Horizon posted:Buy over email. It's great when everything is in writing. AI has this weird idea that the entire world is anything like them. In reality there are very few really well informed customers. Hell I still get customers walking in the door at my dealership saying "I am interested in a Kia" and when asked which model they don't even know the names of the cars. Even the people that come in thinking they have done good research come in wildly misinformed about option packages and pricing. For better or worse dealers aren't going away any time soon. As a salesman personally I would love for more well informed customers to come in knowing exactly what they want and have reasonable pricing expectations it would make my job a lot easier. I spend way more time trying to explain to people why they cant get the very top trim level for the same price that a base model is advertised at. Typically customers end up being their own worst enemy when it comes to buying their car. d
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Jan 16, 2015 17:12
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Advent Horizon posted:Buy over email. It's great when everything is in writing. I've always ended up going to the dealer after agreeing on price via email, never really occurred to me to try to do the whole transaction remotely. Might try that next time, It'd be great to avoid the back room crap completely. kill me now posted:AI has this weird idea that the entire world is anything like them. In reality there are very few really well informed customers. Hell I still get customers walking in the door at my dealership saying "I am interested in a Kia" and when asked which model they don't even know the names of the cars. Even the people that come in thinking they have done good research come in wildly misinformed about option packages and pricing. Showrooms are fine and necessary, people still need to test drive and ask questions. The current dealership model is what needs to change.
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Jan 16, 2015 17:49
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I wish I'd done my negotiating by email. I'd done all my research, knew what a Leaf should work out to, and went in armed with that information. They agreed after some balking, went to draw up papers, and I went home as I was out of time and planned to return the next day once things finalized. I got a call letting me know everything was ready. "Good news! We were able to get pretty close to your target numbers and the paperwork is all ready." They were a hundred dollars off on a 250$ a month number. I should have asked on the phone of course. It worked out after I did the whole walking out three or four times thing, "let me get my manager" thing, and I got the Leaf. I did manage to discover exactly how low my Leaf will go on Tuesday. Found out my phone GPS was garbled, got lost, and wound up going below the Very Low Battery warning and no bars left on the battery. When I rolled into my driveway and checked Carwings, the guess o meter said I had a mile. It's pretty frustrating that the estimated miles disappear and start flashing "- - -" once you hit the last little bit.
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Jan 16, 2015 18:26
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I wonder if AAA will soon start offering a service where they show up with a big generator and a J1772.
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Jan 16, 2015 18:46
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Hillridge posted:I wonder if AAA will soon start offering a service where they show up with a big generator and a J1772.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:07
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Mortanis posted:
I think maybe this is just a Nissan thing... my 350Z does the exact same "---" thing when miles remaining gets very low. Don't know about other models though.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:16
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Holy poo poo. I was just running some numbers with a Mini-owning friend and realized that I'm 21,000 miles into driving my Leaf and still under $350 in energy costs. This is largely due to a power company rebate that also essentially got my garage EVSE , purchased and installed, for free in exchange for having a time-of-use meter installed on my house. But, still, that's honestly way lower than I had been thinking.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:28
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Advent Horizon posted:Holy poo poo. I was just running some numbers with a Mini-owning friend and realized that I'm 21,000 miles into driving my Leaf and still under $350 in energy costs. That's a big discount on energy but I don't think it's a "holy poo poo" discount. Run the numbers and see what you would've paid for gasoline on a Prius. You're paying more for a Leaf than you would have for a used Prius (not sure if you bought or are leasing) so obviously that factors in. You're paying a little more than 1/3 what gasoline would cost you per mile. It's a big discount certainly but for that to really be "holy poo poo" and change the minds of consumers to purchase EVs we need the costs of EVs to come down a lot more. Of course, it is interesting and useful to see real-world electricity costs so thank you for sharing. Michael Scott fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jan 16, 2015 |
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Jan 16, 2015 19:47
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Michael Scott posted:That's a big discount on energy but I don't think it's a "holy poo poo" discount. Run the numbers and see what you would've paid for gasoline on a Prius. You're paying more for a Leaf than you would have for a used Prius (not sure if you bought or are leasing) so obviously that factors in. You're paying a little more than 1/3 what gasoline would cost you per mile. It's a big discount certainly but for that to really be "holy poo poo" and change the minds of consumers to purchase EVs we need the costs of EVs to come down a lot more. well you kind of have to compare apples to apples, so a new Leaf vs a new Prius, not a used one. Obviously a used anything is going to be cheaper to purchase initially. I rented a new Prius recently and drove from Seattle to San Francisco with stops along the way, it cost me about $70 for a 1070 mile trip, averaging 50.6 mpg. So for the sake of agrument, multiply those figures by 20, that's $1400 in fuel costs to run a new Prius for ~21000 miles. If you got your charger and installation free, as Advent Horizon did, and the cost of purchasing the vehicle in the first place is roughly equivalent, and it's cost him $350 for that same mileage, that's a quarter the energy cost of a Prius, which is already among the most fuel efficient gas powered cars sold in the US. An extra thousand bucks a year in savings over that is nothing to sneeze at.
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Jan 16, 2015 19:59
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AAA has a quick charge truck in Seattle. Doesn't go very far outside of Seattle and I'm about 60 miles north so my membership just nets me a tow, but they do actually have a charge truck. I gather it's just enough to get you to a station, but still cool. I'm at 21k miles at well on my Leaf, averaging 4.4 miles per kWh, and 10 cents a kWh, which works out to $477 in "fuel". Even though gas just hit 1.99 in my area today, it's still cheaper to drive the Leaf. My old clunker gets 30 miles per gallon, and I have a 44 mile round trip, which makes for perfect even math at $1.00 a day on the Leaf and 44/30 = 1.4666 gallons * 1.99$/gal = 2.99$/day in gas in the ICE car. Gas would have to drop below a ways below a buck a gallon for it to be cost effective to drive the clunker again. Not counting the monthly cost of the car and the insurance, of course. That tends to skew numbers.
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Jan 16, 2015 20:10
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A Prius was not on our radar. Choice #2 was a new Subaru Impreza hatchback, so about half the combined mpg of a Prius. Also factor in that gasoline is still $3.41/gallon around here and the Leaf has already passed the point of making up the price difference.
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Jan 16, 2015 20:16
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I'm rolling up on 18 months and 23000 miles with my Volt. Lifetime MPG is 150, MPGe is 72.5. 75% of miles were EV. It's still on the factory fluids (the oil-o-meter at its current rate will hit 0% life at 30k at its current rate).
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Jan 16, 2015 20:34
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Goober Peas posted:I'm rolling up on 18 months and 23000 miles with my Volt. Lifetime MPG is 150, MPGe is 72.5. 75% of miles were EV. Even with modern synthetics, don't you want to change oil based on time since it's in there as well? Oil change intervals longer than annually scare me, but I could just be an old man.
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Jan 16, 2015 20:39
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I think you're just a scared old man who trusts Jiffy Lube too much. Nothing magically happens to these fluids after one year's time. When you're talking multiple years, degradation becomes significant. That is my uninformed understanding, however, and I'd love to hear from an expert.
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Jan 16, 2015 20:49
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Twerk from Home posted:Even with modern synthetics, don't you want to change oil based on time since it's in there as well? Oil change intervals longer than annually scare me, but I could just be an old man. The Volts' oil guesstometer supposedly takes oil age and ICE mileage into consideration (2 years max life allowed) . It's only had ~5700 miles of actual duty. It feels weird until you think about it, then it kinda makes sense.
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Jan 16, 2015 20:51
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Trisk posted:I think maybe this is just a Nissan thing... my 350Z does the exact same "---" thing when miles remaining gets very low. Don't know about other models though. My Kia does this as well. Gas light goes on at 50 miles, miles remaining hits 30 and then goes to "---".
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Jan 16, 2015 22:54
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Goober Peas posted:The Volts' oil guesstometer supposedly takes oil age and ICE mileage into consideration (2 years max life allowed) . It's only had ~5700 miles of actual duty. Yep, Mine has slowly dropped even during weeks of electric only driving and no engine starts at all. This looks kind of neato: http://pluglesspower.com/chevy-volt/ I wonder how good the efficiency is though. Most of that stuff struggles to hit 85%.
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Jan 16, 2015 23:00
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Goober Peas posted:The Volts' oil guesstometer supposedly takes oil age and ICE mileage into consideration (2 years max life allowed) . It's only had ~5700 miles of actual duty. I wonder if this thing would be good to have: http://www.amazon.com/Lubricheck-Motor-Oil-Tester-Contaminated/dp/B00HBAG9AC/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
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Jan 16, 2015 23:23
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Cockmaster posted:I wonder if this thing would be good to have: I have no idea really but my gut tells me that some random gadget is going to have limited usefulness. For $50 you could have actual oil analysis done on two separate samples. Blackstone Labs is the most well known company for this I believe.
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Jan 17, 2015 00:19
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Hillridge posted:Yep, Mine has slowly dropped even during weeks of electric only driving and no engine starts at all. Installations start at around $2800. Also, they get really wishy-washy when you start asking about whether their equipment installation affects the factory warranty.
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Jan 17, 2015 01:46
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Cockmaster posted:I wonder if this thing would be good to have: In all likelihood, I'll get an oil change next week when I take it for it's (late) 22500 tire balance and rotate (I got free maintenance for the balance of the drivetrain warranty as a 'so sorry' present for my factory hosed up rear hatch). I think the likelihood of the oil being bad now, or 6 months from now is pretty slim.
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Jan 17, 2015 03:10
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Those of you with Volts, how often and for how long does the engine run itself, even if you don't need it? My concern on the long term oil change intervals is not that the oil will go "bad", but that the engine will build up in condensation, especially if the run time cycles are short.
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Jan 17, 2015 14:25
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angryrobots posted:Those of you with Volts, how often and for how long does the engine run itself, even if you don't need it? I have a 2012 model and mine performs engine maintenance every six weeks of non-use and runs about 10 minutes or so each time.
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Jan 17, 2015 14:56
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I end up in gas mode too often for auto-maintenance to ever kick in. I generally do about 45mi a day, plus occasional road trips. Its really not something you have to worry about. Just drive it. The auto-magical computers will take care of the rest. I am having a hard time talking myself out of getting one of the new ones, though. The extra EV-only range would cover my commute, with a tad leftover. I don't think Im going to be able to make the money work, though. 
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Jan 17, 2015 15:32
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Hasters posted:I have a 2012 model and mine performs engine maintenance every six weeks of non-use and runs about 10 minutes or so each time. I don't know, but my seat of the pants intuition meter says that's neither as long, or often enough run time to boil off the water. But I also suppose with the engine pretty much never running, it can't suffer bearing damage either way.
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Jan 17, 2015 17:15
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Hillridge posted:Yep, Mine has slowly dropped even during weeks of electric only driving and no engine starts at all. I wonder if you could run a series of rails with induction coils down a freeway and make the physics of wireless charging work. Like a transit train's third rail.
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Jan 20, 2015 09:34
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You certainly could, if you wanted your roads to cost an extra $10M per mile.
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Jan 20, 2015 11:01
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...And you wanted a bunch of people to buy old box trucks, build a grow room in the back, and do super-fresh delivery after stealing traction power.
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Jan 20, 2015 16:39
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That's an oddly specific fantasy. 
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Jan 20, 2015 18:47
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EgonSpengler posted:I wonder if you could run a series of rails with induction coils down a freeway and make the physics of wireless charging work. Like a transit train's third rail. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_afs6Y83c8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6dssNI3AZM
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Jan 20, 2015 19:22
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