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Throatwarbler posted:Frunks are small because the front wheels need space to steer both in terms of the steering rack hardware and also the wheels themselves have to go somewhere when they turn left nd right, and the driver needs to be able to see over them, both problems that the rear wheels don't have. Dunno it seems smaller than the ones on much smaller cars like Porsches, though it wasn't a direcr comparison so it might just be a visual thing
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May 10, 2016 04:19
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Mange Mite posted:Dunno it seems smaller than the ones on much smaller cars like Porsches, though it wasn't a direct comparison so it might just be a visual thing A Cayman and Telsa S both have 5.3 cu ft frunks. A 911 has a 4.8 cu ft one.
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May 10, 2016 05:14
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silence_kit posted:This doesn't make sense to me. If I were a full-time Uber driver or taxi driver, I wouldn't buy an electric car until the charging structure were to be greatly improved and the charging times were to improve. I've never actually been a taxi driver, but I imagine that uptime is way more important for them than for commuters, and the best-case 30 minutes that it takes to half-charge your car with a Supercharger is time wasted which could have been put to use picking up fares. And yes, to scale the number of cars we need to improve infrastructure. But there are a lot of home owners who can afford a grand on a charger if they end up paying pennies on the dollar for travel. Destination charging and apartment lot charging are both on the rise.
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May 10, 2016 05:55
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Also keep in mind that the average car in the US is 11.4 years old and the average is getting older. A lot of people drive $5000 cars. It's going to be a long time until they even look at an electric. I think self driving car-share systems will make more economic sense than ownership for most people before electric cars get down into their price range. The charging of the cars will be done at an industrial site at industrial rates. No car ownership means no parking needs which means downtown parking areas can be reclaimed for housing, and cities can expand within their current borders. Imagine what will become of your average downtown area when cars don't park anymore.  http://www.urbanindy.com/2012/01/27/friday-fun-downtown-indy-parking-lot-map/
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May 10, 2016 06:17
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Mange Mite posted:Ive heard thay one of the problems midengine cars have that makes them expensive and thereby rarer is thst without the engine and its associated supports you have to spend more money/ weight budget on front crash structures. I would assume EVs have similar issues. This is also probably why the frunk on the model s is so small. That doesn't make any sense. The engine doesn't constitute crash structure, the stuff that makes it stick to the car makes it worse in a crash. It's an anvil, not a crumple zone. You have to have the same amount of crumple zone whether the engine is there or not. But you probably have to spend more still securing the engine from entering the cabin from the rear. Oh and I guess the frunk is smaller than an engine bay. On 2WD versions, they still have to package steering, AC etc in there. But "so small"? 
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May 10, 2016 06:42
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The reason the engine rides under the car in a crash is so that it doesn’t make things worse. A heavy, incompressible engine block is never a good thing. The best you can do is try to minimise the harm. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 09:28 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 07:31
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Mange Mite posted:I think it shared platforms with the Echo. Maybe body panels too? No, it actually used the MC platform which is shared with the Corolla, RAV4, tC, etc. The Echo uses the NBC platform shared with the first-gen Scion xA, xB, etc. The Prius also came out two-years before the Echo in the Japanese market, so the styling of the Echo would be based on the Prius, I guess. Supposedly a California design studio came up with the first-gen Prius but the article Wikipedia links to is dead.
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May 10, 2016 09:26
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Powershift posted:Also keep in mind that the average car in the US is 11.4 years old and the average is getting older. A lot of people drive $5000 cars. It's going to be a long time until they even look at an electric. An empty wasteland?
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May 10, 2016 13:21
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ilkhan posted:Lots of Uber drivers run on electric. With a decent range you don't need to recharge during a shift, and the per mile costs are a ton lower. With Tesla's if there is a supercharger around you are back on the street in 20-30 minutes and zero cost to you, remember. This makes no sense to me if you are depending on being a taxi driver for your livelihood and do it full time. There's an opportunity cost to sitting around and charging your car when you could have been out there taking passengers and making money. The free electricity from the Tesla Superchargers too is not sustainable. If Tesla actually became a popular car manufacturer and actually got into the business of selling inexpensive electric cars which could compete with normal cars on price, there is no way that they could afford to pay for the energy costs of their users. ilkhan posted:And yes, to scale the number of cars we need to improve infrastructure. But there are a lot of home owners who can afford a grand on a charger if they end up paying pennies on the dollar for travel. Destination charging and apartment lot charging are both on the rise. I'm just pointing out that there are costs to electric cars that their proponents often ignore. Not everybody gets to take advantage of having charging at their wealthy tech company parking lot or in the case of living in a dense area, are willing or able to pay the premium for a private spot where they could even begin to think about shelling out the cash for installing an electric charger. These types of things will make electric cars always products for only the wealthy, even if car companies were to somehow in the future figure out how to lower the price of electric cars so that they would be competitive with normal cars. Powershift posted:Also keep in mind that the average car in the US is 11.4 years old and the average is getting older. A lot of people drive $5000 cars. It's going to be a long time until they even look at an electric. Oh yeah, for sure. Most people can't even afford new normal cars, which is why Tesla fans who talk about the electric car renaissance coming around the corner are seriously delusional. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 14:44 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 14:17
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Indianapolis is surrounded by 200 miles of empty corn fields. Not a good example. Plus we need space for convention parking. The city actual has electric borrow cars parked everywhere that we need lots for. We also have an inventory of 100,000 vacant lots ready to build if you are interested in living in the city. Many within 10 blocks of city center. No need to destroy my parking spot when I want to eat St. Elmos.
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May 10, 2016 14:47
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Oh god the idiocy of "reclaiming" parking as the hip new trend can't die soon enough. The best is when they "reclaim" like five spots around here, paint some lines around it, and convert it to bike parking. Nevermind whether or not there is enough bike parking in the area, in fact it can be 50 feet from a mostly empty rack, still gotta do it because meaningless symbolic gestures make people feel good! Don't think too hard about all those empty bike racks while you circle for 10 minutes looking for a spot, this is somehow magically better for the environment and we can engineer whatever behavior we desire!
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May 10, 2016 15:14
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Pryor on Fire posted:Oh god the idiocy of "reclaiming" parking as the hip new trend can't die soon enough. The best is when they "reclaim" like five spots around here, paint some lines around it, and convert it to bike parking. Nevermind whether or not there is enough bike parking in the area, in fact it can be 50 feet from a mostly empty rack, still gotta do it because meaningless symbolic gestures make people feel good! Don't think too hard about all those empty bike racks while you circle for 10 minutes looking for a spot, this is somehow magically better for the environment and we can engineer whatever behavior we desire!
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May 10, 2016 15:19
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They will take my steering wheel from my cold dead hands! Hopeful as I die from joy running down a car protest ride. (Do not run over bike protesters).
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May 10, 2016 15:23
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ilkhan posted:They think if they make driving difficult enough people won't drive. Obviously they know what is best for you and you are just too stupid to realize it. They can't realistically ban cars, so this is as close as they can get. If they make parking hard enough, and the fines high enough, people will stop driving. They won't be happy about it, but they'll so. It requires adequate public transport, though. A good solution would be to create more multi level parking garages to replace ground level parking. And implement good public transport options. I like driving, but I agree that most cars need to get the gently caress out of the cities. City driving sucks rear end in every way.
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May 10, 2016 15:28
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The urban anti-car movement has huge traction in Europe, where there's fewer four lane boulevards and more medieval cobblestone alleys. I agree with parts of its core sentiments. Infrastructure is hugely biased towards the car, which is unfair when the scenario in question is moving your butt and your packed lunch from home to work and back. So I'm all for urban car free zones and public transport prioritized above private cars - car free cities are pipe dreams - they have no roads in the utopian 3D renders but proponents are happy to make exceptions for goods vehicles to supply the shops, taxis and transport for wheelchairs etc. Which require roads. Where I live, city air quality is a massive argument against the car. Here's a time lapse of winter air pollution* I shot a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEh5YTDJiAU Once everyone is driving electric, that argument is gone. *there's more than just car exhaust contributing the fog layer
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May 10, 2016 15:39
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Yes this is the purpose of government, make things people want as difficult and as expensive as possible so only the super rich are capable of doing those things. Sounds like a great society, can't wait until we're down to 5 parking spots per 1,000 people. Let's make everyone live in that hellish bay area dystopian nightmare, it's worse for the environment but it's still "progress"! Don't you dare criticize this "progress", everything we do is "progress" and moving forward.
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May 10, 2016 16:06
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Sometimes, what people want is not the right way forward. Politicians should obviously listen to their constituents, but outright populism helps nobody in the long run. Part of the solution is to not give rich people unreasonable benefits over common people. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 16:12 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 16:10
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Pryor on Fire posted:Yes this is the purpose of government, make things people want as difficult and as expensive as possible so only the super rich are capable of doing those things. Sounds like a great society, can't wait until we're down to 5 parking spots per 1,000 people. Let's make everyone live in that hellish bay area dystopian nightmare, it's worse for the environment but it's still "progress"! Don't you dare criticize this "progress", everything we do is "progress" and moving forward.  Exaggerate all you want, but that's how politics works. If you want to change a certain pattern of behavior and you don't want to outright ban it, make it more difficult to use. Rich people will do whatever they want no matter what. And not everyone thinks this is the glorious pot of gold on the opposite side of that rainbow: Taking resources and space from private driving and giving it to public makes sense. A lone rear end in a space demanding car shouldn't be prioritized over a lone but efficient rear end on a tram or whatever, even if sitting in your own car, listening to your own music and farting freely and gloriously is much more comfortable.
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May 10, 2016 16:24
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Pryor on Fire posted:Oh god the idiocy of "reclaiming" parking as the hip new trend can't die soon enough. The best is when they "reclaim" like five spots around here, paint some lines around it, and convert it to bike parking. Nevermind whether or not there is enough bike parking in the area, in fact it can be 50 feet from a mostly empty rack, still gotta do it because meaningless symbolic gestures make people feel good! Don't think too hard about all those empty bike racks while you circle for 10 minutes looking for a spot, this is somehow magically better for the environment and we can engineer whatever behavior we desire! I think you are confusing the idiotic slacktivism of stuff like "parklets" and other junk that gets put in curbside parking lanes with the fact that many midsize American cities have entire city blocks of surface parking lots in the downtown core — Indianapolis is a good example of this, but so are places like Albany or Kansas City. If those effectively empty lots were given back over to built environment (because let's be honest, somebody back in the 60s or 70s knocked over a bunch of old "urban decay" businesses and houses to make these parking lots) they could host a lot more people and businesses that would more easily rely on density and things like Uber or shorter-range electric cars or even dumb old busses. It's not like Manhattan or the Chicago Loop are empty wastes because there are few surface lots to park in. Replacing some of those surface lots with buildings containing parking garages could help with parking availability for commuters, even. Elephanthead posted:Indianapolis is surrounded by 200 miles of empty corn fields. Not a good example. Plus we need space for convention parking. The city actual has electric borrow cars parked everywhere that we need lots for. We also have an inventory of 100,000 vacant lots ready to build if you are interested in living in the city. Many within 10 blocks of city center. Those Indianapolis electric rental car spaces, more than the promise of a nationwide Tesla supercharger network or the Chevy Bolt, have made me interested in buying an electric vehicle, and probably within the next six months or so. I came to this thread to post about that, and am glad to see it mentioned — I found out recently that, if you have your own plug-in electric vehicle, you can get a payment card and park in one of those spots and charge for what appears to be a pretty reasonable rate. As someone without a garage and who is downtown all the time, this seems like a great alternative to trying to figure out how to mount a charger on the side of my house or on a post in the back yard or something of that nature. Elephanthead posted:No need to destroy my parking spot when I want to eat St. Elmos. And also there's two big goddamn garages right next to St Elmo, one across the street and one literally behind it underneath that part of the Circle Centre Mall, so the street parking on Illinois in front of the restaurant that you can't use anyway because it's valet loading is kind of irrelevant.
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May 10, 2016 16:31
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Ola posted:
So we want to ban in-city self driving?
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May 10, 2016 16:47
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Godholio posted:So we want to ban in-city self driving? Stop being dense. Incentives and disincentives have been used for time immemorial.
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May 10, 2016 16:50
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bennyfactor posted:I think you are confusing the idiotic slacktivism of stuff like "parklets" and other junk that gets put in curbside parking lanes with the fact that many midsize American cities have entire city blocks of surface parking lots in the downtown core — Indianapolis is a good example of this, but so are places like Albany or Kansas City. If those effectively empty lots were given back over to built environment (because let's be honest, somebody back in the 60s or 70s knocked over a bunch of old "urban decay" businesses and houses to make these parking lots) they could host a lot more people and businesses that would more easily rely on density and things like Uber or shorter-range electric cars or even dumb old busses. It's not like Manhattan or the Chicago Loop are empty wastes because there are few surface lots to park in. Replacing some of those surface lots with buildings containing parking garages could help with parking availability for commuters, even. Indiana is not the same as Manhattan. Those "urban decay" businesses were probably actually abandoned buildings due to white flight, and nobody is going to sell their house in the suburbs and quit their job to live in downtown Indianapolis. In the midwest and rust belt, nobody who can afford it wants to live in a densely populated urban shithole and have to take the bus. Ola posted:Taking resources and space from private driving and giving it to public makes sense. A lone rear end in a space demanding car shouldn't be prioritized over a lone but efficient rear end on a tram or whatever, even if sitting in your own car, listening to your own music and farting freely and gloriously is much more comfortable. Why are you trying to make a distinction between "private driving" and "the public" when they are essentially the same thing in most of America. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 17:20 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 17:18
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Mange Mite posted:nobody is going to sell their house in the suburbs and quit their job to live in downtown Indianapolis. In the midwest and rust belt, nobody who can afford it wants to live in a densely populated urban shithole Huh, that must be the number of apartment units in downtown Indianapolis increased by over 3500 units from 2011 to 2015 while apartment vacancy rates remained under 5%, and 3300 more apartment units downtown will be completed by 2018, many of which are "amenity-rich" and attract earners of "$90,000 or more". Sounds like a real urban shithole to me. And everybody living downtown is going to have to quit their jobs too because there's literally not like a company that just bought the naming rights to the largest building at the center of downtown and plans to make 800 new hires there in the next few years. Anway you weirdos keep on with your stupid fight about whether THE GUBBMIT HATES CARS, ALL CITIES ARE GARBAGE BUT I NEED A LOT OF SPACE TO PARK THERE or whatever Relevant to this thread, is it possible to convert a conventional hybrid to a plug-in hybrid? Like, if I were to get an old prius or insight, is there something I can purchase or fabricobble to make it a plug-in, or is that a totally different setup from the manufacturer? Should I just be looking at off-lease Leaves / i-Mievs?
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May 10, 2016 17:53
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bennyfactor posted:Huh, that must be the number of apartment units in downtown Indianapolis increased by over 3500 units from 2011 to 2015 while apartment vacancy rates remained under 5%, and 3300 more apartment units downtown will be completed by 2018, many of which are "amenity-rich" and attract earners of "$90,000 or more". Sounds like a real urban shithole to me. And everybody living downtown is going to have to quit their jobs too because there's literally not like a company that just bought the naming rights to the largest building at the center of downtown and plans to make 800 new hires there in the next few years. Lol ok jastiger 2
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May 10, 2016 18:37
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Those "electric" parking spots will either be filled with road barrier crap, or a volt that has been parked there all week.
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May 10, 2016 18:39
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Godholio posted:So we want to ban in-city self driving? So it's ok to murder babies with shovels now? I read your posts like you read mine Mange Mite posted:
I meant public transport, like trams and buses. I know that many places in America, taking the bus is only for the homeless and walking is only for mentally deranged homeless. Those cities can do what they want, other cities can do what they want. It depends on what fits the land and what the elected politicians decide to do, it's not all decided in this thread. bennyfactor posted:
No, it's not really feasible. Different generations of stuff, different hardware, too many interconnected bits, software, etc. The 1st generation Leaves, the triplets and other early EVs should all have taken a serious depreciation hit by now, definitely worth checking those out if you can manage with the range.
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May 10, 2016 18:56
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Cities are usually big enough that if you make parking at your store hard, people just go somewhere else.
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May 10, 2016 19:00
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bennyfactor posted:
People did this with the non-plugin Prius but the batteries on it and most hybrids aren't big enough to make it all that useful.
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May 10, 2016 19:15
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ilkhan posted:Lots of Uber drivers run on electric. With a decent range you don't need to recharge during a shift, and the per mile costs are a ton lower. With Tesla's if there is a supercharger around you are back on the street in 20-30 minutes and zero cost to you, remember. Schiphol airport has a fleet of 167 Tesla Model S taxis. It seems to work out for them. To keep with the "lol european cars slow" theme they have limited the Tesla's to a 21 second 0-60 time to increase range.
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May 10, 2016 19:39
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Throatwarbler posted:People did this with the non-plugin Prius but the batteries on it and most hybrids aren't big enough to make it all that useful. The bigger problem is without weird mods the non-plugin models of the Prius will only go like 15mph or so in full EV mode so even if you leave the house with a full charge unless you exclusively drive on bike paths and other places where 15mph is a reasonable speed it's not like it's going to do you any good.
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May 10, 2016 19:47
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NihilismNow posted:Schiphol airport has a fleet of 167 Tesla Model S taxis. It seems to work out for them. How did they do that, a custom firmware from Tesla?
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May 10, 2016 20:29
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io_burn posted:The bigger problem is without weird mods the non-plugin models of the Prius will only go like 15mph or so in full EV mode so even if you leave the house with a full charge unless you exclusively drive on bike paths and other places where 15mph is a reasonable speed it's not like it's going to do you any good. Not true, it'll easily do 50-60km/h off the battery alone. Getting up to that speed might require the engine to kick in, especially if you're impatient and/or there's someone behind you, but it will do it. And during rush hour, 15mph would be considered making serious progress.
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May 10, 2016 21:17
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Michael Scott posted:How did they do that, a custom firmware from Tesla? If you're buying $15M of cars, you get to ask for things like that.
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May 10, 2016 21:19
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Linedance posted:Not true, it'll easily do 50-60km/h off the battery alone. Getting up to that speed might require the engine to kick in, especially if you're impatient and/or there's someone behind you, but it will do it. And during rush hour, 15mph would be considered making serious progress. I'm saying if you hit the "EV mode" button on a normal Prius, after about 15mph it'll deactivate due to "excessive speed."
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May 10, 2016 21:22
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Michael Scott posted:Stop being dense. Incentives and disincentives have been used for time immemorial. Right, so what is eliminating parking supposed to disincentivize? If I'm a suburbanite, 9/10 times it's going to make me go somewhere besides the city, rather than forcing me onto public transit or whatever the point was. In most cities with developed public transit, most people in the city are already using it whenever possible. So I'm genuinely asking what the loving point is.
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May 10, 2016 22:32
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Godholio posted:Right, so what is eliminating parking supposed to disincentivize? If I'm a suburbanite, 9/10 times it's going to make me go somewhere besides the city, rather than forcing me onto public transit or whatever the point was. In most cities with developed public transit, most people in the city are already using it whenever possible. So I'm genuinely asking what the loving point is. For instance, parking spaces are removed from some streets and cars have to park in paid parking garages or big lots which have been located in suitable areas. Some people go for the parking garage, some go elsewhere, some go for public transport. Result, more space in the streets, less traffic in the streets.
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May 10, 2016 22:41
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Godholio posted:So I'm genuinely asking what the loving point is. To make city dwellers feel self-important, and superior to all the people who insist in living in their evil McMansions and driving their own cars instead of renting a shoebox to keep their possessions in and riding the train like a good little peasant. I feel like a lot of this comes from looking at European cities, which have hundreds and even thousands of years of development before the first car, and have geographic limitations at work, and trying to apply it to American cities, which are often in the middle of a gently caress OFF HUGE SEA OF NOTHING, with hundreds of miles to the next major city, with extremely cheap land, and a developed car infrastructure. Exceptions to this include Miami, which has artificial and natural boundaries limiting it's sprawl, yet manages to have absolutely horrid non-car infrastructure, despite being an ideal setting for it in the states.
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May 10, 2016 22:41
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There's some really dumb opinions in this thread about urban design which isn't about urban design. Pretty sure I saw one in D&D not long ago. Go post your dumb opinions there.
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May 10, 2016 23:31
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io_burn posted:I'm saying if you hit the "EV mode" button on a normal Prius, after about 15mph it'll deactivate due to "excessive speed." On gen 2, EV mode only kicks off above 34 mph.
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May 10, 2016 23:51
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The difficulty of accessing reliable charging without having a home charger is the next big problem with EVs after we solve the thing where the batteries are super expensive and drive the cars' prices way above comparable ICE vehicles, which we've almost done. (That mining the lithium and other stuff needed to build batteries is massively environmentally destructive is also a problem but one I believe we'll solve with graphene ultracapacitors and in the meantime, poo poo's still better than oil drilling.) Right now in the US you can get a 30% tax rebate for installing one, and as we all know CA has the thing where legally you must be allowed to install one, but I could really see EV charging infrastructure as the next target of tax breaks and public works programs. Agreed that it's kind of a mess right now and you need to be a homeowner or a Californian with a decent job and an apartment (that doesn't take most of the money you get from that decent job) for EVs to work for you guaranteed, but when the Ford Fiesta EV costs $12k and can go 600 miles a charge all people will really need is easy access to charging at most storefronts and other public areas, even if the charging costs money generally, having somewhere to go plug in while doing the otherwise needful and being set for the week after a couple hours of charging would be a perfectly tenable status quo. This is not an unrealistic goal, and while we need more and more reliable charging infrastructure, don't forget that high range for cheap is nigh inevitable. I mean we should really be gunning for higher density and removing the need for people to own cars in the first place with good planning (and not bullshit shame campaigns) but, Internet Explorer posted:There's some really dumb opinions in this thread about urban design which isn't about urban design. Pretty sure I saw one in D&D not long ago. Go post your dumb opinions there. Boten Anna fucked around with this message at 01:00 on May 11, 2016 |
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