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Geoj posted:Plus demand outside of urban areas has to be next to 0. I seriously doubt there are many people doing cross-country trips in EVs (due to charge time vs. travel time - its just not practical) and not many people outside of big cities have them due to range constraints and/or demographics. I went to a coffee shop on the high street the other day, and their upstairs seating area had to have at least 50x 50w halogen lights in the ceiling. 2.5kW, on upstairs lighting alone, and they probably have them on most days all day long. Suddenly charging stations don't look so expensive.
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Nov 26, 2012 12:09
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ExecuDork posted:I'd say it's not bullshit. The difference in maximum range is not a few percent, it's more than double - and it's a difference that crosses a distance threshold for many people - how often do you want to fill up / recharge - every trip? Or once a week? The "average" commuter might put 50 miles (or whatever) behind them in an "average" day, but that mean value has no importance without some estimation of the variation. And that's not considering the frequency of trips of much longer distances - the often-seen response "just rent something for your annual road-trip" is trite and useless* - people drive widely different distances over the course of a single week, and there are so many unplanned (or poorly planned) trips that estimating "typical" distances and basing a decision on range being "good enough" is basically impossible. The over-arching argument here is one of cultural change. As of right now, we don't want to fill up every day, because we're used to filling up once a week or more. That doesn't mean it'll stay that way. Remember back in the day, when you had a Nokia brick that took hours to charge, but you only needed to charge it once a week? And now we've all got glorious smartphones that do every-goddamn-thing and charge in about an hour or two but you have to charge them daily or they're useless. People just got used to plugging their phone in every night, or whenever the opportunity arose, instead of charging once and not worrying about it for the rest of the week. I don't see why this cultural change won't happen with electric cars. Once they become 'normal', nobody will care that they have to charge them for a few hours at work, or every night when they get home. It's just part of owning one. And if a company can figure out a way to make electric cars a cool thing to own (Tesla is certainly trying hard in this regard), people will accept a lot of shortcomings just to be the kind of person who owns one.
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Feb 15, 2013 04:01
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The "killer app" for smartcars -err- electric cars will be implementing some sort of Roomba technology that works so that once you've been delivered to work or wherever you're going, the car drives itself to the nearest charge point and plugs itself in until fully charged or summoned.
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Feb 15, 2013 04:20
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Meanwhile, in Hamburg... 
Finger Prince fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Apr 13, 2013 |
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Apr 13, 2013 08:18
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I've been catching up on this thread, there's been some good data on cost comparisons, cheers for that. I've got some questions for owners about viability though (for my circumstance), as well as creature comforts. I'm going to be moving soon, for work, and the new work facility has EV charging points in the parking lot. I'll be working a 4x4 12hr/day shift pattern and won't have access to charging at home, at least initially. I'm going to need to buy a car, and the whole free charging at work thing has got my interest. I'd have at most a 40km (25 mile) each way commute, so say 50 miles total, and when I'm on nights I might look into taking the commuter train, and during the summer probably motorbike. How does, for example, a Leaf handle sitting outside without charging for days, possibly weeks at a time? Has anyone got any experience with them through year-round Toronto weather? The idea of sitting in a car in rush hour Greater Toronto traffic has me strongly biased towards creature comforts, so how's a Leaf to be stuck in? Comfortable? Good stereo? I'm saying Leaf because I have an old friend who's wife works for Nissan Canada, so I might be able to get a deal through them.
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Apr 24, 2014 07:45
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Advent Horizon posted:Sorry I missed this earlier! good info, thanks! I think I'll look into one once we've settled in and bought somewhere, rather than dealing with battery issues while renting an apartment. I'll definitely take one for a test drive when I get a chance.
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Jun 6, 2014 20:20
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Goober Peas posted:Cash back is a rebate, that is typically applied to the final sale price (after taxes, tags, license, etc) and will reduce the amount financed (like a down payment). If you're financing at 0%, you'd be better off having them cut you a cheque and chucking it in bonds or something* for the term. *late night drunken eBaying
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Jun 8, 2014 22:02
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Sten Freak posted:Not sure if hybrid talk is right for this thread but speaking of interiors, what about the Lexus 200ct? It's just a Prius which has been tarted up with a nice interior and gadgets, and different suspension from what I can tell. Not sure if I can live with a car that takes over 10 seconds to reach 60, on the other hand my commute maxes out at 35 so I just don't need the power on a daily basis. I keep eyeing these up, but on the used market they're still just a bit too pricey I think. Lexii seem to have very good residuals in Canada. I do like the idea of a deluxe hybrid hatchback though. ijustam posted:I have one and I love it. It certainly won't win any races but my commute maxes out at 45-50 mph and it's mostly city. I probably spend half of my commute on electric alone. I get about 35-36 in the winter (mostly so the engine can provide heat) and 44-46 in the summer. Cool, nice to hear positives about it. I've driven a base model Prius and actually kind of liked it, but the interior is kind of dull and cheapish. I guess you need to look at the price difference like choosing an Audi over the equivalent VW. I am a sucker for a nice interior. Finger Prince fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jun 28, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2014 19:20
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roomforthetuna posted:What a daft measure. I suppose a month's worth of CO2 from 2456 Americans sounds kind of feeble though. 73,684 already sounded pretty weak, like "each car sold can't even come close to CO2-offsetting a single average American." Probably would have been better to just not mention that aspect. yeah but could you imagine if it did have that capability? The entire federal fleet would suddenly be replaced by Teslas and their drivetrains would be going in everything so that the government could claim all those sweet sweet Kyoto credits... ooohhhhh riiiight....
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Jul 11, 2014 14:56
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OldPueblo posted:So I have a minivan that carries 7 people, and I hate the poor gas mileage (16/23). It looks like the tesla is the closest replacement with the two seats in back for kids, but that's a pretty hefty price and I expect the model X to cost even more. My van is paid off in a year and I have an extended warranty that literally never expires, but I spend around $200 a month for gas. I'm stuck with this aren't I. You're pretty much limited to hybrids at the moment. The big Prius, Lexus RX***h, probably some Toyota brand SUV, and maybe a couple of Hondas for the time being.
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Oct 13, 2014 23:40
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windex posted:If you want to be angry about a perceived lack of EV charging locations, the price of EVs, etc.. Tesla/Tesla owners are not really the place to direct it. The guys building the hybrids, though, are. And the people building the Prius have decided complete duplication of everything from pumping systems to transportation logistics for a fuel not much more clean or efficient than gasoline is a good idea. Not exactly geniuses, except that if their stupid idea comes to fruition they'll have avoided a small investment in battery tech by getting John Q Public to waste billions on rolling out infrastructure for them. You seem to be the only one who's getting angry about anything. Teslas are great, but they are primarily vehicles for wealthy (sub)urbanites. You can pick up a decent low mileage 2nd gen Prius for around $12k where I live, and although you have to still have to rely on a gas engine, you get all the efficiency benefits of the traction motor for heavy traffic/urban driving. I'm seeing used Leafs around the $20k mark, which is doable, but going full electric means I can only charge at work, which is very limiting. As for moving, never mind states or countries, even just to the burbs so I can have a house and garage that I can charge at... the whole idea of basing your entire life and lifestyle around your preferred mode of personal powered transportation just seems ludicrous to me, sorry.
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Oct 15, 2014 23:59
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Ola posted:Here are the details. I thought they were releasing an "upgrade" in the traditional sense - i.e. a new car which you can "upgrade to" if you sell you own Roadster. But it's actually a paid-for upgrade, like an expansion pack to a computer game. That's really cool. I love how Tesla is changing the entire (sorry for the buzzword) paradigm of car ownership. An upgrade package is such a familiar and normal thing, when you think that it has never applied to cars it just seems so strange.
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Dec 27, 2014 17:49
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Mange Mite posted:That's because most people need their cars on a regular, usually daily basis, whereas the Tesla Roadster is usually a toy which you won't miss if you have to send it out for a few weeks / months. Aftermarket tuners and dealer-installed upgrade kits have been a thing for a long time for that sort of car too. Yeah but (aftermarket aside, since that's generally going to be 3rd party) that's point-of-sale stuff. The equivalent would be Ford coming out and saying "hey 2009 mustang owners, we've got this new ecoboost engine that is better in every way than what came with your car, if you like you can bring it in and we'll fit it for a few thousand bucks". And then it's up to the owner, who might decide that they're happy with what they've got, or might use the opportunity to get a fresh new engine instead of a whole new car. Ford would much rather you trade in your old mustang and finance a whole brand new one.
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Jan 3, 2015 16:29
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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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Just spit balling here... This is probably dumb as hell... What if a hypothetical future charging station used very high efficiency electric motor/generators to spin a very large flywheel situated on site. When a vehicle came in requiring a recharge, that stored energy was returned through the motor generators to the batteries in the car. In that way, the flywheel can be constantly topped up with energy from the grid when there are no cars charging, and be ready to go when one turns up.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:22
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Mange Mite posted:Flywheels in theory are highly efficient but in practice, much much less so. Right now, they're bad at long-term energy storage and if you wanted to charge off-peak and store until the day, you'd need a system that can manage to do that for at least 5-6 hours. Also you're talking some significant losses with every conversion between electrical to mechanical back to electrical energy. I was wondering about efficiency losses. Although it's likely minimal to insignificant, I wonder how much efficiency, that is to say joules of potential energy, is lost through evaporation, spoilage, and unusable fuel in the storage tanks when it comes to liquid fuel? Just purely out of curiosity. As for a big bomb, a storage tank full of gasoline could also be described as such, though if the flywheel went off it would involve less mushroom cloud of firey explosion, so it loses in that regard.
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Jan 27, 2015 16:52
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Ola posted:Yes, the physical management. I haven't seen any good analysis, just talking out of my own charging port here. But I do believe it will be a problem. The rental car industry can teach it some lessons, probably many other businesses as well. But the price of battery packs, how much insured value is out on the streets at any given time, how much stock you need to keep to handle peaks, service rural areas etc etc. There's so much that need to be in place for it to be smooth and if things start falling apart, the entire driving nation grinds to a halt. If it was something you did once a year when the high density, short life battery was worn out, perhaps. But swapping three times in a day when you are driving home for Christmas? You'd just bury them underground (the flywheels), surrounded in concrete. Probably have some kind of kinetic absorption foam or goo that fills the chamber if there's a catastrophic failure. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it's an idea.
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Jan 27, 2015 19:54
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Ola posted:Sounds amazing. About the screen, does it dim dark enough to not interfere with your night vision? Sorry to derail, but if your wiper fluid comes in rectangular jugs similar to this:  Tip it sideways (like with the label facing up) and pour. You practically don't need a funnel and you have much more control. Works with engine oil too.
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Mar 25, 2015 21:21
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MrOnBicycle posted:IF everything goes to plan I won't be buying a car until earliest ~2020, which is pretty exciting if the predictions that batteries will be at @ $100 / kWh or better by then. If I lived in the countryside with my own garage, the charging would be a piece of cake as you can get up to 32A charging installed. Hopefully by then there are way more chargers in my city. Pretty hard to charge if I have to rely on neighbourhood parking though where you don't have a fixed parking place though. Same here, will be keeping the Prius and Forester (yes, I am a stereotype, and I don't even live in the PNW (yet)) while we live in greater Toronto. Once we move out west in a couple of years and get settled in, so probably about 4 years, a used Leaf or Model 3 or some kind of EV, maybe even new, is the way to go. By then I expect there will be a much more mature marketplace. I'd love to go full EV now, but budgets and renting mean I can't really commit to it (although I could charge at work, I wouldn't want to have to rely on it exclusively).
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Jun 20, 2015 19:14
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silence_kit posted:Why are you guys going through the trouble of setting the charging timer? Isn't the electricity cost of an electric car only something like a couple bucks per charge? Well, it's a bit like waiting for Wednesday for gas to drop 10c/liter before filling up, or avoiding filling up at highway service stations. Even people who use premium or drive luxury cars do that.
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Jul 10, 2015 16:36
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wilfredmerriweathr posted:I would think that, given the choice of a) making an EV just reverse the electric motor itself, which probably requires no additional parts and b) using an actual reverse gear (with all the added moving parts that brings) the solution is obvious. I'm not sure that it would be possible to "damage" an electric motor by reversing it while its still moving forward, since it's just making a magnetic field do the work. Motor/generators are funny. There's a lot of stuff going on under the hood, so to speak, that to the layman just looks like "no moving parts!  ". But there's a whole poo poo load of moving electrons! And boy howdy are they moving, and they don't much like being told to move the other way. Now you can totally design a system to take that into consideration, and it might be a more robust solution than just slapping on a reverse gear, but if you think stopping an electric motor spinning one way and start spinning the other way is a non-event, a lot of expensive engineering has gone into making it so. If it helps, think of a reciprocating engine, and ask yourself why you can't just vary the timing to start spinning crankshaft in the opposite direction instead of having a reverse gear. Same basic problem to overcome; what the gently caress to do with all that energy. It's just *easier* to deal with the physics with electromagnetism.
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Jul 24, 2015 02:21
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MattD1zzl3 posted:My deep, dark greatest fear is being grabbed and maimed/killed by industrial machinery. I go out of my way not to be around it. Im not happy with it showing up at every gas station https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtCitiQMnIA This doesn't have music because licensing I guess, so here's a dailymotion link for the same thing in all its glory. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg52f_the-chemical-brothers-believe_music Finger Prince fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Aug 7, 2015 |
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Aug 7, 2015 04:07
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Ola posted:Not only that, the bulk of the cost with the 80s car is labor, for the battery replacement most of the cost is parts - so you can save a lot of money DIYing the 80s car, but only save a tiny bit DIYing the battery change. In both cases the cost will be several times higher than the purchase price before the repair and probably noticeably higher than the market value after the repair - which is often the case with old cars. I wonder if there will be a market for 3rd party reconditioned batteries. Take in a worn out pack, spend some sum in consumables and labor, get a fresh pack back for less than a brand new one. There's already a market for 3rd party reconditioned/new, higher capacity batteries for Priuses, so I'm sure that market will grow and mature for all EVs as time goes by.
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Aug 23, 2015 20:35
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Godholio posted:Now pretend you're trying to entice the demographic that includes men in their 40s with 3-5 kids and hates everything about their lives. "Yes, I'd like to sit in a booth for half an hour twice a day with these screaming nitwits and my 300 lb wife who spends my paycheck on perfume that smells like roadkill's rear end and McDonalds instead of the peace and quiet of standing at the gas pump fighting the urge to just spark a lighter and call it good." All this talk about lounges and eateries and stuff on the highway where you can pull in and use the toilet, get a coffee, they're relatively clean and decent.... These things already exist? At least in Ontario, along the 401. And here's the thing about the guy you're describing. Oh sure, he's probably out there, maybe only existing in your mind if you were in that position. Thing is, you go in these places for a piss and a snack or a coffee, they're teeming with happy dads and their ill behaved children. The pod people? They loove being pod people, and they travel in pods, and they all get out of their people movers and get their Timmie's and their A&W, Starbucks if they're feeling fancy, and have a good old family meal on their family road trip. If anything, there wouldn't be anywhere near enough charging capacity at highway rest stops if even a quarter of them drove EVs.
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Sep 10, 2015 07:43
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Boten Anna posted:Priuses are weirdly roomy, like leafs are pretty decently sized and there's not much my wife's Matrix can do that my Leaf can't cargo-wise, but Priuses are made of the same poo poo the Tardis is I think. If only they were, I might be able to get some of the time I spend communing in mine back.
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Sep 21, 2015 08:52
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Cockmaster posted:http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-speeds-up-electric-car-work-1442857105 White plastic exterior with a softly glowing logo? (brushed metal finish available on the Pro trim level)
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Sep 25, 2015 03:46
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Godholio posted:Will they go the phone route and refine 2-3 year old hardware? Or the computer route and just use the same hardware as everyone else but charge 3x the price? After 2 years of ownership, they push a software update to the car and now every time you load the maps app, it crashes. Into a bridge abutment.
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Sep 25, 2015 05:11
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You have to buy an aftermarket clear plastic film to apply to the windscreen to protect from scratches and getting smashed by a rock. They also sell a variety of silicon rubber surrounds you can put over the car to protect it in parking lots.
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Sep 25, 2015 11:44
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It takes until the 6th generation before they make a car bigger than a Smart.
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Sep 25, 2015 11:46
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Ribsauce posted:Has anyone used something like swapalease? I had never heard of it before today and I am interested in the concept. I want to get a Volt, but I am afraid to buy the current ones because the 2017 might make enormous leaps. I really wish I could "rent a Volt" for a year. A guy had one on craigslist to take over the lease but his lease was like 349 a month but I liked the idea. Anyway, I found swapalease and saw this I've looked into similar services. My feeling is any financially advantageous deal available through them is likely to be snapped up by someone in the trade well before you get a sniff of it. What's left is everyone who put zero down in the first place and boned every which way elsewhere in the contract, making the deals available no better and sometimes worse than just simply buying or leasing a similar car through conventional channels.
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Sep 26, 2015 21:36
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Ribsauce posted:What do you mean financially advantageous snapped up by someone in the trade? What would they do with it? Are you talking about buying the vehicle at the end? If someone puts 5000 down on a lease, and finds themselves needing to get out of the lease, and is putting up a deal that is just taking over their payments with no cash either way, that's a net gain for the new keeper. Those sorts of deals don't stick around, and there's probably a whole side business of people scouring these sites looking for deals like that. What you end up with is someone who put 0 down at signing and the dealer coming out on top off the back end. The payments on those leases are going to be at least as high as if you just walked into a dealer with 0 down yourself and signed the same lease, and in a lot of cases you can do better just buying a similar off lease model "certified pre-owned" off the same dealer's lot.
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Sep 26, 2015 22:03
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Ribsauce posted:If the lease has a $175 for 15 months (~1000 miles a month left too), what terms could I not know where the dealer comes out on top at the end? It seems like the payment and length is established so I don't understand what could happen to screw me over. I apologize if I am missing something simple. I have no intention of buying it at the end. I just want something for a year-18 months. Say the guy on leasebusters put 0 down, pays 400/mo, has 18 months remaining in a 4 year lease. Never mind what the buyout is, you don't care either way, but suffice it to say that is the part that is geared to the dealer's favour. You could, and I'm generalizing here based on my own research when shopping for a car last year, buy the same 2 year old car off the dealer's lot for 15000. So great, you get to pay only 7200 - say 7500 to make the math easy - for a car selling for twice that. But if you'd just bought the one for 15k from the dealer, shovelled 400/mo into it for 18 months, then sold it on you pretty much always end up at least a few thousand up on the deal. These numbers are totally fabricated and might not be precisely realistic, but if you dig into the finances on all those deals on leasebusters etc., all you realize is "wow, all these deals are so bad", to the point where even just taking them over doesn't make them improve them. Of course there are always exceptions, and if taking over a lease makes sense for your circumstances, by all means. But really do the research to find the few deals on there slightly better than the vast majority.
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Sep 27, 2015 02:16
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Can these systems use their machine vision to tell what road they're on and use that for navigation? Or cross reference what they see with what they're supposed to see, and if it doesn't match, to find a match? I ask because right now Waze can't tell the difference between driving on a raised highway and driving on a surface street that runs underneath it, and GPS isn't lane-accurate enough to differentiate between parallel adjacent roads going the same direction.
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Oct 28, 2015 13:31
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Ranter posted:How does Elon justify customers paying $2,500 for enabling a feature in software? Referring to Autopilot. $2,500 add-on during purchase, or $3,000 to enable after delivery. It's not some foreign concept business model. At least they aren't forcing you to spend $10k on an options package you want nothing else from in order to get it, which is a major annoyance with every other manufacturer. What would be interesting to see is if they pursue a subscription model like software companies have done, so that instead of an upfront fee, you pay as long as you're using it and can cancel your Autopilot subscription any time. And when you trade in for a new model, your software subscription follows you.
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Oct 28, 2015 23:45
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Kind of off topic, but I saw a few ads during football last week about some kid all proud that he landed a programming job with GE and will be doing all kinds of cool poo poo, and none of his friends get it and his one friend is all "whatevs, I got a job for the people that make that app that puts fruit on pets heads". I guess GE is hurting for programmers, and/or Kids These Days are too busy working on stupid mobile apps in the hopes of get-rich-quick instead of getting a Real Job with a proper company? I dunno, I mean it was an ad for employment at GE, but the message was really weird.
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Nov 20, 2015 23:07
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Sagebrush posted:Yeah. The Prius is a well-made car, but a lot of the reason it so massively outsold the other hybrids on the market is because it was the first one to look like a weird little space pod so you could show off your eco-consciousness to your neighbors. I'm not disagreeing that that is a big factor, but what it doesn't take into account is the practicality of both cars. The civic is extremely hampered by the compromised trunk space and lack of split fold seating. It simply would not work as a family car, whereas that is precisely what the Prius is designed for. So looks aside, you get better fuel economy and more useful space for about the same money with a Prius.
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Dec 2, 2015 22:51
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Subjunctive posted:My S feels like it has a lot of storage between trunk, trunk compartment, and frunk. More than my previous Kia that's for sure! Putting a bike in the back is easy. Well, where are you supposed to fit your stack of 4x8' sheets of plywood for one? And try fitting a hay bale, calf, and a pallet of oil drums along with your 4 kids and 2 muddy dogs in the back.
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Jan 8, 2016 21:50
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Just seen a bit on the news that Ontario is increasing incentives for new EVs. Bonuses for 5 seats, higher range/capacity. Still too expensive. 
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Feb 11, 2016 02:07
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Remote Chauffeur® "now you don't even have to see the help" Finger Prince fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Feb 13, 2016 |
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Feb 13, 2016 16:14
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Wouldn't it be great if Tesla cracked the whole autonomous driving thing, and all the other engineers working on it for other companies are like "how the hell did they do it? We're years away", and it gets revealed that they actually have a high speed ultra low latency private network connected to a driver sweatshop in Asia somewhere and it's actually humans doing the auto piloting.
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Feb 13, 2016 16:30
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