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Fame Douglas posted:Sorry, didn't realize I'm only allowed to post an opinion on yet another huge truck that conforms to yours. Seems like most Americans need to haul lumber and steel constantly, and require pickup trucks to do this! I wonder how the rest of the world manages. the European equivalent of a cheap-rear end fleet vehicle optioned Silverado is a van, like a Mercedes Sprinter or a Ford Transit. they come in any color as long as they are white, and they all have a 2.something liter diesel that is completely unremarkable in every way. for contractors, gardeners, plumbers, electricians, job sites, etc. mostly full of tools. you couldn't drive the bigger American pickups on a normal license here anyway (too heavy, over 3.5 metric tons loaded) and if you have a truck license you might as well get an actual truck. yes I know the question was rhetorical. can I have fries with that please? TheFluff fucked around with this message at 01:06 on May 27, 2021 |
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May 27, 2021 01:03
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GoutPatrol posted:How much of this is related to styles, your mentioned license requirements, or "acceptability"? Like in Asia, you would rarely see the big trucks or the vans, but instead you have little kei or key-style trucks. Every region has their "acceptable" style of worker automobile. In Europe I'm pretty sure a lot of this is driven by regulatory controls. You know how European big rigs are stub-nosed with no hood at all, like the entire front of the tractor is just vertical? That's because there are EU-wide restrictions on overall vehicle lengths, so they design the tractors to get the most cargo space in the available length. The attractiveness of a pickup is that it's a do-everything vehicle that you don't need a commercial license for, but in Europe you do need a special license and gas prices are much higher, so you don't want to drive around in something with a comically huge engine all the time either. Restrictions on what you can tow are much stricter too. I'm also pretty sure sedans and coupes sell a lot worse here than in the US, while hatchbacks and wagons are correspondingly more attractive - people do want that trunk space, especially if the family only has one car. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 10:49 on May 27, 2021 |
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May 27, 2021 10:44
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Nitrousoxide posted:I'd say our electrical system is pretty bad, but it being 110-120 at for residential and (light) commercial use is not one of them. Around here we almost always have 400V three-phase to residential breaker panels, that's just how the distribution works (except in really old buildings that haven't had their electrical panels touched since the stone age).  You don't always have it at your apartment's panel if you live in a multi-unit building, but it's not uncommon either. Electric stoves that run on 400V three-phase are common. 50-60A single phase circuits weird me out.
TheFluff fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Jun 17, 2021 |
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Jun 17, 2021 17:11
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knox_harrington posted:You guys are going to love the Plug And Socket Museum website Aw, they don't have the SEMKO 17 plug  If you wanna talk lovely plugs, this one's gotta rank pretty high up. It's a Swedish design that has unclear origins but has been in use since at least the 1930's. Any sale or installation of these has been prohibited by law since the early 1990's but you still see them every once in a while, and using them isn't illegal. It's for 240-400V two- or three-phase (or 380V back in the day), but was most commonly used for three-phase installations, frequently outdoors (was commonly seen on exterior walls on farmhouses, for example). Variants of it existed that could handle up to 200A 380V three-phase, which is pretty alarming in and of itself. This is an ASEA (now ABB) catalog page from the 1960's:  Contraptions such as this one also existed, in machine shops and the like:  What's so bad about it, you might ask? Well, let's have a look inside:  This is a female connector. If you look carefully you'll see that there are indeed five wires, as is proper for modern three-phase, but the green wire is hooked up to the body of the outlet, and therein lies the rub. The bodies of both the outlet and the plug are metal, and what they did was connect protective grounding through the body of the connectors. If the connector is undamaged this is not a problem, but as these things age, the weather sealing around the cable (where it passes through the metal body) usually starts leaking, moisture gets in (remember these were frequently installed outdoors) and the whole thing starts corroding, and then you usually lose the protective grounding connection (there's usually a small spring-loaded latch that's supposed to make sure there's a good connection but in older plugs the spring wasn't always stainless, so it corrodes too and the latch stops working). That's bad enough, but the real killer is that it's relatively common that these get damaged in such a way that the body of the plug becomes conductive, and if you touch that your muscles lock up, you can't let go and it's goodnight. These things kill people on a somewhat regular basis even to this day. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jun 17, 2021 |
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Jun 17, 2021 23:04
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taqueso posted:11kw seems like it's going to be the max you can get from a typical receptacle that wasn't put in for EVs or a machine shop. That's 50amps @ 220v. Around here the smallest/cheapest grid hookup you can get for a single family home is about 11kW, supplied as a 16A main breaker on 400V three-phase. There are a bunch of increments above this (20, 25, 35, 50 and 63A) too though which you'd need if you actually wanted to use 11kW to charge your car. Upsizing the main breaker is usually sorta expensive though, both in installation and operation (your grid fee depends on the size of the breaker).
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Sep 9, 2021 10:06
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Nfcknblvbl posted:LFP batteries are fairly common in China, and they're incredibly stable. Only downsides are lower capacity and poorer performance in the cold. They don't even have cobalt in them! China-made Teslas have LFP batteries (made by CATL I believe). It's probably the way forward in general too; it's a bit less energy dense than NCA or NMC, but it's one heck of a lot less volatile (doesn't suffer from thermal runaway and doesn't decompose under heat), avoids the expensive and controversial cobalt, and ages better than most other Li-Ion chemistries. Tesla's newer cells all seem to be vapourware too.
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Sep 23, 2021 21:37
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Eyes Only posted:I thought tesla showing it in wh/mi was a stupid move, but kwh/100km is somehow even more obnoxious. Miles or km per kwh seems like it'd be the intuitive way of showing this but apparently EV manufacturers disagree. It's intuitive and familiar in Europe, where the "distance per unit energy" measurement is very rarely used. Energy consumption is always measured as unit of energy per unit of useful work you get for that energy. There's fuel consumption per distance of course, but also fuel consumption per hour for things like boat and aircraft engines as well as for diesel gensets. Household appliances like laundry machines and dishwashers are always labeled with energy consumption per cycle and typical consumption per annum, and so on. When you buy a home the real estate agent usually provides an estimate for energy consumption per annum as well. I agree that the 100km distance is rather arbitrary, but being consistent with the established measurement for ICE fuel consumption is good because it makes direct fuel cost comparisons easier (just multiply by the cost of gas and the cost of electricity respectively and there you go). Russian Bear posted:Can't wait for the non american folks to chime in to say why /100km is the better way to measure something. It's not If you want to compare energy costs, then energy consumption (or I guess energy intensity if you want to be pedantic) is the appropriate metric to use. It's not a "better" metric, it's a question of what you're trying to use it for. For the purposes of consumer education though, familiarity is arguably more important than technical correctness, which is why we get things like MPGe. It's a very handwavy unit but I'd say it definitely helps consumers make better decisions. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Jun 22, 2022 |
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Jun 22, 2022 12:32
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Ola posted:What's an automotive rated LCD anyway? One that handles the tough environment of sunlight and fresh air that gaming LCDs aren't exposed to? It needs very high heat tolerance. The center stack of an ordinary car can get to +80°C in the sun on a hot day. The car is a greenhouse and a turned-off LCD is effectively black so it absorbs a ton of solar radiation. High temperatures degrade most electronic components eventually, "automotive grade" just means it takes longer. Here's a long article about it if you want a lot of links to research papers on automotive engineering. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Jul 1, 2022 |
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Jul 1, 2022 00:33
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The US still has over 40% more fatalities per VMT than Australia, Canada and most EU countries though, so that argument isn't exactly a slam dunk.
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Aug 22, 2022 17:47
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Indiana_Krom posted:Tesla should have really pushed to make their connector the standard in North America, their connector is so much better than CCS in basically every way. They should have made it free to use with no major restrictions other than some quality control inspections/certification and requiring that it at least be no more complicated to activate/use than a pay-at-the-pump gas station. I'd think there's a reason literally everybody else uses separate pins for AC and DC charge current. The IEC type 2 connector used in Europe does allow using two of the pins for DC instead of AC, but only Tesla actually implements that, everyone else went with CCS. Since the Tesla connector uses the same two pins for both DC and AC, it relies on the car having a pair of very high current relays to connect to either the onboard AC charger or directly to the battery, and I can definitely see why that isn't very popular; cost and complexity just for one thing.
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Sep 26, 2022 19:13
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Elviscat posted:Sitting around may have contributed, but I don't think batteries really do that without an internal structural defect. The hydrogen is only really dangerous if the battery is mounted in an enclosed compartment, so I wouldn't worry too much about that, but since the cause of the venting is not known it's probably not a good idea to try to use the battery (by driving the car) until you know why it's venting.
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Oct 29, 2022 19:18
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e: no, that was a stupid and immature response
TheFluff fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Oct 30, 2022 |
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Oct 30, 2022 20:01
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I saw a Volkswagen ID Buzz today, the cargo version, and it made me kinda double-take. It really stands out from all the other nondescript cargo vans all the tradespeople drive around here - it really is reminiscent of an old VW bus in some way. In this case it looks like a local rock drilling contractor got themselves a new work vehicle, judging by the logo on the side. Business must be booming, that thing can't be cheap.
TheFluff fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Aug 10, 2023 |
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Aug 10, 2023 23:19
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Kia Soul Enthusias posted:Wait are the EX30 trim levels out? Is this for the U.S.? At least in Sweden you can configure and order directly from Volvo's website (Swedish, may not be available outside the country). The base trim level does have ACC with lanekeeping and all the automatic driver assist safety features (Volvo doesn't usually mess around with that stuff). Notable features that's restricted to the top trim is Park Pilot Assist (as SlowBloke mentioned) and the 22 kW onboard charger (two lower trim levels are 11 kW). The extended range package is available at the lowest trim level but for the dual motors you need either one of the two upper trims. If I'm reading this right though the base trim doesn't come with any USB ports?! That'd be some amazing nickel-and-diming nonsense  One thing I don't get is that the Extended Range package claims to have lower energy consumption per 100 km than the base single motor offering. How is that possible? More batteries must make it heavier. Does it get more efficient motors or better aerodynamics or something? TheFluff fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 11:46
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In cold climates what you want is district heating, ideally with cogeneration, that is you use the waste heat from power plants to heat water that in turn heats buildings. Even without cogeneration, district heating is generally the best option since heat generation benefits from economies of scale and one huge furnace with a very sophisticated exhaust gas management system is a lot less polluting than a ton of small furnaces with probably no exhaust gas management at all. Also, with district heating you can swap out the fuel source without having to rip out the infrastructure of an entire city in the process. There are also opportunities for recycling waste heat from industrial processes and facilities like data centers. It's pretty neat! District cooling is also a thing in some places; it's not that common yet but I think it's a growing market. My favorite cogeneration plant is Ĺgesta, a small nuclear reactor for district heating, power generation and a side of weapons grade plutonium production built inside of a mountain only a few kilometers from a Stockholm suburb in the early 1960's (there's a different take on acceptable risks if I ever saw one). It closed in 1974 and then sat around for decades more or less untouched while nobody could agree on what to do with it. I had the great fortune to visit a few years ago before the final teardown started.  Main reactor vessel barograph, final roll of paper still intact with the words "STOP 1974-06-02" written in pencil. Left side (marked "atö") measures pressure in atmospheres, right side measures a volume but I'm not sure what. More pictures here. Sorry, just had to nerd out a bit! TheFluff fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 12, 2023 23:43
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Saukkis posted:The problem with district heating is that the network is so expensive. Several apartment buildings in Helsinki region have switched from district to ground source heat pumps to reduce heating costs. District heating was pretty obvious choice when you were using fossil fuel electrical plants in the city, they were a free source of heat, just install pipes. But what do you use as a source when you get rid of fossil fuels. Nuclear would be obvious alternative, but we are far from ready to install them at practical distance from district heating networks. Bio fuel could replace fossil, but the expense and transport inefficiencies are an obstacle. Large scale heat pumps are probably the best options and they can get the heat from multiple sources, sea, data centers, waste water treatment plants. But I'm doubtful about the efficiency benefit between house or building scale heat pump versus an industrial heat pump heating and pressurizing water above boiling point, then transporting it through tens of kilometers of underground piping. Yeah, the infrastructure is expensive, but I think there's a reasonable return on investment if you take climate effects into account. As far as fuels go, the answer is waste, as in you burn residential waste. There's a new plant in Copenhagen that does this extremely cleanly, I hear, but it's fairly common in Scandinavia in general (although it's often supplemented with biofuels, mostly wood pellets). I genuinely don't know about efficiencies of scale for heat pump facilities, but I do know that at least here in Stockholm we have what's claimed to be the world's largest heat pump facility (225 MW worth of heat pumps), and yep, it uses treated waste water as its heat source. It's been around since the 1980's and the cold side of the circuit is used too, for district cooling. Speaking of infrastructure though I know EV charging and residential solar is already starting to be a big challenge for the last-mile parts of the grid, so district heating is beneficial in that regard because it takes some load off the grid. By the way, for district heating you generally want lower temperatures in the distribution circuits because then you get lower heat losses (less heat leaks into the environment). The Stockholm system is the only one I'm familiar with and its hot water is distributed at 68°C (return temperature as low as you can make it, if it's below 40°C or so you get a cost reduction; if it's above 50°C you get a cost penalty because you're not using the heat delivered). TheFluff fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 02:55
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fondue posted:I have had three relatives die of COVID and despite this my stupid cousin and his wife (whom both have survived loving brain cancer) refused to mask up but they're both huge conservatives. So in short, go gently caress yourself.  ") might've been read?Like, sure, elevated levels of nitrogen dioxide and other combustion byproducts in a residential indoor environment aren't anywhere near covid level dangerous, but they undeniably have adverse health effects in the long term. You can mitigate the problem with improved ventilation, but it's not going to go away entirely. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 00:33
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Failson posted:Now I won't be satisfied until there's a car with an entire capsule hotel inside. Cars are falling behind. ÖBB (Austrian state railways) has some new couchette sleepers that are basically capsule hotels on a train, it's pretty neat... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnB_vSVkX3k&t=246s
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Nov 17, 2023 15:51
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Saukkis posted:In Finland insurance is always only for the car, so my assumption is uninsured car would get fined the first time they drive by a plate scanning police. In Sweden it's enforced automatically; there's a registry tied to the license plate (or title, I guess, in US terms) and the insurance companies report insurance status to that registry. If you don't buy insurance yourself you're automatically signed up for a really expensive government policy that covers only the mandatory bits (damage to third parties, mostly). Once you've purchased insurance you can't cancel it either. You can change insurance companies, but if you want to cancel it the insurance company will check the license plate registry and if you're still the owner and the plate is active you can't legally cancel the insurance. There are some special regulations about which companies are allowed to sell car insurance and how they sell it too; there's a bunch of rules in place to ensure everyone can get coverage at a reasonable rate.
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Nov 18, 2023 12:25
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Nidhg00670000 posted:Volvo Cars owns I think 49.5% of Polestar, the second biggest owner is PSD Investment Ltd (UK), owned by Li Shufu, owner and founder of Geely. Geely owns 82% of Volvo Cars. They announced a couple weeks ago that they'll also start making the EX30 in Belgium (Ghent) from 2025. Still not Sweden though!
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Nov 22, 2023 01:56
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Evil SpongeBob posted:Looks like VW is bringing back their hippie van, full electric. There were a couple there. The cargo version of this is already starting to become a popular work vehicle in Europe. I've seen more than a few. There's a local drilling contractor of some description that has one parked in my neighborhood - dark blue, cargo compartment in the back so no windows, ugly winter wheels with no fancy rims at all, company logo on the side. I'd expect all sorts of construction industry specialist contractors to be all over these (people like the aforementioned drilling specialist, various engineers and surveyors, blasting specialists, welders, etc). It's a very common work van form factor and I'd expect the range to be perfectly fine for any city work. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 15:00
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fuckin' tall people man, got all the odds stacked in their favor and yet constantly complaining about how they "don't fit". babies the lot of them. pay for a larger vehicle/bigger house/higher class airplane seat with all the money you make from being tall and deal with it
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Dec 15, 2023 21:29
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Who cares which standard gets used, as long as everyone agrees to use that one standard.
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Dec 16, 2023 14:49
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There's been some experiments with electrified roads in various places in Europe yeah. Here in Sweden there was a two kilometer highway test track with overhead power lines and truck-mounted pantographs active between 2016 and 2020. It was a very small scale tech demonstrator that was supposed to be followed up with a much more ambitious and more realistic pilot project on a 20 km stretch of highway with construction starting this year, but that project was put on indefinite hold in late 2023. There was a whole bunch of concepts the Transport Administration wanted to do in a full scale realistic environment. Primarily they wanted to try out some different power delivery systems - overhead power lines, two different types of road surface rails, and some inductive nonsense - but they also wanted to work out things like debiting and access control solutions. The plans were at a fairly advanced stage, they'd secured access to land for the substations and their service roads, done all the environmental reviews and presented plans to local councils etc, they had complete engineering plans ready to go and budget allocated, but then all the construction bids turned out to be way more expensive than budgeted so the project was put on hold for the time being. I don't know what's going to happen to it now. It was intended to be permanent though, not just a demonstrator that would be torn down after the study was complete. There's a project plan PDF here if someone happens to be interested, but it's in Swedish, of course. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Feb 19, 2024 |
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Feb 19, 2024 15:13
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For things with rubber tires you need two pantographs or trolley poles (trains use the rails as the neutral conductor). Seems hard to fit on a bike
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Feb 19, 2024 16:04
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The truuuuuggghhhs are starting to show their ugly faces in Europe as well. F-250 vs Renault Mégane, idk, semi-wagon I guess we call it here? More thread relevant, you might not like it but this is the ideal work vehicle:  VW ID Buzz, cargo variant with ugly winter wheels. Belongs to some drilling contractor it seems. TheFluff fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Feb 27, 2024 |
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Feb 27, 2024 14:26
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Starting in 2026, European crash tester Euro NCAP will deduct points for cars that don't have physical controls for certain functions:https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/03/carmakers-must-bring-back-buttons-to-get-good-safety-scores-in-europe/ posted:"The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes," said Matthew Avery, Euro NCAP's director of strategic development.
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Mar 5, 2024 12:08
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Battery tech stuff: apparently you can just buy sodium ion 18650's on Aliexpress now? Feels like they've been "coming soon" for years now but finally it's an actual product. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6zcI1GrkK4 Energy density seems on par with LFP/LiFePO4. The voltage range is bigger than any lithium chemistry which might be inconvenient in some applications but maybe not in EV's? The big advantages are no conflict minerals or rare earth metals at all and a lot more stable and less fire prone than lithium. You can also charge them down to -10C which is better than what LFP can do, and maybe they'll survive more charge cycles? Right now they're expensive but hopefully within a few years we'll see this scaled up.
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Mar 24, 2024 22:10
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Yeah what Elviscat said. They're not a drop-in replacement for lithium cells, primarily because of the weird voltage curve. An LFP cell usually has a safe voltage range of 2.5V to 3.65V, but the voltage curve has "cliffs" on both ends so something like 90-95% of the useful capacity of the battery is in the 3.0-3.5V range or so. For a lot of non-EV applications what you want is a nominal 12, 24, 36 or 48 V battery, and LFP can easily do this. For example, if you hook up 4 LFP cells in series you get a battery with a voltage range of 10.0-14.6V which is compatible with most nominal 12V stuff (especially automotive things which are designed for lead-acid batteries). You can also trim avoid using the extremes of the voltage curve without losing much capacity, if you need a smaller voltage swing. Sodium ion batteries on the other hand have a mostly linear voltage curve and if you want to get the full capacity of the battery you need to use a voltage range of like 2.0 to 4.0V. Apparently you can discharge these things almost down to 0 without any ill effects but it's mostly pointless because there's practically no capacity below 2V. Either way a battery that doubles is voltage from empty to full is kind of impractical in many applications and you might need a voltage regulator to deal with it. It might be a year or three before we're seeing large scale applications in the wild.
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Mar 25, 2024 03:35
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Oh so there are cheap ones already, that's a good sign!
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Mar 26, 2024 22:52
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dissss posted:Their export models are fine - they put some effort into attaining 5 star NCAP ratings It seems pretty well established that most car manufacturers are "teaching to the test" so to speak; they do what's required to get a good crash score for a particular market and absolutely nothing else. Dan Luu had an article about this a couple of years ago that I thought was pretty interesting. quote:When the driver-side small overlap test was added in 2012, most manufacturers modified their vehicles to improve driver-side small overlap test scores. However, until the IIHS added a passenger-side small overlap test in 2018, most manufacturers skimped on the passenger side. When the new test was added, they beefed up passenger safety as well. To be fair to car manufacturers, some of them got the hint about small overlap crashes when the driver-side test was added in 2012 and did not need to make further modifications to score well on the passenger-side test, including Mercedes, BMW, and Tesla (and arguably a couple of others, but the data is thinner in the other cases; Volvo didn’t need a hint). It goes into a lot more detail; I found it to be worth reading. The conclusion is pretty much that Volvo is in a class of its own when it comes to safety culture, but the article is from 2020 and mostly relies on pretty old data and I don't know to what extent it's still true. e: here's a comparison of a 2015 Nissan NP300 made for the European market (grey) vs a 2019 Nissan NP300 made for the African market (white): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL_2MdSTM7g TheFluff fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 22:37
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