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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 30 2017, @03:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-the-fill-ups-take-a-while dept.

Aston Martin is the latest car maker to announce it's going to move to an all-hybrid lineup. CEO Andy Palmer has told the Financial Times that "We will be 100 per cent hybrid by the middle of the 2020s." Palmer also told the FT that he expects about 25 percent of Aston Martin sales will be EVs by 2030. A similarly bold announcement was made by Volvo earlier this summer; however, in this case Aston Martin will continue to sell non-hybrid versions of its cars as an option.

The first all-electric Aston Martin will be the RapidE, a sleek four-seater due in 2019. But that will be a limited-run model, with only 115 planned. There's also the hybrid Valkyrie hypercar in the works, an F1 car for the road that's being designed by Aston Martin in conjunction with Red Bull Racing's Adrian Newey. But there will be more mainstream (if such a word can apply) hybrid and battery EV Aston Martins coming, too. Like Volvo, some of these will just be 48V mild hybrids.

Guess it's embarassing when your gas-powered supercar gets left in the dust by an EV.


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  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:03PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @04:03PM (#561546)

    Firstly, good job for keeping your car going; that deserves respect.

    Yet, the truth of that matter is that cars have improved in safety and efficiency over those 20 years; not only are you missing out on those improvements (possibly to the detriment of others), but you're also not helping to pay for those advancements.

    Listen, I don't mind that you have an old car, and I don't think anyone should be forced to buy new stuff. However, most people (and society at large) would benefit from being able to "recycle" their old cars—it would be great if the car culture were such that you expect to swap out your current car for a new/newish car every 2 years, at only a marginal cost, rather than paying for regular maintenance; the old car could be salvaged for parts for newish cars, etc.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:35PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @05:35PM (#561598)

    Yet, the truth of that matter is that cars have improved in safety and efficiency over those 20 years; not only are you missing out on those improvements (possibly to the detriment of others), but you're also not helping to pay for those advancements.

    But 20 years of developments usually contains some pretty bothersome misfeatures as well; at one point, it was early ABS*, more recently there's the triumph of the automatic transmission**, and the last 20 years definitely includes major privacy and security risks. I'm happy to be "not helping to pay for" OnStar and the like.

    * I know auto hipsters like to moan about how expert drivers (and therefore every auto hipster ever) can brake 5% shorter than a typical ABS, therefore they hurt performance. But many of the early ones were really very bad, though I think all the last 20 years' worth are actually quite good.

    ** Again, auto hipsters get caught up in the mechanical details of dogs and synchros vs planetary gears and band brakes, which leads to some hilarious statements when they don't realize some automatics are geared like manuals, with the dog clutches controlled by computer. But the fundamental problem with automatic transmissions is a matter of user interface -- there's very limited ability to handle driver decisions like "I'm preparing to pass this semi, get ready to deliver maximum acceleration from 45mph" or "This hill gets steep half-way, so select a gear now to handle the whole thing"; they're always stuck reacting. Since I'm not in the habit of working on my own transmissions, I have no preference for the internals, but I really do want some option to select a particular gear on demand, and this is missing in far too many cars nowadays. It wouldn't cost much in the base model to make a tiptronic-like interface available as an option to almost any vehicle, but few vehicles have such options.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @10:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @10:04PM (#561775)

      > 20 years of developments usually contains some pretty bothersome misfeatures as well

      Add to the list the 1st generation airbags which ended about 2000, +/- several years for model changeovers. The first gen bags were high powered, sized to restrain a large, heavy person. If you are smaller, or not exactly "in position", they have a good chance of hurting you.

      More recent bags are either lower powered, or have two charges that will fire as needed depending on the weight on the seat. Often there are two different charges, giving option of one or the other, or both together--dealing with a wider range of body weights.

      My 1992 Corolla didn't have an airbag and I held off switching until I could get a car with the 2nd gen system, my next car was a 2001 Saturn L-series (bought used in 2004).
       

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:38PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:38PM (#561754)

    > However, most people (and society at large) would benefit from being able to "recycle" their old cars—it would be great if the car culture were such that you expect to
    > swap out your current car for a new/newish car every 2 years, at only a marginal cost, rather than paying for regular maintenance

    Society wouldn't benefit from having most people drive new cars. The car sellers would be happy, but discarding a product that can operate properly for twenty years every two years is silly and mindbogglingly wasteful (like changing your phone every year).

    People who want to "recycle" their newish car by selling it and getting a new one. Their cost isn't maintenance, it's the high depreciation of the early years. Those cars couldn't get stripped for parts, as it's not economical, and minor variations in features would prevent efficient reuse for new cars.
    Meanwhile, others (like me) get to buy newish used cars with the high reliability of new without the hassle of really-old. (then I drive them for 15 years, until maintenance becomes too painful).

    You might want to learn about the advanced concept of "lease" applied to cars.