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I decided a few years ago that I was sick of standing in the snow at a gas station waiting for the person inside the building to finish selling that lottery ticket and turn the pump on so I can stand there some more babysitting it while it fills up and I freeze. The answer, of course, was to buy a car that didn't need gasoline, one I could plug into the house and go inside where it's warm.
I'm not a rich man, I'm a pensioner who is still paying a mortgage, so I looked for an affordable EV. Used ones are almost nonexistent, and I found out why when I finally bought one: it has a ten year warranty. They haven't been making them much longer than that.
I swore off new cars decades ago when my month old VW stranded me ninety miles from home with a bad alternator, but if you want an EV, new is your only choice. I kept seeing the Chevy Bolt advertised, but could never find one for sale at all. Then I found that they had stopped making them two years earlier.
Why? Well, battery problems, they claimed. Why just the not so expensive one, $30,000? GM is still selling electric Cadillacs and Corvettes, why no cheap cars?
I discovered after buying an EV that the only two advantages of a piston car to an electric one are the lack of infrastructure for long trips, and the high purchase price of the vehicle. Why high? Because only their flagship autos have electric motors, the ones that formerly had V8s.
My car cost $40,000. It's absolutely the nicest, roomiest (except for the minivans) car I ever owned. My Dad had a Checker when I was about ten, they no longer make them. They were designed for taxicabs and I've never seen more back seat leg room than in one. My new Hyundai has more leg room except Dad's Checker than any other car I've ever seen, and although the '74 LeMans was a much bigger car, my new EV is much roomier. It's a lot roomier than the '02 Concorde that was the same size as my new car on the outside. Why aren't the auto companies advertising how roomy EVs are? I never realized how much space engines, transmissions, and gas tanks take up.
I started trying to buy one when I realized that you don't have to babysit them when you're charging. I didn't want to stand there in the snow filling a gas tank, but judging from most Facebook comments I've seen, I must be the only one who realized that. People seem to think you have to stand there when they charge. Why aren't they advertising this benefit?
Why aren't they telling you that your car can now heat your garage, unlike a piston car? Why aren't they advertising the fact that rather than the heat coming on when you get to where you're going, you have heat before you're out of the driveway?
Why aren't they telling you how well EVs handle, thanks to its crazy low center of gravity? Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?
Why aren't they advertising the fact that electricity is five times cheaper than gasoline and diesel? The only way I found out was by buying one.
Why aren't they advertising all the advantages of EVs?
Why are only the top of the line autos like the Mustang or Cadillac EVs? That's an easy question to answer. The automakers are under laws from our and other governments that their fuel mileage average of all the vehicles they sell has to be under a certain number. The easiest way to do that is to make the expensive cars, the ones with big V-8s, electric. When your fastest car doesn't use traditional fuel...
But this, of course, begs a second question: why only the expensive ones? Because they don't want to make electric cars at all. The obvious reason is that they hate EVs. But why do they hate them and love the incredibly inefficient (my car will go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline), obsolete Rube Goldberg device with thousands of moving parts to wear and break?
EVs threaten their business model. The businesses are set up so that GM makes almost as much profit from aftermarket parts, like spark plugs, belts, hoses, pumps, and so forth as they do on the cars themselves.
Gasoline and diesel vehicles all need periodic maintenance. They're needy things, expensive to maintain, and the car company gets a cut of every repair of every car they sell. The drive train is a Rube Goldberg mess with thousands of moving, interlocking parts, any one of which fails can cripple the vehicle. A bad fuel pump stranded me in the bad part of town last year, and the repair was nearly $900 not counting the towing charge. The repair shop got half, Pontiac and other companies got the rest.
My new car doesn't have a fuel pump. Or spark plugs, or belts, or fuel injectors, or any of the other moving parts all the other cars I've owned since 1968 had and needed replacing. The motor's shaft IS its drive train! When was the last time your ceiling fan needed servicing?
More than likely that new 1976 Vega that cost $3,000 garnered more than that for GM in aftermarket parts. There may still be some on the road still earning money for GM. An EV has few aftermarket parts; tires, brake pads, windshield wiper blades are all I can think of. Hyundai won't make any more money from my new EV like they would if it had a big six cylinder piston engine.
Which is a shame, because electric motors are all far, far superior to piston engines and transmissions in every way. But the nearly zero cost of maintenance is why the thieving billionaire car companies don't want to sell affordable EVs. In fact, they want to sell as few EVs as possible. If it wasn't for fuel mileage restrictions, Tesla and the Chinese would likely be the only electric cars you could buy.
But isn't this just a conspiracy theory? No, there was never a conspiracy, nothing needed to be said. Those people aren't moral, but they're not stupid, either. Ford and Chevy aren't making cars for a hobby, nor are they charitable organizations. All they care about is profit, and EVs threaten their gravy train.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @12:10PM (23 children)
> Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?
How fast you can stop depends on the friction available between tires and road. Any modern car (with ABS disabled) has more than enough brake torque available to lock the wheels, and also (with good driver control) maintain the tires at a suitable slip ratio to get optimum braking force from the tires. The optimum depends on tires/road/condition(wet/dry/etc)/temperature and other environmental factors. For dry pavement the best slip ratio is often in the range of -5% to -10%, the tire rotation rate is slowed compared to rolling freely. With ABS brakes, the computer tries to maintain the tires near this optimum slip ratio for you--all you have to do is stand on the brake pedal (note: may not be true on loose surfaces like gravel or slush, then locked wheels often give the best braking...but with loss of steering control).
How fast you can stop has nothing at all to do with whether the brakes are friction or regen to a battery or some blended function of the two. You may have been confused by a change in the brake pedal force required when you changed cars? The pedal force can vary quite a bit, depends on the car design and perhaps different friction characteristics when brake pads are changed.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:34PM (20 children)
and also (with good driver control) maintain the tires at a suitable slip ratio to get optimum braking force from the tires.
Besides my dad teaching me to drive, and the high school class, I was a driver in the Air Force. It's a lot more training than you'll get in high school. But besides someone with military grade driver training and possibly CDL training (I'm ignorant of what that entails), nobody on the road has good driver control. My '02 Concorde was the first car I had with ABS, and it could stop on ice faster I could without ABS.
My next car was an '04 four cylinder with rear drums that I would have killed two people with had it not been for my military training. People fear self-driving cars, but people suck at driving them.
How fast you can stop has nothing at all to do with whether the brakes are friction or regen to a battery or some blended function of the two.
The point wasn't either/or, it was one or both. That Concorde stopped faster than any car I'd driven previously; the military vehicles were all old and had drum brakes. The Concorde's braking was great thanks to its huge disks made possible by its 18 inch wheels.
Traditional brakes work by changing kinetic energy into heat. The faster you can turn motion into heat, the faster you will stop. With an EV you not only have the traditional brakes that turn motion into heat, but a second braking system that changes momentum into electricity.
The Hyundai stops even faster despite weighing twice as much. If I'm doing less than 20 mph (33.1/3 kph) it doesn't slide, it just stops dead right there. "It stops on a dime" is an old cliche but with this car it's actually true, at least at slow speeds.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:49PM (5 children)
The main thing that the double braking system has the capacity to improve is: brake disc/pad overheating. You usually don't encounter it in normal driving though, the stock brake pads on our 1999 Dodge Ram 1500 would overheat and fade in a single stop from 80mph with just two passengers and no load in the bed, I replaced the pads with a more competition oriented compound and that improved significantly.
Where this typically becomes a factor is in racing, where you are doing many heavy brakings in a short span. Racers will put larger pads and rotors on to help dissipate the heat before it gets to a point that makes the brakes slippery, but that only works up to a point. If you have a low power (sub 100hp) engine, it generally doesn't take an unreasonably large brake disc to dissipate all the heat that engine can get into the brakes before reaching seriously challenging temperatures. With more power, you can heat the brakes faster and hotter. But... if you drive on the street in a way that challenges the brakes like racing does, you'll get pulled over for suspicion of driving like you are guilty of something / afraid of someone chasing you - even if you aren't speeding.
The regen braking system in some EVs does take some load off of the traditional disc and pad system, but I doubt it's enough to make up for the extra weight of today's battery packs - and if you go racing your super-high power and torque EV, I bet you're going to hit the same brake issues as high power ICE racers - especially if you put on grippy race tires that can handle the weight and speed of your EV.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:32AM (4 children)
I doubt it's enough to make up for the extra weight of today's battery packs
Doubt away if you wish. Drive one once and you will no longer doubt.
if you go racing your super-high power and torque EV, I bet you're going to hit the same brake issues as high power ICE racers
At my age, I've been past that for a long time.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:51AM (3 children)
So, before kids I used to (solo) race my Miata.
In street driving the Miata never had a brake fade problem. In solo racing with 116hp it started to fade a bit, but upgraded pads fixed that for the 3 minute course I raced on.
Then I turbocharged it up past 200hp and the brake fade came back, only on the track.
If you drive your stock EV hard enough on a track, I would be seriously surprised if the brakes didn't eventually overheat and fade, probably in a minute or two of accelerate-brake-accelerate-brake cycles.
Will this ever affect you driving normally on the street? I would hope not. If it does, your manufacturer seriously cheaped out on an important safety system in your car.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:09PM
> If you drive your stock EV hard enough on a track, I would be seriously surprised if the brakes didn't eventually overheat and fade, probably in a minute or two of accelerate-brake-accelerate-brake cycles.
In addition, the battery pack or a stock EV will also start to overheat with race track usage, often within one or two hard laps of a road course. At that point the system protects itself and de-rates (reduces available power for drive or regen).
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday December 10 2023, @08:25PM (1 child)
Judging from city traffic, I'm the only one who doesn't drive like that!
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 10 2023, @08:59PM
City traffic around here tends to accelerate with about 80-100hp, and braking is nowhere near limits, as it should not be. It can seem like racing, when I drove a 60hp Honda Civic it was all that 1600lb hatchback could do to keep up, but it could outbrake traffic, even on 155-70/12 tires.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @04:45PM
> That Concorde stopped faster than any car I'd driven previously;...
> The Hyundai stops even faster despite weighing twice as much.
Tires continue to improve, your Hyundai has about 20 more years of tire development and the changes over that period are many. Looking back further, the tire-road friction available now for ordinary cars rivals what was available for race cars with special "sticky" tires in the 1960s or 70s. Rubber compounding and other aspects of tire design are being continuously improved, although no one makes a big deal about it. Once again, it's the available friction between tires and road that normally determine how fast yo9u can stop a car.
As pointed out elsewhere, in any normal highway driving the brakes are not likely to fade, they will always be able to make enough torque to lock the wheels.
Not only did your military vehicles likely have poor brake hardware, they also likely had long-lasting, very hard rubber tread and, this translates to low peak friction capability between road and tire.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Thursday December 07 2023, @07:20PM (5 children)
"Traditional brakes work by changing kinetic energy into heat. The faster you can turn motion into heat, the faster you will stop."
Traditional brakes have already been able to stop the tire rotation sufficiently fast for years now, such that you'll lose friction with the road and slide if they engage fully. The limit of braking is tire grip. The better stopping distance of a sports car or racing car is primarily due to lower mass, plus wider and softer tires resulting in better friction. The larger, and/or exotic ceramic brakes on them dissipate heat faster and run hotter without loss of performance in race conditions where they are in constant and extreme use - but wouldn't make much difference vs 'regular brakes' at stopping from 20mph, as even those can easily stop the wheel rotation fast enough to hit the limit of tire grip in those conditions.
It's actually well documented that EVs generally have WORSE braking than ICEs precisely because they weigh so much more and most of them spec to run narrower tires specifically to REDUCE friction (enabling better range).
I can't comment on your anecdotal experience with the Hyundai; tire technology is constantly improving, tires are getting better, the technology that goes into the rubber and the tread is pretty advanced, and maybe you just have really good new tires on your EV and had cheap crappy old technology tires on your previous vehicle(s).
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday December 07 2023, @08:07PM (4 children)
Got a link for that, or is it just more fossil-fuel propaganda?
(Score: 5, Informative) by vux984 on Thursday December 07 2023, @09:53PM (3 children)
Is basic physics "fossil fuel propaganda"?
Do EVs run narrower tires, and run lower rolling resistance tires to extend range? yes.
Do EVs weigh more than ICE vehicles? yes.
Do these characteristics impact braking distance? yes. Go look up any manufacturer's articles about the EV tires they make they'll all say stuff like this.
What exactly are you disputing here?
Even the tire manufacturers acknowledge these issues:
"Increased weight means longer braking distance"
"the demand for a long range and lower emissions comes an even greater need for minimal rolling resistance"
https://www.continental-tires.com/products/b2c/tire-knowledge/electric-vehicle-tires/ [continental-tires.com]
"Ford brought in Pirelli to help with rolling resistance to increase the Mach-E’s driving range"
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a45529565/pirelli-p-zero-e-tires-for-ev-market/ [autoweek.com]
Here's an article about hybrids and evs sacrificing braking distance for fuel economy:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/hybrids-evs/sacrificing-braking-distance-for-hybrid-fuel-economy-a3970563268/ [consumerreports.org]
And here's an article about telsa getting a software update to improve resolve it's then terrible braking distance:
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-model-3-gets-cr-recommendation-after-braking-update/ [consumerreports.org]
Now think about it, and put aside the breathless reporting aside.
First, why was the braking distance so bad in the first place?
And second? How can a software update improve braking distance? The physics of braking haven't changed. The car weighs the same, the tires are the same, etc.
Now obviously, right out of the gate we know that if the car could be made to stop any faster than it already was then that tells you that it was NOT braking at the limit of tire grip. If it was, then well, that's the *limit*, and if you brake any faster you'd lose traction and slide.
This means they were deliberately limiting the braking speed to some point less than the limit of grip for... reasons. The two reasons would be a) to reduce wear on the tires (note that EV tires are already more expensive and already wear out faster because EVs are so heavy) and b) to allow for more regenerative braking to take place, increasing range.
So... hurrah, Tesla reduced the braking distance of their car with a software update, which is great. But its not fucking magical. They retuned the braking parameters to prioritize braking distance a bit more. So now the tires will now wear out some amount faster, and the effective range will be some amount less. It was likely the correct thing to do, and good on them for doing it, but it was a re-balancing of trade offs, it wasn't "free".
It's not a knock on EVs -- range anxiety is real and makes more sense in a vehicle where charging infrastructure is still far from universal and charging times are relatively slow. But ICE cars have the same trade offs -- and there's a reason your family runabout isn't using the same massive tires as a Porsche or Lamborghini -- because the ultra high performance high grip tires come with a price, not just in the higher initial purchase price -- they lower the fuel efficiency, lower the range, and they wear out faster.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:37AM (2 children)
Do EVs run narrower tires, and run lower rolling resistance tires to extend range? yes.
Apparently you have never looked at a single EV in your life. My tires are a little wider, and the extra weight gives extra traction.
So... hurrah, Tesla...
Fuck that Nazi.
No blind man has ever convinced anyone that colors don't exist. Drive one, until then you're speaking from ignorance.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday December 13 2023, @08:50PM (1 child)
"Apparently you have never looked at a single EV in your life."
3 of my neightbors have them, 2 Tesla 3's and a Chevy Bolt. I've seriously evaluated buying a Taycan.
"My tires are a little wider"
A little wider than WHAT though? Compare with cars that are available in multiple configurations, like, say the VW Golf.
The e-golf specs 205mm wide tires, same as the Golf TDI (the turbo diesel which is also targeted at people who want maximum range/fuel efficiency). The Golf GTI, a more performant variation takes 225mm and the Golf R the highest performance variant takes 225mm or 235mm.
Now, yes the Tesla S Plaid (the most extreme hyper performance version) specs 285mm in the rear; and those are seriously wide tires, but there's really nothing to compare that to. I mean, a Porsche 911 Turbo S runs 315mm in the rear and the Porsche weighs ~2000 pounds less. (That's a whole 80s Toyota MR2 in extra mass on the Tesla plaid -- sitting on 30mm narrower tires -- but i don't know what conclusions you'd really try to make from that.)
"and the extra weight gives extra traction."
mcgrew -- are you serious? Can a dump truck full of gravel stop faster than an empty one? I've got to believe you know that's absurd. And that you know it is absurd because more mass requires more force to accelerate (or decelerate). So, sure, yes, you get more friction force from the higher weight, but the the amount of stopping force you need to apply to slow down is also much greater - the net effect is that braking distance is LONGER by adding weight.
"Fuck that Nazi."
Someone shit in your cereal this morning?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 16 2023, @08:04PM
a dump truck's weight isn't on the bottom. It adds to handling, not stopping.
Are the Republicans really in favor of genocide, or are they just cowards terrified of terrorist twit Trump?
(Score: 4, Informative) by owl on Thursday December 07 2023, @09:35PM (5 children)
Uh, no... well, up to a point that is.
The maximum speed at which you can stop is determined only by the friction between your tires and the road surface. If you can produce negative torque on the tires sufficient to match, but not exceed, the friction force between the tires and road surface, it does not matter how much "more" negative torque you can produce, nor how (heat gen or electricity gen) you simply can not stop faster than what that friction allows for.
It also does not matter how the negative torque is generated, you can not stop faster than the tire to road surface friction allows.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Friday December 08 2023, @05:11AM (4 children)
Many moons ago I had an Olds F-85, which had the sort of automatic transmission that let you shift directly from low to reverse (P-N-H-2-L-R, not what we usually see today). With studded snow tires on glare ice and an emergency in front of me, I discovered that it would stop much faster if I shifted to reverse.
(Probably sub-optimal for the Olds, but better than becoming a Participant headed for the ditch.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @06:11AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday December 08 2023, @06:55AM
I wasn't sliding (four studded snow tires = had to give up whirligigging in the grocery parking lot, because it would not slide, at all), the guy ahead of me was, in my direction. So I needed to stop or better yet back up a whole lot quicker than normal.
Those old transmissions seem to have been made to handle this, tho... in the day, we all did the low-to-reverse bump to climb out of ice ruts, and none seemed any the worse for it. You just had to be careful to brake between, however briefly.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:58AM (1 child)
Studded snow tires on an icy surface is another beast altogether, in reverse you could be tearing up the ice and making a higher friction surface for yourself.
Rubber on pavement doesn't do this in normal situations. Bleach on drag tires at the launch pad of a drag strip being one notable exception. Simple heating of race rubber being another. Those exceptions have nothing whatsoever to do with street tires on normal driving surfaces.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @02:49AM
That's true. That car became downright sticky even on the worst ice. Way more difference than you'd expect for 2WD -- you don't realize how much the front end slides until it doesn't.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Friday December 08 2023, @05:04AM
My F350 (6000 pounds even) stops like that. Dually (extra tire patches) and oversized brakes. At 20mph, step on the pedal and it stops dead. A pleasant shock when I thought I was going to T-bone some idiot who jumped out right in front of me -- nope, stopped with room to spare.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:40PM (1 child)
If the ABS system is any good, it can keep all 4 tires near the limit of rolling friction in a way that no driver with only single pedal input can.
My Miata has no ABS. Braking at the limit I will inevitably reach locking point of one tire long before the other three, need to modulate, and can stop dramatically quickly, but not as quickly as a 4 wheel ABS system can when the driver just mashes the brake pedal as hard as possible.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @05:05PM
Yep, agreed, well-tuned 4 wheel ABS can be very good.
But, here (NE USA) we often have slush on the road, a mix of brine (road salt) and ice/snow. In those conditions, older ABS has given me several close calls--the control algorithm keeps the tires rolling to give steering control...and the available *rolling* friction is so low that the car feels like it's not slowing down at all. The pedal was pulsing hard, I was well into the ABS range.
The solution is to pull the ABS fuse on slushy days so it becomes possible to "pump the brakes" old style. Locked wheels build up a wedge of slush in front of the tires and slow the car down, but the car slides straight, no turning possible (it will slide down any road slope). Every cycle of releasing the brakes so the wheels roll, allows some steering to be done. A skill routinely taught to young drivers around here...before ABS. I learned how to pump the brakes (not on public roads) before age 10.