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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: 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?