FTFY
The Car thread
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try the 70-75 year range....
I thought this was an interesting split, 40% verts. The Z06 will be nutty.
www.carscoops.com
Over 40% Of 2021 Corvette C8 Models Sold Have Been Convertibles | Carscoops
The Convertible costs $7,500 more than the equivalent Coupe, while customers typically went for a more premium trim level
www.carscoops.com
Sandwiches' thread reminded me of two things related to my car:
1. I studded my own tires last year with an improvised tool. I will never do this again. Although I got it down to the point where it was pretty efficient, at first it took me like 30 min/stud to try and get them seated, obviously progress like that is a huge drain on time. I had to keep playing around with screwdrivers that accept bits to find the right size socket the stud would insert into at the right depth. It was horrible though and I'm never doing it again.
2. I recently tried to unseat my tires on stock rims to get my TPMS out to put them on my new rims. Despite all the youtube videos on this, it's pretty much impossible with lower profile/passenger tires without either damaging the rims, or exposing yourself to a significant hazard of straps/parts flying out at you. All the videos are either like easy truck tires with way more to grab or with extremely suspect methods. I tried a few of these to the point where it just didn't make sense to continue. Just took the tires and rims and got them switched out and got some new TPMS for my new rims (using the old for winters).
So yes, for studding, no for popping the bead off one side.
1. I studded my own tires last year with an improvised tool. I will never do this again. Although I got it down to the point where it was pretty efficient, at first it took me like 30 min/stud to try and get them seated, obviously progress like that is a huge drain on time. I had to keep playing around with screwdrivers that accept bits to find the right size socket the stud would insert into at the right depth. It was horrible though and I'm never doing it again.
2. I recently tried to unseat my tires on stock rims to get my TPMS out to put them on my new rims. Despite all the youtube videos on this, it's pretty much impossible with lower profile/passenger tires without either damaging the rims, or exposing yourself to a significant hazard of straps/parts flying out at you. All the videos are either like easy truck tires with way more to grab or with extremely suspect methods. I tried a few of these to the point where it just didn't make sense to continue. Just took the tires and rims and got them switched out and got some new TPMS for my new rims (using the old for winters).
So yes, for studding, no for popping the bead off one side.
Though the charging infrastructure is very nice to have, I don't think it's quite as "needed" as most people think. 98% of people's driving needs will be met by charging at home. The charging infrastructure will be critical to driving ev uptake. Not because people need it, but mostly because they will feel safer with it.
I can't see many people doing this sort of thing too often: https://www.motortrend.com/features/2022-rivian-r1t-exclusive-drive-review-trans-america-trail-off-road
I'm starting to agree with you. I like the idea of full EVs, but I think most peoples' needs would be satisfied by a plug-in hybrid. I'm starting to get on board with the idea of charging at home every night, driving to work on battery power, but having a gas motor for going on long road trips. Eventually the tech will catch up, I am sure, but if you're off "the grid" or not in a tesla, you're kind of fucked for the time being. I'm not enough of a True Believer to change my vacation plans to accomodate a charging network yet.
The alternative is a cheap beater EV for commuting and a big barge ICE for long trips, but then you have two cars...
or renting a big barge when you need one. some countries (e.g. S Korea) have a scheme where you have access to a fleet of ICE vehicles (by reservation), when you buy an EV. Seems like a good option to me.
I have a buddy that did what you suggested. His foray into the EV world was via a plug-in hybrid. He was obsessed with maximising EV distance, so was constantly seeking out public chargers. Since going full-EV, (granted a Model X with massive range), he's no longer worried about charging at all. And when he does road trips (his kids are into ski racing, so they drive all over Quebec in the winter), the on-board computer and Tesla supercharger network makes it stupid-easy to refuel. He also has parents about a 6 hour drive in cottage country Ontario, and the refuelling has been dead easy (I think it amounts to 1 15-minute stop at a supercharger en-route, and then overnight charging at the destination). Which is pretty much what I'd do anyways, even with a ice vehicle. I don't have the endurance to drive more than 4 hours without a stop.
And then there's the minor advantage of (next to) no maintenance on EVs. With a plug-in hybrid, you still have to do all the maintenance on the engine and transmission. All my buddies with EVs (5 of them so far), have said the freedom of not having to worry about any of that is liberating!
That would be neat. I think if you are willing to make the considerable leap into a Tesla, you get access to the best charging network available, and it really is a world changer. Still not as efficient as gassing and going, but not the most painful experience on earth. I went with woody to highland one time and had to top up on the way up and the way back. Cost us about an hour of time or so in total. Could have very easily filled up the gas tank prior to departure and not stopped at all, but it afforded us some time to piss and eat a breakfast sandwich.
I'd like to know what maintenance cars no longer need because they have a battery. You get out of oil changes, sure, and the battery/motor combo is more reliable than an engine and all of its moving parts, but on a reliable (say toyota) engine, you shouldn't need to worry about coolant until ~100k miles, belts until 80k miles, timing chains practically ever...but you'll still need to worry about brake fluid, pads and rotors, air conditioning, tires, wheel bearings, window regulators, and all of the other parts that fail on cars, plus all the gucci shit that automakers insist on putting into EVs. You will save that $100 a year on oil changes though.
I have two buddies with the Leafs, one with a Bolt, and one with the Model X. Battery issues aside with the Bolt (those have been covered under warranty, but it's still a fiasco of monumental proportions, I'll grant you that), they have had no issues in the 4 years of ownership. In fact, the extent of maintenance of one buddy with the leaf has been to buy new tires (after the soft OEM ones wore out), and to change the windshield wipers in 3 years.
The mechanics are just a lot simpler. There's no engine, no transmission, no exhaust system. so much less to go wrong. And with regen braking, you also use the brakes a lot less. I can see disc rusting being a big issue though, in climates like ours.
But you're probably right, I'm probably making too big of a deal about that aspect. I've had my car 9 years (Mazda CX-5) , and the only issue I've had to deal with are wheel bearings, brakes (rusty discs and pad changes) and tires. Though there's a funky sound coming from the engine now, I'm not sure if it's transmission, muffler, or (god forbid) piston related... Once I can drive again, I'll take it into a garage to have it checked out. But that's after 9 years. so yeah. maybe that aspect is a little overblown in my mind.
You're not wrong, but I'd counter with woody's replaced battery, drive unit, headlight, and suspension issues across his two teslas.
My point is simply that a well-made car should last whether it has an ICE or BEV...and that the demands of car maintenance spill over regardless. In 9 years you've had wheel bearings, brakes and tires...all issues that could come up with a BEV. And if you do have a serious issue now, I'd venture a guess that it'll be cheaper than or similar to a replacement battery pack or drive motor.
And 98% of driving is within 50 miles of home. I just made that up, but I’d bet it’s close to actual.
I am slightly upset with myself for not getting into a Hyundai Ioniq plug in or electric last summer when the lease was $129 a month. I am 12 miles each way to work, we have a few chargers that always open and I rarely drive my commuter car more than 100 miles at a time. It the deal was there again I would jump all over it now that I have $2,000 equity in my car that I didn't have last year. My big concern is the range cutting in half or even more when it is cold outside.
That is what I would do if there was a cheap EV and Danish car taxation would be more reasonable. So now I still drive my dirty diesel everywhere because it can drive 550 miles w/o refueling on long distance trips.
It works the other way too though. I've only once needed to plug in the Leaf on the road, and that was on a trip up to Denver for a show during a pretty brutal cold snap that included a side trip to my brothers. IIRC, about 240 miles on one of the coldest weekends of that particular year. Otherwise, I do all my charging at home. But, it's also true that we don't do longer trips, or more remote trips, or ski with the Leaf, BECAUSE of the lack of charging infrastructure. It galls me a bit to not have access to something the Tesla supercharger network, though I understood this when I bought the Leaf. Any talk about infrastructure for electric cars absolutely needs to include some provisions for charger standardization.
My nominally 310 mile Tesla was just fine for everything up to day trips to the mountains in the bitter cold, even when starting from 90% SOC.
Now that I have a house with a 10 kW L2 EVSE in the garage up in said mountains to complement the 10 kW EVSE in my Denver garage then a 200 mile range vehicle would be plenty and then some for my needs. (Expensive way to fix the problem but in the long run it'll make me money!)
Now that I have a house with a 10 kW L2 EVSE in the garage up in said mountains to complement the 10 kW EVSE in my Denver garage then a 200 mile range vehicle would be plenty and then some for my needs. (Expensive way to fix the problem but in the long run it'll make me money!)
Exchanging regular cars with EVs is not the solution. We do not have enough lithium on Earth, the mining of it is everything else but environmental friendly, the energy for EVs has to come from somewhere and so far only few countries can fuel all potential EVs with renewable energy.
IMO people are just using EVs as an easy way to buy themselves a clean consciousness. REALLY doing something for the climate requires as massive change in lifestyle that nobody wants. Face it, the issue is the overpopulation and consumerism, so only max. 1 kid per parents, no airplane travel, less/no driving, mainly plant-based nutrition, less internet use, etc. Basically all things that "hurt" and would bring us to a livestyle closer to before the industrialization or what poor countries have. If any politicians would suggest something along the lines they are either labelled as socialists or commit political suicide that way.
To be honest, nobody on here is near climate neutral judging from the GMTs and this thread. And yes, replacing a pedal bike with an e-bike goes in the wrong direction as well.
I disagree with a lot of this, but I am watching shitty movies with my kids right now. Will respond more fully later. We are ‘over’ the ‘carrying capacity’ of Earth but this is a metric based on a lot of shitty assumptions about existing shitty systems. Ditto ‘overpopulation’. And don’t get me started on material shortages….
I hope you aren't streaming them
How binging on Netflix is killing the planet, new documentary reveals
Dirty streaming: The Internet's Big Secret explains how three quarters of the world's internet use is video - and data centres which store them are largely powered by fossil fuels.
People are going to buy new cars. They just car, no matter if the car is ICE or EV. All of a sudden we are going to start a family, OMG, we need an SUV! Or, this car is getting old, I need a new one! No matter what, they are going to buy new cars, no matter what the source. This isn't just people, but businesses, rental fleets, the post office, the scope is absolutely huge, as you say.Exchanging regular cars with EVs is not the solution. We do not have enough lithium on Earth, the mining of it is everything else but environmental friendly, the energy for EVs has to come from somewhere and so far only few countries can fuel all potential EVs with renewable energy.
IMO people are just using EVs as an easy way to buy themselves a clean consciousness. REALLY doing something for the climate requires as massive change in lifestyle that nobody wants. Face it, the issue is the overpopulation and consumerism, so only max. 1 kid per parents, no airplane travel, less/no driving, mainly plant-based nutrition, less internet use, etc. Basically all things that "hurt" and would bring us to a livestyle closer to before the industrialization or what poor countries have. If any politicians would suggest something along the lines they are either labelled as socialists or commit political suicide that way.
To be honest, nobody on here is near climate neutral judging from the GMTs and this thread. And yes, replacing a pedal bike with an e-bike goes in the wrong direction as well.
Lithium is pretty abundant relatively. People act like you don't have to mine aluminum or spend a ton of energy refining and forming it, all sorts of materials on your car have to be formed, including plastics. New methods are being developed which will gab lithium from ordinary sea water: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/699652#:~:text=KAUST researchers have now developed,parts per million (ppm).
Another project at the Salton Sea to refine it from the salt brine and they plan to use the proceeds to restore the lake from the toxic farm runoff that has plagued it in recent years. But the issue is the US only currently produces about 2% of the total product in the world. Welcome to world economics, where some countries have things and others don't. I don't see any reputable sources saying that we are going to "run out" or that total production will be a problem. Just the age old issue of reliance on foreign deposits...like oil.
You don't have to fuel the EVs with renewable energy to be more efficient and significantly reduce CO2 emissions. Even powering them with traditional sources, like the current popular favorite natural gas turbines, is far more efficient than running ICE vehicles. Think about it, each ICE vehicle has to start up, reach operating temperature, where only then it approaches 20% thermal efficiency. Beaming electricity out on lines, is more efficient, it's been shown countless times and even better, you tend to be utilizing the grid off-hour from the biggest draws, so it's really a more efficient grid (being utilized more of the time, not as big peaks/drops).
But going back to your original point, yeah, there are other issues, like how shitty our public transportation and lack of trains is in the US, but we both know that people will continue to buy cars. The writing is on the wall. At this point, automakers are not prototyping EVs as possible tech anymore, they are full on in development of dedicated EV models. Remember how far ahead they usually are, like they release a new model, but their design and engineering is well established working on the next model. Right now, that next model is an EV for many automakers and models. It's already happening.
I am not arguing what you say, but my point still stands. We will not be able to engineer us out of the climate crisis. The damage has been done and now it is only about how to soften the blow. People are dumb and won't change their lifestyle, so all the current efforts are just to lengthen the time we have before we are truely f'd.
Hardly anybody (me included) is willing to make the sacrifices necessary to have an impact. Interestingly, in Germany the people that vote for the green party seem to have a higher CO2 footprint than those of other parties. Reason is that they have a higher household income and therefore fly more often. Do as I say and not as I do at its best!
(I am better than climate neutral, but only because I pay for non-greenwashy sequestration and the nature of my work). Anyway.Exchanging regular cars with EVs is not the solution. We do not have enough lithium on Earth, the mining of it is everything else but environmental friendly, the energy for EVs has to come from somewhere and so far only few countries can fuel all potential EVs with renewable energy.
IMO people are just using EVs as an easy way to buy themselves a clean consciousness. REALLY doing something for the climate requires as massive change in lifestyle that nobody wants. Face it, the issue is the overpopulation and consumerism, so only max. 1 kid per parents, no airplane travel, less/no driving, mainly plant-based nutrition, less internet use, etc. Basically all things that "hurt" and would bring us to a livestyle closer to before the industrialization or what poor countries have. If any politicians would suggest something along the lines they are either labelled as socialists or commit political suicide that way.
To be honest, nobody on here is near climate neutral judging from the GMTs and this thread. And yes, replacing a pedal bike with an e-bike goes in the wrong direction as well.
We absolutely can engineer our way out of this. Some of us are actually doing it, the question is speed of take up. It is possible with current tech to decarbonise the entire sphere of human activity and some are doing it.
The thing I think about a lot these days is speed of change. You have to take a step back and see the decade scale change. We can ‘have nice things’ (even better things I think) and be climate good guys. I know it seems that nothing is changing fast enough, and it is true we need to go faster but, for example, Volvo are making steel without carbon, seemingly unthinkable even five years ago (except to the engineers who were actually doing it of course), there is massive investment in green energy tech all over the planet and nearly every industry has a clean way forward. We will have entirely green power at some point, and essentially once you solve energy all else follows.
Germany’s CO2 output, along with much of Europe is actually falling, you can and should feel good about that. Germany isone of the most advanced economies on the planet. You are an example to us all.
I have written before about the fallacy of ‘overpopulation’, tl;dr it’s a political idea, not a physics based one. It’s a particularly dangerous idea propagated by the right with nazi evil outcomes if allowed to fester.
The problems now are not with tech or ‘how’, they are with entrenched money and human greed and shortsightedness. That is the fight.
What we need is for people everywhere to push for faster change, to behave like we can do this, because we can, and to understand and behave like putting carbon into the atmosphere is evil, because it is. Sometimes we have no choice but we also have to be clear about where the line of ‘must’ lies. Some minor inconvenience will be required in the short term to not destroy our environment completely but we absolutely don’t need to live in caves.
At this point it makes me crazy it it still legal to advertise ICE vehicles given what we know and that we have the option not to already.
If you can afford an EV you morally should buy one, doing so has a host of good downstream effects, including speeding the rollout of better charging networks and inducing demand for more, and better future EVs. This is an example of how individuals can use the power of the market for good. An EV now, even in backwards USA is still better than ICE and as power decarbonises it just gets better. Soon new cars will be produced carbon free too. Again, zoom out, look at the decadal scale change. Even the US, late to the party as normal now has huge initiatives underway and I think we will see rapid real change over the next five and ten years.
So; don’t loose hope, zoom out, see the many many good things that are happening already. Vote with your wallet for products and services that are going in the right direction. Perfect is the enemy of good at this point, (and why individualistic cultures are having harder time with this) but good is worth chasing, it will encourage more good.
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Wallet and, perhaps equally if not more important, your ballot.
Cause let's face it, change at the individual scale feels insignificant. The actions of many are easily offset by the actions of a few. It is only once larger entities (corporations and governments) make a concerted shift toward carbon neutral initiatives that the sea change will happen.
Not saying we don't need to shift away from ICE as soon as possible, but there are intermediary steps that can be taken in the mean time. Drive less. Stick to highway speed limits. Promote remote work. Change tax structures to better incentivize more efficient modes of transportation. Develop better public outreach and education.
Of course, I say this from a country where half the population won't even tolerate a minor inconvenience to combat a current problem, nevermind change their behavior to fight something they may not even be alive to feel the impacts of.
Overpopulation is an ecology issue. Can an ecosystem sustain the population of a certain species or not? And the answer for humans is "no" at the moment. Yes, we are not pure animals and use our brains to help us with trying to defy the rules of ecology, but that only works to a certain extend.
Good for you that you are CO2 negative, but would the technology be able to cover everybody on this planet to do the same? The main concern here is energy. Sure, we can do many amazing things with unlimited energy, but AFAIK no country is fully relying on renewable energy. Not sure how to treat nuclear energy in this equation as it is CO2 neutral but still not renewable.
While I think Germany is taking the right steps, one thing to reduce the emissions in transport the politicians do not want to touch: a general speed limit on the Autobahn. Calculations show that having a 130 km/h limit everywhere would reduce the emissions by 30%, 110 even more. But besides the Green party no other touches it. Other thing would be to make domestic flights prohibitly expensive.
What frustrates me the most is that many of us scientists that work with climate change or mitigation do not live to our own standards. I have the feeling that many of my colleagues just use the buzzword "green" to fund their research, but not wholeheartly stand behind the ideas that they otherwise propagate. Why fly to China twice a year for field work, 3-4 times to conferences in the US or somewhere "exotic" or do regular research stays in Australia during the Danish winter? When the university wanted to stop reimbursing travel costs in Europe if you took other modes of transportation than trains, holy shit was there a backlash.
So if even the people that are the most aware of climate change do only cater towards their own interests, then we are truely f'd IMO.
Can't wait to see this when it's finished-
re Tesla vs. the others charging network and road trips:
pretty damning, and shows how much work needs to be done on the "public" network.
I work on climate policy for the Gvt of Canada. I've been talking to some of my colleagues that run the programs that provide funding for alternative fuel charging infrastructure. So far, we just fund installation, but I've suggested we may want to add some conditionality around performance, reliability and availability... I think this will be crucial moving forward.
pretty damning, and shows how much work needs to be done on the "public" network.
I work on climate policy for the Gvt of Canada. I've been talking to some of my colleagues that run the programs that provide funding for alternative fuel charging infrastructure. So far, we just fund installation, but I've suggested we may want to add some conditionality around performance, reliability and availability... I think this will be crucial moving forward.
Originally had 9HP, hahaha, a Richshaw would have been faster.
To keep on the crap car topic, you can buy a brand new Lada Niva!