The Electric Car Thread

[Quarthinos]

If they beat the Taycan ring times, range, power, etc, it doesn't matter at all to Taycan buyers. You aren't buying a Porsche just because of some specs on paper, as what Porsches are competitive in any segment dollar to dollar based on specs alone? The arguments about range particularly make me chuckle, given my current ICE car generally needs a fill up after 225 miles or so, and it isn't magically full every morning when I wake up. Porsche just needs to demonstrate to its buyers that the Taycan is a real Porsche (whatever that is these days), and I think they've managed that.

To compete in the $150k car market, Tesla needs *much* more configurability, and improved interior materials. Go to Tesla's site and configure an S, then go compare that with a Taycan. Ordering a Tesla is like buying a Honda, you get almost no choices other than color.

BTW, I really love that the Taycan and e-tron GT will have charging ports on the front, at both sides. The Bolt has the charging on the front left, and so I really want charging available on the front right. If we're headed to an all-EV future, manufacturers should realize that there might be 2 cars in a garage that need charging (or sharing a charge pole in public) and either put the port in the middle (like the Kona EV) or on both sides, preferably in the front.

Is there some reason the charger's cables can't be longer?

I sometime fuel my Prius from the wrong side because I don't want to wait for the F350 to finish filling and I just have to tug a bit more...

 

[Quarthinos]

Model X towing cross country (fairly typical use of a SUthing in this part of the world)...

Which part of the world is that?

edit: oh. Wyoming? At 75mph? Uhhhh yeah. I won't rehash what others have already said. I will try to resist rolling my eyes.

(I mean, come now, we all admit there are many uses cases for which only a specific vehicle or vehicle type is going to work, how many edge cases tho, are we trying to get at here?)

Here in not-Portland Oregon, there's about a dozen trailers of some sort in my neighborhood with some newer SUVs and (smaller) fullsize trucks. Those folks are gone most weekends with those vehicles and trailers. It's not some crazy rare edge case for SUVs to do SUV-like things (instead of being a glorified minivan).

So it's interesting to see an X attempt to do the same, instead of fancy-minivan duty.

It's not an edge case to need to tow a trailer. The edge case is towing a trailer at 75 mph over a 700+ mile drive.

 

[Quarthinos]

I mean, they were timed beating the Taycan by 20 seconds even in traffic on multiple different laps, despite all the predictions that they couldn't even compete with Porsche. For all the doubt about their ability to even finish a lap much less dream of getting near to Porsche's lap time, Tesla seems to have done pretty well. It'll be interesting to see the actual specs of the plaid version and how much it ends up costing.

With a car with a totally gutted interior, giant carbon ceramics, huge ass gurney flap out back and tires that are different than anything you can buy. Bares as much resemblance to anything you can buy as if Porsche slapped their badge on the I.D. R.

Raven isn't going to impact Taycan Turbo or Turbo S buyers, though it will probably have some impact on e-tron GT buyers.

I thought all the cars that set a record at the ring were stripped down like this? Did porsche set some kind of record with a car they picked up at the local dealer (including tires that are generally available to the public)?

 

[Quarthinos]

With a car with a totally gutted interior

* citation needed

5 seconds of googling will give you a crapton of articles about it. You can start with road and track and go from there if you want.

I just googled "tesla nurbergring" (so I can't spell.. Google knows what I meant.) I see a lot of people crowing over Taycans "lapping" one that broke down (4 times!111one). I see nothing about the interior being gutted, and all the pictures I see have tinted windows, so the (lack of) interior isn't visible.

I just read the entire road and track article on page 2 of the search. I see the flap and brakes and new street legal tires, but nothing about the interior.

 

[Quarthinos]

I have roadside assistance through my car insurance. I have to pay a bit extra, but it's not any more expensive than PlayStation Network or Netflix. It's probably cheaper.

 

[Quarthinos]

So how accurate are the estimates for delivery on the Model 3? We are looking at ordering one soon for my wife, and she is a bit...impatient For owners, ideally any in central Texas, how do the mileage figures hold up to Texas summers? And finally, is the Model 3 capable of fitting 2 child seats reasonably well? I suppose we need to drop by the Austin store and just have her take a look herself, but any info is appreciated!

My wife ordered her Tesla 3 two weeks ago, at which time the web page said delivery was about 4 weeks. It's supposed to arrive at the end of the month, which is exactly on schedule. You can get test drive/display vehicles when you order, but there were none available when she placed her order, as it was the end of the quarter and most of the inventory was gone. I think my brother-in-law got a test drive model and they gave him some free charging as a discount, although that might have been the end-of-quarter sale incentive? I think Texas is one of the states where the car dealers have put a serious crimp on what can be done by Tesla in state. According to wikipedia, the Texas site isn't a store, it's just a showroom and they're not even allowed to discuss financing?

As far as child seats, we don't have any, but I'm 6 feet tall and can fit in the back seat if I watch my head when entering/leaving. I checked through the trunk of our test drive 3, and there were child seat anchor points on both seats. If you go for a X, it's much bigger and also has anchors. I'd assume the S has anchors, too, but I didn't check.

 

[Quarthinos]

Brakes, suspension and miscellaneous electrical parts should be about the same.

We know that they're not. Even on mild hybrids, the brakes incur way less wear and hence get worked on much less frequently, than on pure ICEs.

Also, on ICEs (and maybe some mild hybrids?), the alternator is a mechanical part, that fails at some noticeable rate. On a BEV, you just have solid-state voltage conversion circuitry.

That's not even what an alternator does. It converts mechanical energy to electrical. The same wearout mechanisms exist in BEV and hybrid electric motors.

Are you sure? I don't think BEVs have alternators. They just turn the motors into generators when "braking".

After the first couple of model years, Priuses switched to all electrical pumps and no belts/alternator, I assume to decrease weight and have one less source of drag in the powertrain. I don't see any reason why a BEV would add an alternator, especially when there's not a crankshaft to attach it to.

 

[Quarthinos]

It doesn't look awful, I'm hopeful it pumps some competition in, but using the Mustang brand is just an insult.

I certainly get why some people might not be a fan of the use of the Mustang brand given how much of a deviation this car is from what you’d expect when you think of a Mustang, but I like that they did it. To me, using their premium brand like this makes me feel that they’re taking their entrance into the EV market seriously. While I have little interest in the CUV/Crossover/SUV market, I realize that it’s a huge chunk of the market and likely a smart place to start. My wife is looking for a similar vehicle in the next few years, so we'll probably go check one out at least. I know she’s leaning more towards a 7-seater with AWD though, so the top picks are currently the Model Y and the CX-9.

In any case, it looks like a really solid option for a ton of people. I’m excited to see what other cars will follow in this vein from Ford.

Mustang is a premium brand? I thought it was all about getting a sports car without paying $MAXINT for an exotic? Perhaps you meant premiere brand? Or am I just out of touch with Ford these days?

 

[Quarthinos]

Presumably in this case the owner IS the manufacturer...

Did Tesla sell it to Musk?
The Federal laws only apply to prohibit sales and importation.

Corporate ownership of vehicles is a thing. As long as Mr. Musk is on the list of authorized drivers, there shouldn't be a problem. If he's stopped by the cops or whatever, it wouldn't surprise me if he's test driving the manufacturing sample/early prototype/etc for <reasons>.

 

[Quarthinos]

My wife got a 3 recently. I drove it for a week when she went on vacation with her brother and his kids. I had liked it when we test drove it and didn't find any reason to not like it now. My primary driver is a Prius, so having minimal engine lights, and so forth only available off to my right was not a problem. Yes, it was even further to the right than my Prius, but that's ok.

I did find one tiny problem in the interior: Where the sunscreen/visor is attached to the roof of the car, there's a plastic cover. It doesn't seem to be attached to anything. I think it's normally just glued?

 

[Quarthinos]

I took delivery of my Model 3 yesterday.

Quite happy with it. It has the range I require, more power than I usefully need and has almost enough space. I can put my laptop with space to spare in the frunk, but I can realistically only fit one of my giant suitcases in the trunk. However there is space for smaller items afterwards. Supercharging at one of the 250kv chargers was stupid quick, 15 mins to go from 50 to 80%. Barely had time to finish my tea.

We put down the seats in ours almost immediately. We didn't want to get dog hair all over the nice white seats, but it also gives a huge amount of cargo room. Of course, we don't have kids, just the dog, so YMMV.

 

[Quarthinos]

space in the Model 3

For the frunk, it's useful enough if you're picking up a couple bags of groceries, though it's complicated enough to open that I tend to just put them in the back, since if I'm carrying a couple bags of groceries, it's not worth juggling stuff to open up the app to pop the frunk. It's nice enough as some extra storage space for small things if you're loading your car all the way, but inconvenient enough to not really matter most of the rest of the time, at least for me.

Yes. It's also a pain to properly close with only one hand (or even two!). I have a huge hand and I still have to place it exactly right to get it to close. It's not helped that my wife read about the Ss and Xs getting a broken "T" if you closed it wrong, so I CANNOT touch the T, lest I face her wrath..

 

[Quarthinos]

WaPo has a story about battery strategies in the industry, particularly Tesla's aggressive battery densities and mass, which leads to the highest range per charge.

However the supposed tradeoff is lower lifespan, not beyond 8-10 years and potential instability, such as alleged spontaneous fires of parked cars. Also complaints from some people that it takes longer to charge their older Teslas, which are also unable to produce the acceleration that their cars had when new.

OTOH, with longer ranges, the need to recharge as frequently would be reduced. Do people put their Teslas on the charger each night, regardless of the charge level, or do they not connect it if they have 50% or more charge left?


Other manufacturers are expected to "catch up" and offer more competitive ranges on their offerings, though I guess some TSLA investor crowed about the Taycan only testing out to 201 miles in EPA testing.


Of course it's paywalled so should be able to find the story if you want.

I read the article. There was lots of sources for most of the story except for the part about falling apart after 8-10 years. One person buying a used, factory-cert Tesla feeling it takes longer for him to charge his car that also lost range when one of the software updates that said "this may effect range for some users" did affect range does not make a good source. There are quite a few Tesla owners out there who bought their Model S new ten years ago, and they don't seem to have any data from even one of them. There might even be some on staff at WaPo..

 

[Quarthinos]

There are quite a few Tesla owners out there who bought their Model S new ten years ago, and they don't seem to have any data from even one of them.

Not 10 years (yet). Model S only went into production in 2012, and around 2,500 were delivered by the end of that year. Due to the production ramp over the successive years, i'm pretty sure the vast majority of S's out there are 2015 or newer.

True. I looked over the article again and I think I took the start date for Roadsters and applied it to the Model S.

In any case, WaPo still did not report from any Tesla owners except the one guy who's range decreased after he installed software that warned him he might lose range. That sounds like Tesla is doing it correctly to me.

 

[Quarthinos]

Fair enough. My wife wants something with a third row but honestly she will likely get a 2020 Explorer.

What does she have against the planet? Tesla X's have 3-row seating (for up to 7).

A $40k Explorer or a $90k X makes it an easy choice. Plus the X is old, and a nightmare from a reliability perspective. Plus we both think it is hideous.

It has nothing to do with the planet.

Where did you get the info about Model X reliability? Doesn't ford stand for found on road dead?

 

[Quarthinos]

They've stated publicly before that CCS Type 2 will be supported via an adapter when they feel the network here is good enough.

Type 2/Combo 2 is Europe only. America uses the Type 1/Combo 1 connector, making the two incompatible.

America vs. Europe being incompatible is irrelevant. Who's going to drive from Europe to America? Compatibility within Europe and within America should have been mandated by law.

I'm planning on doing it once the G-I-UK line gets upgraded to a tunnel. Getting to Greenland from Canada is still going to be a pain, tho.

 

[Quarthinos]

I'd love to see a graph of efficiency (Wh/mile) plotted against speed for various EVs on the market. I'd wager that the Model 3's efficiency doesn't drop as sharply at high speed as most other EVs, making for a closer-to-EPA-range in fastlane freeway driving. That's conjecture based on the 3's aerodynamics, but it'd be very cool to both see if I'm right, and by how much the Model 3 is better than something like a Leaf. Also pretty curious how the Model Y will fare -- will the EPA range be close to the 3, but the real-world range be significantly worse due to the larger frontal area?

My wife and I recently took a road trip in her Model 3. The hotel valet had a charger and we got the car at the 90% the wife had set as the max. Told the car to navigate us home. Gave us the route and then about every minute or so would throw up a warning "Do not exceed 70 mph to arrive at your destination". We were up in the mountains and my wife actually restrained her lead foot, so the extra mileage from going downhill and actually following the speed limit eventually changed the warning to 75 mph. Made it to the house with 20% or so left. So the Model 3 knows how much extra charge it uses based on speed. Not sure if it has an aerodynamic model, or just keeps track based on historical trends. (As I said, my wife has a lead foot and we were cruising at 78 along the interstate to get to the hotel, and we were NOT getting the estimated range.)

 

[Quarthinos]

You only get the kind of productions gains of moving from Hand Made to large scale mass production once. These are NOT repeatable. There is no equivalent next step, after large scale mass production, where we are now, that can deliver that increase in efficiency/cost. This is the elephant in the room, that the optimists are ignoring.

Transistor electronics would like to disagree with this general statement.

Most of the time Moore was looking at when he stated the "law" was while transistors were being mass produced.

Granted, the move from Bell Labs (I think that's were they worked) to Fairchild semiconductor (to pick a historical producer out of the air) was probably an order of magnitude increase in productivity, but they kept doing octaves every 18 months for a very long time after mass production started.

 

[Quarthinos]

You only get the kind of productions gains of moving from Hand Made to large scale mass production once. These are NOT repeatable. There is no equivalent next step, after large scale mass production, where we are now, that can deliver that increase in efficiency/cost. This is the elephant in the room, that the optimists are ignoring.

Transistor electronics would like to disagree with this general statement.

Most of the time Moore was looking at when he stated the "law" was while transistors were being mass produced.

Granted, the move from Bell Labs (I think that's were they worked) to Fairchild semiconductor (to pick a historical producer out of the air) was probably an order of magnitude increase in productivity, but they kept doing octaves every 18 months for a very long time after mass production started.

Like I said earlier in the thread, you can't equate transistor/semiconductor economics to any other kind of manufactured goods. Moore's law doesn't apply to any other kind of manufacturing. Hopefully I don't need to explain why that is.

How about switching from thru-conductor boards to surface mount components? That allowed whole assemblies to be run through a wave soldering machine rather than soldering individual components. It gave a large bump in production, and was after mass production had started. You can't just say its impossible for mass production to never get any improvement.

And before you increase the size of your "not allowed" envelope from transistors to electronics, I'll point to cars, where just in time inventory and kanban allowed manufacturing rates to increase. And the increase was significant enough that everyone saw it helped and changed.

 

[Quarthinos]

How about switching from thru-conductor boards to surface mount components? That allowed whole assemblies to be run through a wave soldering machine rather than soldering individual components. It gave a large bump in production, and was after mass production had started. You can't just say its impossible for mass production to never get any improvement.

And before you increase the size of your "not allowed" envelope from transistors to electronics, I'll point to cars, where just in time inventory and kanban allowed manufacturing rates to increase. And the increase was significant enough that everyone saw it helped and changed.

I actually worked in a small company that did on site manufacturing and we had our own wave soldering machine.

Wave soldering is for through-hole components, NOT surface mount.

Wave soldering is the first basic step you go through for mass production soldering, when moving from individual hand soldering, to whole board soldering.

Again, NOTHING like Moore's Law for semiconductors.

Hmm. I was misinformed by the people who showed off one in high school, or maybe I'm getting too old and forgetful. I think it improved productivity, however?

I still stand by the fact the car production got much better with kanban.

 

[Quarthinos]

"The have been getting dramatically smaller", indeed.

Memory cells, however, have not been getting smaller. They have been getting cheaper, but not smaller.

You zero clues about what you are blathering about.

Memory "cells" are based on transistors which have gotten dramatically, pretty much incomprehensibly smaller.

DRAM for instance only uses 1 transistor. I posted a scaling chart above where we have essentially moved from on the order of 1000 transistors on an IC in 1970's to on the order of 10,000,000,000 today.

Thats a factor of 10,000,000 times more, which means they need to be 10,000,000 times smaller to fit on that tiny piece of silicon.

This shinking is the entire basis for Moore's Law.

DRAM is NOT just a single transistor. There's also the capacitor to store the charge, and then you also need all the read/write/addressing machinery, which is necessary because DRAM needs to be refreshed. Even if the spacing between transistors has been shrunk, you still need enough volume in the capacitor to hold the charge, which is not yet just a single charged atom.

redleader seems to have an understanding of how semiconductors are actually manufactured beyond "lower distance measurement means smaller!" which is what your argument appears to be.

Also, your chart of years and "normal" sizes doesn't consider how much area is in the die. 10 µm for 2000 transistors. Ok. On how large of a physical die? The 6502 was
3.9 mm × 4.3 mm based on a 8 µm process in 1975. Had about 3500 transistors, which is 200 transistors per square millimeter. A 80386 was 10 mm × 10 mm when first produced in 1985. 1.5 µm process and 275000 transistors, 2750 transistors per millimeter. That's one order of magnitude in surface area in 10 years. Whereas Moore would imply six orders of magnitude (10 years /18 months is about 6).

You're trying to say Moore cannot apply because electronics are a special class that doesn't need materials. Moore's "law" only held true in the strictest sense at the beginning of Intel. The cost part has mostly continued, but the size part stopped having meaning long ago, which is what redleader and several others have been trying to say for quite a while.

Edit: Looking around for something with your claimed 20 billion transistors, the closest I can see is a nvidia Titan V, which has 21000 million transistors on a 12 nm process. But the die is 815 mm, which seems to be a bit bigger that the 80386 or even a Core Duo, which was 150 million transistors in 88 square mm (65 nm process).

 

[Quarthinos]

PHEV vs BEV is not a thing for owners, you know which you can use. For manufacturers it will be tricky to match your offerings with customer needs/wants.

The numbers will vary by nation (US has 120v at 12 Amps while UK is 220v at 13 Amps, etc.) but in 5.5 hours I can recharge a Prius Prime to its 26 mile electric range and 600 mile gas range from any outlet (and gas station) in the US. The same 5.5 hours does not do so well for a BEV at 120 volts. 100 hours is closer without additional infrastructure.

So a PHEV, is going to 'fit' a great many parking spaces a BEV is not going to 'fit' well.

As someone with eight 240 outlets in their garage, some with 50 Amp 3 phase*, I am in less stress about charging time, a BEV could recharge overnight in my scenario. I am less impacted by the distance to a DC Fast Charger than 95% of the folks in my town. (It is 35 miles to a Supercharger, 110 miles to CCS, and 115 miles to Chademo, all to the north, going east, west, or south is 230 miles to CCS or Chademo)so a significant percentage of home charging will be needed here)

Cities will be different, but I bet I am similar to a great deal of fly over America.

*some previous owner of my house assembled/repaired vending machines in that garage, so needed welders, benders, and stamping machines. When I moved in, the house had 3 phase Air Conditioning.

What kind of monster battery are you charging that takes 100 hours on house current? My wife's Model 3 LR consistently says it gets 5 hrs/mi on house current, and the battery maxes out at ~300. Since her work is only a few miles away, we haven't bothered calling an electrician. When my Prius finally dies, I'll probably get a Model 3, too. Then we'll probably get some 3 phase 240 outlets run and maybe turn the carport into a garage. We've been talking about getting a real garage ever since we bought the house, just never bothered to do it.

 

[Quarthinos]

Yeah, I guess 3 phase and 240 are different. I think in the US 240 is 2 legs of the 3 phases? I assumed an electrician could grab three phase from the panel, but maybe not? I talked to a friend about getting the line to the stove extended, but he said each individual plug for 240 has to have its own separate breaker, which seems excessive to me. If I need the stove, I'll unplug the Tesla. No issue. If some other idiot tries to run them both, I assume the breaker would throw, as that's what breakers are for? Guess I don't get to find out because the code just won't allow it and I'm not stupid enough to fiddle around inside my panel. I've jacked myself up enough when high potting electronics!

 

[Quarthinos]

We'll soon have 2 EVs, and currently have a single EVSE on a 6-50 outlet. Considering that we already don't charge the car every day, I don't forsee a problem for 2 cars.

It would be nice if multiple chargers could communicate with each other to coordinate charging. If I park 2 Teslas that both need 4 hours of charging time in a garage and plug them both in, the chargers should be able to sort out how to charge them without tripping the circuit.

I think some can. There’s also products like this: https://www.clippercreek.com/dual-ev-ch ... ation/amp/

You can program your tesla to only draw current at a certain time of day (the dealer said it was to take advantage of off peak prices). I don't see any reason why you couldn't plug them both in and program them to switch off manually so each gets half a night of charge..

 

[Quarthinos]

You can program your tesla to only draw current at a certain time of day (the dealer said it was to take advantage of off peak prices). I don't see any reason why you couldn't plug them both in and program them to switch off manually so each gets half a night of charge..

Again, this is on top of chargers sharing load. The HPWC's can share up to 4 units either over serial or wifi (newer units). You tell the "Master" unit what the circuit capacity is and it dynamically balances load based on the number of cars plugged in and their state of charge.

I wasn't saying you were wrong. I hadn't seen your reply before I posted mine. My point was that even without getting a tesla charger installed, you can make the cars share the load by programming the cars to timeshare manually. Obviously, the wall charger scales better, but scaling to two can be done the old fashioned way.

 

[Quarthinos]

I have a question about Rex engines for the technical people here that's been puzzling me for a while.

The i3 engine is a nice little compact 3-cylinder engine, putting out about 25kW peak (is that electrical output?) Normal generators are rated in kVA not kW, so an equivalent diesel/petrol generator would be around 30kVA, I think.

Yet 30kVA generators are enormous. Why are normal generators so large comoared to range extenders of the same capacity? Or is it just the packaging that's different?

Spoiler

I can't really answer the why question, but a 25kW car motor is not rated electrically. It's rated in continuous power. 30kVA is rated in electrical output, hence the VA label rather than W. I think a lot of the size of the generator is a transformer, cooling, and insulators to stop random passersby from electrocution. Cars tend to keep moving, so they have a bit easier of a job dissipating heat.

 

[Quarthinos]

Interesting front story about emergency evacuations from hurricanes.

https://meincmagazine.com/cars/2020/09/hu ... t-we-know/

So idling is okay for EVs in big traffic jams even if you have to turn on climate control.

But there may be a crush at fast chargers.


So the lesson is, always keep your BEV topped off in case you have to get out of dodge pronto?


Don't live in hurricane zone out here in CA but a killer earthquake, maybe your BEV in the garage is more likely to be crushed?

Heh.

I live in tornado country. The only thing that BEV is going to do is get chucked down the street..

Are you trying to say BEVs are more likely to be destroyed by a tornado than an ICE vehicle?

 

[Quarthinos]

I mean if it works for someone it works.

Doesn't for me right now but hey; not everything can work for everyone.

F-150's don't make sense for downtown city residents. Smart Cars don't make since for Exurb commuters. Hummers don't make sense for anyone. Not all cars are built to serve the entire market..

but we're are now at the exciting point in time, where a person with limited mileage needs and a modest budget, can choose an EV without financial penalty.

At some point, the EV market will catch up in the higher mileage, modest budget market.

As a call-up chest freezer repair person, I disagree with that remark!

 

[Quarthinos]

Ford is showing they still don't get it.

They've been teasing pics of the new Bolt design, due next summer, as well as a CUV variant.

Meanwhile, other manufacturers aren't teasing. They're showing their cards, even for cars over a year away.


Tax credits for Ford BEVs must surely be exhausted by now. They're going to have to overdeliver and still be price leader to change market perceptions. The Mustang Mach E launch better go well for them.

GM has more of a clean state, though they seem to be shooting for premium first with Hummer and Cadillac SUVs.

Fiat Chrysler? Oh a Ram truck BEV is coming. :facepalm:

Um.. Ford doesn't make the Bolt, that's Chevrolet, part of General Motors. I think Ford still has lots of BEV credits left to give out. I will grant you that the Mustang E is badly named for the North American market, IMO.

 

[Quarthinos]

The Supercharger network, plus the usual Chargepoint, Electrify America, etc. options.

No CCS though, just L2 charging.


I agree that the id.4 and the Audi version (yet to be officially announced) the Q4 eTron are going to be very real competitors to the 3/Y.


Anyone know how the tax credits work for the different brands of a OEM? Does Audi get it's own bucket or is it all VW Group vehicles?

Are there any CCS chargers in the US? If so, how do they compare to a V2 supercharger, which I think is the majority of the superchargers?

 

[Quarthinos]

Interesting. I'll call my local Tesla site and ask if they can get me one.

A rumor site (driven.io) says that CARB published documents on a "Model Y SR RWD" just last week. According to the site, that implies that Tesla is certifying a new RWD Model Y and should be available in a few months.
https://thedriven.io/2021/03/26/tesla-g ... range-rwd/

EDIT: For me personally, I don't need all wheel drive or more than 250 miles of range. I did a road trip from Tampa to Miami and back in a standard range Model 3, which is 250 miles range, and I was satisfied. Ergo, if I get a Model Y with one motor and 205 miles of range *and* save $8k, I'm in.

I am laughing over this weird mash-up typo in the article:

Currently, only dual-wheel-drive Long Range and Performance variants of the Model Y are available through Tesla’s US website.

I guess the author changed their mind from "dual motor" to "all wheel drive" mid-sentence and so we get this Frankensteined combo, LOL.

It is kind of funny, but if only two wheels are being driven by the motor(s), then isn't it dual wheel drive, especially in contrast to all wheel drive?

 

[Quarthinos]

wavelet is correct. The salesman got annoyed with me when I pointed that out. He said the Id.4 is marketed at people who've never owned an EV, and they didn't want to learn one-pedal driving. His take, "These people have been driving one way for 50 years. If you take away their brake pedal, they might not even buy the car." :facepalm:

I wanted to shout that (a)one-pedal is an option, not a requirement, and (b)the brake pedal is still there and still works. Instead, I just stopped asking questions. It was clear he'd only gone through a VW training course and didn't actually know much about EV's.

<rant>
Aside from a Tesla salesman, the sales people on my test drives haven't know jack about EVs. I don't expect them to lecture on battery chemistry or cooling methods. But they ought to know basic things like: Level 1, 2, and 3 charging. The difference between J-1772, CCS, Chademo, and Tesla connectors. Regenerative braking. Salespeople at Chevy, Ford, Nissan, and VW dealerships couldn't describe most (sometimes any) of these topics.
</rant>

So in one-pedal mode, you take foot off the accelerator and it should brake.

But if you have to do a panic stop, you can still slam on the brake pedal?

Not only that, but in one-pedal mode if I'm not pushing the accelerator I don't want the car to move AT ALL.. That means the software (or the mechanical hardware, idc) should compensate for hills in either direction and not pretend to be an automatic crreping forward because the transmission fluid has a measurable viscosity. My ideal of one foot driving is that the accelerator is the rheostat for movement speed, and the break pedal means "OH SHIT STOP NOW GODDAMN IT!"

 

[Quarthinos]

There's no way the F-150 will average 800 Wh/mi. The battery capacity just for the short range version would be 184 kWh! 400-450 Wh/mi is a more reasonable guess.

Agreed. I don't know what Range Rover did to make the results that bad.

It gets 80KW/100 miles, while the Wrangler 4Xe gets 68 kWh/100mi which is itself quite dismal.

All PHEVs have extremely high consumption on all-electric mode; the drivetrain is just inherently inefficient.

Has to do with a plethora of things, from using very small batteries that need to be charged and discharged at high C-rates to using non-continuous rated inverters and motors (relatively inefficient) to driving the car through a relatively complicated drivetrain.

Just increasing the battery capacity (something I have a fair bit of experience with ) massively improves consumption figures. It's like 20% better on an Outlander with 22kWh instead of 11kWh (nom.).

Ultimately overall miles/KWh is:

Mass: Trucks/Jeeps are heavy
Aerodynamics: Trucks/Jeeps are big bricks
Drivetrains: Jeep 4XE doesn't have a direct Electric drive, it passes through the transmission, and hi/low/RWD transfer case.
Motor Efficiency: Unknown
Power Electronics efficiency: Unknown

So I can see why the Jeep has terrible efficiency, it scores low in every case that we know about. Hard to see how the Range Rover does that much worse again. Probably heavier.

F-150 Lightning appears to have the advantage of direct EV drive instead of running through a transmission/transfer case, though it's still a big, heavy, poor Aerodynamic, pickup truck.

Still I expect MUCH better than Range Rover PHEV or Jeep 4XE.

I was thinking of this thread as I was driving to work today. I don't know enough about aerodynamics to answer the question, but I saw a work truck that had three different extension ladders, each with the extra bars (wings?) on the top to help with stability. They weren't stacked very neatly, so there were all sorts of extra pointy-out bits above the cab. How much would the ladders change the range? Would stacking the ladders neatly help?

 

[Quarthinos]

I was just thinking, many readers of this thread have probably never driven a car without a microcontroller in it.

I got to drive a Yugo as my daily driver in high school? After it was rear-ended, I switched to an Escort EXP, which might have had EFI, but it was manual everything else.

 

[Quarthinos]

Nope There are only 2 configs now anyway, LR and Plaid.

I though the LR was available with all the bells and whistles except launch control and the big wheels? (And the yoke..)

edit: That's what I see when trying to order a new custom Model S.

 

[Quarthinos]

That's not really saying much, though. The amount of maintenance and restoration put into a Model A to keep it driveable would certainly fit my definition of "heroics". Over that timeframe, even Tesla's crypto shouldn't be a problem.

A basic machine shop gets you most of the stuff you need for something of that era. I own one and am part of a family that owns plenty of old stuff. They're far simpler and there's far less that goes wrong in ways you can't easily solve. They're easy wrenching.

Yes, but you're comparing 90 years ago's construction to today's tools. 90 years ago, you probably wouldn't have had electricity due to your rural location, and the machinery was far more expensive. You would probably have had a small blacksmithing shop instead.

Being able to be repaired in rural (and I mean rural) turn of the century America was a chief design feature of those early Fords. Its just not a design consideration on a Tesla or any modern car that's sold in 1st world countries. But you can see that in a lot of vintage machines. You can go to an airshow and still see all manner of WWII piston powered planes flying around but hardly any vintage jets. When's the last time you saw an F4 fly around in an air show? The only ones I ever see are basically rolling scrap used for target practice at great expense to the government. Certainly no private owners are tinkering away at their Vietnam-era jet in their hangar. The level of complexity of WWII era planes vs a jet built just 10 years later is staggering. You just can't expect to see anything that complex to be kept in operating condition 70-100 years after it was built that isn't a B-52 again at massive expense to the US government.

I seriously doubt we'll have vintage Tesla car clubs where our grandkids rebuilt Grandpa's old Model 3 just for fun. If they do it'll be with modern components and would be more accustomed to guys who put a brand new crate engine, wheels and suspension into a 1970s muscle car. You'll see plenty in museums but they'll be long stripped of anything that will make them move.

At one point, Michael Dorn owned a demilitarized F-5 (I think from Canada?)F-86 from South Africa. The reason you can't get hold of an F-4 is because it's a military aircraft owned by the US Govt and they don't want you to have it. The last time I went to Udvar-Hazy, they were having a small show on the tarmac behind the building and there was a 1950's passenger jet in perfect working order, owned by a private individual. The reason "no private owners are tinkering away at their Vietnam-era jet in their hangar" is because they're all in the boneyard as US property. I'm sure if Russia/Eastern Europe had actually maintained their MiG-15s longer, you'd be able to own one, but I'm not aware of a boneyard for Soviet era jets.

 

[Quarthinos]

To a greater extent its fast charging makes up for any real lack of range , 250+ miles is plenty to go between stops and it charges like a crazy thing.

Subject to having the power available at the charger... I don't know how charging infrastructure is in Europe, but it could be much better in the US. Several states have issues with individuals buying power per (kilo)watt rather than monthly billing.

 

[Quarthinos]

It's unlikely that you could do a 15-mile round-trip on a RAV4 Prime at freeway speeds only using the electric motors?

Just to clarify do you mean 15 miles total, or 30 miles total?

I meant 30 miles total.

But even 15 miles, once you hit a certain speed threshold, I would think the gas engine is running?

At least that seems to be the case with the standard Toyota hybrids, the electric motors can't drive the car by themselves above a certain speed.

Afik the max ev only speed on the prime is 84mph, it has a 42mile range but that would get eaten at highway speed, it might do a 30 mile trip depending on conditions.

That's pretty nice imo. I assumed 30mph or some horseshit like that would be the max battery speed on those. Way to go Toyota.

My Prius flatly refuses to go above ~25 mph on batteries, but it's a 2008(?) model. If I want to use batteries to get through my neighborhood from (or to) the major road, I have to spend more time watching the dash than the road because of all the hills so it doesn't turn on the gas motor.

 

[Quarthinos]

Boeing had fire issues with lithium packs on the Dreamliner, with no mechanical damage...

The S had a big plate fitted, afik the model 3/Y just have (extra) protection at the front of the pack, though that whole pack is well designed and very resistant to fires

There's a difference between "was able to land after declaring an emergency" and "no mechanical damage"...

 

[Quarthinos]

Yep, a ~6 second 0-60 is "Fast" to most people.

But with Tesla's business model of selling direct to buyers rather than going through a dealer network, they would seem more reliant on people configuring and buying on the website, so that is where buyers would have the opportunity to look at a comparison table.

But for a Tesla that's basically "Small battery" and "Big battery"

People (as a general rule) don't care about what size brakes it has, or how many GFLOPS the giant touchscreen has. Price/Appearance/Quality are what the vast majority of people shop.


This is why people buy Taycan's. It's a much, much nicer vehicle overall unless you only care about something very specific.


Fuck, my Wife's 2018 Explorer is built better than a $100k Model S (and I don't just mean assembly quality but actual parts/design)


RobDickinson: You seem to only care about raw stats. Yes the Tesla's have better range than anyone else right now, but literally people don't give a shit. That doesn't make them better cars.

Don't paint me with that huge brush, because it is NOT true in my case, or my wife's.

And it's not range anxiety. We like to travel in our car, and the fabled "it's just like gassing up the car!" hasn't happened yet, so having a good range helps a lot.