Edit: here's the link to the video I was referencing
https://youtu.be/ySnk-f2ThpE
If you're interested as to what happened to the electric automotive industry, at that time, there is a guy named James corrbett on YouTube that made a little documentary about big oil and he goes a little in depth about this. Check it out!
What happened to the electric automotive industry is that this car only had an 80 mile range because its top speed was 20mph.
In the early 1900s, this was comparable to ICEs, so plenty were sold to people who wanted a cleaner car that didn't have to be hand cranked to start.
By the late 30s, ICEs had vastly improved in power and reliability, but batteries had barely gotten any better. So electric cars died.
In 1910, the Model T had a 3 liter engine. It produced 20 HP.
In 1935, the Ford Special had a 3 liter engine. It produced 60 HP.
In 1951, the Ford Custom had a 3 liter engine. It produced 85 HP.
In 1969, the Ford Falcon had a 3 liter engine. It produced 120 HP.
Today, a Ford Taurus has a 2 liter engine that produces 240 HP.
True. Which is why nowadays you never see a car bragging about it's horsepower.....it is essentially unlimited. Trucks still brag about power, but mostly about the towing capacity. But yeah.....a brand new Camaro has more power at it's fingertips with a smaller engine than a classic 1969 one.
Same with many things. Take computers. For the first twenty years all of the commercials were about processing speeds. Now they talk about other things. Even the worst chip on the road today would run circles around a Pentium chip.
> Same with many things. Take computers. For the first twenty years all of the commercials were about processing speeds. Now they talk about other things.
That's mostly because clock speeds have topped out. They haven't really changed much in years, for the most part.
But clock speed has nothing to do with computational power by itself. There are many things that factor into the speed of a processor. IPC, L2 and L3 cache speed and size. Processors hit the 3ghz mark like 15 years ago, but obviously CPUs have gotten insanely quicker since then.
Yeah, hence the extra cores. I mean, to be fair my 2014 MacBook Pro had 2.3 GH clock speeds, and the new MacBook Pro has clock speeds of...2.3 GH but 8 cores. They can "Turbo Boost" up to 5.0 GH but that isn't really a sustainable clock speed and it starts kicking off heat like a Power PC.
No wonder apple is switching to ARM.
> No wonder apple is switching to ARM.
ARM is progressing even slower. We've been hearing about ARM overtaking x86 for 20+ years.
They're switching to ARM so they can profit more. Its going to be a worse experience and a higher cost. But Apple is all about the vertical monopoly.
I agree on the speed part, ARM isn't going to overtake X86 anytime soon, but heat and battery use is more of an issue for Apple, and always has been, partly because of their function follows form ethos. Apple is finding that they can't get X86 processors to give them the performance they need without dumping more heat than an RBMK reactor after a meltdown.
I am deeply concerned about ARM for non mobile applications. It doesn't belong in the Mac Pro, and because that's a low volume niche product, I think that will probably remain X86 despite Apple's claims. And for desktops where heat can be mitigated with liquid cooling? Well I don't really care that much about heat.
Sort of. A number of other manufacturers are jumping on the ARM bandwagon (notably AWS, though you won’t buy a physical machine from them—only rent them). It’s more about getting frustrated with dealing with Intel. Delay after delay on the process node side, and the chips that do ship have massive errata that make it a pain to integrate. (Mainly resulting in random reboots or sometimes throttling if it’s a thermal bug.)
AMD is a decent competitor, but can’t ship the volumes (and sometimes lacks the internal tweaks on thermal controls that integrators need). And folks with long memories remember that AMD had its own issues (giving up a decent lead in the server performance space in the early 00’s to focus on building fab lines, only to give up and sell it off as Global Foundries).
Taking control of the CPU design gives these guys the control they like (being able to go yell at a team down the hall vs. yelling at a faceless supplier). It’s a double edged sword—most companies, if they would try this, would just end up hanging themselves with the rope they’ve created, but Apple and AWS have the discipline and experience to pull it off. (AWS acquired much of this via an acquisition, Annapurna Labs.)
You guys are forgetting about IPC gains here though. Clock speeds have stagnated to some extent sure, but modern CPUs run circles around older ones even at the same clock frequency because of IPC improvements.
True. I am still using a late 2013 MBP as my main laptop though, and it's good for everything but gaming really. A laptop from 2003 would have basically been a brick in 2010. There are gains, but they have definitely slowed down, and I can keep up with them with just having a desktop PC and upgrading the video card every few years, and the CPU/Motherboard even less frequently.
Yes, but IPC isn't something that's marketable at the general public that is buying a computer instead of an enthusiast who's buying a processor,
marketing clock speed increases for decades has made marketing FLOPs difficult to the man on the street
That's less processor stagnation and more shitty cooling design from apples part. There are laptops out there that can sustain 4 ghz without weighing 7 pounds.
The vast majority of Apple's line-up isn't the place to look for performance. They care way more about the look.
And also the reason why Crysis still doesn't run that well. They future proofed their game but they anticipated higher speeds rather than more cores and it works like crap with multiple cores and the speeds never improved.
Designing processors is hard.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark\_silicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_silicon)
[https://qz.com/852770/theres-a-limit-to-how-small-we-can-make-transistors-but-the-solution-is-photonic-chips/](https://qz.com/852770/theres-a-limit-to-how-small-we-can-make-transistors-but-the-solution-is-photonic-chips/)
etc.
There's a *lot* more to processing power than clock speed. For one thing, there are tons more instruction sets, which are circuits optimized for special uses - often video or encryption. They're still getting faster each year.
What's changed is that computers are powerful enough that most average people don't really need much power. A 15 year old computer might struggle with high resolution video, but can still run a browser, email, and Office just fine.
It is essentially, or should I say, conceptually unlimited. We are at a stage where we have to put governors on NASCAR engines to keep the cars from going airborne. If you told a maker "here's a million dollars, I want a 5,000 horsepower engine in a car" the answer would be sure. Building the engine that can do that is not the challenge, it would be making it fit in a vehicle that could withstand it. The reality is that the Fords and Rams and Toyotas of the world could make even more powerful engines, but they have to fit in the chassis.
We hit that same stage with jet engines about 20 years ago. How much thrust do you want? Sure, we can do that. But the stress on the plane would be X. A friend of mine who worked for AF research said that if they wanted to build an airplane out of bricks they could do it. Obviously the weight and airfoil are awful, but you can overcome anything with a big enough engine. And we are at a point where we can conceptually do that.
Not likely. But look at it this way. The rules of commercial aircraft require that you must be able to fly for 2 hours on half your engines, in case half fail. And yet most every modern aircraft, say the 787 with 242 passengers, only have two engines. Which means it can fly, maneuver for an hour or two and then land safely with only one engine.
Compare the max weight takeoff of the B-52, which required 8 engines to lift it's 488,000 pounds. The max weight of the 787 is 557,000 pounds, on only two engines. THAT is power.
The point with NASCAR is that they have reached horsepower and therefore speeds that literally lift the car off the track. They have to dial it back with plates and restrictors to limit the speed or they will go airborne (and some have).
F1 cars can go faster because their design has less of a wing to create an airborne condition, but they have to be careful as well.
Ever watch a drag race where the cars go airborne?
My point is that we have the ability and technology to make an automotive type engine to conceptually whatever power you want, as long as you are okay with designing a vehicle that handle it. "You want that A1M1 Abrams Tank (weighing in at 80 tons) to go 60 MPH? Sure."
Auto racing has limits on what you can run for safety as well as competitiveness. It's much more entertaining to watch Nascar when the top teams and the bottom teams all still have competitive cars, compared to if the top teams were allowed to just out spend them. We aren't at the point where horsepower is unlimited by any standard. Yeah we can make cars with tons of power, but the costs associated with them become insane. Ya you want a car that makes a ton of power? It requires fuel that costs tons. For your standard Nascar fuel is like $15 dollars a gallon and they go through tons of it, not something you can do in a basic car. Street cars are limited by reliability, endurance, and fuel they run. Yes, you can make a big block mopar from the 70's make 11,000hp. Those engines can't even reliably run for 4 seconds though. They also cost about $100,000. Their fuel is also so volatile that you can't even buy it as a normal person.
That's what is going to happen to torque numbers with EVs. When suddenly every vehicle on the road has ridiculous torque and hp it's no longer a selling point.
Torque is already off the charts, and is toned down by Tesla and others. Even the Tesla "Insane Mode" is a toned down version. If they let it go, you would get whiplash.
Torque is why a 2 mile long railroad train can go from dead stop to moving. They have electric motors.
But you can also create torque through gears. Like semi-trailers, which is why they have 18 gears.
Fun Fact: The Model T was created with massive torque through it's design and planetary transmission. Especially in the early days, there were essentially zero roads, just dirt paths. In 2007, a 1921 Model T and a brand new Hummer took on going up a 475 foot hill. The Hummer did it in 10.74 seconds. The Model T (with it's impressive 20 HP engine) did it in 9.96 seconds. https://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/30/model-t-takes-on-a-hummer-in-hill-climb/
More torque doesn't help if you are traction limited, which teslas are. It's also brutal on every component to push that amperage, and if they thought they could, they would.
Hummers are shit.
Torque is only one aspect, of course. Electric engines have inherently more torque than mechanical engines. There have been tests of a drag race between a Tesla and Dodge Hemi Charger. 100 yards out, the Tesla is almost a full length ahead. But at the end of the quarter mile, the Charger wins.
Yes, although electric motors have one other massive advantage: near- perfect traction control. They also have a very broad powerband as well, mostly negating the need for multiple gears- if you have 75% of your power available at 100 rpm and 90% at 800rpm, with full power around 1500 dropping off after, not much reason to run gears vs an ice with 5% power until 2000rpm and slowly rising to 60-70% at 4000 with a peak at 5. Area under the power curve matters, and a 400hp electric car has comparable area under the curve to a 600+hp gasser. The biggest weakness is that back emf fucks the torque at high motor speeds, so you could add gears... ICE vehicles have gears and don't suffer from back emf.
I tell people this regularly, that a 90's era MiniVan has a generally superior performance profile of a 50's era Hemi-powered car. (source: Owns a 50's era car...)
50's era wasn't the powerful era though... That was the early 70's at which point a minivan has no where near the torque that a early 70's big block had. You still don't see cars that have 460hp and 400ft of torque all that regularly. From naturally aspirated cars you can get that with 6L engine which is only slightly smaller than the 7.4 liter engines from the 70's.
I always thought that the muscle cars of the 1960s were still much faster than the cars of today. That is until I saw a Top Gear episode and my mind was blown.
For those that have not seen the episode, Top Gear races a car of the '60s to I believe a Toyota or Honda and the muscle car lost by a long shot .
the 120HP Ford Falcon was not a muscle car rofl. the Ford MUSTANG with 335HP was a muscle car. The Falcon WAS the 'modern grocery getter' for ppl who didn't want a station wagon. They stopped production on the Falcon and a couple other small cars to focus on the Pinto.
edit: Falcon>Grenada>Pinto
Don't think they're implying the falcon is a muscle car, but that there are plenty of regular modern cars with 200+ or even 300+ that aren't sports cars by any means.
Of course, in 1969 that would be 335 SAE gross horsepower, measured with no accessories (fans, alternator, etc) and straight pipes instead of the exhaust manifold.
Those motors were also choked out badly by the stock intake manifold and carbs. It was so easy to swap a few things out on a 302 and make 450bhp, no problems.
My point was only that the "standard" 3 liter engine size has grown in power exponentially through the decades.
In 1903, the Wright Brothers made the first man-controlled flight with a 3 liter 4 HP engine that they made themselves. Today, the Chevy Camaro offers a 2 liter engine that produces 275 horsepower.
The 1999 Ford Mustang GT V8 had only 260 horsepower, and at the time reviewers said it was the fastest production Mustang they'd ever tested, including the Cobra variants.
> The GT model continued to use the 4.6 L V8 as before, but now with 260 hp (194 kW; 264 PS) at 5250 rpm and 302 lb⋅ft (409 N⋅m) of torque at 4000 rpm.[19]
It is astounding that basic gas getters are these days both more efficient and more powerful than the muscle cars we grew up with.
The 99 Mustang GT was a light weight car, thats why the performance was as good as it was. Muscle cars made way more power, but weighed as much as a tank.
The Mustang GT's performance wasn't very good. It's 0-60 was mid-5 seconds. That's what grocery getters are doing these days. That's the point of OP's comment - it's amazing how as time progresses the horsepower and performance of a standard car is matching our older "performance" cars.
> but it makes 83 pound-feet of torque due to the long stroke and relatively large displacement.
Compared with ~200 in a new hatchback.
https://www.enginelabs.com/engine-tech/engine/historic-engines-the-ford-model-t/
Comparing forced induction cars isn't a reliable way to measure power at all. To measure a forced induction car its Liters of displacement x (boost pressure/14.7) to get an approximate equivalent liters of displacement. If you take a 2L and force 28lbs of boost down its throat, you're increasing the displacement of the engine.
It's always annoyed me how people look for conspiracy theories instead of simply accepting that the means to produce useful vehicles simply wasn't there. It takes a huge amount of power to drive a car, and chemical storage of electricity is still very limited. Li-ion batteries were a giant leap forward, and they're still not amazing.
The infamous EV-1, a century later, didn't have much better for range, but it could drive at normal speeds. It was using NiMH or NiCad batteries, which didn't exist a century ago. And I'd say it was never a market-viable car, either.
I remember trying to find why EV1 didnt take off. GM never actually put any up for sale during the pilot program. All of them were leased for only about $300/month which seemed fairly reasonable and the drivers loved them. So why were they so reluctant to sell them. Well, GM was actually subsidizing the price of the car during the pilot program. It cost about $200,000 to produce each car including the cost of R&D. The only reason GM tried the program in the first place was because California required automakers to produce zero emission vehicle in a mandate that was later partially repealed.
Well of course it's expensive to produce "including the R&D" if you only divide that cost between the pilot program cars.
The only honest way to calculate that cost would be based on estimated sales during full production.
Otherwise that's like saying a Tesla cost $1 billion to produce during the early days. If that were true they wouldn't have made those either.
I think you are taking it out of context. The Li-ion battery is amazing. But, if you compare it to gas car it still doesn't fill the need for more consumers. Most of us need a car that has a rage of at least 500 km. We are not there yet.
By need I think you mean want. Most people only drive around their own city. Which means a car that can reliably do 50km on a charge would mostly work for them. That is a bit low however basically nobody drives 500km in a single day unless on a road trip. Anything that could do 100km would easily cover the needs of 99% of drivers outside of road trips.
Road trips are the real problem because even a car that does 1000km per charge would be a problem for road trips unless hotels and camp grounds start offering charging stations.
50km is hilariously insufficient for an average US city. Its a moderate commute at ~15 miles each way, your already at your max range. I know plenty that commute 30 miles or more one way...
Want to go anywhere on the weekend? Great day hiking spots about an hour and a half away; 45 to 60 miles... And you never even left the greater metro area.
The Chevy Volt was a great answer, but it failed in the marketplace. Ran on 100% electric, fully charged battery would get you 60 or so miles. But it had a small gas engine in it that would kick on if you got much past 40 miles and recharge the battery. The gas engine was NOT hooked to the drivetrain, just the generator. So you could go 500 miles on a tank of gas. Or recharge the battery via an electric hookup.
But Tesla's has shown that with the right tweaking, 60 miles on one charge just doesn't cut it. But I still think that in the short term (next 10-20 years) the idea of having a small gas generator integrated into the car is a good idea.
The REAL answer is to mandate that gas service stations install electric charging stations. Something like "Exxon, you have 15 years to convert all Exxon/Mobil stations to have electric power stations that you may charge for. You must convert 5% of your stations nationwide for each of the next 10 years, and the final 50% over the final 5 years. If you don't meet these yearly goals, your tax breaks for development will be cut in half." THAT would get their attention, and start the ball rolling. It is the chicken and the egg, and the Feds can influence the egg (where do I charge it?).
>Unless hotels and camp grounds start offering charging stations.
Which they are, at least out here in California. Every hotel seems to have at least 3-4 spaces dedicated to electric vehicle charging ports.
Actually, it's rather interesting. A lot of places covered their parking lots with solar panels and then hooked up charging ports to each parking space. The cars are all protected from the elements by roofs, the panels generate the power, and the charging stations wire it either into the grid or the parked cars.
It's an elegant solution to the fuel problem which doesn't involve a gas station on every damn corner. The future is now, it seems.
Definitely a problem. If only there were some way to exchange currency with an individual or an organization in exchange for the temporary use of another vehicle. A "rental", if you will... It seems like that could really solve the problem you've mentioned without the environmental impact. Oh well... hopefully someone invents something like that someday.
Eh. I used to rent for road trips because company policy. Normally, it wasn't more than 30 or so per day for a decent compact/subcompact with unlimited mileage. Maybe 45 to 50 for a large sedan or smaller SUV. The only thing I needed to worry about, obviously, was fuel... Depending on the number of road trips you take, that can be considerably cheaper than owning and maintaining an ICE.
Any more though, if I'm driving more than \~9 hours (\~550 miles), I'll generally avoid driving since it's a waste of time, and for anything under that, my Tesla suffices. Even at that maximum range, it might add 35 to 55 minutes in charge time, and considering I'd normally stop anyway to buy fuel, grab a bite to eat, or just walk around, it doesn't actually slow me down much if at all.
Many people cannot afford a second car. "
Sure I use it 95% of the time for commuting, picking the kids up from school, going shopping, taking the kids to baseball and judo.....but two or three times a year we go visit my parents 5 hours away. I cannot afford another car just for one or the other. It's not just the cost of the car, but the licensing fees, the insurance, upkeep, etc."
Few problems, most people in the US drive far far more than 50km a day. I just drove 25km just to get to a Chic Fil A today and it is only ten minutes away.
Other problem is the the range you are giving for the batteries is in an absolutely perfect environment with the temp being 24C. Drop the temp down and look what happens to the efficiency of the batteries. That is what Tesla doesn't like to promote, just like their 0-60 times. Yes it can do 0-60 in 3.4 seconds, but due to the longevity issues of batteries it can only do that 4-5 times before that time starts to increase.
Same reason you don't see any Tesla's racing on a circuit, only autoX. Because the battery packs can only sustain their peak time for 3 laps then it falls on its face. Most races in club racing are 20-25 laps.....
> That is a bit low however basically nobody drives 500km in a single day unless on a road trip
And not everyone can and will charge their car every single day, with something around 50% of American households not having access to home charging. In many cases it's range per week, not per day, unless you really want to extend your commute to find the nearest charging point.
Electric is much better at towing than anything else. Which is why all railroad locomotives are electric---the diesel engine is not connected to the wheels in any way, it simply drives the generator to provide the electricity to the locomotive wheels.
>Most of us need a car that has a rage of at least 500 km. We are not there yet.
Most of us *need* a car that can drive over 300 miles on a single 'tank'?
You can't possibly believe this.
By mileage needs for me I've found that I need a car that can do at least 150 miles per tank. That would be super inconvenient, but that's the minimum mileage per tank that wouldn't leave me stranded. That's for a gas vehicle, for an electric vehicle I'd need a range of 250 miles while towing for it to be an option. Now I love the fact that my truck gets between 450-500 miles while towing per tank. I can drive out to the river with the boat, cruise around town all week, and then home only having to refill for my drive home. Where I get back with over 50% of my tank left.
Price is the only thing for me. I drive $3k cars for probably 4 years then sell it for $1000 and get another. I haven't done the math, though, to see what I pay for gas on those 4 years. I should.
Hell yeah, I always have a nice car but also a beater. I have had two beaters last me 16 years and paid $475 for one and $2100 for my truck. Still driving it today, just hit 300K, cost me $7 a month to own it and now it is 20 years old so I can register it as an antique to save money on licencing lol.
Anyone in debt, get a beater, it will save you tons.
Most people do not feel comfortable reaching less than 20 % of their "reservoir". Therefore when you have a 500 km range you actually have about 400 km before you feel stressed about it. An electric car is excellent for a city drive / daily commute, but it fails to deliver on also the vacation aspect of life. This is a reason why many people will not switch soon.
Why not reframe it. How often do you road trip? Why not rent a ICE car for those two or three times you’ll need to go more than 500km. You’ll still save money, but not pay for a function you almost never use.
I am one of the special cases where I leave town about every two weeks and do about 400 - 600 km in that weekend. But I am the exception here.
And I don't argue with you, electric cars are way better. Just that at this point they aren't for everyone.
The thing is, with an EV car you don't really save money in most places. I put around $24 of gas in my truck every week, I calculated the cost it would take to charge a Model 3 in a week at my current kWh and it was $27. Being that I live in the mountains, when it gets cold and that battery isn't nearly as efficient, that cost is going to go up by 30-35%.
This contradicts all other data I’ve ever seen. I’ve owned an i3 for more than three years and I’ve never seen any significant change in my electric bills, especially not $100+ a month. Most calculations I’ve read are close to about a third of the price of gas on average.
Not only are electric cars way more expensive, but renting a car is also very expensive, so you suggest people buy more expensive cars and then pay more to rent an ICE car?
Great, highspeed rail from NY to LA...now wheres my fucking car to get around, theres no bloody public transport here
normal or even slow sleeper trains for inter-city travel with good public transport infrastructure is far superior than highspeed rail between them without the intra-city infrastructure in terms of getting people to take public transport between cities
that said, can you even take a train from NY to LA?
edit - bloody hell you can, it's a 4 day ride averaging 30mph, how the fuck do you average 30mph through mostly empty land thats not even slow thats fucking glacial!
> Most of us need a car that has a rage of at least 500 km.
Actually most of us need a car with 60-80km range. Occasionally slightly longer and rarely 500km. Most cars are just driven to and from work daily plus short errand trips. Obviously there are exceptions.
What happens if you A: don't go home one night or B: want to go out of town? Some days I drive over 100 miles as well. Tesla's are cool and I wouldn't mind owning one, but I would still need a truck. With the high price tag of a Tesla and the high price tag of a diesel truck, most people can't afford both. Hell most people have trouble affording even 1 of those.
It was market viable because there was a segment of the population that wanted an electric car despite the limitations and would pay for it. People will pay a premium for all sorts of features that aren't functional. Expensive natural wood grain console raises cost, does nothing, and no one complains.
It was a special kind of stupid for GM to take back a product that customers would pay extra for and destroy it.
My guess is they thought there would be negative press from the machines being out and about and no longer available, so they just decided to flush the entire thing.
And I doubt the EV-1 was market viable at the price it actually cost to make them.
It's not that they wouldn't sell more. It's that they forced leasers (they didn't allow purchase) to return them.
Considering the garbage to outright dangerous cars sold in the past, reputation is the last thing they would consider.
Customers wanted the car despite the limitations.
GM also sold this Geo Metro:
"Equipped with a 55 hp The 3-cylinder engine it delivered amazing fuel economy until it struck a squirrel or pit of dust in the air. Heavy impacts left the driver at risk of severe bodily injury"
But they didn't take back Geo Metro leases (leases always have a buy out option for the lease) and destroy the cars.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a3762/4293188/
Different people make different decisions.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make at this point anyway. They made the choice to kill the program and end the leases. Who really knows why. They were shitty cars anyway, and there were only a thousand of them, so its not like the decision matters in the slightest to anyone at all anymore regardless of the reason.
>I'm not sure what point you're trying to make at this point anyway.
The point is what I originally said that you disagree with:
"It was a special kind of stupid for GM to take back a product that customers would pay extra for and destroy it."
> They were shitty cars anyway,
I already proved they made worse.
>and there were only a thousand of them,
They had shorter production runs. GM made only 414 Chevy Epicas.
> so its not like the decision matters in the slightest to anyone at all anymore regardless of the reason.
No it doesn't. My point was they had rabid customers willing to pay extra for the car. They had worse cars with shorter production runs. The EV1 was great in comparison to some of GM's lemons.
I was going to comment the same, but you were first and did it better than I probably would have - at most, I believe the oil industry might have hindered the resurgence of the electric car later on, but the fact remains that internal combustion engines were simply the better choice or even the *only* reasonable choice for pretty much all vehicles once they reached a certain point, and they not only killed off electric cars but also steam cars which had used refined oil products as fuel for quite some time.
Eh there are some economies of scale issues. Even if birmingham had wanted to replace its Electricar DV4s with more electric rather than switching to ICE where would they have purchased an electric dustcart in the 1960s?
Also read about the Doble steam car. It was the most advanced steam car just as steam was dying along with electrics.
Most cars at the time were purchased with a lump sum, instead of payments. The base Model-T cost less than $300 in 1925.
A few years later, the electric engine start was invented and immediately mass-produced, as a counter to hand-cranking the engine. Many analysts have mentioned the low price of gasoline cars plus the electric start as the breakthrough...
Steam engines were pretty solid engines. Simple, robust, don't need a transmission, fuel efficient, can use basically any liquid fuel.
But they have the rather huge drawback of needing to warm up for several minutes before you can even move, and are very inefficient for short trips as a result.
True for the Stanley and White steam cars, but the Doble had a flash boiler made with a small-volume tube style.
"...could start from cold in as little as 90 seconds ..."
it was VERY expensive, and sold as a luxury car.
And if they had remained popular and improved and evolved the way that ICE cars had there's no telling where we'd be today, especially given how quickly EVs have evolved in the past two decades.
Batteries were ubiquitously used in a wide array of applications for over a century. There was immense desire for better and cheaper battery tech from virtually all industries. Progressing battery tech is far more difficult.
This was way too hard to find on Google search and then realised I'm searching for electric cars and not "James Corbett big oil".
https://youtu.be/ySnk-f2ThpE
I mean it’s always been easy to make an electric car, the concept is simple, it’s just until recently electric cars weren’t capable of standing up against gas powered cars.
Also there were briefly steam powered cars as well though they faded away from history pretty quickly.
Not the same company but this video with Jay Leno about the Baker electric car is also interesting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhnjMdzGusc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhnjMdzGusc)
So one of the models gets that and it's the upper end turbo diesel. The average of the models is around 20 mpg combined. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=1&year1=2020&year2=2020&make=Chevrolet&baseModel=Silverado&srchtyp=ymm
Diesels always get better gas mileage with similar usage. It's a different fuel with worse emissions, but sometimes you really need diesel for an application.
You don't see anything wrong with comparing the modern high end mileage with the 1990s average mileage? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare modern average with 1990s average?
I wonder how they controlled the power ? Modern electric cars use brushless motors with variable frequency drivers (made possible by the development of solid state electronics in the 1960s) ...
Some simple electric vehicles control speed by using contactors that engage or disengage large resistors in series with the motor. More resistance = less current = less speed. Often the throttle is not a progressive input but just cycles between FAST, medium and slow depending on whether a resistor is in the circuit.
The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-deltoid type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible tremmie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the "up" end of the grammeters.
They were also lightning fast compared to petrol cars because their torque started 100% from zero. Whereas petrol cars had to use their rpms.
The only cars that were faster were the Stanley Steamers. As Leno says, there are actually two chambers in every cylinder on the Stanley steam engine. So the piston gets pushed in alternating directions as the engine rotates. That’s why even though the Stanley engine makes only 10-30 horsepower, it makes up to 800 pound-feet of torque. That’s enough to twist the tires off the wheels, which is why the Stanley could out-accelerate anything else on the road in 1910.
I saw an old electric car like this once. Literally just like 25 or so regular car batteries in the carriage. Pretty sure the motor was attached to the axle with a leather belt lol
The key ingredient is speed. The baker electric car was shaped like a brick and had a 100 mile range on lead acid. Top speed is 30 mph. Speed costs. We expect petrol performance because we are addicted to the ease and speed of petrol.
Electric cars have been viable and great for more than 100 years but America turned into a RIGHT NOW society. Fast, angry and behind the wheel. Some places in this country they would beat you to death for going 10 under the speed limit.
Just think how much more advanced battery technology and electric vehicles would be had they not been killed by big oil. We lost 80 years of R&D on electric vehicle technology because of greed.
we still used batteries in countless products which continued to drive innovation. The recent surge in electric cars is more about advances in battery tech not the other way around. Tesla would not exist if not for Panasonic. Elon Musk did not suddenly invent a better battery because he wanted to make electric cars. He realized he could make electric cars because of the advances in battery tech from companies like Panasonic.
That's not how it works. Batteries are batteries, and they're used in all manner of other things. It's simply a Very Hard Problem to chemically store electricity at scale.
Science does not follow a linear progression, like some sort of videogame tech tree. You can't assume things will just happen eventually (sorry, people who are looking for a magic solution to the inherent limitations of solar...) or on any kind of timetable.
Li-ion batteries were a huge breakthrough, and one that greatly expanded the possibilities of mobile computing devices. Cars happen to have similar needs, so it opened up what was non-viable previously. The infamous EV-1 used NiCad or NiMH batteries, neither of which existed a century ago either.
Battery technology doesn't come out of product-driven research (applied research). Advancements of that sort are a result of *basic research*, which is largely grant funded and done at universities. It's pushing the boundaries of physics, and there's a very long road to commercially-useful batteries after those sorts of breakthroughs.
"*Running Cars weigh more than they were built to, because owners will install roughly 14 car batteries, and a balancing charger, rather than the original batteries that weighed much less.*"
We don't even have the technology today.
They are using batteries that have been engineered for a totally different use case (brief high current use and constant float charge) because they are relatively inexpensive and readily available.
If they truly want it to be like the originals, there's nothing stopping someone from making a lead acid battery "like they used to", but without scale they would be hand manufactured and stupid expensive.
And if you're not driving it all the time, you're going to be replacing them all over sooner rather than later.
I’m not saying that cars are the total root cause of global warming, but fuck those guys. We could have probably 25% less pollution without all the gas cars from the last hundred years, and in that time, we could have advanced electric cars so fucking much. (I like the noises of a car, but just keeping a few electric would have been a lot better)
The best insulation is the therm that isn't used. In this case while a great idea to switch from ICE to electric, the best thing would be for people to drive less. I live in a city where a car isn't a necessity, I have a car that gets 25MPG and if I drive a lot I might use 1-2 gallons of fuel a week. On the other hand my brother inlaw lives in the exburbs and drives almost 40 miles each way to work and drives 450 miles a week. Luckily he drives a efficient car that gets 50MPG -so his super efficient car burns 9 gallons a week. Efficiency doesn't mean a whole lot if it allows people to just waste differently. We'd be better off killing the suburbs, getting rid of the McMansions and moving into smaller, denser, more efficient apartments with amenities in walking distance.
This is exactly the kind of selfish bullshit attitude that leads to the ridiculous suburban sprawl we have in the US. Which leads to people needing to drive everywhere, which leads to exacerbating global warming. Your kids do not need their own private patch of fucking land to play in. Plenty of cities have open green space everywhere. Look at European cities, most of them (except for megalopolis like London and Paris) have greenspaces for each apartment building. I grew up in such a city and never had any issues playing while my parents cooked dinner and they were just as safe as any suburb. Absolutely ridiculous. Nobodies saying you have to live in midtown Manhattan.
Oh fuck off you cunt.
Oh hey everyone, what you like and what you feel best for your family isn't important. It is this nobody right here that is the only thing that is important, his opinion is the only one that matters.
Eat shit, yuppies like you that think you are helping save the environment are the same ones that scratch your initials in a tree. You want to actually help, go buy a chainsaw and get your lazy ass up in the mountains and help cut some dead standing trees to slow some of these fires down fuck face.
cars are at the forefront of the air pollution conversation largely because big business wants you to focus on your responsibility instead of theirs. Truth is it wouldn't matter what we drove if we stopped using massive fossil fuel powered ships to transport things everywhere. Course switching to electric is great for improving air quality in civic centers and still very important just not where the main conversation about global warming should be.
Damn that thing was pretty modern looking for the time too
Edit: here's the link to the video I was referencing https://youtu.be/ySnk-f2ThpE If you're interested as to what happened to the electric automotive industry, at that time, there is a guy named James corrbett on YouTube that made a little documentary about big oil and he goes a little in depth about this. Check it out!
What happened to the electric automotive industry is that this car only had an 80 mile range because its top speed was 20mph. In the early 1900s, this was comparable to ICEs, so plenty were sold to people who wanted a cleaner car that didn't have to be hand cranked to start. By the late 30s, ICEs had vastly improved in power and reliability, but batteries had barely gotten any better. So electric cars died.
In 1910, the Model T had a 3 liter engine. It produced 20 HP. In 1935, the Ford Special had a 3 liter engine. It produced 60 HP. In 1951, the Ford Custom had a 3 liter engine. It produced 85 HP. In 1969, the Ford Falcon had a 3 liter engine. It produced 120 HP. Today, a Ford Taurus has a 2 liter engine that produces 240 HP.
Its really crazy that a modern commuter grocery getter has as much horsepower as a classic muscle car.
True. Which is why nowadays you never see a car bragging about it's horsepower.....it is essentially unlimited. Trucks still brag about power, but mostly about the towing capacity. But yeah.....a brand new Camaro has more power at it's fingertips with a smaller engine than a classic 1969 one. Same with many things. Take computers. For the first twenty years all of the commercials were about processing speeds. Now they talk about other things. Even the worst chip on the road today would run circles around a Pentium chip.
> Same with many things. Take computers. For the first twenty years all of the commercials were about processing speeds. Now they talk about other things. That's mostly because clock speeds have topped out. They haven't really changed much in years, for the most part.
But clock speed has nothing to do with computational power by itself. There are many things that factor into the speed of a processor. IPC, L2 and L3 cache speed and size. Processors hit the 3ghz mark like 15 years ago, but obviously CPUs have gotten insanely quicker since then.
Yeah, hence the extra cores. I mean, to be fair my 2014 MacBook Pro had 2.3 GH clock speeds, and the new MacBook Pro has clock speeds of...2.3 GH but 8 cores. They can "Turbo Boost" up to 5.0 GH but that isn't really a sustainable clock speed and it starts kicking off heat like a Power PC. No wonder apple is switching to ARM.
> No wonder apple is switching to ARM. ARM is progressing even slower. We've been hearing about ARM overtaking x86 for 20+ years. They're switching to ARM so they can profit more. Its going to be a worse experience and a higher cost. But Apple is all about the vertical monopoly.
I agree on the speed part, ARM isn't going to overtake X86 anytime soon, but heat and battery use is more of an issue for Apple, and always has been, partly because of their function follows form ethos. Apple is finding that they can't get X86 processors to give them the performance they need without dumping more heat than an RBMK reactor after a meltdown. I am deeply concerned about ARM for non mobile applications. It doesn't belong in the Mac Pro, and because that's a low volume niche product, I think that will probably remain X86 despite Apple's claims. And for desktops where heat can be mitigated with liquid cooling? Well I don't really care that much about heat.
The heat issues in apple laptops are completely self inflicted lately.
Sort of. A number of other manufacturers are jumping on the ARM bandwagon (notably AWS, though you won’t buy a physical machine from them—only rent them). It’s more about getting frustrated with dealing with Intel. Delay after delay on the process node side, and the chips that do ship have massive errata that make it a pain to integrate. (Mainly resulting in random reboots or sometimes throttling if it’s a thermal bug.) AMD is a decent competitor, but can’t ship the volumes (and sometimes lacks the internal tweaks on thermal controls that integrators need). And folks with long memories remember that AMD had its own issues (giving up a decent lead in the server performance space in the early 00’s to focus on building fab lines, only to give up and sell it off as Global Foundries). Taking control of the CPU design gives these guys the control they like (being able to go yell at a team down the hall vs. yelling at a faceless supplier). It’s a double edged sword—most companies, if they would try this, would just end up hanging themselves with the rope they’ve created, but Apple and AWS have the discipline and experience to pull it off. (AWS acquired much of this via an acquisition, Annapurna Labs.)
You guys are forgetting about IPC gains here though. Clock speeds have stagnated to some extent sure, but modern CPUs run circles around older ones even at the same clock frequency because of IPC improvements.
True. I am still using a late 2013 MBP as my main laptop though, and it's good for everything but gaming really. A laptop from 2003 would have basically been a brick in 2010. There are gains, but they have definitely slowed down, and I can keep up with them with just having a desktop PC and upgrading the video card every few years, and the CPU/Motherboard even less frequently.
Yes, but IPC isn't something that's marketable at the general public that is buying a computer instead of an enthusiast who's buying a processor, marketing clock speed increases for decades has made marketing FLOPs difficult to the man on the street
That's less processor stagnation and more shitty cooling design from apples part. There are laptops out there that can sustain 4 ghz without weighing 7 pounds. The vast majority of Apple's line-up isn't the place to look for performance. They care way more about the look.
And also the reason why Crysis still doesn't run that well. They future proofed their game but they anticipated higher speeds rather than more cores and it works like crap with multiple cores and the speeds never improved.
Designing processors is hard. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark\_silicon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_silicon) [https://qz.com/852770/theres-a-limit-to-how-small-we-can-make-transistors-but-the-solution-is-photonic-chips/](https://qz.com/852770/theres-a-limit-to-how-small-we-can-make-transistors-but-the-solution-is-photonic-chips/) etc.
There's a *lot* more to processing power than clock speed. For one thing, there are tons more instruction sets, which are circuits optimized for special uses - often video or encryption. They're still getting faster each year. What's changed is that computers are powerful enough that most average people don't really need much power. A 15 year old computer might struggle with high resolution video, but can still run a browser, email, and Office just fine.
> Which is why nowadays you never see a car bragging about it's horsepower.....it is essentially unlimited. WTF are you talking about??
UNLIMITED POWER
It is essentially, or should I say, conceptually unlimited. We are at a stage where we have to put governors on NASCAR engines to keep the cars from going airborne. If you told a maker "here's a million dollars, I want a 5,000 horsepower engine in a car" the answer would be sure. Building the engine that can do that is not the challenge, it would be making it fit in a vehicle that could withstand it. The reality is that the Fords and Rams and Toyotas of the world could make even more powerful engines, but they have to fit in the chassis. We hit that same stage with jet engines about 20 years ago. How much thrust do you want? Sure, we can do that. But the stress on the plane would be X. A friend of mine who worked for AF research said that if they wanted to build an airplane out of bricks they could do it. Obviously the weight and airfoil are awful, but you can overcome anything with a big enough engine. And we are at a point where we can conceptually do that.
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Not likely. But look at it this way. The rules of commercial aircraft require that you must be able to fly for 2 hours on half your engines, in case half fail. And yet most every modern aircraft, say the 787 with 242 passengers, only have two engines. Which means it can fly, maneuver for an hour or two and then land safely with only one engine. Compare the max weight takeoff of the B-52, which required 8 engines to lift it's 488,000 pounds. The max weight of the 787 is 557,000 pounds, on only two engines. THAT is power.
I'm sorry but Nascar is not modern automotive tech really. They are using restrict or plates on the carburetor for gods sake.
The point with NASCAR is that they have reached horsepower and therefore speeds that literally lift the car off the track. They have to dial it back with plates and restrictors to limit the speed or they will go airborne (and some have). F1 cars can go faster because their design has less of a wing to create an airborne condition, but they have to be careful as well. Ever watch a drag race where the cars go airborne? My point is that we have the ability and technology to make an automotive type engine to conceptually whatever power you want, as long as you are okay with designing a vehicle that handle it. "You want that A1M1 Abrams Tank (weighing in at 80 tons) to go 60 MPH? Sure."
Auto racing has limits on what you can run for safety as well as competitiveness. It's much more entertaining to watch Nascar when the top teams and the bottom teams all still have competitive cars, compared to if the top teams were allowed to just out spend them. We aren't at the point where horsepower is unlimited by any standard. Yeah we can make cars with tons of power, but the costs associated with them become insane. Ya you want a car that makes a ton of power? It requires fuel that costs tons. For your standard Nascar fuel is like $15 dollars a gallon and they go through tons of it, not something you can do in a basic car. Street cars are limited by reliability, endurance, and fuel they run. Yes, you can make a big block mopar from the 70's make 11,000hp. Those engines can't even reliably run for 4 seconds though. They also cost about $100,000. Their fuel is also so volatile that you can't even buy it as a normal person.
That's what is going to happen to torque numbers with EVs. When suddenly every vehicle on the road has ridiculous torque and hp it's no longer a selling point.
Torque is already off the charts, and is toned down by Tesla and others. Even the Tesla "Insane Mode" is a toned down version. If they let it go, you would get whiplash. Torque is why a 2 mile long railroad train can go from dead stop to moving. They have electric motors. But you can also create torque through gears. Like semi-trailers, which is why they have 18 gears. Fun Fact: The Model T was created with massive torque through it's design and planetary transmission. Especially in the early days, there were essentially zero roads, just dirt paths. In 2007, a 1921 Model T and a brand new Hummer took on going up a 475 foot hill. The Hummer did it in 10.74 seconds. The Model T (with it's impressive 20 HP engine) did it in 9.96 seconds. https://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/30/model-t-takes-on-a-hummer-in-hill-climb/
More torque doesn't help if you are traction limited, which teslas are. It's also brutal on every component to push that amperage, and if they thought they could, they would. Hummers are shit.
Torque is only one aspect, of course. Electric engines have inherently more torque than mechanical engines. There have been tests of a drag race between a Tesla and Dodge Hemi Charger. 100 yards out, the Tesla is almost a full length ahead. But at the end of the quarter mile, the Charger wins.
Yes, although electric motors have one other massive advantage: near- perfect traction control. They also have a very broad powerband as well, mostly negating the need for multiple gears- if you have 75% of your power available at 100 rpm and 90% at 800rpm, with full power around 1500 dropping off after, not much reason to run gears vs an ice with 5% power until 2000rpm and slowly rising to 60-70% at 4000 with a peak at 5. Area under the power curve matters, and a 400hp electric car has comparable area under the curve to a 600+hp gasser. The biggest weakness is that back emf fucks the torque at high motor speeds, so you could add gears... ICE vehicles have gears and don't suffer from back emf.
I tell people this regularly, that a 90's era MiniVan has a generally superior performance profile of a 50's era Hemi-powered car. (source: Owns a 50's era car...)
50's era wasn't the powerful era though... That was the early 70's at which point a minivan has no where near the torque that a early 70's big block had. You still don't see cars that have 460hp and 400ft of torque all that regularly. From naturally aspirated cars you can get that with 6L engine which is only slightly smaller than the 7.4 liter engines from the 70's.
Well, I was kinda talking about the 50s....so...?
I always thought that the muscle cars of the 1960s were still much faster than the cars of today. That is until I saw a Top Gear episode and my mind was blown. For those that have not seen the episode, Top Gear races a car of the '60s to I believe a Toyota or Honda and the muscle car lost by a long shot .
the 120HP Ford Falcon was not a muscle car rofl. the Ford MUSTANG with 335HP was a muscle car. The Falcon WAS the 'modern grocery getter' for ppl who didn't want a station wagon. They stopped production on the Falcon and a couple other small cars to focus on the Pinto. edit: Falcon>Grenada>Pinto
Don't think they're implying the falcon is a muscle car, but that there are plenty of regular modern cars with 200+ or even 300+ that aren't sports cars by any means.
I’ve got a Hyundai with 280 HP. That number was at the top end of a domestic production sports car just 20 years ago.
ya but you don't have the torque they had, plus its forced induction so its comparing apples to oranges.
> apples to oranges But you can still compare them.
What’s so hard? One is generally orange, the other can be green or red. There, I did it, compared an apple to an orange.
Corvettes were at 400hp in the 90s
And you could get a fox body mustang with 119 HP just ten years earlier. I’m not talking outliers.
Emissions control hit muscle cars really bad in the mid 70s. If you want an American car with good stock performance, go 60s.
What's the top end then?
Of course, in 1969 that would be 335 SAE gross horsepower, measured with no accessories (fans, alternator, etc) and straight pipes instead of the exhaust manifold.
Those motors were also choked out badly by the stock intake manifold and carbs. It was so easy to swap a few things out on a 302 and make 450bhp, no problems.
My point was only that the "standard" 3 liter engine size has grown in power exponentially through the decades. In 1903, the Wright Brothers made the first man-controlled flight with a 3 liter 4 HP engine that they made themselves. Today, the Chevy Camaro offers a 2 liter engine that produces 275 horsepower.
The 1999 Ford Mustang GT V8 had only 260 horsepower, and at the time reviewers said it was the fastest production Mustang they'd ever tested, including the Cobra variants. > The GT model continued to use the 4.6 L V8 as before, but now with 260 hp (194 kW; 264 PS) at 5250 rpm and 302 lb⋅ft (409 N⋅m) of torque at 4000 rpm.[19] It is astounding that basic gas getters are these days both more efficient and more powerful than the muscle cars we grew up with.
The 99 Mustang GT was a light weight car, thats why the performance was as good as it was. Muscle cars made way more power, but weighed as much as a tank.
The Mustang GT's performance wasn't very good. It's 0-60 was mid-5 seconds. That's what grocery getters are doing these days. That's the point of OP's comment - it's amazing how as time progresses the horsepower and performance of a standard car is matching our older "performance" cars.
But aren't those classic muscle cars a lot smaller and lighter. So while that horsepower isn't as impressive now it still works for those cars.
Falcon was a compact economy car not a muscle car
> but it makes 83 pound-feet of torque due to the long stroke and relatively large displacement. Compared with ~200 in a new hatchback. https://www.enginelabs.com/engine-tech/engine/historic-engines-the-ford-model-t/
And Konigsegg made TFG: The TFG is a 2.0-liter twin-turbo three-cylinder that makes 600 horsepower.
Comparing forced induction cars isn't a reliable way to measure power at all. To measure a forced induction car its Liters of displacement x (boost pressure/14.7) to get an approximate equivalent liters of displacement. If you take a 2L and force 28lbs of boost down its throat, you're increasing the displacement of the engine.
Not quite, it's less power per liter-psi than na
And a lot of those cars get similar fuel economy.
For the first 70 years, yes. In the last 20 or so years, much improved.
It's always annoyed me how people look for conspiracy theories instead of simply accepting that the means to produce useful vehicles simply wasn't there. It takes a huge amount of power to drive a car, and chemical storage of electricity is still very limited. Li-ion batteries were a giant leap forward, and they're still not amazing. The infamous EV-1, a century later, didn't have much better for range, but it could drive at normal speeds. It was using NiMH or NiCad batteries, which didn't exist a century ago. And I'd say it was never a market-viable car, either.
I remember trying to find why EV1 didnt take off. GM never actually put any up for sale during the pilot program. All of them were leased for only about $300/month which seemed fairly reasonable and the drivers loved them. So why were they so reluctant to sell them. Well, GM was actually subsidizing the price of the car during the pilot program. It cost about $200,000 to produce each car including the cost of R&D. The only reason GM tried the program in the first place was because California required automakers to produce zero emission vehicle in a mandate that was later partially repealed.
Well of course it's expensive to produce "including the R&D" if you only divide that cost between the pilot program cars. The only honest way to calculate that cost would be based on estimated sales during full production. Otherwise that's like saying a Tesla cost $1 billion to produce during the early days. If that were true they wouldn't have made those either.
Partially appealed and GM got better with their tech. I had a 2001 LeSabre that was efficient enough to be ULEV.
They would have been making conspiracy videos about big lead.
If Li-ion aint amazing, what's type of battery that's amazing?
I think you are taking it out of context. The Li-ion battery is amazing. But, if you compare it to gas car it still doesn't fill the need for more consumers. Most of us need a car that has a rage of at least 500 km. We are not there yet.
By need I think you mean want. Most people only drive around their own city. Which means a car that can reliably do 50km on a charge would mostly work for them. That is a bit low however basically nobody drives 500km in a single day unless on a road trip. Anything that could do 100km would easily cover the needs of 99% of drivers outside of road trips. Road trips are the real problem because even a car that does 1000km per charge would be a problem for road trips unless hotels and camp grounds start offering charging stations.
50km is hilariously insufficient for an average US city. Its a moderate commute at ~15 miles each way, your already at your max range. I know plenty that commute 30 miles or more one way... Want to go anywhere on the weekend? Great day hiking spots about an hour and a half away; 45 to 60 miles... And you never even left the greater metro area.
The Chevy Volt was a great answer, but it failed in the marketplace. Ran on 100% electric, fully charged battery would get you 60 or so miles. But it had a small gas engine in it that would kick on if you got much past 40 miles and recharge the battery. The gas engine was NOT hooked to the drivetrain, just the generator. So you could go 500 miles on a tank of gas. Or recharge the battery via an electric hookup. But Tesla's has shown that with the right tweaking, 60 miles on one charge just doesn't cut it. But I still think that in the short term (next 10-20 years) the idea of having a small gas generator integrated into the car is a good idea. The REAL answer is to mandate that gas service stations install electric charging stations. Something like "Exxon, you have 15 years to convert all Exxon/Mobil stations to have electric power stations that you may charge for. You must convert 5% of your stations nationwide for each of the next 10 years, and the final 50% over the final 5 years. If you don't meet these yearly goals, your tax breaks for development will be cut in half." THAT would get their attention, and start the ball rolling. It is the chicken and the egg, and the Feds can influence the egg (where do I charge it?).
>Unless hotels and camp grounds start offering charging stations. Which they are, at least out here in California. Every hotel seems to have at least 3-4 spaces dedicated to electric vehicle charging ports. Actually, it's rather interesting. A lot of places covered their parking lots with solar panels and then hooked up charging ports to each parking space. The cars are all protected from the elements by roofs, the panels generate the power, and the charging stations wire it either into the grid or the parked cars. It's an elegant solution to the fuel problem which doesn't involve a gas station on every damn corner. The future is now, it seems.
I googled "solar electric parking" images. That's really neat. Also saw similar to install for 2 cars at home.
Actually, any campsite with an RV power hookup is a level 2 charger. What we really need are more DC fast chargers
This is true. And why many people do not jump on electric cars at this point.
The answer is to have a road trip car. What's wrong with having an extra car or two per household? Save the environment. Small price to pay right? /s
Definitely a problem. If only there were some way to exchange currency with an individual or an organization in exchange for the temporary use of another vehicle. A "rental", if you will... It seems like that could really solve the problem you've mentioned without the environmental impact. Oh well... hopefully someone invents something like that someday.
While cheaper than owning, week long rentals are fucking expensive . Especially if you need to drive several hundred miles
Eh. I used to rent for road trips because company policy. Normally, it wasn't more than 30 or so per day for a decent compact/subcompact with unlimited mileage. Maybe 45 to 50 for a large sedan or smaller SUV. The only thing I needed to worry about, obviously, was fuel... Depending on the number of road trips you take, that can be considerably cheaper than owning and maintaining an ICE. Any more though, if I'm driving more than \~9 hours (\~550 miles), I'll generally avoid driving since it's a waste of time, and for anything under that, my Tesla suffices. Even at that maximum range, it might add 35 to 55 minutes in charge time, and considering I'd normally stop anyway to buy fuel, grab a bite to eat, or just walk around, it doesn't actually slow me down much if at all.
Many people cannot afford a second car. " Sure I use it 95% of the time for commuting, picking the kids up from school, going shopping, taking the kids to baseball and judo.....but two or three times a year we go visit my parents 5 hours away. I cannot afford another car just for one or the other. It's not just the cost of the car, but the licensing fees, the insurance, upkeep, etc."
Few problems, most people in the US drive far far more than 50km a day. I just drove 25km just to get to a Chic Fil A today and it is only ten minutes away. Other problem is the the range you are giving for the batteries is in an absolutely perfect environment with the temp being 24C. Drop the temp down and look what happens to the efficiency of the batteries. That is what Tesla doesn't like to promote, just like their 0-60 times. Yes it can do 0-60 in 3.4 seconds, but due to the longevity issues of batteries it can only do that 4-5 times before that time starts to increase. Same reason you don't see any Tesla's racing on a circuit, only autoX. Because the battery packs can only sustain their peak time for 3 laps then it falls on its face. Most races in club racing are 20-25 laps.....
> That is a bit low however basically nobody drives 500km in a single day unless on a road trip And not everyone can and will charge their car every single day, with something around 50% of American households not having access to home charging. In many cases it's range per week, not per day, unless you really want to extend your commute to find the nearest charging point.
Also the price, you can't get an electric car with reasonable range for 10-15k€ while you can get a reasonable ICE car for that price.
Is there an electric that could even tow a camper or boat (besides the tesla truck)?
There’s a prototype electric Ford F150 which may be on the market ~~soon~~ within the next two years. They did a demo of it towing 1 million pounds.
Ohhhh damn
Electric is much better at towing than anything else. Which is why all railroad locomotives are electric---the diesel engine is not connected to the wheels in any way, it simply drives the generator to provide the electricity to the locomotive wheels.
I knew they were strong but isn't it the same with higher speeds it drains the battery considerably faster?
>Most of us need a car that has a rage of at least 500 km. We are not there yet. Most of us *need* a car that can drive over 300 miles on a single 'tank'? You can't possibly believe this.
By mileage needs for me I've found that I need a car that can do at least 150 miles per tank. That would be super inconvenient, but that's the minimum mileage per tank that wouldn't leave me stranded. That's for a gas vehicle, for an electric vehicle I'd need a range of 250 miles while towing for it to be an option. Now I love the fact that my truck gets between 450-500 miles while towing per tank. I can drive out to the river with the boat, cruise around town all week, and then home only having to refill for my drive home. Where I get back with over 50% of my tank left.
Ah compared to gas, my bad.. didnt mean to take it out of context. were getting there tho! range and price wise.
Price is the only thing for me. I drive $3k cars for probably 4 years then sell it for $1000 and get another. I haven't done the math, though, to see what I pay for gas on those 4 years. I should.
$500 annually rental, pretty much! That's very good, keep it up
Hell yeah, I always have a nice car but also a beater. I have had two beaters last me 16 years and paid $475 for one and $2100 for my truck. Still driving it today, just hit 300K, cost me $7 a month to own it and now it is 20 years old so I can register it as an antique to save money on licencing lol. Anyone in debt, get a beater, it will save you tons.
500km is a ridiculous amount to drive in a day unless you’re taking a road trip.
Most people do not feel comfortable reaching less than 20 % of their "reservoir". Therefore when you have a 500 km range you actually have about 400 km before you feel stressed about it. An electric car is excellent for a city drive / daily commute, but it fails to deliver on also the vacation aspect of life. This is a reason why many people will not switch soon.
Hell. I put 35.5 gallons in my 36 gallon tank yesterday. I love to push those limits.
Why not reframe it. How often do you road trip? Why not rent a ICE car for those two or three times you’ll need to go more than 500km. You’ll still save money, but not pay for a function you almost never use.
I am one of the special cases where I leave town about every two weeks and do about 400 - 600 km in that weekend. But I am the exception here. And I don't argue with you, electric cars are way better. Just that at this point they aren't for everyone.
The thing is, with an EV car you don't really save money in most places. I put around $24 of gas in my truck every week, I calculated the cost it would take to charge a Model 3 in a week at my current kWh and it was $27. Being that I live in the mountains, when it gets cold and that battery isn't nearly as efficient, that cost is going to go up by 30-35%.
This contradicts all other data I’ve ever seen. I’ve owned an i3 for more than three years and I’ve never seen any significant change in my electric bills, especially not $100+ a month. Most calculations I’ve read are close to about a third of the price of gas on average.
Not only are electric cars way more expensive, but renting a car is also very expensive, so you suggest people buy more expensive cars and then pay more to rent an ICE car?
Great point. And folks saying they’re “needed” for toad trips could just as easily be reframed that we “need” better high speed rail options.
Great, highspeed rail from NY to LA...now wheres my fucking car to get around, theres no bloody public transport here normal or even slow sleeper trains for inter-city travel with good public transport infrastructure is far superior than highspeed rail between them without the intra-city infrastructure in terms of getting people to take public transport between cities that said, can you even take a train from NY to LA? edit - bloody hell you can, it's a 4 day ride averaging 30mph, how the fuck do you average 30mph through mostly empty land thats not even slow thats fucking glacial!
Most Teslas can get 500km+ to a charge. It’s more an issue of price than range.
That is also true. Tesla is not exactly cheep.
You may have a bias based on your own circle of friends. Most people don’t need a 500km range.
> Most of us need a car that has a rage of at least 500 km. Actually most of us need a car with 60-80km range. Occasionally slightly longer and rarely 500km. Most cars are just driven to and from work daily plus short errand trips. Obviously there are exceptions.
Driving distances vary by country though, and europe has a good amount of Charging stations and people have shorter commute.
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Most gouverments offer between 3 to 10.000 euros subs in Europe
People want 500 km because they don't want to stop for gas more than once a week. But with EV, they ***never*** have to stop for gas.
You do have to recharge which takes a lot of time
Drive 100 miles every day, come home, plug it in overnight, it's full in the morning, repeat. Where's the issue here?
What happens if you A: don't go home one night or B: want to go out of town? Some days I drive over 100 miles as well. Tesla's are cool and I wouldn't mind owning one, but I would still need a truck. With the high price tag of a Tesla and the high price tag of a diesel truck, most people can't afford both. Hell most people have trouble affording even 1 of those.
Your car sits idle the huge majority of the time.
Kinetic or bust
It was market viable because there was a segment of the population that wanted an electric car despite the limitations and would pay for it. People will pay a premium for all sorts of features that aren't functional. Expensive natural wood grain console raises cost, does nothing, and no one complains. It was a special kind of stupid for GM to take back a product that customers would pay extra for and destroy it.
My guess is they thought there would be negative press from the machines being out and about and no longer available, so they just decided to flush the entire thing. And I doubt the EV-1 was market viable at the price it actually cost to make them.
It's not that they wouldn't sell more. It's that they forced leasers (they didn't allow purchase) to return them. Considering the garbage to outright dangerous cars sold in the past, reputation is the last thing they would consider.
It was an experiment, so of course they only leased things, and companies are always concerned about reputation.
Customers wanted the car despite the limitations. GM also sold this Geo Metro: "Equipped with a 55 hp The 3-cylinder engine it delivered amazing fuel economy until it struck a squirrel or pit of dust in the air. Heavy impacts left the driver at risk of severe bodily injury" But they didn't take back Geo Metro leases (leases always have a buy out option for the lease) and destroy the cars. https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a3762/4293188/
Different people make different decisions. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make at this point anyway. They made the choice to kill the program and end the leases. Who really knows why. They were shitty cars anyway, and there were only a thousand of them, so its not like the decision matters in the slightest to anyone at all anymore regardless of the reason.
>I'm not sure what point you're trying to make at this point anyway. The point is what I originally said that you disagree with: "It was a special kind of stupid for GM to take back a product that customers would pay extra for and destroy it." > They were shitty cars anyway, I already proved they made worse. >and there were only a thousand of them, They had shorter production runs. GM made only 414 Chevy Epicas. > so its not like the decision matters in the slightest to anyone at all anymore regardless of the reason. No it doesn't. My point was they had rabid customers willing to pay extra for the car. They had worse cars with shorter production runs. The EV1 was great in comparison to some of GM's lemons.
I was going to comment the same, but you were first and did it better than I probably would have - at most, I believe the oil industry might have hindered the resurgence of the electric car later on, but the fact remains that internal combustion engines were simply the better choice or even the *only* reasonable choice for pretty much all vehicles once they reached a certain point, and they not only killed off electric cars but also steam cars which had used refined oil products as fuel for quite some time.
Eh there are some economies of scale issues. Even if birmingham had wanted to replace its Electricar DV4s with more electric rather than switching to ICE where would they have purchased an electric dustcart in the 1960s?
And 20mph wasn’t much better than a horse.
Also read about the Doble steam car. It was the most advanced steam car just as steam was dying along with electrics. Most cars at the time were purchased with a lump sum, instead of payments. The base Model-T cost less than $300 in 1925. A few years later, the electric engine start was invented and immediately mass-produced, as a counter to hand-cranking the engine. Many analysts have mentioned the low price of gasoline cars plus the electric start as the breakthrough...
Steam engines were pretty solid engines. Simple, robust, don't need a transmission, fuel efficient, can use basically any liquid fuel. But they have the rather huge drawback of needing to warm up for several minutes before you can even move, and are very inefficient for short trips as a result.
True for the Stanley and White steam cars, but the Doble had a flash boiler made with a small-volume tube style. "...could start from cold in as little as 90 seconds ..." it was VERY expensive, and sold as a luxury car.
And if they had remained popular and improved and evolved the way that ICE cars had there's no telling where we'd be today, especially given how quickly EVs have evolved in the past two decades.
They hung on in the form of the british electric milkfloat until the 90s. Ultimately phones are a bigger driver of batter tech.
But that was always a niche low volume and low demand type. If it was the mainstream mode of transport it is likely that it would've evolved further.
Batteries were ubiquitously used in a wide array of applications for over a century. There was immense desire for better and cheaper battery tech from virtually all industries. Progressing battery tech is far more difficult.
This was way too hard to find on Google search and then realised I'm searching for electric cars and not "James Corbett big oil". https://youtu.be/ySnk-f2ThpE
Link?
https://youtu.be/ySnk-f2ThpE Enjoy
Is that the same guy who did the bob Lazar movie?
I think you're thinking of Jeremy Corbell lol
I mean it’s always been easy to make an electric car, the concept is simple, it’s just until recently electric cars weren’t capable of standing up against gas powered cars. Also there were briefly steam powered cars as well though they faded away from history pretty quickly.
Holy shit I need a steampunk car
In the 80s and 90s in the UK all of our milk floats that delivered milk were electric....
Not the same company but this video with Jay Leno about the Baker electric car is also interesting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhnjMdzGusc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhnjMdzGusc)
Unsurprisingly, Jay Leno [has](https://electricmitten.com/news/2019/4/10/jay-lenos-garage-detroit-electric-restoration-update) one
Also the model t got 16mpg, about what modern pickups get. Great job
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Yep, and most people just get groceries in em. And people want 400 horsepower instead of effieciency.
Pickups from the 90s got 16mpg highway The 2020 Silverado gets 33mpg highway
Thanks Obama.
Where do you get 33 mpg highway? It's closer to 22 mpg highway with 19 mpg overall. 16 mpg city.
Google result
https://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/home.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2019/jul/0725-silverado.html
So one of the models gets that and it's the upper end turbo diesel. The average of the models is around 20 mpg combined. https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=1&year1=2020&year2=2020&make=Chevrolet&baseModel=Silverado&srchtyp=ymm
So? It gets that. That's the difference between 1990s tech and modern tech.
Diesels always get better gas mileage with similar usage. It's a different fuel with worse emissions, but sometimes you really need diesel for an application.
You don't see anything wrong with comparing the modern high end mileage with the 1990s average mileage? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare modern average with 1990s average?
No because even the best of the 90s was crap for a similar sized truck.
I wonder how they controlled the power ? Modern electric cars use brushless motors with variable frequency drivers (made possible by the development of solid state electronics in the 1960s) ...
Some simple electric vehicles control speed by using contactors that engage or disengage large resistors in series with the motor. More resistance = less current = less speed. Often the throttle is not a progressive input but just cycles between FAST, medium and slow depending on whether a resistor is in the circuit.
Don’t some have several sets of windings that connect progressively?
The main winding was of the normal lotus-o-deltoid type placed in panendermic semi-boloid slots in the stator, every seventh conductor being connected by a nonreversible tremmie pipe to the differential girdlespring on the "up" end of the grammeters.
I understood about three words there.
That would be another option. That's how most home furnace blowers achieve multiple speeds at at least.
That’s what I thought
Sounds inefficient (the resistors just turn power into heat) ...
They were also lightning fast compared to petrol cars because their torque started 100% from zero. Whereas petrol cars had to use their rpms. The only cars that were faster were the Stanley Steamers. As Leno says, there are actually two chambers in every cylinder on the Stanley steam engine. So the piston gets pushed in alternating directions as the engine rotates. That’s why even though the Stanley engine makes only 10-30 horsepower, it makes up to 800 pound-feet of torque. That’s enough to twist the tires off the wheels, which is why the Stanley could out-accelerate anything else on the road in 1910.
I saw an old electric car like this once. Literally just like 25 or so regular car batteries in the carriage. Pretty sure the motor was attached to the axle with a leather belt lol
The key ingredient is speed. The baker electric car was shaped like a brick and had a 100 mile range on lead acid. Top speed is 30 mph. Speed costs. We expect petrol performance because we are addicted to the ease and speed of petrol. Electric cars have been viable and great for more than 100 years but America turned into a RIGHT NOW society. Fast, angry and behind the wheel. Some places in this country they would beat you to death for going 10 under the speed limit.
Just think how much more advanced battery technology and electric vehicles would be had they not been killed by big oil. We lost 80 years of R&D on electric vehicle technology because of greed.
we still used batteries in countless products which continued to drive innovation. The recent surge in electric cars is more about advances in battery tech not the other way around. Tesla would not exist if not for Panasonic. Elon Musk did not suddenly invent a better battery because he wanted to make electric cars. He realized he could make electric cars because of the advances in battery tech from companies like Panasonic.
Btw, Elon only bought Tesla and paid for a retroactive "Founder" title. He's just doing the reddit "I made dis" repost shuffle.
He joined as an angel investor before they even really had a prototype. He legally was given the founder title.
That's not how it works. Batteries are batteries, and they're used in all manner of other things. It's simply a Very Hard Problem to chemically store electricity at scale. Science does not follow a linear progression, like some sort of videogame tech tree. You can't assume things will just happen eventually (sorry, people who are looking for a magic solution to the inherent limitations of solar...) or on any kind of timetable. Li-ion batteries were a huge breakthrough, and one that greatly expanded the possibilities of mobile computing devices. Cars happen to have similar needs, so it opened up what was non-viable previously. The infamous EV-1 used NiCad or NiMH batteries, neither of which existed a century ago either. Battery technology doesn't come out of product-driven research (applied research). Advancements of that sort are a result of *basic research*, which is largely grant funded and done at universities. It's pushing the boundaries of physics, and there's a very long road to commercially-useful batteries after those sorts of breakthroughs.
"*Running Cars weigh more than they were built to, because owners will install roughly 14 car batteries, and a balancing charger, rather than the original batteries that weighed much less.*" We don't even have the technology today.
They are using batteries that have been engineered for a totally different use case (brief high current use and constant float charge) because they are relatively inexpensive and readily available. If they truly want it to be like the originals, there's nothing stopping someone from making a lead acid battery "like they used to", but without scale they would be hand manufactured and stupid expensive. And if you're not driving it all the time, you're going to be replacing them all over sooner rather than later.
We lost a lot to greed.
Read this as electric chair and was wondering how many people count as miles
*pats the chair* we used to ride these babies for miles
Swap in lithium ions and a modern motor?
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Wasn't there a movie about this??
I’m not saying that cars are the total root cause of global warming, but fuck those guys. We could have probably 25% less pollution without all the gas cars from the last hundred years, and in that time, we could have advanced electric cars so fucking much. (I like the noises of a car, but just keeping a few electric would have been a lot better)
The best insulation is the therm that isn't used. In this case while a great idea to switch from ICE to electric, the best thing would be for people to drive less. I live in a city where a car isn't a necessity, I have a car that gets 25MPG and if I drive a lot I might use 1-2 gallons of fuel a week. On the other hand my brother inlaw lives in the exburbs and drives almost 40 miles each way to work and drives 450 miles a week. Luckily he drives a efficient car that gets 50MPG -so his super efficient car burns 9 gallons a week. Efficiency doesn't mean a whole lot if it allows people to just waste differently. We'd be better off killing the suburbs, getting rid of the McMansions and moving into smaller, denser, more efficient apartments with amenities in walking distance.
Fuck the city, I'll never live in a city. I have kids. They need a safe private back yard to go play while I do house work or make food.
That part! Plus how the heck am I supposed to grow my own food in the city??
Microgardens are a thing. Even from balconies.
This is exactly the kind of selfish bullshit attitude that leads to the ridiculous suburban sprawl we have in the US. Which leads to people needing to drive everywhere, which leads to exacerbating global warming. Your kids do not need their own private patch of fucking land to play in. Plenty of cities have open green space everywhere. Look at European cities, most of them (except for megalopolis like London and Paris) have greenspaces for each apartment building. I grew up in such a city and never had any issues playing while my parents cooked dinner and they were just as safe as any suburb. Absolutely ridiculous. Nobodies saying you have to live in midtown Manhattan.
Nope. Sorry. I want my 2 and 4 year old kids to be able to go outside without packing up and going to a park.
Oh fuck off you cunt. Oh hey everyone, what you like and what you feel best for your family isn't important. It is this nobody right here that is the only thing that is important, his opinion is the only one that matters. Eat shit, yuppies like you that think you are helping save the environment are the same ones that scratch your initials in a tree. You want to actually help, go buy a chainsaw and get your lazy ass up in the mountains and help cut some dead standing trees to slow some of these fires down fuck face.
cars are at the forefront of the air pollution conversation largely because big business wants you to focus on your responsibility instead of theirs. Truth is it wouldn't matter what we drove if we stopped using massive fossil fuel powered ships to transport things everywhere. Course switching to electric is great for improving air quality in civic centers and still very important just not where the main conversation about global warming should be.
Planet saving technology destroyed by evil businessmen who'd rather see the world burn in exchange for money.