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Electric Vehicles

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Trebuchet said:
Switch to a motor home and tow a Tesla or Leaf!
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Motor home versus travel trailer? This forum couldn’t handle that argument.

It’s bad enough that I own trailers from three different brands, each with its own cult. I’m a heretic in all three communities. Even though two of them pretend to be part of the same cult.
 
Dr. Keith said:
With all these new stalls going in I have a pressing investment question: is Ditchwitch still the leader in trenching technology and who owns that brand?
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I don't know if they're the leader, but they're definitely still in business, the house brand of a machine company in the midwest.

I think it will be some time before we can all go all electric, but I don't see why we need to worry right away about an all-or-nothing solution. If a goodly percentage of cars become electric, the infrastructure will improve, and the technology will improve, and at the same time the crisis of excessive carbon consumption will ease somewhat even if there are still plenty of gas vehicles around.

We're a multi-car household here, and replacing one vehicle with an electric makes plenty of sense (or will in the near future). We don't have to immediately worry about how we'll get to Maine, or whether my truck will get where it needs to go in the winter.

On the idea of putting the batteries in a trailer, I recently saw a pioneering hybrid made long ago by Briggs and Stratton, which used that idea. This was back when they were still using lead acid batteries, and they had a fairly normal looking car, with a little two cylinder B&S engine in front, and an electric drivetrain, and dual rear wheels to support a heavy rear battery bank. Not really a trailer, because its not horizontally trailing, but similar.

Theoretically, one could likely have made that rear section removable, and either left it at home when not needed, or set it up as swapable.

I can't remember the episode, but you'll find it on Jay Leno's garage web site.
 
Ziggurat said:
Large SUVs like the GMC Suburban WERE trucks (as in, like a large pickup truck). And nobody had to be programmed to like them. In fact, they aren’t very popular even now. It’s the small SUVs, like the Honda CRV, that really took off. As to why, it’s simple: they have advantages over cars. More cargo room, more headroom, better view of the road, and if you live anywhere with snow, better handling in the snow. In fact, the CRV is the most popular car model in New York. Because, get this, it snows a lot in winter, and CRVs are pretty good in snow.
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I wouldn't conflate SUVs with big trucks. Sensibly-sized SUVs are popular for all the reasons you describe. But that doesn't explain why the giant Ford F150 pickup truck is one of the best-selling vehicles in the U.S.
 
Bob001 said:
I wouldn't conflate SUVs with big trucks. Sensibly-sized SUVs are popular for all the reasons you describe. But that doesn't explain why the giant Ford F150 pickup truck is one of the best-selling vehicles in the U.S.
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Not "one of". It is THE best selling vehicle in the USA.
And most of them these days have four full doors and a bed too short to haul my small trebuchet.
 
I think part of the F-150 popularity just has to do with an American love of bigness. People are getting bigger, building bigger houses, buying bigger furniture. In the crew cab short bed version, it's really more like a big SUV that makes you feel kind of country-ish. You can imagine needing something to carry the horse feed or the ATV. And it says "off road" on the side, so you can picture yourself off in the jungle, with the optional bars and guards to protect you against random rhinoceri. And it tells the world you can afford the gas too. The full size crew cab pickup is the emblem of American exceptionalism, the long bed version with dual rear wheels that of the horsey aristocracy at play.

It seems everything gets bigger. Cars that start out small get bigger with each iteration. A Honda CR-V or a Rav-4 used to be really small. Now they're big. Even Minis are getting bigger.

Besides, below a certain exotic price point, all the cars look about the same. Once upon a time your car had chrome and fins, and you could tell the difference as soon as a car appeared on the horizon. Your Buick had portholes and your Pontiac had stripes. I can still tell the difference between a 1950's Dodge and a DeSoto and probably get the year right too. Now you can't tell one SUV from another, or one sedan from another. You can't even tell a Mercedes from a Toyota at a distance. But that big Dodge Ram with the enormous chrome sheep on the grille, and the towering F-150 with running boards and flags and roo bars and the chrome extension to turn the empty short bed into an empty long one...a statement is made, even without putting flags on it.
 
Seems to me that there is a great opportunity here for the Government to help out some businesses with startup loans for them to EV supercharging stations. Get in and help people build the infrastructure and all the issues being raised in this thread will be solved, including space for charging vehicles with trailers. Heck could even have stations set up their own wind turbine and solar to create the majority of electricity they will be selling right there on site. Add a cafe with broadband and wifi, and a store, and people will even have things to do and spend money on while they wait.
 
Ziggurat said:
You're getting way ahead of yourself. Long before street chargers, you're going to need a hell of a lot more electric generation and grid capacity.

And realistically, that means either a lot more coal or a lot more nuclear. Solar and wind won't cut it.
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There’s a lot of electricity generation that is used for refining petroleum that will be freed up.
 
zooterkin said:
There’s a lot of electricity generation that is used for refining petroleum that will be freed up.
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It may even be possible that vehicles might get more efficient overall though perhaps it will prove impossible to reverse the trend towards larger, heavier SUVs and Pickups. :(
 
Bob001 said:
But that doesn't explain why the giant Ford F150 pickup truck is one of the best-selling vehicles in the U.S.
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That's great for Ford, but as a statistic relating vehicle type to popularity the sales figures for any one model are meaningless.

In 2020 40% of new vehicles sold were 'crossovers', 20% were 'pickups', 10% were 'mid-sized cars', 10% were 'small cars', 9% were 'SUVs', 5% were 'vans', 5% were 'luxury cars', and 1% were 'large cars'.

While the Ford F series is 'the best selling vehicle' of all individual models, it's class runs a distant second to smaller 'crossovers'. If we add mid-size/small cars and SUVs to the 'car' category then trucks are even less popular in comparison, and the F150 even less popular than that.

But if we are going to play statistical games then the Tesla model 3 is by far the most popular small to mid-size luxury car in the US, with sales ~3 times higher than its nearest rival (BMW 3 series). Nevermind that luxury cars as a whole are only 5% of the market.
 
The Don said:
It may even be possible that vehicles might get more efficient overall though perhaps it will prove impossible to reverse the trend towards larger, heavier SUVs and Pickups. :(
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I have definitely read that MPG rates haven't kept up with increases in energy efficiency because cars are bloating, probably because "hey, same mileage, but 50% more headroom, which you never knew you needed."
 
Filippo Lippi said:
I have definitely read that MPG rates haven't kept up with increases in energy efficiency because cars are bloating, probably because "hey, same mileage, but 50% more headroom, which you never knew you needed."
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To be fair, the increased requirement for safety features means that equivalent cars are far bigger and heavier than they used to be. IIRC a Mk1 or Mk2 VW Golf is much smaller and lighter than the current VW Polo, a vehicle a class smaller.

That said, a lot of people seem to have been convinced that larger = safer and so instead of having a small or medium sized car to biff around town in, people are choosing an SUV, or something that looks like an SUV instead.

At the moment, the main road between Chepstow and Monmouth is closed for road works. The local "Karens" seemingly cannot follow the posted diversions and are instead crawling down our narrow single-track lane in their oversized SUVs. They are causing absolute havoc because not only are they moving so blinking slowly (I was out on my pedal cycle the other day and one was holding me up) but they seemingly cannot reverse at all so if they encounter a vehicle coming in the other direction, that vehicle has to reverse a couple of hundred metres to a passing spot as opposed to the SUV backing up a few metres. :mad:

The other day, two met outside our house and there was a standoff for a full 15 minutes until one of them finally relented and moved (by which time there was a decent sized queue in both directions.
 
The Don said:
To be fair, the increased requirement for safety features means that equivalent cars are far bigger and heavier than they used to be.
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I question that. Weight and size != safety. Your average sedan back in the 70s were way bigger and heavier than the ones today and were much, much less safe.
 
bonzombiekitty said:
I question that. Weight and size != safety. Your average sedan back in the 70s were way bigger and heavier than the ones today and were much, much less safe.
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That's really a myth.

The best selling car in 1980 was the Oldsmobile Cutlass (5th Gen), with a 108 inch wheelbase and a curb weight of 3,300 pounds.

The best selling CAR (ignoring that full size pickups make the top 3 and various size SUVs take up 2 more top spots) in 2020 was the Toyota Camry (8th Gen) with a curb weight of... 3,340 pound and wheelbase of 111.2 inches.

And the Cutlass was considered a full sized car while the Camry is a large compact / small midsized one.

In 1991 in its first year a Ford Explorer, one of the first SUVs, was 184 inches long. A 2021 Volkswagen Jetta is 182.

We've normalized older cars as "big" because they were boxy and square and made horrible use of their interior space.

My favorite example of this is the H1 Hummer, which despite being a pop culture joke as a oversized vehicle throughout the entire 90s and into the 2000s is smaller than every single full size pick up (again the most popular vehicles on the road right now) sold. A Hummer H1 is shorter than the aforementioned Toyota Camry midsized car... by over 7 inches. But it's wide and boxy and square and it looks way bigger than it is. And if you're like me and have ever had to take a long trip in a Hummer the interiors are goddamn TINY in those things. It barely sits 4 in the original configuration. I swear those things are like a TARDIS in reverse.

Now yeah there's one or two exceptions here or there, go look up Doug Demuro's review of a 1980 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon or the 1977 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz ("The car ends and then there's like... a foot more car on each end...") if you want a good laugh at a hilariously overly large old vehicle, but in general cars look smaller because they are sleeker and more aerodynamic and just generally packaged better (cab forward design and the fact that cars no longer have hoods which are so long they get to your destination 10 minutes before you do are a big factor) and they share the road with giant SUVs and pickups, but they've gotten way bigger.
 
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bonzombiekitty said:
I question that. Weight and size != safety. Your average sedan back in the 70s were way bigger and heavier than the ones today and were much, much less safe.
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You're right that weight and size do not guarantee safety but safety requirements have made cars bigger and heavier than they otherwise would have been - in Europe at least.

Just look at the difference in door construction between a typical car from the 1970s one from today with impact protection and airbags.

Likewise with size, cabins are wider to allow doors to deform on impact without severely compromising the passengers.

Joe Morgue has covered the myth of the big heavy 1970s car but for reference a Mk1 VW Golf is 3.7m long and has a kerb weight between 790kg and 970kg depending on model.

Despite the best efforts of VW's engineers to manage weight, the current model is 4.3m long and has a kerb weight between 1,255 and 1,465kg. The current Polo, a class smaller, is over 4m long and between 1100 and 1350 kg. The VW Up, the smallest car they currently make and two classes below the Golf is nearly as long as the Mk1 Golf and as heavy as the heaviest Mk1 Golf.
 
bonzombiekitty said:
I question that. Weight and size != safety. Your average sedan back in the 70s were way bigger and heavier than the ones today and were much, much less safe.
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Unfair comparison. That's a bit like saying wattage is unrelated to CPU performance, because a low-watt CPU today can outperform a high-watt CPU from the 70's.

The correlation for cars between weight and safety isn't as strong as between CPU performance and wattage, but it still exists. Heavy cars of the 70's were generally safer than light cars of the 70's, and heavy cars today are generally safer than light cars today. We could make VERY light cars today that would pass 70's safety standards, but wouldn't pass today's standards.

To give a concrete example, the 1988 Honda Civic LX weighed in at 2138 lbs. The 2002 Civic LX weighs in at 2515 lbs. The 2021 Civic LX weighs in at 2771 lbs. That's a pretty substantial weight gain.
 
Even so all that does is get us back to "Heavier cars are safer for me, but screw the people in the cars I hit."

That's basically what happened. If you're equating "safety" with "size" even if it's true within certain contexts, all that does is create an arms race of everyone wanting to drive the biggest car on the road so they aren't at a disadvantage in an accident.
 
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