Electric car thread

[kgwilson]

6 hours ago, onetrack said:

Yes, of course - it was raining - when he drove his Tesla into that lake, and the water came over the roof!

Following google maps religiously.

[facthunter]

There are Lies, Damned Lies and silly pictures.  Nev

[spacesailor]

 

In the day of the " Ford Popular  " car.  if submerged the " indicators arms " will jam in their housing.  The engine oil  will have to be drained & replaced ,as will the fuel in the petrol tank .

Then drive a long distance to warm-up all the components. 

The advice to owners,  from the motoring organisations. 

spacesailor

 

 

 

 

[nomadpete]

True Spacey.

 

but.....

 

Ten miles is a long distance in a Ford Popular. Wet or dry.

[onetrack]

A former farmer client of mine had a 1942 Chev 1-ton trayback truck as his farm ute in the 1970's. It ran like a top, never ever failed to start and run, and the only problem he had with it was it used to break front springs fairly regularly due to bouncing at 50-60 kmh, over the hard-set ridges in the paddocks from seeding.

 

He told me one time how he and his brother were carting water with the old Chev from a farm dam. They had about a 200 gallon (900 litre) tank on the back, and they were backing down into the corner of the dam a bit to fill the tank as the hoses weren't long enough on the pump to fill it on level ground out front of the dam.

 

He said as the tank filled this particular time, the handbrake let go and the old Chev rolled straight back into the dam, fully submerging itself in about 12 feet of water!

So they went home, got a tractor and a stout rope and went back and duck-dived on the old Chev until they could hook the rope onto the front bumper!

 

They then pulled the hapless Chevy out of the dam and opened the doors and let all the water out, and  then took the seat out and set in in the sun to dry. It was mid-Summer, so pretty hot. 

Then they drained the fuel tank, the gearbox and differential and engine oils, and left the truck for a few days.

They came back, refilled all the oils, filled her up with petrol, blew out all the important electrical connections (plug wires, coil, etc), and after some spluttering and coughing, she fired right up - and ran sweetly for another 20 or so years until they sold the farm and retired!

 

Edited December 20, 2023 by onetrack

[old man emu]

Yesterday I parked my car nose-to-nose with a Tesla. I have a Hyundai Tiburon, so in a small country town both cars are very rare. Sort of like being

 

I noticed the bonnet badge on the Tesla and thought it was very close to mine 

 

It probably explains why my car seems to attract a bit of attention when I go into Dubbo. Although it is a 2005 model, its design is fairly up to date:

[onetrack]

A bloke who hung around with SWMBO's sister about 18 years ago had a Tiburon, I thought it was quite a sporty little chariot for the time. He was a Uni lecturer, and I suspect he thought he was a real ladies man. Old blokes who drive sporty little coupes and convertibles are always a bit suspect.

[kgwilson]

EV batteries are designed to remain inert when submerged so do not electrify the water surrounding them. Being submerged in salt water of course causes corrosion especially of electrical connections but the risk of a battery fire is very low. So far only 2 EV battery fires have occurred globally after being removed from being submerged in flood water/sea water.

 

Whether a car is ICE or EV, once it has been submerged it is always written off by insurance companies.

 

Similar to the Old Chev story after the 2022 floods I had a whipper snipper, 2 lawnmowers & a generator all submerged for 2 days in flood water plus an electric fan and a transistor radio. I just gently washed the fan & radio out with fresh clean water & let them dry for a couple of weeks. The rest I drained fuel & oil, washed out the electrical bits with clean water & renewed filters cleaned carbies etc & again left everything for a couple of weeks & got everything back in working order as if nothing had ever happened.

[octave]

6 minutes ago, onetrack said:

Old blokes who drive sporty little coupes and convertibles are always a bit suspect.

Hey I resemble that remark!

[Marty_d]

1 hour ago, octave said:

Hey I resemble that remark!

Which bit? 

[facthunter]

The Yellow chick magnet with the old codger in it.  Don't park near the Girl's School in that, (or anything else for that matter)..   Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

Yeah.. I'm locking up my partner and daughter as I type.

[octave]

2 hours ago, facthunter said:

The Yellow chick magnet

 

I don't really see this car as a chick magnet in fact these small convertibles are often seen as being a bit "girly" by some.    I would be more suspicious about the bloke in the V8 muscle car.

[Jerry_Atrick]

27 minutes ago, octave said:

I would be more suspicious about the bloke in the V8 muscle car.

I would like to resemble that remark. I have no idea why; the are ugly unsafe, inefficient, poor driving bogan chariots (much like some ladies I have dated), but for some reason, I like them.. especially the XB/XC Cobra. It's not even to cover for a deficiency of masculinity. I just like the look of them.

[onetrack]

An interesting article below, which is a classic piece of jumbled facts, misinformation and outright BS.

 

https://www.drive.com.au/news/study-finds-some-electric-car-owners-considering-a-switch-back-to-petrol-power

 

The article essentially claims that more than 50% of current EV owners are going to go back to IC engined vehicles when they trade their EV's.

It's utter crap, it's all based on some phone surveys, it's all based on U.S. owners (although it never says that in the article) and it all swings around the Tesla owners group.

 

The comments at the bottom provide more relevant info. What I take away from the story and the comments is;

 

1. The Tesla owners are fan bois, like iPhone owners and Apple supporters. They follow Tesla slavishly and they'd buy a Tesla even if the new model came with square wheels.

2. Virtually all Tesla owners can be classed as wealthy. There's little doubt of that, especially when you find many Tesla owners have owned multiple Teslas - and many Tesla owners have no long-term ownership story to tell. They swap them like I swap my shirts - and that's often.

3. The commenters who have owned both EV and IC, give good points of view.

4. I wasn't aware that many public EV charge points throttle back the available power when there's multiple cars being charged.

5. Many owners buy EV's and Teslas as business vehicles and get massive tax deductions accordingly. This doesn't rate as an EV value measure to me, I can't possibly get a tax deduction with any car.

6. So the business owners swap their Telsas out every 3 - 4 years and claim they're just fantastic, because they've cost them virtually nothing (taking into account their massive tax advantage).

This might be great for them, but it means nothing to me. It does mean I'm financing their "great deal" via the taxation system.

7. It is becoming obvious that a used EV that is approaching 7 - 8 years old is worth little - because the battery will soon need replacing, and the cost of a new battery is more than the car is worth.

There's much talk of batteries soon becoming much, much cheaper. I'm not holding my breath, they are still enormously expensive, and that isn't going to change for 5 or more years at least.

8. The battery degradation rate is not talked about much. After 5 years, your EV is going to only hold about 70 - 80% of the charge it held when new. That means a much shorter overall range. It's subtle, but it's a costly degradation, in overall terms of charge time and trip lengths.

9. No-one speaks about the hassles of EV car cleaning and generally wet conditions. Car washes and pressure washing of EV's is not something that is mentioned in the glossy brochures - but Tesla has strict instructions on washing and automated car washes for their cars.

 

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-65384C1F-86F2-44E8-A8BC-8A12E7E00A40.html

 

10. I can find little information on the cost of EV repairs and how promptly they are written off. That would be a very good study to undertake, and the information made public, so people can make a better judgement on whether an EV suits their needs and budget.

[spacesailor]

I recall ' my girls ' all drove muscle cars .

Not all of them ( 4 ) . Were happy with a " stock " v8 . And had " Sainty's " ( Speedwork's ) really 

Make " Holden HJ MONARO . Leave " rubber on the road .

Also have to have a letter from the " blue slip " examiner,  to show , it Was compliant. 

spacesailor

 

[octave]

11 minutes ago, onetrack said:

An interesting article below, which is a classic piece of jumbled facts, misinformation and outright BS.

Yep sounds like classic FUD to me Fear, uncertainty, and doubt

 

I often find it amusing how EV owners are characterized. My son owns a Tesla but he also owns the little yellow convertible posted earlier and a motorsport race car. Is he rich, well richer than me probably upper middle class I would say.   Is he a Tesla fanboy, nope in fact although he likes the car there are things he is very critical of. 

 

My son'sTesla is now 4 years old and despite numerous goes on the motorsport track still has a battery in great shape.

 

Lately, there has been an invigorated campaign against EVs especially in poor-quality rags like the Daily Mail.

 

If EVs are so bad we would expect this to show up in Norway Norway: Plug-In Car Market Share Hits Record 93% In September 2023    With this many cars you would expect the predictions of the doomsayers to cause people to riot in the street.

 

 

 

 

[onetrack]

Norway is regularly held up as a great example of EV ownership - but it's not typical of the rest of the world.

 

1. The Norwegian Govt accelerates EV sales via major tax incentives.

 

https://www.oecd.org/climate-action/ipac/practices/norway-s-evolving-incentives-for-zero-emission-vehicles-22d2485b/

 

2. Norway is only a small country. Saying it has "29,000 kms of coastline" is disingenuous, the actual land area of Norway is only 385,000 sq kms, and its road network is seriously limited by its mountainous terrain.

Norway has just under 93,000 kms of roads, of which 72,000 kms are paved, and only 664 kms are motorways.

By comparison, we have 677,000 kms of local roads alone.

 

3. Little is spoken of how much hydro power Norway generates. Virtually every rural property has a hydro power setup, with free, endless power from continuous waterfalls. The Norwegian Govt encourages private hydro power generation. There are a staggering 1769 hydro power stations in Norway, with hydro power generating 88% of the countrys power requirements.

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by onetrack

[kgwilson]

There is a huge amount of misinformation about EVs as well as complete and utter falsehoods. Someone will have a problem with a battery and all of a sudden that is all over the web that the batteries are useless. If EVs are no good how come there are 26 million of them on the road as at the end of last year with the forecast number by the end of this year to be 40 million.

 

MG wouldn't give a 7 year unlimited km warranty on the car & battery if they didn't think the battery would last. Other manufacturers give between 5 & 8 years. The battery is typically about 40% of the cost of an EV but the quality of the batteries and the battery management systems included all but guarantee a long life. CATL is by far the largest battery manufacturer in the world and produces the best batteries. The 64kWH battery in my car should according to CATL have degraded to about 80% of new by the time the car has travelled 1 million km. On that basis the battery will outlast the car by a long shot.

 

I speak to every EV owner I see at a public charging spot & I haven't met any yet who say they will go back to ICE.

 

In the US there were government incentives to produce EVs & the US car makers all took the money & produced some good ones and a lot of awful ones. Now many are sitting in car lots without buyers. The public charging infrastructure wasn't/isn't there and little was done to promote and stimulate demand. Funny thing though it hasn't dampened Teslas market which continues to grow. Also the US does not allow importation of Chinese made EVs who make most of the worlds EVs and many of the best.

 

Apparently some 3800 car dealers in the US petitioned the government to stop promoting EVs quoting all sorts of problems but omitting the main reason. Most of their income comes from servicing and maintenance and the lack of this requirement for EVs means a large part of their bread & butter income is not there, at least for the first 160,000km.

 

Charge points don't throttle back when there are multiple EVs charging. The problem is the supply to the chargers is under specified. If the supply to the hub is 1 megawatt and the maximum out put of all chargers combined is 2 megawatts then they will only run at half speed when all are operating. This is being resolved by battery storage at multi charge point hubs. There is one new charge hub outside Shanghai airport that has 259 charge points & all can be used at the same time. This is operated by Shell, an oil company. They see the writing on the wall and want to survive.

 

Also Teslas have a lot of hi tech sensors all over and around them and automatic car wash machines may affect them. My car has 360 degree cameras, forward and rear radar etc as well and so do a lot of ICE cars. This issue applies to all high end cars. I would never take any car I own to an automatic car wash. Tesla warns owners about this. Other car makers don't bother & the dealer rakes in more money when the item has to be adjusted or replaced. Tesla does not have any maintenance requirements during the warranty period at all. If something goes wrong you just take it to the service agent. It is not surprising that dealers are scared. They can see their income stream disappearing & so the misinformation stream grows and is stoked all over the web.

[old man emu]

Perhaps manufacturers are misleading themselves by taking a proven basic design for a personal transport vehicle (power/transmission system, collision resistant body and ergonomic design for occupants) and stuffing the vehicle with a lot of whizz-bangery that most often is there simply to let the owner become one of the Joneses that the rest try to keep up with.

 

Until the computer chip began to be used in cars to control everything from fuel/air ratios to detecting raindrops on windscreens, manufacturers had gone from providing things like oil and water temperature gauges to simple "idiot lights". The removal of the gauges did not detract from the functioning of the vehicle. Modern vehicles, no matter whether ICE or EV or some combination have, as KGW says 

9 hours ago, kgwilson said:

a lot of hi tech sensors all over and around them and automatic car wash machines may affect them.

Not only water, but vibration can also break connections, leading to unserviceability. Vehicles now have a plethora of "anti-collision" devices which can either alert the driver, or take control of the vehicle. For once I'll not bag the TESLA motor company with an example. In an effort to be ahead of the pack, TESLA installs "Autopilot". As a result of several fatal and serious injury collisions TESLA has been sued. While evidence in these cases has tended to indicate that the claimed abilities of the Autopilot were involved, recent court decisions have held that, no matter what sort of anti-collision warning systems is installed in a vehicle, the ultimate responsibility for operating the vehicle is the driver.

 

It is not TESLA's engineers who are at fault, but its advertising department who have implied that a vehicle with Autopilot can drive itself and the driver does not have to do anything. In a recent Florida case, the judge cited a 2016 video showing a Tesla vehicle driving without human intervention as a way to market Autopilot. The beginning of the video shows a disclaimer which says the person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. “The car is driving itself,” it said.

 

The judge said that “absent from this video is any indication that the video is aspirational or that this technology doesn’t currently exist in the market”. Another example of TESLA's advertising department pissing before the engineering department could make the water.

 

[kgwilson]

The system in my car is called MG Pilot & with lane keep assist, lane departure assist, forward collision assist, speed sign recognition, forward radar, rear collision assist, blind spot monitoring and 360 deg camera plus a heap of other things. With adaptive cruise control on and on a well defined road like the pacific highway the car will follow the lane by itself until the woman who lives in the computer tells me to put my hands back on the wheel. The handbook has all sorts or warnings about the systems must not be relied on but then you get people who buy cars and have never read anything in the handbook.

 

I hate the lane keep assist & nearly always turn it off. The problem is that to maintain the 5 star NCAP rating the system must always be on by default. The only things I have found really useful are the cameras when parking, adaptive cruise control and traffic jam assist as the car will automatically start & stop & keep up with traffic.

[onetrack]

The thing I find interesting is that Tesla has (so far) managed to make money out of EV's, whilst every other vehicle manufacturer is losing vast sums of money on EV's - and I'll wager that includes the Chinese.

 

But the Chinese are playing the "long game" as they always do - their intention is simply to rule the automotive world by sheer domination of numbers and production levels - of EV's. I have little doubt they will achieve that aim, although with an uneven track record along the way.

 

American manufacturers are frightened of being left behind, and have invested literally dozens of billions in new EV manufacturing facilities, new battery factories, and new EV products.

 

But none of these new EV products from America have reached a level of acceptance and profitability that are sustainable.

 

Both GM and Ford are in serious trouble with their EV product lines. Losses on their EV's are not decreasing. 2024 production levels of EV's from both Ford and GM have been reduced.

EV demand has effectively plateaued - and the disparity in cost of the average EV and IC cars is the biggest hurdle yet to be overcome.

 

Tesla are doing alright at present, but the impact of Elon Musks chaotic and erratic decision making, vastly increased competition from competitors, a plummeting share price, higher interest rates, and production woes at numerous factories, are all leading to a picture for 2024 for Tesla that is less rosy than many would suggest.

A global economic downturn or recession would soon see EV makers in serious trouble - and high interest rates, inflation and a lot of mortgage holders under stress could easily see car sales of all types slow down.

 

In an era of economic austerity, only the Chinese EV manufacturers are well-positioned to take advantage of a drive to find cheaper alternatives in motoring.

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ford-gm-and-even-tesla-are-warning-about-the-ev-market-194905657.html

[old man emu]

My 2005 car has cruise control that I can manually override to suit my needs for a particular situation. It has an airbag deployment system. It has a computerised engine management system. It has switches with knobs I can feel for to change air conditioning settings, or buttons to change radio stations. If I need navigation assist, I have a mobile phone with Google Maps sitting in a holder. And the instrument panel has a number of warning lights that are specific to the component they are monitoring.

 

Things I'd really like:

1. Blind spot warning

2. A rock stadium speaker system that pumps out "Hey! I'm backing out of a parking spot beside a bloody great SUV. Watch out for me until I can see you!"

 

 

[octave]

7 minutes ago, onetrack said:

plummeting share price,

The share price isn't plummetting. I have shares and although they are a little down from their peak they are still healthy and growing.

Edited December 28, 2023 by octave

[onetrack]

Octave, that's not the same news I'm reading ...

 

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tesla-stock-plummeted-elon-musk-twitter/story?id=95756733

 

2022 was an utterly disastrous year for Tesla - however, because the values of Tesla shares dropped so badly in 2022, they started 2023 at a record low, and have since recovered some ground.

So I guess if you jumped in at the record low price they were in Jan 2023, you would have made some money.

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by onetrack