Gas Prices

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

I think for some people the distinction between a fun car to drive and one that isn't is how loud it goes "vroom vroom". Maybe electric cars need to add speakers under the hood to attractive those cavemen.

Thankfully the legacy ICE automakers have already solved this problem for us:

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/vi...50-pumps-v8-engine-noise-into-v6-trucks/

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by FarmerHaight

I think for some people the distinction between a fun car to drive and one that isn't is how loud it goes "vroom vroom". Maybe electric cars need to add speakers under the hood to attractive those cavemen.

The sound of rubber squealing works for me.

I've got one EV, and one very loud project car. A loud car fatigues the hell out of you after a couple hours.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

this is quite the convo to read.

i wish hydrogen was getting a fair shake. seems like its the most forgotten of the personal vehicle fuels.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

i wish hydrogen was getting a fair shake. seems like its the most forgotten of the personal vehicle fuels.

I've never understood Toyota's fascination with hydrogen. It's a dirty fuel (almost all commercially available hydrogen is manufactured from fossil fuels) and there's a huge chicken-and-egg problem with regards to the infrastructure. It's been 15 years since BC proudly proclaimed its participation in the West Coast Hydrogen Highway, and it's fallen into disuse.

Electricity, by contrast, is already everywhere, it's cheap and it's green. It's pretty hard to compete with that. Compare the complete lack of any progress on hydrogen transportation with the rapidly increasing growth of electric vehicles over the past decade.

Hydrogen may have some important niche uses for fleets or bulk transportation, but it's role in personal transportation really seems dead to me.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

this is quite the convo to read.

i wish hydrogen was getting a fair shake. seems like its the most forgotten of the personal vehicle fuels.

You can always try driving a NEXO. But there are only 4 places to fuel them, and 'you won’t be able to buy one any time soon'. As Aberdeen notes, there's no 'green' hydrogen production available yet, only the fossil fuel based 'blue hydrogen' which is clean on combustion, but not at production. If there's ever a larger scale renewable to hydrogen program it might have a role, especially for larger freight operations and maybe shipping, (and quarries) but until then it's better to go straight to electric propulsion.

[Alex Mackinnon]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

I've never understood Toyota's fascination with hydrogen. It's a dirty fuel (almost all commercially available hydrogen is manufactured from fossil fuels) and there's a huge chicken-and-egg problem with regards to the infrastructure. It's been 15 years since BC proudly proclaimed its participation in the West Coast Hydrogen Highway, and it's fallen into disuse.

Electricity, by contrast, is already everywhere, it's cheap and it's green. It's pretty hard to compete with that. Compare the complete lack of any progress on hydrogen transportation with the rapidly increasing growth of electric vehicles over the past decade.

Hydrogen may have some important niche uses for fleets or bulk transportation, but it's role in personal transportation really seems dead to me.

It's a Japanese thing. Their gov't is subsidizing it. I think they're nervous about producing more electricity domestically.

Hydrogen is importable. Electricity less so.

Hydrogen will not take off unless something fundamental changes to the economics. Would you rather pay the equivalent of $3-6/L for hydrogen or $0.30/L for electricity. Currently it's not much of a comparison, considering the fuel cell vehicle still needs a small battery and the same sized electric motor.

[VancouverOfTheFuture]

Originally Posted by Changing City

You can always try driving a NEXO. But there are only 4 places to fuel them, and 'you won’t be able to buy one any time soon'. As Aberdeen notes, there's no 'green' hydrogen production available yet, only the fossil fuel based 'blue hydrogen' which is clean on combustion, but not at production. If there's ever a larger scale renewable to hydrogen program it might have a role, especially for larger freight operations and maybe shipping, (and quarries) but until then it's better to go straight to electric propulsion.

i have driven a NEXO. i quite liked it. expensive, but a nice experience i thought. i drive an electric car for work surprisingly often. its about 8yrs old now, and you can notice the battery performance is not great anymore. you can use up like 1/2 a charge in about 2hrs of city driving. and the costs to replace the batteries will never make that economical to do. i don't think there will ever be classic cars in the future.

in the end, though, our fossil fuel use will never stop globally. it might stop for personal transportation. but more fossil fuels is used in manufacturing than vehicle transportation. i do plan to get an electric car in the next few years as my daily driver. seems to be a decent way to go for the most part.

[Changing City]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

i have driven a NEXO. i quite liked it. expensive, but a nice experience i thought. i drive an electric car for work surprisingly often. its about 8yrs old now, and you can notice the battery performance is not great anymore. you can use up like 1/2 a charge in about 2hrs of city driving. and the costs to replace the batteries will never make that economical to do. i don't think there will ever be classic cars in the future.

in the end, though, our fossil fuel use will never stop globally. it might stop for personal transportation. but more fossil fuels is used in manufacturing than vehicle transportation. i do plan to get an electric car in the next few years as my daily driver. seems to be a decent way to go for the most part.

Yesterday's news about a possible 100 year life for batteries from Dalhousie / Tesla suggests the battery technology of the near future will probably be quite different from the technology of eight years ago. And cheaper as well, apparently.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by Changing City

Yesterday's news about a possible 100 year life for batteries from Dalhousie / Tesla suggests the battery technology of the near future will probably be quite different from the technology of eight years ago. And cheaper as well, apparently.

The era of electric vehicles is still in its infancy. If you think about how much change occurred with the internal combustion engine over 100 years, it'll give you some idea of where battery technology is heading.

The fact is that the cost curve of Lithium-Ion batteries just tipped over into "feasible" territory to power electric vehicles around a decade ago. Now with EV sales burgeoning and the need for solar and wind energy storage, there's an absolutely huge and growing market for battery technology. This has spawned a gold rush of research and innovation that will continue to tip the scales as new chemistries, materials and manufacturing techniques move out of the lab.

The progress can seem slow, but it's just starting to pick up steam.

You do have to be careful reading the press releases, though. It's easy to create a battery that excels a one particular metric such as longevity, but fails others such as energy density, weight, or manufacturing cost. Technology announcements don't mean nearly as much as actual products that manufacturers are willing to go out and use.

[Migrant_Coconut]

Didn't we already swap out nickel batteries (in flip phones) for Li-ion? Now we want them back?

[WarrenC12]

Even today's generation of batteries are highly recyclable. Far better than any fossil fuel in that regard.

[whatnext]

An interesting story on Slate about Elon Musk and Tesla:

When I First Saw Elon Musk for Who He Really Is
The CEO’s mythmaking often obscures an uglier truth. The public is finally reckoning with it.
BY EDWARD NIEDERMEYER
MAY 27, 2022

On a beautiful day in May 2015, I drove the 13 hours from my home in Portland, Oregon, to Harris Ranch, California, halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. At the time, Tesla was touting a battery-swap station that could send Tesla drivers on their way in a fully powered vehicle in less than the time it takes to fill up a car with gas...

....There, amid the pervasive stench of cow droppings from a nearby feedlot, I discovered that Tesla’s battery swap station was not in fact being made available to owners who regularly drove between California’s two largest cities. Instead, the company was running diesel generators to power additional Superchargers (the kind that take 30 to 60 minutes to recharge a battery) to handle the holiday rush, their exhaust mingling with the unmistakable smell of bullshit...

Finding those diesel-powered Superchargers called into question the two pillars of Tesla’s image: an environmental mission and technological leadership. This led me to start digging, and I found that Tesla was getting nearly double the California Zero Emission Vehicle credits for every car it sold thanks to its Potemkin swap station, and that its claimed carbon impact didn’t reflect the actual energy mix used by its Superchargers...

...The following year, in 2016, I discovered some of the ways Tesla maintained this gap between public idealism and private cynicism, when I found the company had been requiring customers to sign nondisclosure agreements in return for free repairs to defects. This practice not only propped up Tesla’s buoyant stock price by keeping bad news away from investors’ ears, but also cut off auto safety regulators from their only independent source of information about defects. Then, even after major media outlets picked up the story and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration called the practice “unacceptable,” Tesla published a blog post saying I had fabricated the story, implying I had done so because I was short-selling their stock in order to profit from the declines caused by my story.

Despite having not even known what short-selling was up to that point, I was mobbed by an online army of angry fans who repeated these smears. Here was the turducken of Tesla’s information-control strategy: NDAs for customers, smears against critical reporters, a vicious pack of online enforcers, and a total disregard for facts holding it all together.....

https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/elon-musk-tesla-twitter-fables.html

[Klazu]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

this is quite the convo to read.

Haha, tell me about it. You always know you have struck a nerve when fanboys and enviro yahoos come out of their basements swinging with Elon's Twitter feed open on their smartphone.

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

I hate Tesla's screen-based UI too.

Originally Posted by whatnext

Tesla and others like VW who use just touch screens have made operating a vehicle more dangerous. How can any system which requires you to take your eyes off the road ever have been allowed by regulators? It is ridiculous.

Yeah, it is all done due to cost. Ugly screens like on Tesla cost next to nothing to produce and bolt on the dash and put some unresponsive capacitive software buttons on it, that are hidden deep in a cluttered menu. It is not only awful UX, also dangerous. Actually, most car manufacturers do better job with this than Tesla with more integrated screens and some physical buttons, but they are all bad nonetheless.

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

BMW has been all downhill since at least the early 2000s, it's not just a screen or some other random crap. It's all bad.

Dayumn. I wish some 2.5 million wealthy annual car buyers would have your knowledge on this, so they could avoid the biggest mistake in their life! What's even worse is that almost all of them are incredibly happy with their purchase, the highest figure in the luxury segment! Those poor, poor deceived souls...

Originally Posted by Alex Mackinnon

...you spent a bunch of money on a badge kit and some fancy rims for a car with no performance pedigree. As someone who loves fast cars, I find that shit hilarious.

I can't even... I am sorry, but I tried to think of something witty, but you have clearly outdone me with the experience-based wisdom - not jealousy - of yours. You win the internet today.

[mezzanine]

Dayumn. I wish some 2.5 million wealthy annual car buyers would have your knowledge on this, so they could avoid the biggest mistake in their life! What's even worse is that almost all of them are incredibly happy with their purchase, the highest figure in the luxury segment! Those poor, poor deceived souls...



I can't even... I am sorry, but I tried to think of something witty, but you have clearly outdone me with the experience-based wisdom - not jealousy - of yours. You win the internet today.

If you have this money to buy a high performance BMW SUV then why are you complaining about gas prices

[Klazu]

Originally Posted by mezzanine

If you have this money to buy a high performance BMW SUV then why are you complaining about gas prices

I am baffled if you have actually been reading any of the discussion here? Didn't I just few messages ago say that gas prices have zero impact on my driving?

Hello?!?!? Is this thing on??

[Lexus]

2022, May 28

Lots of pipeline sections near Hope, BC.

Untitled by Lexus LX570, on Flickr

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Dayumn. I wish some 2.5 million wealthy annual car buyers would have your knowledge on this, so they could avoid the biggest mistake in their life! What's even worse is that almost all of them are incredibly happy with their purchase, the highest figure in the luxury segment! Those poor, poor deceived souls...

For what it's worth, from your own source it seems Tesla owners are just as satisfied as BMW owners, and for specific models my understanding is that Model 3 and Y owners are the most satisfied on the road. [LINK]

In addition, 5 of the top 10 most satisfying vehicles are EVs.

BMWs are fun to drive but have issues; Teslas are fun to drive but have issues. Why argue about subjective things like satisfaction? EV evangelists want to shit on legacy brand vehicles, and ICE nostalgists want to shit on EV models, but at the end of the day the driving experience isn't very different, one's just louder, polluting, and costs more in the long term.

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by chowhou

EV evangelists want to shit on legacy brand vehicles, and ICE nostalgists want to shit on EV models, but at the end of the day the driving experience isn't very different...

Here I kind of disagree. While an ICE driver can certainly step into an EV and drive it the same way, for me the driving experience is vastly more refined. The quiet, smooth, instant power coupled with one-pedal driving make my Chevy Bolt the best car I've ever owned. It's hard to quantify the difference, but it really is there. I feel like ICE drivers just don't know what they're missing until they've spent some time driving an EV.

And yeah, the reduced operating costs are insane. My car is going on 5 years old now and it's only ever been back to the dealer twice for software updates that were covered under warranty. I had to pay for a pair of new tires recently as well as wiper blades and cabin air filters, but apart it's been zero maintenance cost.

[chowhou]

Originally Posted by aberdeen5698

Here I kind of disagree. While an ICE driver can certainly step into an EV and drive it the same way, for me the driving experience is vastly more refined. The quiet, smooth, instant power coupled with one-pedal driving make my Chevy Bolt the best car I've ever owned. It's hard to quantify the difference, but it really is there. I feel like ICE drivers just don't know what they're missing until they've spent some time driving an EV.

I think you might be comparing the EVs of today with the ICE of yesterday. My parents have a current generation Camaro and those come with a 10 (!!) speed automatic nowadays. As far as smoothness is concerned, you can barely notice the gear changes. I have to admit, it's pretty fun, but it's definitely an obnoxious vehicle.

If you really push it, you can definitely feel the the low end torque difference in an EV, but how many people are really doing that?

[aberdeen5698]

Originally Posted by chowhou

I think you might be comparing the EVs of today with the ICE of yesterday. My parents have a current generation Camaro and those come with a 10 (!!) speed automatic nowadays. As far as smoothness is concerned, you can barely notice the gear changes. I have to admit, it's pretty fun, but it's definitely an obnoxious vehicle.

Before the Bolt I drove a Prius C with a CVT. No gear changes in that car, either.

The EV is qualitatively different. One-pedal driving means the car is instantly responsive to my needs with just subtle changes in foot pressure - stop and go traffic no longer requires shuttling my foot back and forth between accelerator and brake. I can barrel up the Cut to the Upper Levels, easily slotting into traffic with zero engine noise or lag. When I slow to stop, the car comes to a perfect standstill with absolutely zero jerk.

I had to pass someone going 80 km/h on a fairly short straight stretch of the 2-lane Crowsnest highway. I floored the accelerator and passed him quickly. When I pulled back into the right-hand lane I was shocked to discover that I was going 150km/h. Apart from the acceleration, the car gave no hint that it was going that fast, it simply flew down the road without any sign of exertion.

It's hard to communicate, but it's a much better driving experience that I think can't really be appreciated unless you actually try it for a while.