Delorean Is Back

[LoneSage]

I've probably run out of gas a dozen times.

I have known you for 15 years. You are my friend. But I do not look kindly upon you after this. Once or twice, sure. A dozen times? No sir.

 

[SignOfGoob]

Only if you abuse it. Unless you're doing an absolutely stupid amount of long road trips, you should only be doing lvl 2 charging at home, or if you lucky, at work.

Any EV worth it's salt will have a long term battery warranty. I'm getting the Mach-E next month and it's battery is covered for 8 years. It'll definitely get traded in before then.

Oh man…if I wasn’t bound by NDAs I could probably talk you out of the Mach E. Good luck, I guess!

It’s a lease, right? Surely you’re not signing up to actually own the thing, right?

 

[SignOfGoob]

yes. yes you can.
but carrying gasoline or a battery to a dead car isnt fun either way.

Especially since you can pour a gallon of gas in seconds and it’s small. Then the car can drive to the station and fill up in three minutes.

The idea of charging cars on the side of the road or even being able to easily bring a battery big enough to charge it or a generator…this is all ridiculous. People will lose the taste of doing that after experiencing it just once. Tow truck drivers don’t have 400V three phase generators on their trucks. Is that coming in the future too? Well then so is the bill for him sitting there charging your car when he could just tow you and be on to the next job.

You know charging a battery with another battery will lose you %20, right? Imagine if every time we filled our tanks we spilled %20 of it on the ground.

Please look at a cutaway drawing of an electric car and see how HUGE the battery is. Check out the specs on it, how many hundreds of times bigger it is than any rechargeable battery we’ve ever owned. It’s not something you can top off in a hurry any more than you can charge your phone to %6 and have it get you through the day.

If the technology to make this stupidity practical is in the future then I suggest you wait until that time.

And solar panels…don’t make me laugh. Are you towing it with a 15foot trailer? No? Then it won’t ever make the juice you need. Nothing small enough to put on the roof of the car can be more than a drop in a bucket.

 

[Burning Fight!!]

they should make a piezoelectric recharger so the car comes up again as you violently hit the wheel in rage

 

[SignOfGoob]

Normally I’d say that’s also an insignificant amount of current but American road rage is infinite…maybe it could work.

Broadly speaking, I think decades of oblivious detachment from what goes on inside a car has made people too ignorant to make an informed choice on electric cars.

Roughly speaking, even a cheap weak car has at least 100HP, HP being horsepower horsepower being more or less equal to a horse, or .75KW. In my life the best use for solar panels in real life for most people is powering portable calculators, I’ve never seen one produce a single horsepower that wasn’t the size of pool table, probably bigger. Cars are POWERFUL and any electric replacement that is similarly powerful will have extremely heavy electrical needs. For most people even charging at home is semi-realistic, if they make one trip a day they can do it. If they only stay at hotels with fast chargers I guess they could drive cross country…but those hotels only have so many charging stations and will only offer them for free until electric cars start to become popular.

People should think ahead, is what I’m saying, way ahead.

 

[TheJiggler]

I ran out of gas (Petrol thank you) once, ran it real close and then went up an incline and yep car go sleep now. I nearly ran out of diesel 600km from home as I expected the town I was headed towards to have fuel but... nope I had to back track some 30km to find an unmanned station to refuel. Running on fuckin fumes I tell ya.

On the topic of EV though I don't really believe in it, we're gonna need far better than Li-ion to keep this sustainable. Hydrogen god damn you!!

 

[joe8]

On the topic of EV though I don't really believe in it, we're gonna need far better than Li-ion to keep this sustainable. Hydrogen god damn you!!

That's what I've always thought about electric cars, what happens to the old batteries when they have to be replaced?
And the range will decrease over time, as the batteries wear out.

 

[norton9478]

You know who doesn't need jump starts?
-People with electric cars.

 

[norton9478]

I have known you for 15 years. You are my friend. But I do not look kindly upon you after this. Once or twice, sure. A dozen times? No sir.

Even if I were Lobster Boy, I could count on one hand how many times I ran out of gas.

And I used to drive a car with no gauge and a leaky tank.

 

[Fygee]

Oh man…if I wasn’t bound by NDAs I could probably talk you out of the Mach E. Good luck, I guess!

It’s a lease, right? Surely you’re not signing up to actually own the thing, right?

It's a purchase with the expectation I'll trade it in after a few years since EVs hold their value really well in general. I've seen nothing but good reviews for it, especially for the GT which I'm getting.

Though now I'm really curious as to what I should be concerned about...

 

[norton9478]

That's what I've always thought about electric cars, what happens to the old batteries when they have to be replaced?

They are reusable in arrays.

 

[norton9478]

You should be concerned that BJZ isn't talking out of his ass for once.

So don't be concerned.

 

[SignOfGoob]

It's a purchase with the expectation I'll trade it in after a few years since EVs hold their value really well in general. I've seen nothing but good reviews for it, especially for the GT which I'm getting.

Though now I'm really curious as to what I should be concerned about...

If you sell it in three years then everything will still be covered and unless it burns your house down you probably won’t be fucked for thousands of dollars.

Owning it out of warranty…any electric car…not a wise idea. If it’s a project or race car or something, different story, but it will need a new battery some day and it will cost thousands, likely at a point when it’s resale value is the same as a new battery.

Please do keep us updated on anything exciting regarding your purchase, number of recalls, price and lifespan of tires, battery health, etc.

 

[norton9478]

Yes, batteries cost money.

So do Exhaust systems (just replaced one at 6 years/100,000 miles for $2200)
So do spark plugs (last replacement was $600)
So do new Timing Belts ($400-$500)
So do new brakes ($200-$300 per axel and replaced twice as often)
So do oil changes ($50 every 6000 miles)

 

[SignOfGoob]

$600 for spark plugs? WTF do you drive?

 

[lithy]

Who would have guessed, norton is an EV-stan.

 

[norton9478]

$600 for spark plugs? WTF do you drive?

The vehicle was a Taurus-X (AKA limited/Flex).

Apparently, the location makes some of them them hard to get to.
I asked my dad about doing them (a 40 year auto tech) and he was like "no way... Pay to have them done".

 

[norton9478]

Who would have guessed, norton is an EV-stan.

Nope. Don't have an EV or have a use for one right now. I'm a big fan of the internal combustion engine.

I love my $75 snow blower and the blue flame that comes out of the muffler. I love my partner's 48" John Deere that takes 20 minutes to mow a quarter acre. And my push mower that I picked up for free on the side of the road.

 

[norton9478]

..........

 

[lithy]

For the Freestyle/Taurus X/Flex rear bank of spark plugs you just take the upper intake manifold off which is like 6 bolts.

Might need a u-joint or two then to get the socket down there, but certainly not impossible.

 

[norton9478]

For the Freestyle/Taurus X/Flex rear bank of spark plugs you just take the upper intake manifold off which is like 6 bolts.

Might need a u-joint or two then to get the socket down there, but certainly not impossible.

Come to think of it, Might have been $350ish. I know it wasn't something that that he was interested in helping me with (this is back when he still helped me with shit).


Here is my current TransverseV6 Spark plug job.

 

[Jon]

That Jason guy from Engineering Explained drove his Telsa 1900+ miles in one day. Every 200 miles, he had to take a 50 minute break to fast charge it. Pretty interesting video. Not sure what the longevity on your battery would be if you did trips like that all the time.

Not a huge fan of electric cars. If I owned a house, I could see them being more practical. The batteries are very expensive, more if you decide on a higher capacity one. I have also heard nightmare stories about access to Tesla's ecu programs. It's not cheap, even for momentary access.

I have also heard the expression "a dented Tesla is a totalled Tesla" from a few friends that have owned them in the past.

Jon

 

[SignOfGoob]

The vehicle was a Taurus-X (AKA limited/Flex).

Apparently, the location makes some of them them hard to get to.
I asked my dad about doing them (a 40 year auto tech) and he was like "no way... Pay to have them done".

Come to think of it, Might have been $350ish. I know it wasn't something that that he was interested in helping me with (this is back when he still helped me with shit).


Here is my current TransverseV6 Spark plug job.

Indeed, the transverse V6 is the worst of all service worlds. Except on a Honda Odyssey, for some reason. Compared to a Grand Prix or a Ford anything it’s basically cake. I guess it’s a choice of engineering and marketing together.

Still, $600 is nothing compared to $6000 which is what an EV battery could easily run you…if not two or even three times that.

 

[norton9478]

The point was that there are advantages and disadvantages.

You can't just look at the cost of a new battery and ignore the costs that EV's don't have.

A 100,000 mile EV doesn't need an exhaust job. I doesn't need spark plugs or timing chains. It doesn't need oil changes. It doesn't need nearly as many brake jobs.

 

[norton9478]

The energy savings to me of an Ford F150 lighting would be about $11,000 at 100,000 miles.

Which wouldn't quite cover the added cost of MSRP..