I spotted a NEW (insert make/model) today!

benjaminh

I saw a Honda Clarity plug-in hybrid when I was getting an oil change for my Accord at the dealer. Strange looking, but sort-of cool. Doesn't quite work for me, styling-wise. Slightly reminds me of a Citroen DS....

benjaminh

bhill2 said:

There has been considerable discussion about overcoming the disadvantages of range limitation and recharge time in electric vehicles. In general, the consensus is that significantly longer range and faster charging is years away and likely to be expensive. Consider also that most electricity is generated using fossil fuels anyway.

Please let me present a half-baked idea for potential further baking. It has already been shown that electric cars can be produced at moderate price that have good performance and adequate range for most driving. Would there be any play in adding, or even replacing some of the battery capacity with, an internal-combustion engine optimized to run at constant speed and drive a generator? That is, a parallel hybrid. It should be a fairly simple addition, and I would think that the optimized engine could be made very low in emissions. It would have to be able to maintain battery charge under normal situations, but in most driving not a lot of power is needed. Under high power requirements the battery would be drawn down a bit, but recharging could take place when the power demand goes back to normal. Discuss among yourselves.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I think the Accord Hybrid I'm considering buying sort of does what you are talking about....?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBpoZ9yFDWw&t=180s

qbrozen

bhill2 said:

There has been considerable discussion about overcoming the disadvantages of range limitation and recharge time in electric vehicles. In general, the consensus is that significantly longer range and faster charging is years away and likely to be expensive. Consider also that most electricity is generated using fossil fuels anyway. Please let me present a half-baked idea for potential further baking. It has already been shown that electric cars can be produced at moderate price that have good performance and adequate range for most driving. Would there be any play in adding, or even replacing some of the battery capacity with, an internal-combustion engine optimized to run at constant speed and drive a generator? That is, a parallel hybrid. It should be a fairly simple addition, and I would think that the optimized engine could be made very low in emissions. It would have to be able to maintain battery charge under normal situations, but in most driving not a lot of power is needed. Under high power requirements the battery would be drawn down a bit, but recharging could take place when the power demand goes back to normal. Discuss among yourselves.

That is a Volt, yes?

edit: just looked it up. The original 2011 Volt worked that way for the most part, but the 2016 redesign changed it to be more of a blended power delivery once the battery ran down.

the i3 range extender only charges the battery, right?

texases

While many folks focus on range and battery costs, getting the charging time down into the 'few minutes' range will be VERY difficult - the current draw to do that is enormous, more than any residential and most small commercial systems can handle.

berri

Gasoline will be in for a price jolt so to speak when the much higher octane fuel becomes required for new vehicles down the road. Wait and see the oil and gas station industry gouge.

texases

Gouge? It costs more to make. Basically, the car industry wants us to pay (with higher gas prices) for them to make their mpg targets.

andres3

Mr_Shiftright said:

FWD has better traction unless you are going uphill--then, not so much.

A Tesla Model S should be regarded as a full-size Lexus with a 9 gallon gas tank and wider panel gaps and one dealer every 100 miles.

and with poor reliability, something Lexus doesn't know the definition of.

Mr_Shiftright

Well people are still buying the Model 3, so apparently what Consumer Reports says doesn't blunt the charisma of the Fearless Leader.

Maybe they're using Land Rover as a model for this level of blind faith. Some people want what they want--reliability isn't the highest priority.

explorerx4

Saw my first 'without a doubt about it' Model 3 today.
It was moving and didn't see anything fall off, going kind of slow though.
It was black and had a temporary paper plate.
I think that makes sense because I don't think they are for sale in CT.

berri

Gouge? It costs more to make. Basically, the car industry wants us to pay (with higher gas prices) for them to make their mpg targets.

You mean to tell me that premium fuel costs 60 cents or more a gallon to produce compared to regular 87 octane??? Now I can't tell you whether it is the industry, wholesalers or gas stations that are exaggerating this price differential.

texases

If it didn't cost more, somebody would charge less. Look what happened to gas prices when they plummeted. Demand for premium also is creeping up as more folks buy turbo cars that recommend/require premium.

If gas sellers could set their price where they wanted, why'd they let regular prices drop?

stickguy

scoped out a new Jetta today. Big upgrade over the prior model IMO. Impressive car. Very roomy too.

fushigi

texases said:

While many folks focus on range and battery costs, getting the charging time down into the 'few minutes' range will be VERY difficult - the current draw to do that is enormous, more than any residential and most small commercial systems can handle.

Put a supercapacitor at the charging station and feed it at a sustainable rate. Let it dump the high-current flow into the EV batteries. For commercial chargers the capacitor may need to be oversized or part of a bank of units to handle the demand. For residences or small businesses it would be around the size of Tesla's Powerwall.

But there is still an issue: heat. Dumping that much juice into the EV battery pack quickly creates a lot of waste heat. It has to be managed or you wind up with bulging/exploding battery cells or otherwise shortening the useful life.

laurasdada

Shipping up to Boston tomorrow after a nice (and extremely quick!) week long visit with family in LA. To summarize:
Model 3s, not so rare
Bentley's a go go including the Bentayga
A fistfull of Ferraris, including Italias and FFs
Late sightings of Lexus LC500, 3 today
Lexus RX300s
A bunch of Aston Martins, DB9, Vantage and DB11
A dime a dozen 911s
And, of course, the lower middle class folks in their MBs, BMWs and Audis.

You know, the usual.

bhill2

qbrozen said:

bhill2 said:

There has been considerable discussion about overcoming the disadvantages of range limitation and recharge time in electric vehicles. In general, the consensus is that significantly longer range and faster charging is years away and likely to be expensive. Consider also that most electricity is generated using fossil fuels anyway.

Please let me present a half-baked idea for potential further baking. It has already been shown that electric cars can be produced at moderate price that have good performance and adequate range for most driving. Would there be any play in adding, or even replacing some of the battery capacity with, an internal-combustion engine optimized to run at constant speed and drive a generator? That is, a parallel hybrid. It should be a fairly simple addition, and I would think that the optimized engine could be made very low in emissions. It would have to be able to maintain battery charge under normal situations, but in most driving not a lot of power is needed. Under high power requirements the battery would be drawn down a bit, but recharging could take place when the power demand goes back to normal. Discuss among yourselves.

That is a Volt, yes?

edit: just looked it up. The original 2011 Volt worked that way for the most part, but the 2016 redesign changed it to be more of a blended power delivery once the battery ran down.

the i3 range extender only charges the battery, right?

I had forgotten the i3 range extender; it may indeed do that. All of the hybrids I am aware of are parallel, so that the engine is often used to propel the car. That requires that the engine be designed to operate at a range of speeds. Since electric propulsion can now provide more than sufficient power on its own, I was hoping that being able to operate the engine at a constant, or limited range of speed for recharging only would allow optimization for low emissions and fuel consumption while still giving greater range and short refueling times.

Mr_Shiftright

I'm kind of surprised that BMW was able to sell any i3s. You get very little value for your money.

fintail

i3 resale is hilarious, lease it, don't buy it.

Mr_Shiftright

Sheer madness to buy one.

kyfdx

Some pretty reasonable lease deals, though.

Mr_Shiftright

Well sure, that's the only way to unload them. If the leases were as bad as the MSRP, they wouldn't sell a single one I'd guess. Next to the Smart Car, this has got to be the most ridiculous vehicle in the marketplace today.

qbrozen

Ok now I'm curious. What makes you say that? Why is it more ridiculous than a Leaf, for example? I think the range extender makes the i3 a pretty reasonable appliance, putting aside the homeliness of it, of course.

texases

Nothing BMW about it. Dumpy/odd looking, nothing special as to performance or handling. Why buy it over a much cheaper Leaf?  The range extender adds about 100 miles, right?  Not enough to matter, it seems, especially because it was an option.  Seemed like a bandaid. 

qbrozen

But the point more to the range extender is that you can fill with gas and keep going. 

Mr_Shiftright

Yeah, but it's almost $50,000 dollars!!! For what? Looks? Handling? Performance?

Nope. Ain't got any of those things.

Next to the Cadillac ELR, probably the worst automotive value of the 21st century, IMO.

qbrozen

Oh, ridiculous price? Ok, maybe. But I have nothing against the car itself.

fintail

I swear I saw a new QX50 on the road today, didn't know they were out yet.

kyfdx

fintail said:

I swear I saw a new QX50 on the road today, didn't know they were out yet.

yeah... I've seen a couple of them, and received promotional flyers from my local dealer.

explorerx4

Someone down the street is having a party. Mostly the usual Camry's, CR-V's, Honda vans.
Then I see a white Model S. 3 tires on the pavement and one on the lawn kind of ruined it.

Mr_Shiftright

Maybe his extension cord was too short?

fintail

3x Model 3 today. I am waiting for them to emulate Prius behavior, just need a critical mass.

fintail

White Model 3 in the workplace parking garage every now and then. It would be a remarkable sight if I lived elsewhere, but with the half a dozen Tesla already there, not as exciting.

I noticed a couple late model Audi with HUD today.

fintail

This may impact new model sightings

Tired of winning yet? Or just tired in general?

texases

Yikes....

Back to new cars, a Lotus Evora (pretty new, at least) in traffic.

lemmer

Mr_Shiftright said:

Yeah, but it's almost $50,000 dollars!!! For what? Looks? Handling? Performance?

Nope. Ain't got any of those things.

Next to the Cadillac ELR, probably the worst automotive value of the 21st century, IMO.

We have a used one. It really changes the math. We bought a CPO model with 20K miles and pretty much every conceivable option (except the REX) for $15,900. My wife loves it. It is her favorite car she has ever owned.

Mr_Shiftright

fintail said:

This may impact new model sightings

Tired of winning yet? Or just tired in general?

That's only the Impulse of the Moment. This could change in the blink of a Tweet.

fintail

Or maybe the start of a big Bezos-like feud with the de facto leader of the free world (Merkel).

Free markets, small government, lolol.

Mr_Shiftright said:

That's only the Impulse of the Moment. This could change in the blink of a Tweet.

Mr_Shiftright

If yo stifle competition in the auto industry, Americans are going to start seeing crap-cars again. We'll all be driving 2020 versions of a Chrysler 200.

kyfdx

At my current 8K mi/yr pace, I'll just keep driving my 116K mile car for another 10 years, then.

fushigi

It was unclear if that would be a ban on imports or a ban on Mercedes specifically. Banning Mercedes would put at least 4000 Americans out of work based on their US manufacturing.

ab348

Things are a bit crazy right now. The US just reimposed tariffs on imports of Canadian aluminum and steel (also ones from Mexico) and the Canadian gov just responded with tariffs on imports of a whole laundry list of US products, from frozen pizza to toilet paper to bourbon.

All of this apparently started because the US gov was unhappy with the time taken to get a NAFTA deal. Up here in Canada both the pols and the citizenry are justifiably P.O.ed at the US gov after all the support we provided after 9/11, in Afghanistan, etc etc.

fintail

Funny line I read today is that 45 should repeal the asinine 25 year import rule - as it was bought and paid for by Mercedes (because free markets, limited government, freedom, etc).

ab348, many down here are also less than thrilled with the government.

texases

"All of this apparently started because the US gov Trump was unhappy with the time taken to get a NAFTA deal."

There, I fixed it. Two different things.

Mr_Shiftright

Saddest of all is that some of the people making these decisions couldn't even tell you in any great detail what's in the NAFTA deal. This is all political theater. If a critic thinks a deal is "bad", that critic should be able to explain why it's bad. That way, we're all in on it.

Perhaps it turned out "bad" but I don't think all parties went in thinking it was bad.

thebean

From what I see happening at the big white house in DC, apparently the rule is "everything that was enacted prior to 2017 is terrible and everything since is genius".

berri

Banning Mercedes would put at least 4000 Americans out of work based on their US manufacturing.
...and a lot of well to do political contributors own one. Sometimes I think he just spurts these things out to appease his base and maybe see what jello-o sticks to the wall.

stickguy

messing with their wheels might finally be the breaking point for the enablers. You don't do that.

fintail

I doubt many of the base are in the market for a late model MB, and you can be sure cars made in China won't be touched.

I still have to support repealing the 25 year rule. It'd be hilarious for MB, BMW, and VW to threaten "buh bye", too. Trade wars have produced positive results exactly zero times in history, no surprise the narcissist thinks it will be different this time.

stickguy

2019 RDX. scoped out and drove one. Very, very nice. Massive improvement over the old one. I think Acura will sell a bunch of them.

texases

Good to hear, that's on my list. What would you say are the biggest changes?

stickguy

seems like an entirely different car. Actually seemed very BMWish. Biggest change to me was the sound (turbo engine) and the whole dash and infotainment set up. That took about a 20 year leap into the future. Definitely looked roomier in the cargo hold too.