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No, we need more rail. Enough with cars.
And dedicated bike lanes.
I’d take more Heavy rail, light rail, bike lanes, better city layouts, AND cheap electric cars.
We can’t afford that either, look at California.
“hyperloop” lol
Yeah Americans are shit at doing hsr
I walked past a Tesla showroom recently and they had one car on the floor that they still sell, one that they haven’t sold in decades, a frame to a car that’s out of production, and a robot they still don’t produce. They used to have more cars out then they stopped producing them. The stock is still high somehow.
The original roadster is still so cool to me. I wish a small relatively light ev sports car was sold in the US. I don’t want a barge with 800 HP I’d much rather have something nimble with a quarter of the power.
There was very little original with the roadtser. The chassis is just a Lotus Elise that they stuffed an EV drivetrain into.
And there are some small ones. The Kia EV3 is 201hp and under 30k.
Yeah I know and that’s exactly why it was good, because the elise already had an incredible sports car chassis.
The EV3 seems like a fine commuter but is certainly not a sports car in weight, shape, chassis, or suspension. It’s just another compact crossover, seemingly a good one, but not really what I’m talking about. In the US the closest thing is probably the Mini Cooper SE, but it’s still heavier and less powerful than the original roadster.
Imagine if Mazda made an mx-5 EV or Toyota made an 86 EV.
Mazda confirmed the next generation of MX-5 will include EV and petrol powertrain options.
Hell yeah. Hopefully it comes to all of their markets unlike the Mazda 6e
Imagine if Mazda made an mx-5 EV or Toyota made an 86 EV.
I’m pro-EV in general (pro-trains notwithstanding), but don’t see the point in that. I’d rather they just got the people who designed the MX-5 and GT86 to design EV sports cars on their own terms. An MX-5 EV would just be there to remind you how much more fun the ICE version was to drive.
Well yeah I don’t mean literally make the same car but an EV. Of course there are special considerations that need to be made when designing a different type of car. The main reason most EVs aren’t very fun is because most of them haven’t been designed to be.
I’ve wrote this before and I’ll write it again. Conversion kits need to become mainstream. It’s like my old Jeep can have pretty much any engine. Someone converted theirs with using parts from a junk yard Tesla.
as battery tech improves and electric motors become more powerful and ubiquitous it’ll happen. there’s a small market of people converting classic cars to ev. one day I’d like to convert my old honda element. I don’t need 300 miles range, give me 80 and it’ll be fine for grabbing lumber or taking junk to the dump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53ZV1GMrf50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqcHIQmWgIs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d53aNHMMai0
and a host of companies trying to cater to the market -
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T4WWHvZODz4
dig around and there’s a lot more. there’s a lot of rolling stock that can be swapped eventually, it would be stupid to condemn all that metal to scrap.
Totally agree. It sounds like you live in Vermont or the like. I think of how the star trek movie had a electric corvette.
And it’ll be extra nice because those kits could also deshitify the car in the process. Oh, you stuck a dependency on a functional phone home system in the fuel injection loop? Who cares after I’ve removed the fuel injectors?
That’s what I want.
There is a whole chunk of people wanting the diesel electric conversion kits Deboss Garage is developing with Edison Motors.
https://debossgarage.com/builds/diesel-electric-edison-pickup
(yes it will be possible to have a big battery instead of an engine + smaller battery)
Pretty cool if it’s legit. The west side Germany 300 got me a giggle. Bookmarked it. Okay, I just finished. I can’t believe this tech is out. I have read about how well it does with frying oil.
I bought a used 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5 for $25k. 30k miles. I know its still not cheap, but the ask the batteries have a 100k+ warranty.
77kW 220-280 miles at 100% (though I rarely go beyond 90% for battery life). 0-60 in 4.5 seconds, all wheel drive, CCS charger with NACS adapters available. Tesla chargers max at 96kW just fyi, idk why. But a lot of quick chargers work better, there’s 2 65xkW, 4x180kW near me. There’s a 4x375kW and a 4x400kW on a regular distance trip I take. Those are stupid fast charging.
A standard 120v is 1.4kW max, and it works out to about 10%/11hrs. A 240v is much better (i can’t remember maybe its like 10kW) charges fully in about 8 hours.
Kia and Hyundai are awesome EVs. I’ve heard good things about Subaru’s. The Chevy Bolt I’ve heard less good about. Toyota’s EVs are disappointing. Avoid Polestar - they aren’t allowed to sell in the US anymore anyway, but the car has a fancy interior and is fun to drive until the AC stops working. And it’s got weird software license gates for hardware it has.
Also don’t find reasons to funnel money to Musk.
Subaru and Toyota’s EVs are the same cars with mild restyles, both should be similar mechanically and reliability wise. The Uncharted is definitely the nicest of the bunch in my mind, though.
2027 Chevy Bolt driver here 👋. Urban car-dependent locale unfortunately.
Freaking love the Bolt. Got some good incentives and bought new, which felt sorta foolish at the time. Never ever bought new before. (But there were no used models under like 100,000 miles around us, and they were old ones with slow charging.)
It is a touch smaller than our CR-V, but they vastly improved this model and I enjoy it a lot. The LT was quite affordable, and I don’t ask for much luxury. (IMHO my Honda Element was the best car ever.)
There’s also third party module to get Android auto to work, I’m considering that.
I can say one thing though, even though having a payment sucks, I feel vindicated every time I drive by $6 gas.
Hehehehe I DO get that vindication.
I really like my '23 Bolt EUV. I bought it when it was new, and it’s been perfectly reliable ever since. Like you, it was the first time I ever bought new. I’ve got no regrets!
I recently heard that Honda might be bringing the Element back in a few years. I hope it’s true. I really wanted an Element when they were still in production, but couldn’t afford one back then
They keep teasing it over and over. AGH. It kills me! Like every year a new bunch of articles pop up to generate clicks. I can never tell when it’s real! Lol
And I thought I was CRAZY for thinking “Could I EV convert it?” (Could fix stuff with YouTube. Not a mechanic.)
Well, now I see converting cars becoming a big thing. But sadly I screwed up the whole engine by snapping a 10mm gooseneck bolt deep in some crevice deep down in there, and it was leaking oil, and I had to sell it for scrap because we needed to get to work. Tragic. I got almost 200,000 miles out of it. :( :(
…at least now I know how a new very simple way to sabotage a vehicle hardcore in a way no mechanic or machinist would dare bother with it. (Ask me how I know Lol)
Maybe that Element EV will be a thing. I know EVs like to chase high efficiency / low drag but they need to not be afraid to be boxy for the right audience instead of jelly beans! XD
Haha well it didn’t have much of a reputation for efficiency, did it? I heard it would come back as a hybrid though, which might be cool if they can pull it off without sacrificing too much interior space.
Hahaha yeah, it was a bit of a brick! 😂 25MPG on a good day wasn’t bad though.
But I mean hey, if Rivian can make those gargantuan Amazon vans electric, I’m sure Honda could figure it out for us. 😉 With enough infrastructure, range is pretty negotiable!
Might just have to raise the interior floor a bit to fill it with battery or make the hood space a little less snubby. :p
Would be super cool though. I’d be all over that haha.
For 240V most people use a dryer outlet which is 30 amps. 30A x 240V = 7.2kW before resistance and conversion losses, etc. Use a 50 amp circuit and outlet and you can achieve 12kW with the same stipulations.
240V can vary depending on the amperage and what the individual charger can handle. Power = Voltage x Current. I ran a 60A line, but for continuous loads you can only do 80%, so I get 240V x 48A which is about 11.5kW. There are always losses, so 10ish is a fair guess for real world time expectations.
As a Bolt EUV owner, I’m very envious of your charge speeds on the road, even though I wouldn’t make much use of it.
I’ve had a polestar for a couple years now, and it’s by far my favorite vehicle. It has quirks, but most I can get past. I also have a kia EV and I fucking hate it. It forces you to get handheld through everything and it has some really dumb software choices. Everything I hate about then could be changed with a software update to give options, but I don’t foresee that happening ever.
It was really fun, don’t get me wrong. I miss the small amount of extra power it had. The shifter was cool.
But the tire sensors kept going off, and the AC just dying and requiring me to do a fancy start sequence to get it going again was just impractical. Also it didn’t have smart cruise control, barely any storage space, max charge was like 210 miles, and the backup camera was almost useless.
That was a 2023 polestar 2, so i cant speak for other models or newer ones.
That’s fair, my tire settings need reset a few times per year. I don’t have the ac problem, but the sound for the speakers doesn’t work maybe once a month for some reason. Like I said, definitely quirks, but much better than my experience with the kia.
The things I don’t like on the kia are deliberate design decisions (or perhaps wild after thoughts in design) that I have to deal with every single time I drive it. I don’t know if I’ve ever had the level of disdain for a vehicle ever. In fairness, there is a lot to like, but I feel like it’s definitely vehicle for people who either don’t like driving, are passive drivers and indifferent to the vehicle or both.
Here’s the thing everyone seems to be forgetting. Once a motorized vehicle leaves the ground under powered flight it is no longer under DOT’s domain it is now under FAA’s domain. FAA licenses are way harder to get and way easier to lose. They also require annual tests to keep. This is why flying cars are a non starter, because to pilot them you need a general aviation license.
There are exceptions but it’s always in the ultralight or experimental categories. A release of this car will fit neither of those categories.
Yeah this car will never be for sale. There will be the $50,000 version which has none of the compressed air loaded into it, and a tuned up version with some boost for the 0-60. The flying car they showed yesterday was the only one that will ever do that, because it was a literal stunt for the shareholders.
From my memory, it’s just a $50k reservation, and if that’s the case, it’s going to cost a lot more than that in actuality.
I think you’re correct
Note that even the lowest even described model (50k just to reserve a spot for unspecified price and based on Tesla historically, unknown delivery date) there are issues.
They claim the active down force fan will be on that, but I hear that even on tracks they frequently aren’t allowed. It’s not likely to be a street legal thing, given what happens with road debris in such a scenario.
They saw the McMurtry Spéirling and got jealous, how cute 😂
(The Spéirling can hold itself upside down on a flat surface)
Correct. There is zero chance they ever come out with a flying car
New planes are fucking expensive. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. 50% of the cost of those planes is airframe certification and insurance for the manufacturer
Planes used to be war cheaper, but liability and bureaucracy has slowly been killing GA for a few decades
Even funnier, you’re generally not allowed to land on roads so once you take off you have a problem with that flying car. Debris flying around will also be fun.
What will be even more fun is getting eviscerated by an exploding pressurized gas tank they use to do that shit, in the tiniest crash known to man.
*accidentally bumps stray shopping cart in parking lot*
You can land on roads. It’s just rare it would be safe and a good idea
Big tire super cubs do it pretty often in rural Alaska
Biggest problems landing on roads is power lines and traffic. If either are present, it’s emergency only
To be fair, with teslas track record we’d be lucky if a production “flying” car like this could achieve more air time than my Subaru when I go ditch banging 😂
They also require annual tests to keep
No they don’t. Good for life, although I do need to do a flight review every 24 months
Flight reviews are pretty chill, juat do a flight with an instructor (or anyone else certified to sign off on it). We should require these for drivers too on license renewal
Not to mention insurance.
Also, don’t pilots need to take annual physicals?
It will be like flying an ultralight over your own land. And it won’t even be legal on public road.
I just want public transit…
Here you go:
Oh, did you mean in the US?
I would ride this just to ride this
The interior design is rather bland or let’s say functional, but I think the exterior looks great. It is not crazy like some of the French trams of the “Flexity”-family but quite elegant I think.
I work on those, they are pretty nice to work on when compared to the previous ULF trams, but nothing beats the old E2 trams
The current administration is in the process of abolishing what little we have. And they will.
Public transit is mostly at the city and state levels. Amtrak is the only exception I can think of.
A lot of systems get federal money, or did.
I don’t honestly think the US has the technical ability anymore. The US doesn’t really make much and hasn’t since the seventies. That’s a long time. How much of a Ford is actually made in the US? Shoot, how much is designed in the US?
Best they could do would be buy the parts, maybe make the frame, paint it and assemble. Don’t make batteries, don’t make screens, or chips, or leds or much of nothing.
There won’t be flying cars until Autonomous Vehicles have a perfect self driving score.
Joe Average Potata-brain can’t drive as it is. Now they want to add the extra chaos of multiple tons of debris falling from the sky after minor crash bends one of the stabilizer ports out of alignment?
No shit. I feel like this company has enough money they could produce a $10k Electric car that is basically sold at cost.
Tesla refuses to even develop a compact 20k car they could sell at a profit. Instead the new developments focus on wankpanzers and sports cars with party tricks.
I think it’s because they know they can’t compete with quality or specs at the low end. They’d much rather get customers with gimmicks and “controversial” aesthetics. Chinese cars would eat anything they could build for that price for breakfast but even legacy brands like Hyundai and VW have been able to make good EVs far cheaper than Tesla.
Well, if Hyundai, Kia, VW, Renault and others can compete on reasonably priced compact cars, Tesla should be able to do so too. They do not only produce in the US after all. If they can’t that would be just an admission that their future is that of a niche highend producer. But for that, they are a bit too cheap on the inside.
Tesla doesn’t want to produce cheap cars. Tesla wants to be a premium brand.
They could spin off a value brand, like the opposite of what Hyundai did with Genesis. And they don’t want to do that, because that means less money. Much more effective to lobby to keep cheap Chinese cars out of the country.
But I wouldn’t buy one if they did…fuck Elon.
A premium brand that cuts costs at any corner and even proudly proclaims though? Their main selling cars (model 3 and Y) are not premium cars, they are mid range cars and certainly not known for having a premium feel, rather to deliver a very good range for the price and the software stuff.
Why would any company sell anything at cost? The point of a company is to make money
Then sell it for 20k it would still be one of the cheapest on the market. That seems like a pretty braindead leap in logic. The “at cost” comparison is just to show how cheap the baseline should be.
Selling at cost allows you to undercut other companies and take over the market, then charge a premium. It’s a pretty basic business strategy.
The point of society is to live on.
And I said “basically at.” As in, make SOME money, just not excess money.
If we’re talking about “society” then the way forward is to get rid of cars almost entirely and have extremely robust public transport. Not make new cars.
Yes but let’s say, in the interim, we make cars that are more efficient and better for the environment, and make them affordable enough that everyone can use one.
public transit will never work for 100% of people
Public transit is never going to work until people stop being allowed to make it not work.
Maybe, but you cannot expect an entire societal mindset to change overnight, and for many, it’s never going to change. Society in many places can’t even agree that women are equal to men, which is like, step one for any other equality mindset going down the line, for example. Because it’s been engrained into culture.
Even places with better mass transit than the US like Europe or Japan still have cars. Mas transit works great in some areas and terrible in others. Which is also why its going to be impossible to make it work 100% of the time for 100% of situations.
Even before cars, we had “individual transport” with things like carts and horses etc. mass Transit isn’t even an old concept.
Car sizes will continue to increase until morale improves.
I’m probably gonna get an Ioniq 6 or 5 in a year or two, those are very affordable and have actual buttons and switches.
I’m still a little salty about my experience trying to test drive a used Ioniq 6. It was on the site for like $23k I think. I reserved it and then got an email saying that they’d already sold it, but they have a new one available to see for like $55k. I like my Bolt EUV a lot, but Ioniq 6 was my first choice, and I’ve since only discovered more reasons to be envious lol. My 50kW level 3 charging is incredibly sluggish compared to the 300ish that they can do, even if it’s rare for me to have to use it at all.
I have a lot of buttons and switches, but I have to tap the screen to select and deselect HVAC vents. That’s annoying while driving. There’s a button for max defog, but I don’t want to keep cycling that on and off. Just give me a damn knob.
Lmao Bollywood type shit for the plebs
