@ranwhenparked — without interacting with any other people

Of course, in cars, we do interact with other people, sometimes unpleasantly and even violently due to the dehumanizing effect. Much has been written about driving psychology, but a good tl;dr was provided by J.P. Donleavy 40 years or so ago, when he wrote of people "isolated in their individual mobile temples of discontent."

In other words, driving at its worst is like the Internet at its worst—only with the possibility of actually giving strangers the ability, not just the urge, to maim and kill each other.

Driving at its best is of course wonderfully convenient and even enjoyable...

@atfsgeoff Sounds like the Tesla one is the standard now and everyone should just conform to it.

The standard Type-A wall socket was a proprietary design before it was accepted and standardized as the NEMA connector.

if you get another benz, you are required to get me one for free too. thanks!

@ForSweden

They will sell many of these.

@Just-Jeepin Yeah....I dunno. I wanted Sono to do well, but the company seemed very....'influencer-y' the way it was run ( go watch the launch video of it, lol).

Sad to see it go though. The Aptera is the only solar car I know left, and I really like the Aptera, but I hate the very Tesla-style interior, and I worry the 3-wheels thing wouldn't work very well at all in the winter when your front wheels would be in the tracks left by other vehicles on snow-covered roads, but your back wheel would ALWAYS be in the slush and snow in the middle...

@kiltedpadre

Max articulation

@Ad-absurdum-per-aspera that sounds right, I think the LLV and FFV are about 70-75% of the fleet at this point

@RallyDarkstrike
The VW Up! has been unchanged since it came out on 2011.
The petrol version is in both 3 and 5 door bodystyle, while the E-Up! is only available in 5 door.
VAG discontinued the Skoda Citigo in 2020 and the Seat Mii in 2021.

@phenotyp I grew to like it more after we had one as a rental.

@Roadkilled Fascinating stuff... Makes me wonder in what ways that manner of thinking might influence a culture, to ingrain such a fundamental sense of universal truth instead of the relativity of "left" and "right".

@facw Given the cracks in the financial facade from week one they sucked at having a leader that actually had the money he claimed to have too.

While they probably can make some FF91s, their reputation is basically interlinked with the self destruction of Jia Yueting's. Their only hope now would be Musk self destructing his reputation in serious circles even faster.

@SilentbutnotreallyDeadly It is larger than I thought! Still not HUGE though.

@Ad-absurdum-per-aspera Yeah, with EVs having been with us for a bit, it seems pretty clear that battery longevity is not a major issue... unless you have a Leaf. Apparently everyone but Nissan was right about batteries needing liquid cooling.

@ForSweden said in Tesla Opening North American Superchargers to Other Cars?:

Man with a early Model S with free supercharging mad that a Chevy Bolt is gentrifying the parking lot

Nah, Bolts just add a much-needed, authentic, working-class flavor to the area. I mean, where would the world be without the demographic of "College degree and some postgraduate studies" and "Household income $100k-$149k/year"?

They're just keeping things real and gritty.

@yetanotheruselessburner said in Looks like one of Stellantis's new upcoming EVs has been outed - this one is one of Jeep's:

@RallyDarkstrike I've got a turbo/stick/AWD Rennie. Deplorable excess of personality in that little brick. "Not A Jeep" bros aside, it's a helluva thing. The FIAT was a good base for the Jeep guys to go nuts on.

Now the Compass? Jeebus, imagine the Rennie with every drop of character filed away. Had one as a loaner with the dealership was figuring out they screwed up a brake pad swap (lotta noise after they put in the new pads). Horrible, horrible car.

Not surprised...the first-gen Caliber-based Compass was terrible as well....

@Future-Next-Gen-S2000-Owner sounds like the short term future needs to be a hybrid setup as electric drive train and high efficiency generator for towing.. or hydrogen trucks, though it feels like that tech is the car equivalent of betamax or laser discs in the consumer vehicle space at least..

@amoore100 the MV-1 was probably just too expensive. During development, they realized the taxi market wasn't going to be big enough to sustain them, so they repositioned it as a privately owned wheelchair accessible vehicle, but private owners wanted something less offensive to look at

@krustywantout it already reached that with a couple manufacturers VW, nissan Cadillac, mercedes say this gen will be their last round of ICE engines.

@nermal true, but I just like the idea of a super lightweight EV since it's so counterintuitive, and combining agility with near silent acceleration seems like an interesting proposition. The Tommykaira is especially purpose-built, having only an 18kWh battery with 75 mile range but perfect for tiny Japanese circuits and hill climbs. I agree that servicing would be tough as they age, but I would argue that's simply a factor of newness and novelty; over time I would hope here to be more general-purpose EV parts available like replacement batteries and voltage regulators so that home-brew stuff is realizable.

@davesaddiction the noises on the first five seconds of that video give me some good feels. I would like more of this from a sports EV personally!

@EssExTee Yeah, in places like Canada where it is cold in the winter I would worry about winter range loss...

@іди-на-хуй-Влад-formerly-known-as-Distraxi
The thing that amuses me about any of these sort of rebuilds is that the drivetrain typically ends up being so much more powerful than the original that everything that the old car was has to be replaced with something stronger and more capable...and suddenly you don't actually have a characterful old car anymore.

@Napoli I'm not sure how much power the Y has because Tesla doesn't actually publish that information. I see numbers ranging from 450 to 197 hp.

@gin-san it’s still not bad and not gonna lie the pink is cool

@zipfuel Jellopicnic has an article pushing Big H again today, I dropped a link and your TL;DR, hopefully we'll get some more members, if only to tell you why you're wrong, dumb, in Tesla's pocket, and just want the ICE to die

@rallydarkstrike said in Stupid EV question...:

@krustywantout said in Stupid EV question...:

@rallydarkstrike It could work if you could identify high pressure areas that might be creating drag and rerouting the air into the turbine. But I'm guessing the weight and complexity of it probably makes the energy balance negative and you'd be better off making physical modifications to the car to reduce drag.

@MM54 @krustywantout @Highlander @facw @KITT222 This is was kindof what I was thinking - if there was an area of high-pressure or air directed into it as it was moving along....or as some sort of additional power-grabbing 'air brake' when slowing down along with regen or something....

Not saying it was a good idea, was just curious if it would have any benefit 🙂

My Hemi-powered Chrysler Aspen is a Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle when it's parked in my driveway overnight.

@bandit Chrysler has been pushing for an EV drop across the lineup of every brand for awhile now. To be fair, I think theyve only got 1 shot to get it right. So taking the time to get Dodge, Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram all on the same page is a great start. I mean we see now the Jeep e models expanding and doing well, so the hope here is that they will do the same with EV's.

@facw @StreetsofPerth thanks for filling that in. Yea it's pretty strange, if coal is the big player you d think they'd want coal powered ev's.

@chariotoflove Ah, gotcha. Even front-single-wheeled trikes are more stable than they are made out to be....obviously not as much as traiing-wheel designs, but still more than you'd think.

The only reason that Robin on Top Gear, for example, rolled so easily was they weighted it that way.

@wasgtithengtothennovathengtinowa4 said in EV's man:

My argument is why add the complexity of gears when we're already at a point where the EV acceleration can literally make you sick?
If efficiency is the only goal, then sure I guess, but how much drivetrain loss does adding additional gears add in? Surely the OEMs have already done the math.

As I've pointed out repeatedly, it's not always about speed and acceleration. The transmission I linked to improves efficiency up to 15%. That translates into increased range. Less heat also translates into longer service life.

Yes, the OEMs have done the math. Some decided that a single gear ratio was cheaper to manufacture despite the decrease in efficiency and service life. Others, like Porsche, decided that the second gear ratio was beneficial enough to warrant the additional expense and weight.

@wasgtithengtothennovathengtinowa4

Noted.

@kingt I'm liking this idea. Rivian is the only new brand after Telsa that feels like it has staying power.