why don’t you drive an EV?

stephen dorff advocated smoking e-cigs on a regular bike while wearing cargo pants in 2018

My chart of the day:
*Auto sales peaked in 2017
*Electric vehicle sales keep increasing
*EVs are, therefore 100%+ of sector growth, and have been for years pic.twitter.com/fWPvj8Ylg7

— Nat Bullard (@NatBullard) February 9, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/us/pedestrian-deaths-pandemic.html

cars are getting bigger and therefore more deadly!

and EV cars are way heavier - the f-150 lightning is 35% heavier than the ICE one, i think

Yah, the F-150 Lightning is 6500lbs unloaded. Fingers crossed that something comes out of that battery recycling partnership with Redwood Materials.

With all the fracas about Ford shutting down plants because of chips being held up by border convoy protests, I checked with my dealer and prepared for a six-month delay. Nope, eight weeks out - which is a couple weeks earlier than the initial estimate. I received my VIN number last week and through Ford's tracker site I can watch individual submodules arrive.

Would love to see the 6000lb limit enforced in the ev era

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/08/california-s-secret-suv-ban.html

The front end of the new GMC Yukon. For reference, I'm 6'1". The top of the hood is nearly up to my shoulders. pic.twitter.com/Ls7HVzif9N

— AJ LaTrace (@ajlatrace) February 19, 2022

ban cars, but if we cant get that, ban tall cars (or just put a $4000 tax on a car for every inch they go over x inches) idk but this is stupid and this is texas everywhere, just a bunch of punisher skull blue lives flag coal rollers terrorizing everyone bc they dont know how to dance/cant talk good/have an indistinct jawline/whatever other tangle of nagging insecurities leads someone to buy a truck like this

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/americas-favorite-pickup-truck-goes-electric

Since 1990, according to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the weight of the average pickup has increased by twelve hundred and fifty-six pounds—thirty-two per cent. A recent post on Vice observed that the largest pickups and S.U.V.s today are as big as Second World War-era tanks. Now pickups are going to get heavier still. The Lightning, because of its lithium-ion battery, weighs approximately sixty-five hundred pounds; in some cases the pickup can be more than two thousand pounds heavier than its gas counterpart. You’ll be capable of assaulting a mountaintop redoubt, even if you’re just driving to the store for milk.

Not only are large E.V.s not as green as smaller E.V.s.; what about all the people who aren’t in big vehicles? Analysis from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has shown that pedestrians who are hit by pickups or S.U.V.s are two to three times more likely to die than those who are hit by cars. In fact, the number of pedestrians killed by vehicles rose forty-six per cent between 2010 and 2019. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association, if you count deaths against vehicle miles travelled, 2020 saw the largest increase in pedestrian fatalities (twenty-one per cent) since nationwide tracking started, in 1975. Even though fewer vehicles were on the road early in the pandemic, more people died.

http://www.motorbiscuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/tanks-1024x577.png

ugly but glad they're making it

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/03/slinky-stylish-audi-a6-avant-e-tron-previews-future-ev-station-wagon/

Front and back view are not bad, 3/4 view not as good.

sleek and station wagon is always kind of a weird mix, evs total pursuit of aerodynamics is def doing things to car design, all in all pretty cool weird car tho

I rented a new Audi wagon/estate in the uk in 2018. I’m not a car person but it was probably the nicest car I’ve ever driven.

theres nothin like a good eurowagon IMHO

too bad we dont get most of them in the usa

yeah, american wagons are horrible.

https://i.imgur.com/0JBLv2k.jpg

gawd, does it have to be so big?

dont think theres an american wagon being built anymore

but cmon you know you love it

https://i.imgur.com/5tobzL1.png

https://silodrome.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Mercedes-Benz-300TD-Station-Wagon-1600x1063.jpeg

electrify this

beautiful

there are conversion kits

friend of my had a bio fuel conversion for one of those, u cld still put diesel in it tho

I was at the Audi dealer for service and they had this cool sporty station wagon that caught my eye from across the show room and as I walk up I see the sticker in the window says $130k.

It was an RS6 Avant:
https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/2020-audi-rs6-avant-101-1574772328.jpg

ha yeah thats one of the craziest cars on the market huge station wagon that goes 0-60 in ~3secs, mercedes has the e class amg wagon which is a similar idea too

It looks like you could fit a coffin in the back.

Audi A6 EV wagon looks like a weird, melting Dodge Magnum. Not 100% terrible, but I suppose there's only so much you can do with four doors and a tailgate. No mention of how much usable front trunk space there is, but it looks like it might have more usable interior space than CLS-style wagons that may as well be fastbacks.

There's someone here in town that drives a Cadillac CTS-V wagon - an insano wagon powered by the Z06 Corvette engine. Alas, I would have loved to have driven one for maybe --- a couple of days.

Folks look.... Let me get the humblebrag out of the way but hfs at the timing. Ford updated the status of my MM-E to a delivery date of April 4 - April 10. Trying not to drive at all until then.

Want some photos when you get it.

there was one parked in front of my office the other day. it was luscious. did slightly feel as though someone had pulled the trigger on an embiggening ray and expanded a normal car by about 5cm in every dimension.

I'm getting close to pulling the trigger on a Mach-E. The one thing that's troubling me is -- can I be just about for all intents and purposes SURE that there'll be a much more built-out network of non-Tesla fast chargers in the next few years? If I felt like the current status of charging availability were going to stay constant for the life of this car, it would be an inconvenience to have this as my only car (though admittedly long trips are a very small proportion of the driving I do.)

if the need to make long trips in the short/medium term is a thing, i would suggest looking at the plug-in hybrid sector where you can get most of your milage electric but have the gas tank for longer trips.

Hybrid the way to go if you use cars for trips more than commutes.

I drive maybe 4000 or 5000 miles a year. By "long trip" I mean driving up to visit the kids at sleepaway camp, so maybe a 500-mile round trip? I would say I primarily use the car for in-town errands rather than trips or commuting. Then again, if I had a nice new car I might take more and longer trips, who knows?

And I mean my 20-year-old gas car still works, it's just old and I keep putting money into it. I wouldn't discard it if we got an EV. But it might self-discard at some point.

500 miles would probably push it for a lot of EVs, and thats assuming you could fully charge once you got there and then make it back home on a second full charge.

if most of your driving is short trips and you can charge at home, most plug-in hybrids have enough electric range that you could do the bulk of your driving on EV mode and have a gas tank for those longer trips.

My tech-loving kid is going to be pissed at me if we don't get a full EV, not that that should be the deciding factor

And yes, we live in a house, can charge at home.

tell that kid to start going to camps within EV range

someone itt should get a rivian and also a lucid air

I'm just torn between "you're gonna have this car for 20 years, you should buy the car you're going to want 5 years from now," which seems very likely to be a full EV, and "you should buy a car that serves the needs you know you have," which suggests that right now a gas tank backup and almost fully electric driving around town makes sense (plus the plug-in hybrids are a lot cheaper)

i think given the current and future state of EV tech plus the uncertainty around the future of oil/gas industries, making a prediction about what car (if any) one would need 20 years into the future is tuff. you might just look at getting something to bridge the next 5 years and then trading that in for a BEV in 5ish years when ranges and recharge times are improved.

(NB i have a PHEV that i can charge regularly until we move into a house. we'll replace my wife's care with a BEV when the time comes.)

something 2 consider is that since the BBB is probably not going to pass, a lot of the tax credits for EVs are going to expire once they hit sales targets which is already the case for gm, tesla, will be the case for toyota within a year.

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxevb.shtml

i'd reckon kia, hyundai, nissan, and ford will be on that list soon enough. hopefully EVs just become more affordable once the credits expire across the industry (not holding my breath that there will be new credits anytime soon)

yeah i’m on a lease as i expect the market will be very different in a few years.

Is the infrastructure there to support EVs? There have been articles recently about people who keep EVs in DC even though they have to park on the street. (I've seen a car parked in front of a house, with a cable running from the house to the vehicle to charge it. Technically this is illegal because it obstructs the sidewalk.)

I really would prefer not to replace my Prius while the market's currently in the shitbin. But in the next year I hope to move to a more modern condo, ideally with garage parking. (All the more urgent, given that someone stole the catalytic converter the other night.)

tombot to thread (hes in dc and charges an ev in the street probably rn as we speak)

Range and charging tech don’t need to get any better, infrastructure does.

Take this example driving from LA to SF in a mustang, not even the long range version. 2 stops adding about an hour to a 6 hour trip and you would probably need to do that anyway because everyone needs to pee, eat lunch, etc.

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=9877dfa9-5aad-4268-bfbe-4ed3c110ebd2

Making cars long range or charge fast just makes them more expensive. Batteries are about bottomed out in cost for now, certainly for the next 2-5 years, any gains in tech will get swallowed up by more mundane supply constraints.

If you wan the car to charge faster then even if the batteries are not capable you need a lot more mature tech to make it happen; copper, power electronics, cooling.

Cars that charge at around 100-120kW peak are a real sweet spot and will get you where you want to go in about the same time as your gas car once you factor in the breaks you were going to take anyway.

The gap is enough DCFC infrastructure, but plug your routes into ABRP or similar and find out.

ed otm except for the idea that of adding an hour to a 6 hour trip (bc this is america and we eat and pee before and after driving for 6 hours)