why don’t you drive an EV?

“To get a car below €25,000 that has no compromises with safety and range is literally impossible at the moment,”

apparently by 2025-26 VW are going to do it by:

- simplifying production options
- scale, sharing about half the design with other cars built at the same plants
- using 200 mile-max lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries instead of pricier and higher-range nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC)

Rip bolt https://arstechnica.com/?p=1934137

seems bad, right? you don't want ev's to be a luxury-only category.

supposedly the equinox ev will come in around the same price point so i don't think chevy is abandoning this category completely

oh didn't know that

american car companies have almost totally abandoned cars its all crossovers suvs and trucks now, and the bolt is a car so

From what I understand, the Bolt's battery tech limited its max charging rate to 55 kW with no way around that. It's a tough sell when most EVs have triple that now.

The bolt was smaller than the Leaf, if that matters. When we were shopping for electric cars that was the big deciding factor for us. I don't think it was impossible to get a kid's car seat in the back seat, but it was really tight.

We're still very happy with the Leaf. Waiting for Toyota to find us a Sienna minivan, which are all hybrid now.

looking into it

Car dealers are superrich, one of the top 5 jobs in the .1 percent of American earners. They are militantly organized and extremely conservative, donating to GOP at a 6 to 1 clip with one of the fiercest lobbying shops on earth. So I went to their annual blowout party weekend…

— Alex Sammon (@alex_sammon) May 30, 2023

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/05/rich-republicans-party-car-dealers-2024-desantis.html

mr bean… otm?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/03/electric-vehicles-early-adopter-petrol-car-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson

a lot of the lampposts around here have had charging sockets added to them, which is going to help (although I'm not convinced I've ever seen one in use)

i did have to walk on the road the other day because someone was charging his car from his house with a lead that was crossing the path about a ft off the floor

Thanks for that, TH. My dad is an early adopter and is constantly on at me to ditch my perfectly fine (and not used too much) petrol car for an EV. Imo the best thing you can do is stop buying cars all the time, which is what he does...

with all due respect 2 sr frijol, BEVs are still better from an emissions standpoint even after factoring in cradle-to-grave output after a few years of driving (depending on how many miles you drive ofc) bc of the amount of emissions that are offset in the driving phase of the car's lifecycle.

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner-Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf

that said, ban cars (and ban the ICE ones first)

also this is a good video on all those points:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RhtiPefVzM

that said, the path of american EVs to build bigger badder 'merica-mobiles with enormous batteries and all but abandoning small cars with more modest batteries is undoing some of advantages, and the inflation reduction act's revision of electric car subsidies have effectively wiped out most of the cost savings except for GM, ford, and tesla models

The EX30 Isn't Just Volvo's Cheapest EV — It's The Cheapest Volvo, Period

(looks to be legit great car - would totally consider this if i had to get something in the next year)

ooh that looks nice

no instrument panel no physical controls ipad only

yeah that's a bummer

Hey Google, turn up the air conditioning

“Turning up the volume”

I thought physical knobs were supposed to be far safer? I would really not choose a touchscreen if I had any choice. NB I am also fussy about the font on the dash displays so appreciate I might be a minority here.

knobs def safer carmakers want to shift to an all screen set up cause its easier/cheaper for them to just deal with one interface rather than having to design and manufacture various physical controls, not having an instrument panel above the steering wheel is even worse, obvs more cost cutting

theyve been trying to sell this stuff as new and futuristic technology but i dont feel like most people like it

GIVE ME KNOBS
AND A CD PLAYER PLS

which is not to say that theres no place for screen controls obvs theres only so much space for knobs and buttons so putting the lesser used stuff on screen makes sense, but at the least climate controls volume and so forth should be physical, think theres a tesla that doesnt even have a button on the glove compartment lol

can't tell if car makers genuinely believe that people want something more than a projector for their phone from the car's own entertainment system/UX, or if they're pushing this garbage because someone thinks it's long term subscription revenue.

i think its the business stuff mostly, but also there is a thing where they want electric cars to look futuristic, which hopefully will stop once they become more common

i'm not a tesla historian but i feel like tesla was the first mover here and passed off this cost cutting measure as in fact cutting edge clean sheet redesign futurism, and it's giving air cover for other companies to follow and say 'hey we're no worse than tesla deal with it'

iirc rivian does have some physical controls as a conscious rejection of the tesla philosophy, too bad they're always on the verge of bankruptcy i hope they make it!

i like those rivans but its gonna be tough for all these electric car companies once the big traditional makers start really pumping out the ecars

they're pushing this garbage because someone thinks it's long term subscription revenue

it’s this and they are going to ride it until they can’t no more

i'm not a tesla historian but i feel like tesla was the first mover here and passed off this cost cutting measure as in fact cutting edge clean sheet redesign futurism, and it's giving air cover for other companies to follow and say 'hey we're no worse than tesla deal with it'

Tesla (and Musk) specifically was calling this move "why would you want any of that when cars are going to be self-driving anyway?"

At least that new Volvo has normal door handles

https://jalopnik.com/volkswagen-ceo-admits-it-was-a-mistake-to-abandon-butto-1850557609

When you do buttons, it’s better to do few buttons, but really nice buttons - like an aeroplane: what are the haptics of it?

https://i.imgur.com/ENchzPm.jpg

thats what we want baby

No, I want all that shit buried inside an ipad.

fuck a ipad

dont have the right connectors

"Little warm? Just turn the defroster down a bit."

https://i.imgur.com/3jYWAqT.png

I'm mostly excited about the hype the EX30 is getting, and hoping for a potential boom in sales, so other makers might reintroduce smaller EVs in the US market. I can't get anything in the near future because home charging is a no go at my current house (100+ years old, with wiring that might be older than me), but I want to know there will be small options when I'm ready. Fuck a 3 row monster SUV.

100% anecdotal data points, but one of my two Tesla-driving friends did not stick with Tesla when his lease was up. He went electric BMW this time, specifically citing Musk's douchebaggage (among a few other considerations). He also told me last night that he could easily imagine being a double EV house, saying if he had any range concerns before a trip he could/would just rent a car, which is a sensible stance. FWIW he said he actually still thinks hybrids make the most sense, all said and done, but thinks the stock and selection have kind of fallen by the wayside in the drive (heh) toward electric.

With company after company signing deals for access to the Superchargers I don't understand at all what the case for buying a Tesla is. I thought their entire thing was "we have the biggest fastest charging network" and I'm not sure why they're giving that away. (Maybe they think their charging network lead wasn't sustainable?)

ya prob rather charge for access than have their competitors build their own

theres also the idea that tesla isnt really a car company its the electrify everything company, which idk if they really believe that or its just something they tell investors

definitely something they tell investors and a shoddy facade for musk bailing his brother out by using tesla to buy solarcity

Tesla also had a big lead in securing desirable locations and property deals for their network, especially here in California and the southwest. Typically, Supercharger stations are closer to the freeway and are in locations snobby Tesla owners prefer rather than behind a Wal-Mart next to the dumpsters. If a motel has chargers, they're most likely to be Tesla ones - well, a working Tesla one and a broken CCS one owned by a company whose app no longers exists in the iPhone store.

still more expensive than what it was announced at but 10k less than yesterday, wonder if the car market will ever go back to its prepandemic calm

Ford cuts F-150 Lightning prices, taking the cheapest model under $50,000 https://t.co/QLwZXyk7KG pic.twitter.com/KrggH35hVn

— The Verge (@verge) July 17, 2023

they should do an electric ranger get a midsize ev out before toyota maybe peel off some tacoma users

friend just bought the off road trim ranger the TREMOR very ridiculous vehicle lol

interesting in between time with adoption of evs and gas engines needing to conform to to higher efficiency standards, the imminent new tacoma generation is all turbo 4s which seems pretty crazy for a truck whos main selling point is that it will run forever, toyota claims that the turbos are very burly and will last but theres just no way youre getting 300k out of them right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IhSWsQlaG8

fascinating interview with the CEO of Ford talking about insourcing software. some pretty blunt observations here