why don’t you drive an EV?

"cheap and cheerful" is a british phrase that i used for years before realizing everyone here thought i was talking about things being cheerful.

just happy to see pickup that's a reasonable size

https://i.imgur.com/OZR9fSv.jpg

Replace that video screen on the inside with this and I'll think about it.

"cheap and cheerful" is a british phrase that i used for years before realizing everyone here thought i was talking about things being cheerful.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, June 16, 2021 10:26 AM (five hours ago)

well what does it mean?

cheap but ok

rather than cheap and bad or cheap and of a very high quality

its similar to jacked and jaunty

basically "cheap and shitty" but, crucially, not so shitty that it doesn't work, so let's move on and never consider it again until it breaks, at which point we will gaffa tape it up and resume not thinking about it

if you only need to use it for a shorter period of time than "until it breaks," bonus

lol https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/08/gm-recalls-every-chevy-bolt-ever-made-blames-lg-for-faulty-batteries/

gonna need some major government intervention to get people to buy all these electric cars

The scale of battery production coming online in the next decade from auto firms is mind boggling pic.twitter.com/ZMTiiqyrCa

— hk (@hassankhan) September 8, 2021

do any of them have stick shifts and a cassette deck?

as someone who spent the last 19 years driving stick before getting a PHEV, i dont miss it. i thought i would but...nothing.

p sure the tape deck could be arranged.

the braking + downshifting ability is kinda key for me -- it's less an EV issue and more an automatic transmission issue

I didn't realize until recently that you can't coast in some of them.... taking your foot off the gas accelerator puts the brakes in motion.

taking your foot off the gas accelerator puts the brakes in motion.

wait what??? ... no, I mean, just no.

yeah thats the regenerative braking it converts forward momentum into power for the car, people like it because most of the time you can drive just using the "gas" pedal, you can turn it off in some cars that have it if you dont tho

almost no manuals left on the market ev or otherwise tho, rip

there are a lot of cars with a "manual mode" where you can control the shifting of the transmission without having a clutch pedal tho

I'll eventually get one and get used to it.

yeah thats the regenerative braking it converts forward momentum into power for the car...

― lag∞n, Saturday, October 2, 2021 2:16 PM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is one of my favorite things about EVs, its fun to steal energy back

do any of them have stick shifts

Most EVs don't even have transmissions, thanks to their high torque and full torque being available at 0 RPM instead of having to rev up the engine. The Porsche Taycan and iirc the Audi that's similar have a 2 speed automatic transmission.

almost no manuals left on the market ev or otherwise tho, rip

That's true in the US, somewhat less so in UK/Europe and elsewhere. Even Canada has a few stick-shift cars sold only with automatics in the States.

in the UK it's about 50/50 manual and automatic

but yes as Lee says, EVs don't have gears at all (apart from very specialized models) so a shifter wouldn't be very useful! i know how pleasurable it is to downshift etc but trust me, a nice EV feels even more responsive. you can just put the car wherever you want it. the auto braking thing can be turned off for the most part and doesn't kick in above 30 mph usually i think anyway but it's true that 'coasting' doesn't really happen. you don't have a whole transmission tumbling away that can just carry the momentum of the car. you have to keep your right foot at the right place to keep the car moving at the right speed. EVs actually get WORSE efficiency on the highway than they do in start stop traffic because every time you brake you put energy back into the battery.

i dont really understand the continued popularity of manuals in europe their fuel economy isnt even better anymore, they tend to be slightly cheaper i guess

I feel the same way about tipping in the US

have you tried pretending youre a mafia boss every time you leave a tip

"i'll make an offer ya cant refuse" *adds 20% to the bill so you can still have a place to live*

“you’re uh right, i can’t refuse that”

I think Americans drive automatics because because all the coins they have to keep in the center console of their cars make driving a stick “too jangly”.

one underrated advantage of driving stick is that you never have to worry about anyone borrowing your car

Every year or two I read about how some carjacking attempt was foiled when the would-be thief is foiled by an unexpected manual transmission he doesn't know how to drive.

In the U.S., manual transmissions are in just over 2% of new cars. The disparity with the rest of the world is in part because of how cars are sold here. Decades ago, American cars were sold with a la carte extra-cost options. You could order one to your liking with your choice of engine, transmission, body style, inside and outside colors, several upholstery choices, different audio systems, and different features of all sorts. 50+ option choices were commonplace. Nowadays, the manufacturers no longer allow more than a few packaged variations of a given car so there's not much point in ordering one. Instead the dealerships stock massive numbers of cars and you by one they have in stock off the lot. This means dealers don't want to stock anything they can't sell easily, and that means automatic transmissions for everybody. It's also the reason 76% of the cars sold last year were some shade of greyscale (white, grey, silver, charcoal, black) - these are least likely to offend anyone. My local BMW dealer doesn't stock *any* other colors on their mainstream cars.

Another reason for the downfall of stick shifts is the highly regulated certification process (for fuel economy and pollution) in the US where each drivetrain much be certified separately, which makes it expensive to offer more than one or two drivetrains on a given car. In the UK a mainstream car may be sold with four different engine sizes in gas/petrol and a few more in diesel, each with either manual or auto transmission. In the U.S. the same car would be sold with one engine (usually a big one) and an automatic.

Anyway, yeah, a shifter isn't missed in an EV. There's always loads of immediately-available torque, so if you want more power you just step on it and you'll get a satisfying shove in the back. No need to downshift first.

also people in america just like automatics better, like not that long ago there were more manuals available and they still werent selling, which makes sense to me automatics are just easier, europe is also trending towards automatics too just way later, maybe it just took automatics getting good on fuel efficiency to tip the scales there since gas is so much more expensive and a lot of cars sold there are the tiny ones thatre specifically all about being cheap to operate

i would like to say for the record manuals are cool and fun, under the right conditions, i still wouldnt buy one tho crawling through traffic shifting all around and what not, plus with a lot of the very helpful new tech adaptive cruise control and so forth is a non starter

my first car was a lil manual corolla, salute, that thing was even fun to shift around in on the right roads, try to keep the momentum rolling

i might buy a manual if it was a very sick car, but whatre the chances of that, pretty low, and tbh if i were buying a very sick car id prob go for a new one with all the tech

It should be noted that many recent cars with automatic transmissions can't really be downshifted either, as they too don't have any gears. Instead they use a continuously variable transmission (CVT), which can adjust anywhere from low to high rather than having six or so discreet gears to choose from. This allows them to be more fuel-efficient because the exact optimum engine speed can always be chosen. However cars with CVTs often feel weird to drive, answering with a drone when you need more power. For that reason, some are programmed to have fake "gears" so you can "downshift" and "upshift" when you want.

yeah my outback has a cvt... and paddle shifters lmao

dual clutch is the best very nice transmission

Lag©©n otm re the pleasures of manual clutch out on the road

I love driving manual (learned that way), but haven't in a while unless renting in a foreign land - most recently in Mexico. Took me a while to figure out the fiddly whatsit to get reverse (different makes/models have different "yes I really do mean to go backwards" signals; this one had a weirdly suggestive cuff on the shifter that one had to slide up and down), but overall it is one of those things you don't really forget.

I don't drive an EV but I do have a subpar hybrid Civic, probably on its last legs. Next time it needs a new battery I will likely decide it's not worth it. Not sure if I can afford to go full EV next time; we'll see what the options look like when we cross that bridge.

https://i.imgur.com/Tgmz76Q.png

feel like no one ever talks about this car possibly because it looks like a desktop computer accessory but there are lots of them out there that can be had for a reasonable price used

the batteries in those suck tho

maybe thats why

mmhmm

if i were buying a new EV, id look at the hyundai ioniq. before car prices got wacky, you could get one for under $20K once you factor in the $7500 tax credit. dont seem to have the problem of exploding batteries that bolts have, and have some form of active cooling system for said battery that the nissan leafs do not so you'll get longer life from it.

I miss my old manual, but when I bought the automatic in 2000, my first thought was "Finally, I can enjoy a cheeseburger on the road."

The front looks terrible but otherwise this looks like a lot of fun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGqexebCcUo

Lmao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTjViMJ3o1Y

The front looks terrible

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Sunday, October 3, 2021 12:35 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah companies need to make electric cars look space age is lame, tho i do salute them for going away from the current industry standard angry face front, if that truck just had round headlights instead of oval itd prob look cool and relatively normal

i watched most of the offroading video and my ruling is: that truck is extremely sick

i still wouldnt buy one tho crawling through traffic shifting all around and what not

see this is what I like about having a manual vs. an automatic (one of the things I like) -- the automatics are way too abrupt and more like start/stop as opposed to a consistent smooth crawl, though, when my old corrolla (1989, manual) was near the end of it's 25 year life, it didn't handle the traffic very well and an automatic would have been more pleasant, comparatively.

the pleasures of manual clutch out on the road

hell yes

feel like no one ever talks about this car possibly because it looks like a desktop computer accessory

it looks like the car equivalent of apple earpods