I don't understand this. My Plaid Tesla has a motor on each of the rear axles, and it's direct coupled to the wheel. The already are doing torque vectoring.
Like all things in engineering, the trade-off's are critical. This article doesn't go at all into the pros/cons of the approach Tesla (and others) are doing as opposed to this approach.
As a general rule, if Tesla isn't doing it already I suspect it's either not economically feasible, difficult to manufacture, or otherwise has drawbacks they've judged signifigant.
... with that said, bring on the competition. The whole world wins with every improvement to transport and electrification!
This company really has made Jobs' reality distortion field pale in comparison.
Without comment on the specific innovation in the article, it's a _very_ weird assumption that all innovation in a field would stem from one company. That's simply not how things generally work.
Koenigsegg (yes, the hyper car company) made a motor the size of a briefcase that can output 355HP and weighs 30Kg. This is one random example of a company with not much experience in EVs (their Hybrid cars' motors and batteries are made by Rimac) improving on what Tesla is already doing.
There has been a lot of discussion/reporting around the manufacturing and design of Tesla cars that is way behind that of the likes of Toyota, Nissan and Honda. The computer systems are state of the art, but in with regards to the design and manufacturing of its chassis, Tesla has been historically behind the times.
Just because Tesla doesn’t do it, doesn’t mean it’s not the right way to go.
That's not a very good rule. There a lots of things Tesla doesn't do.
- Tesla doesn't do battery swaps, but NIO does. NIO's done it 10 million times: https://www.nio.com/blog/nio-users-china-have-completed-10-m...
- Tesla doesn't do 350 kW chargers, but Ionity (among others) does. Current EV truck drivers appreciate it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UAttTG03WA
- Tesla's charging network is slowly rolling out charging to all EV brands in Europe, but Tesla still doesn't charge all brands in North America. Electrify America (among others) does.
- Tesla doesn't offer EV scooters, but Gogoro (among others) does: https://www.gogoro.com/gogoro-network/
- Tesla doesn't offer EV vans, but other manufacturers do.
- Tesla doesn't offer EV city cars, but other manufacturers do.
- Tesla doesn't do a heads-up display, but other manufacturers do.
And so on.
Impressive that they were able to do this in July of '22 after just being in one of the world's most severe lockdown for months in a row. There were almost no non-essential vehicles on the road in Shanghai for at least 60 days
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/13/china/china-covid-shangha...
I would really like V2H or V2G but no sign of it from Tesla so far.
You could develop a pretty amazing off-road vehicle with independent electric motors in each wheel, but it would be a relatively bumpy ride.
There is one motor connected to each of the wheels, but there is a shaft between the wheel and the motor and a CV joint on this shaft, allowing the wheel to move relative to the motor, and the wheel is sprung.
There are cars with in-wheel hub motors. For example, MW Motors make on of their Luka models with in-wheel hub motors. Those must keep their motors light, and have the advantage that you get more space in the car at the expense of a tiny bit more bumpiness.
Military EV prototypes are considering wheels-in-hubs, because they have complex suspension and because of under-armour, but yeah it means the motor is basically un-suspended.
Of course the question remains what happens in a high performance car at extreme speeds. But presumably, Ferrari and Mercedes know what they are doing and have considered this as well.
As for suspension; I'm sure there are ways to deal with that as well. I don't see how this should be any more bumpy than other vehicles for off-road.
A bigger concern would be what you'd do in case of a flat tire as that basically means losing an engine. And when you are in the middle of nowhere, getting some road assistance would not be that easy.
The Gemera is a bit different but is using the same motor tech and you can see how it allows them to pack things very tightly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwlNqaz9q_0
For Tesla they already have a huge car with a battery design that works and a large area for the motors so re-engineering the S to make use of the space you save was probably not a good idea, especially when they are already building the roadster. I also wouldn't be surprised if its a bit of a Not-Invented-Here problem considering how much they value vertical integration.
Why would you say something so wrong yet so bold?
Which of those applied to giving the Plaid suitable rotors for its size and power?
In car terminology you have only one rear axle (which is all of the unsprung weight in the back) and two driveshafts, I think you meant driveshaft (unless you have a six wheel Tesla...).
In addition, the extra weight also adds up, no matter how tiny the motor is. Essentially you are making each wheel heavier, adding to suspension woes.
The greatest advantage of individual motors is in cornering when you can precisely control how much power each wheel gets, and obviously on icy surfaces when you can lower the power on the slipping wheel or disengage it completely and drive power from even one wheel which still has traction and grip. Nearly the same result can be obtained by torque vectoring, which is what Tesla employs. So for may be 20% less accuracy you can do away with the individual motors.
That's like saying if you double the power of an engine you get the same power at the wheels? The limiting factor is the grip. The more power you add the more you get out until that limit is reached.
But anyway, I'm not sure the one motor per wheel is all about more power. You could use 2 smaller motors instead of one large one. And then you can get rid of the axle and diff which are weighty items, so I don't think it's necssarily the heavier solution.
Plus there's ground clearance. The diff is often the lowest point in an offroader. A motor at each wheel removes that limitation.
Then you've got packaging. A centrally mounted motor uses space that could be used for cabin space or batteries. Hub motors are using otherwise dead space.
Then there's reliability. If you lose one motor you've still got another to get you somewhere, and it's probably easier to replace too.
-ferrari still maintain that they will never produce electric cars
-the concept of hub motors is a fad that has come and largely gone. Putting the motors inside the wheels leads to reliability concerns
-motors with smaller diameter will need more power for the same performance of a larger diameter motor, and the battery is the heavy part
Normally each of these i'd let slide as journalist ignorance but the combination makes this read like ICE propaganda to me.
Small boring self-driving cars, possibly collectively owned instead of big expensive individually owned cars often used as a proof of social status.
Could we make do with ye olde three-phase induction motor? Sure, that is an extremely good design, simple and yet pretty high efficiency and with a century-long track record. But if we can make something lighter-weight and with even better efficiency, why shouldn't we do it?
I don't see Ferrari or performance cars divisions of Mercedes suddenly starting to ship 500hp motors at 10k units/year volume, so the production process would have to adjust according to their volumes, and to me this design seem to do just that.
I don't know, once there's 20 credible manufacturers in this space I bet they will compete in any way possible. Just like any other industry.
...but of course luxury brands will happily charge you ten times more for that little bit of extra acceleration. Which also ensures future noob owners of Ferraris will keep crashing their eye-wateringly expensive cars (hopefully not causing others to get hurt in the process).
It just makes so much sense in an electric vehicle to have Axial/Hub motors, something I'd expect Tesla to lead on tbh. should have been in the "Make it less dumb" step.
Tesla model S, X, and Y.
All Lucid models.
Mercedes and Ferraris.
Why can't they look neutral?
I want low-key, efficient, safe, and functional. And ideally more than 35 American miles of range.
"Ferrari’s first all-electric car will arrive in 2025."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-ferraris-plan-to-enter-t...
And while it's been a bit like fusion power, always a couple years away, enough is happening in solid state that it's probably happening in a couple years.
Now, it might now be competitive in the mass market, where I believe sodium ion and LFP/LMFP/etc chemistries will dominate for probably a decade, but it will own the 100k+ car segment.
Solid state batteries will let the companies that aren't doing EVs yet catch up, and fix all the terrible, terrible problems current EVs have so don't buy an EV right now, please, don't buy our competitors products that are available now.
I think cars make the world worse, but to the extent that we have them electric cars are significantly better than ICE cars in basically every way. I want less cars, but until then, they should be electric. Efficiency is higher, torque off the line is significantly better, carbon footprint is lower, they're way more fun to drive and significantly simpler from a mechanical perspective. What's not to like?
Mercedes rolled out the 250 largely because biturbo has been a loss leading qc dumpster fire for the last decade. Audi can barely handle infotainment that doesn't brick and reboot on a road trip and BMW has turned their technology package into a monthly milk truck that fleeces people for basics you get out the door from Toyota. if Tesla were to hit the ground with a car thats 10k less than the 3 in 2022 it would bury these gilded Lillie's from across the pond faster than the m5pvl gear in a 7 series punches out and seizes a 20k transmission.
Someone who's so deeply embedded the the industry should know Toyota Connect is the same story, installing hardware in all models but only enabling it for subscribers.
is it a 7 series or some Japanese SUV?
Also, if you're as experienced as you claim; You'd probably BMW does not make any transmissions. They've forever outsourced that to ZF or Getrag.
This is a feature of all recent VAG cars. Nothing quite like your navigation and climate control freezing on a 1000 km road trip but there's no way to reset the computer so you have to wait a hour for it to fully crash and reboot.
So, a bus?
Buses won't work in a lot of the U.S. because of last-mile issues, in the way the suburbs were designed.
Are you also secretly rooting for yummy foods to uncool while bland foods take their place?
I think starting to see cars as a simple mean to go from A to B instead of a symbol of freedom, status or virility would really be a huge win.
I also hope that on the long run it would help more city dwellers accept the idea of sharing cars instead of owning one. Collectively owned self driving cars could really help reshape our cities, reclame the insane amount of space we dedicate to roads and parking spots and funnel money into more public transit.
If anything is excessive in modern cars, it's the size and amount of touchscreens, not the amount of buttons.
I dunno. If it's electric, I guess it's supposed to look futuristic. No accounting for taste.
Peugeot has already announced that the coming models will be the same body regardless of whether they are electric or not (I'm waiting for the e-308 sw myself).
You might not have these cars if you're in North America though.
These all seem pretty normal to me.
Here you go. A Kia EV6 GT:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/2023-kia-ev6-specs-debut-revea...
Or maybe you want a BMW i4. The eDrive 40 has more range, the M50 has more performance:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/40872/2022-bmw-i4-edrive40-and...
The exception, of course, is the Hyundai Ioniq, which looked like the designer watched a few too many dystopian-near-future films while working on it.
For comparison, if Amazon or someone claimed they'd just shipped their billionth package, to someone in Luxembourg, "there aren't many people in Luxembourg so this sounds wrong" would be a weird thing to say.
But yeah, just traded that car in for a Mercedes, and the infotainment is night and day. I basically don’t use CarPlay anymore because the built in stuff actually works better.
Roads won't work in a lot of the U.S. because of tax revenue issues, in the way the suburbs were designed.
On a more serious note: there is no point in building unsustainable transit for neighborhoods that can't even support their own infrastructure. Suburbia will always be car-dependent for exactly this last-mile issue, but the fix is to shorten the last mile such that a bus actually makes sense. Because even to run an automated car you need a road that needs to be maintained and paid for from time to time.
edit: also, busses don't necessarily mean "20m long with capacity of 100 people". Here in Europe we have small bus lines operating with busses of a capacity of 20 people. In fact, Vienna already has the exact thing you propose: https://www.wienerlinien.at/eportal3/ep/contentView.do/pageT...
In Operation since June 2019. Results are mixed.
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/39065/tesla-claims-failing-tou...
My point still stands and it clearly shows that Tesla have room to improve, just like all car companies.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/efahrer.chip.de/news/ueber-60-p...
These vehicles are likely heavy enough that electric motors in the wheels might not change that ratio much.
And swap/repair would be convenient!
Both companies are interesting in their own way, but they aren't exactly comparable in my opinion.
Trivia: Christian von Koenigsegg's daily driver is a Tesla Model S :) [1]
[1] https://www.wheels.ca/news/christian-von-koenigsegg-drives-a...
did koenigsegg do something cool? sure. theres about 100-200 people who dont work at koenigseff whose life that will affect and nobody else. theyre pretty irrelevent.
I have a very humble Skoda with DSG and it works really well even though it has a 1L engine :-)
Electric cars don't have gearboxes at all, and electric cars are "what's coming next/the future", no?
In some alternate universe CVK is making cars that compete with Tesla and are better. Although they make amazing products i wish he and his team of brilliant engineers would work on inexpensive cars, im almost certain they could innovate in the space.
The plaid lap-time was not on a standard car. They had ceramic brakes which you cannot order from Tesla. There were probably more modifications done on the car.
Also, a part from the weight, the range of EV vehicles seriously needs to go up to be competitive to ICE.
Plaid's Nurb lap only showed how far behind these cars really are still.
It basically has the all-drivetrain production sedan. Oh sure... Tesla doesn't offer 50 racing trims like Porsche and BMW. Whatever. Tesla did some afterthought track kit and broke the record. But... sure, go ahead and pretend it doesn't. I loved how Jalopnik commenters collectively shit their pants and called false news like they are used to from watching OAN. Good to see its still alive.
You think tesla has teams of engineers devoted to cranking out racing versions of Plaid? Yeah, uh, no. That's what makes their Nurb time even funnier. It was probably a couple weekends of air kit testing and a cage retrofit.
You'd have a better argument talking about how the IDR is 45 seconds off of the LMP derivative. But I think you know in the back of your head when about 10 years of forthcoming battery and motor tech gets developed... that isn't standing.
Motorheads can talk about 1000HP engines and top speeds they never hit, it doesn't matter. 0-60 is owned by EVs. Quarter miles are a wash. Endurance racing? Battery swaps. Wireless charging built into the track. Who cares.
Racing will need to make a decision: have all racing be like NASCAR with carburetors in the year 2010, or be at the forefront of transportation evolution and development. F1 and LMP is already behind with hybrids, those were introduced in 1997 with the Prius.
The Tesla is absolutely not ready for Nurburgring laps. It did a quick time but that's just marketing. Tesla's are not race ready. Again, the brakes suck, they are terrible, dangerously so. The battery will overheat and you can't do more than one lap.
Again, currently, EV is still far behind to be competitive to ICE for racing.
ICE cars were a lot better than horse- and cow-driven carts (I should know about the latter, my entire childhood at my grandparents was spent in cow-driven carts on the way to the the hay-growing fields and back, think this [1]), while I don't see EVs better than ICE cars.
Yes, on some technical parameters they are better, as you mention, but on many others they are not: the charging times will never come down to reasonable times unless we discover some new laws of physics, which in turn causes people like me, who live in apartment blocks, to not be able to have a EV (I'm not going to spend half an hour and more every few days at an electrical charging station), prices will never go to the same level as ICE cars (unless ICE cars become even more expensive thanks to new extra taxes imposed from top-down), the EVs are "dependent" on their computer OSs, I have very rarely met a computer OS that is easily updatable and maintainable after 10 or so years, as such, most of the EVs will become a pain in the ass to own after those 10 or so years (as it now happens to smart-phones after 3-4 years).
[1] https://alpinet.org/foto/2003/10/22/ZjkyOGRhZDE5ZmZmNjUwMjEw...
Supercapacitor development continues apace, but even without, a wall connector gets you 40 miles per hour charged, and a supercharger gets you 200 miles per hour charged. So my question is, just how far are you going? If it's really far, consider a bus, train or plane.
> ... which in turn causes people like me, who live in apartment blocks, to not be able to have a EV (I'm not going to spend half an hour and more every few days at an electrical charging station)
You spend a half hour or more every few days at a gas station bud. Set a timer next time you go. Also, charge it at home?
> ... prices will never go to the same level as ICE cars (unless ICE cars become even more expensive thanks to new extra taxes imposed from top-down) ...
Of course they will, but remember, up front costs are only a tiny part of the picture. ICE cars will get more expensive if the oil and gas subsidies are removed - no need to add new taxes.
> ... the EVs are "dependent" on their computer OSs, I have very rarely met a computer OS that is easily updatable and maintainable after 10 or so years, as such, most of the EVs will become a pain in the ass to own after those 10 or so years (as it now happens to smart-phones after 3-4 years).
I suggest you check out what's going on in a gas car. BMW is/was selling CarPlay [1] and seat warmer subscriptions [2]. This has nothing to do with the fuel type and everything to do with evaluating new business models.
I'm not sure why advocating against all this needs a political party.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30139034/bmw-apple-carpla...
[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bmw-subscription-plan-for-seat-...
> You spend a half hour or more every few days at a gas station bud. Set a timer next time you go. Also, charge it at home?
Who spends 30 minutes at the pump? The actual act of filling the car takes less than 5 minutes. Even if you include wait times it's still less than 30 minutes in a busy, car centric city (and then you need to account for the fact that EVs also have to wait to charge).
The comment you replied to explicitly stated they live in an apartment, so at home charging isn't an option.
I would only consider an EV if I had a SFH. Even if the building I live in adds a few charging stations, it's not worth the hassle to go fully electric.
So they'll be cheaper up front, cheaper to run and pollution will be taxed and regulated more making running an ICE less attractive.
The US had a decent attempt at forcing EVs to be only luxury vehicles, but the rest of the world didn't fall for that.
Even if the individual units only self drive enough to rearrange themselves in private areas before being driven on roads by an actual human, it feels like that could be a 'cargo container' type revolution.
First off, we need to get this environmentally clean. Obviously, this must all be electric. For last mile, battery electric is the obvious choice; however I think for main routes and highways some kind of wire system would be ideal. This could also charge the battery needed for the last mile or at truck stops and stuff.
Next, we need to make sure that these self-driving units (SDUs) are always centered under that wire. Software would be an easy choice, but with the power delivery arm attached any failure would result in infrastructure destruction, so I'd propose a system of steel guards that force the wheels such that they can't escape the predefined envelope.
Come to think about it, rubber-on-concrete is ridiculously bad when it comes to efficiency, so maybe the SDUs should have two sets of wheels, one for last mile and steel wheels for the much more favourable friction coefficient. Then we should couple these units together, because the combined traction force equalizes loads across the whole chain and makes for better acceleration of the linked units resulting in less traffic.
Finally, we should equip these SDUs with a radio like GSM or something such that they can communicate with each other and drive in breaking distance, so we can increase the overall speed limit.
Gosh, I wonder why nobody has thought of this before.
But if trucks are electric then it's not totally obvious to me that trains would win on cost or environmental factors despite the obvious advantage of tracks and direct electrification. They're already trialing overhead wires on some highways for electric trucks.
Luckily we don't need to choose between them anyway.
Pray tell, what are these significant drawbacks?
> the Plaid is still the fastest car you can buy without dropping a half million
Nope: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/19/23312956/lucid-air-sapphi...
https://www.lucidmotors.com/stories/introducing-sapphire-pin...
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/toyota-ramps-up-efforts-to-l...
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Climate-Change...
Not a totally crazy idea, but has probably temporarily held them back by distracting them from EVs.
Sony has a history of similar hubris, they always ended up adapting to the rest in the long run, usually after losing quite a big chunk of the market to upstarts.
But Toyota recently put an EV to market, it’s called BZ4X or something like that. It’s not good.
http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/michelin/ds/image...
> This suspension design ensured the road wheels followed ground contours underneath them closely, while insulating the vehicle from shocks, enabling the 2CV to be driven over a ploughed field without breaking any eggs, as its design brief required.
Yes, and it's a bad idea. The friction between tarmac and rubber is orders of magnitude worse than steel on steel. Electrification alone doesn't solve the problem.
https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/insights/2017/sep/...
EVs bring performance in the same way Audible brings performance to "reading", ie it's a complete different experience, and some people prefer the old way.
No performance oriented person look at Tesla specs and drool, sure you smoke a fefe in a straight line, add a few turns and quick decel/accel and it's a whole other story. The m3 battery alone weight 1/3rd of a whole Ferrari
By the time the long tail of "people driving old junk" is narrow enough for banning ICEs to be politically palatable the bulk of the people screeching about it now will have picked up some more pressing issue and be caring about that instead.
Why do you say that? Many apartment blocks have chargers, and in some places they're mandatory or going to be mandatory soon.
> Even if the building I live in adds a few charging stations, it's not worth the hassle to go fully electric.
What do you mean specifically?
But... that's not really true? Nissan and Renault's first modern electric platforms predate the Tesla Model S. VW's is only slightly newer (and of course it had a few NiCad false starts in the 90s).
> then they insisted on doing design after design of the clearly inferior hydrogen alternative
That's mostly just Toyota.
> If they really "cared" about EV this would have come 20 years earlier given the sheer scale of endowed resources they had
No, it wouldn't. VW and GM, at least, tried in the 90s, but it just wasn't a runner with NiCad batteries. Electric cars were effectively gated on battery tech.
Why the wierd goalpost moving of having to do this 20 years ago?
"Tesla accounts for more than two-thirds of all-electric car registrations (almost 68%), which is a dominant position, but the non-Tesla electric vehicle sales are growing at a similar rate and potentially might outpace Tesla later this year."
If youre outselling everyone else _combined_ that suggests a clear current market winner.
https://insideevs.com/news/604580/us-bev-premium-car-sales-2...
Source: https://insideevs.com/news/564800/world-top-oem-sales-2021/
I mean, if you assume the US is the only market which exists, then, yeah, okay? Tesla is third or fourth in Europe and in China, both of which are larger BEV markets than the US, though.
The electric car market has been slower to develop in the US than in Europe and China for a variety of reasons (fuel's cheaper in the US for tax reasons, the average drive is much longer, consumer taste is more oriented towards large SUVs and trucks), but develop it has, and US consumers should soon have about as much choice of electric cards as consumers in other markets.
And they’re dodging the largest vehicle market entirely: fleet vehicles. At least a few years ago F-150s outsold all cars. Sprinter vans can’t be produced fast enough to meet demands. These dwarf family vehicles.
Their accomplishment was seeing a market problem and then killing it. Manufacturers were only targeting “city” vehicles or crunchy granola people with hybrids and EVs. Tesla made EVs freaking cool.
Seeing that as evidence that they’re the primary source for all EV innovation, though, doesn’t line up. They have a market targeted and are focused on delivering there. There is work going on with EV fleet vehicles, semis, etc. and they’re not involved.
It’s been about 10 years now, and they’re only making what an “old car company” would consider 1 platform with no sign of expanding. I think they’ll continue to dominate that space, but there’s a lot of innovation required to get outside of that footprint.
Here are some current European sales percentages:
https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Line/All-time-by-Y...
Tesla comes in 4th.
Putting rechargeable batteries into a car form-factor is like strapping a jetpack to a horse. Not the transportation mode of the future.
They are just about getting there as of last year, after 15 years of saying they were going to. e.g. look back at VWs claims about how they were going to be an EV leader back in 2013, vs how long it took them to actually get the ID3/ID4 done.
e.g.
"Volkswagen Group will be the world leader in electric and hybrid cars by 2018, it says.
The bold claim came not from an offhand comment by an executive at this week's Frankfurt Auto Show, but in a press release announcing that the VW Group had set its "sights on market leadership in electric mobility by 2018."
“We are starting at exactly the right time," said Group CEO Martin Winterkorn before the show.
"We are electrifying all vehicle classes, and therefore have everything we need to make the Volkswagen Group the top automaker in all respects, including electric mobility, by 2018."
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1086902_volkswagen-will...
But yes as of now there are a lot of good cars from a lot of manufacturers.
Tesla had to give the industry an almighty kick up the backside to get us here though
Without Tesla all we'd have is stuff like the 2016 Leaf with 100 mile range because 'market research shows people just want an ev for running around town'
VW was third in Europe by 2018 (or second, depending on how you view Renault-Nissan), and first by 2020, so... not _that_ huge of a miss, perhaps? The ID3/4 were their second generation; the eGolf and eUp, while far less ambitious, sold pretty well.
This is covered in the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" (on Amazon).
So it's not like Elon Musk paved the way for electric cars - he just faced fewer headwinds. And let us not forget, he did not actually found Tesla, he acquired it. The company also barely made it if not for government help at the time of dire need.
Elon Musk, being the storyteller that he is, said once that he was drinking alone at a table in a club (who does that?) all sad due to the state of affairs at Tesla. It did not look like the company was going to make it. Then he was approached by his model future 2nd ex-wife, and the rest was history.
If only all men were living in an episode of Red Shoe Diaries.
I suppose you mean that Tesla was the dragging force in the EV sector and all others were reluctant until they saw Tesla become successful?
If you look at the timeline of global auto makers putting EVs on the market, that claim is unsubstantiated, they would have been years later if that was true.
I get it though, Tesla is the first product of the American auto sector that is somewhat innovative, after decades of being behind all others. So it’s natural that many Americans are proud of Tesla’s success and will basically defend that pride with their lives. It’s a cult because they and facts the contrary will be seen as an attack.
Edit: or at least that was my perception. Doing some Googling it appears that they both have done things.
You've got an island - people aren't driving their cars to other countries from Japan so you can build out the entirety of the refuting system with a smaller area (the long axis of Japan is comparable in distance from San Diego to Seattle - https://acme.com/same_scale/#41.30257,-121.06934,38.07404,13... ).
The second thing about being on an island is that importing oil is expensive.
So, the problem of energy storage for vehicles... plugins are one option. Hydrogen is another.
Hydrogen is still something that they're looking at for Japan and it makes sense in that environment.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/toyota-ramps-up-efforts-to-l...
I'll also point out in that article:
> Toyota started working on the development of fuel-cell vehicles — where hydrogen from a tank mixes with oxygen, producing electricity — back in 1992. In 2014, it launched the Mirai, a hydrogen fuel cell sedan. The business says its fuel cell vehicles emit “nothing but water from the tailpipe.”
Consider where the high capacity battery technology in '92 was.
For cars the Galapagos effect on cars gives us a hydrogen fuel cell focus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galápagos_syndrome
I don't believe the research into fuel cell designs for Japanese car makers was a mistake and it likely is still a good idea for Japan and other island countries to have a hydrogen refueling system.
For a fancier car with expensive wheels, it’s generally going to be more expensive to buy another set of wheels than pay for 5 years of tire mounting.
> the Plaid is still the fastest car you can buy without dropping a half million
And you said:
> Nope: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/19/23312956/lucid-air-sapphi...
Except you can't actually buy the car you linked to. That's a pretty big miss in a conversation about cars you can buy. In fact, I would say one of the two defining features of "cars you can buy" is the fact that you can buy them.
Don't feel too bad that Tesla doesn't lead here. Tesla doesn't lead in real world range tests either:
https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/
Tesla makes good ads though. I like the bit with the parrot:
I would suspect that it isn't too different from the Plaid.
I do agree that cameras an ML on the images seems to be stuck at the next plateau of scene understanding performance. An impressive one, admitted, but still not sufficient. For real emergency reactions with highway speeds you need to assess situations about a quarter mile away basically.
Waymo launched their commercial robo-taxi service in 2017. It’s still running today. Open to the public [1].
Meanwhile, Tesla is phasing out their FSD program. Beta-testers, 98 safety score, $15K cost, whatever, current Tesla owners are pissed off.
FSD is a sinking ship, just like the Tesla/Elon brand. They used to be cool.
[1] https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2017/04/...
But sure, do tell me how you're going to ignore the laws of physics and see a road sign, a kid, or a deer when your camera is blind.
https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a39966189/2022-mercedes...
Until you're at night in the snow/dirt.
Lmao.
And that you can't just handwave these problems away.
show us
Might want to start then with Americans and their SUVs.
Few orders of magnitude bigger issue than a few rich people and their supercars.
A collectively owned car that you don't have to drive yourself? Isn't that an existing and well known solution: public transportation?
Seems silly to rely on self-driving to reduce emissions when we don't know how to build self-driving cars yet, but we do know how to build better public transit and design walkable cities.
What I will do is keep an eye on what the ultra-rich "experts" who seem to be most concerned about climate change do. When they give up their mansions and yachts and islands and private jets, eat bugs and teleconference to Bilderberg, that's when I might reconsider my lifestyle. Until then the signal from those experts is crystal clear: climate change is a non-issue. And I wouldn't want to risk being an expert-denier.
There was no consistency, sometimes they would indicate right seemingly to suggest they want to pass, sometimes they indicate left seemingly suggesting the other car to move aside, but I digress.
Since I have bit of a way to go (Innsbruck) and I was a hot headed young man I decided to follow one of the cars that zoomed past me. I think the speed limit was 120km/hr or 130km/hr, but they were passing me at such speed suggesting they were going at least 190km/hr or more.
So I let my throttle wide open through many tunnels and followed these faster cars. There were many other cars travelling under the speed limit, but I was flying with the faster crowd.
After a while I've realised something, all these faster cars were pretty darn flash. Porsche GT3, Lambos, Ferraris, and then I realised, them getting speed tickets might not mean a thing, but me in a rental just there on a honeymoon have better things to spend my money on. So I slowed down and disappear into the slower crowd.
-- A traumatized french driver
They are far better informed and advised by experts in climate than you or I though.
Also one can not just be an expert in climate science. A climate scientist could tell you the effect of increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere on the climate. They can not tell you the social and economic cost of that, or the best and most efficient technologies or social and economic strategies should be to address this problem. That requires a whole cohort of experts from all different fields.
And that is where the ruling class -- our betters -- have so much information and clarity that we can not hope to match.
> and someone can be a hypocrite regarding their lifestyle while being correct about the need for change. People are local optimization machines and one can know that there is a great danger lurking in the future whilst over dosing on consumption.
If that's the case and they are hypocrites who do not in fact consider themselves as being all in it together with the commoners, and they are not actually acting for the greater good, then it's even simpler: I won't listen to anything they have to say because we can assume it's all selfish lies. Which leaves me at the same place.
- why am I voluntarily restricting what I can do so that others can have more leeway to do whatever they want?
For my part, I ride a motorbike. I enjoy it, it uses less fuel, running costs etc than most cars. But I am not going to give it up while my neighbour's family in their multimillion dollar mansion drives 3x 2 ton+ SUVs around.
A work colleague of mine bought a Dodge RAM 2500. To tow his boat and carry his multiple dirt bikes.
I ignore people asking me to do more now. I do enough. Go after the worst offenders first.
I don’t think climatologists are in the pay grade to afford super yachts
And no climate scientist has told me I should lock myself in my house and eat cockroaches while they gallivant in their private jets from mansion to mansion and gorge themselves on quail tongues and sturgeon eggs.
EDIT: I didn't mean to say climate change is not happening or having negative impacts demonstrated by science, clearly the science says it is. I mean it's a non-issue in terms of people changing their lifestyles. With such renown and respected experts as Gore, Obama, Trudeau, Gates, and DiCaprio as my guiding stars on this matter, it's clear that the experts are firmly on my side, and anybody saying otherwise is a dangerous extremist denier.
Wow. Considering that expertise in climate change is given by money rather than, you know, being an actual trained academic in the field, is peak capitalism.
But anyway, assuming they really behave as "experts", yeah, the signal is crystal clear... For them.
It's much less of an issue if you have enough money to move to whatever places in the world remain most livable, keep buying food even if it becomes prohibitive for most people due to crop failures, keep using AC even if it becomes prohibitive for most people due to soaring energy prices, etc.
Doesn't mean that 99.9% of the population won't suffer from climate change.
My point really is that the traditional manufacturers wasted a lot of time faffing about. Lots of glossy promises about the future and not many actual EV cars being made. Possibly internal power struggles. I'm glad things are happening now.
e.g. BMW had the i3 in 2013 which was good for its time, then closed the whole program down and didn't come up with anything new until (correct me if I'm wrong?) last year?
In the UK, until the Jaguar i-Pace launched in 2018, Tesla were the only manufacturer with a 200+ mile range EV. In the States you had the Bolt but that never came to the UK.
But there's a lot of good stuff happening now so I'm happy. FWIW I drive a kia.
(they are one of the only german brands that offer literally every model in a hybrid version, with decent battery packs. I can commute full electric with my hybrid if I charge at work. I drive about 80% full electric. Really only use the engine in the weekend and when using sport mode)
Audi focused on hydrogen and full electric. Hydrogen wasn't the success they hoped it to be. Their gamble for CNG cars also didn't pay off. But at least hydrogen powered cars had electric motors, which is why Audi managed be have the e-tron already in 2018. That is a brilliant car, beats a Tesla in daily use imho, if only it had 100 miles extra range (it has about 200-250). And now they are just limited by chip shortages and battery production for a full electric rollout, same for BMW. The lead times on the i4, iX3 etc.. are ridiculous, 14 to 18 months. So why bother brining out newer models? That's why they stick to hybrid. You can make about 7 hybrids with the scarce resources to produce one full electric.
It's weird enough that Musk claimed he was sad-drinking in a club, but now we are discussing the idea of him sad-drinking in a country club, a place for old, rich, white men who go there to play golf - where he was then approached by a young model?
But if we want to assume Musk was drowning his sorrows, and that it’s an EDM dance club — this seems to be your implication, maybe it’s true — then I still don’t find it weird. Darkness, distraction, the desire to be among people but also alone, avoiding your entourage… plenty of good reasons.
Your second to last sentence is flawed. You can’t logically assume it’s all selfish lies. A hypocrite can be correct in what they saw but wrong in what they do. The correctness of a belief has nothing to do with whether or not the purveyors of that belief are hypocrites.
In any case, I absolutely can assume it is lies. The whole premise is that climate change is a problem, it is the largest / existential problem for humanity, it must be addressed by changing our behavior, and that you should change even if others do not because you should set an example and that will induce more to follow.
I'm not saying it's all lies, but there has to be at least one lie that breaks the chain. They know better than anybody that their hypocritical actions and example are among the biggest causes of resentment among people. If they believed there was an existential threat to humanity, they would change their ways (or at least do something meaningful about climate change rather than start more wars, a la Obama).
So they're lying about something.
Because you refuse to vote for systemic change that would affect everyone positively?
Better off with the Mercedes EQS. Or the Lucid Air for that matter:
https://www.carscoops.com/2022/02/lucids-lidar-based-dreamdr...
Still useful to have someone targetting Silicon Valley nerds that would otherwise own a Prius and a Porsche though.
- Fuel in Europe is on the order of 2x the price vs the US (largely due to low tax on petrol in the US)
- Average European journey in nearly all countries is much shorter than average journey in the US (things are closer together, less cultural tolerance for very long commutes)
- Differing consumer preferences in cars (the US _loves_ large SUVs and pickup trucks, which pose greater challenges to electrification than, say, hatchbacks)
- Electric cars are or at least were a cultural/political issue in the US in a way they're not in Europe. It would be deeply weird to be ideologically opposed to, specifically, electric cars in Europe, but that's quite common in the US.
All of this makes Europe an easier-to-address and safer market for the manufacturers than the US, so they targeted the US _first_. That doesn't mean they weren't interested in the US too. For instance, VW sensibly never released its eUp or eGolf in the US, because there's a tiny market for cars like that there. It also won't release its i3, but it will release its i4, which suits US consumer preferences better.
Incidentally, I think the US does have some _advantages_ as a market for electric cars, too. In particular, it's much more common to have a driveway or garage in the US than in Europe, and this makes at-home charging much easier.
I think a big flaw in your thinking is that for these people climate change won't have big consequences equals in climate change won't have big consequences for you. They can pay there way around the negative effects by e.g. buying another house somewhere more habitable, paying security personal to protect from looters or pay high prices for goods. You probably can't. The people you named are aware of the consequences for the ordinary people and that's why they are raising there voice but they are not directly affected that's why they are only raising there voices and take less action.
You on the other hand should do both, raise your voice and demand action as well as take action yourself by limiting your negative impact where its easiest (which apparently you started to do already) and don't wait for the upper class to change.
Terrible choice of guiding stars. The scientists that have been studying this and raising the alarm bells since the 70s are the guiding star. If you're feeling threatened by what the scientists are saying, and believe in them, I couldn't see how your protest is an honest attempt to help the situation. I agree most celebrity activists are hypocrites, and I sympathize with feeling overwhelmed and helpless, but informed consumers consumers can and have affected production - and ultimately man-made GHGs (transport, energy, goods, livestock, agriculture) are released primarily due to supply chain, and changing how much and how we consume changes everything upstream.
So you confess your extremist heretical beliefs in denying the integrity, honesty, and expertise in the ruling of society of these people? Sounds like a dangerous, seditious thing to think.
> The scientists that have been studying this and raising the alarm bells since the 70s
Of course, I would never doubt The Science of climate change. What I am talking about is what we should do about it as a collective societal response. And that takes a different kind of expert, and those experts have decided that the correct response is to amass vast wealth, buy beachfront mansions and yachts and fly around on private jets and perhaps also to destroy Libya on occasion.
I think maybe you're spending too much time online.
> and those experts
Not sure why you keep calling political entities 'experts'. They are definitely experts of their political domains, but this claim of their prime importance on climate change matters seems to be your own.
To go back to what I'm guessing is your concern: No one's coming to steal your right to drive a Tesla, but more people might just opt to not own their own vehicle, as public transport options improve. If 50 years from now, people are able to use shared transport to get door-to-door from city A to city B, and at a similar (or better) speed, for less money, the demand for vehicles may drop. As autonomous vehicles are getting better, it's only a matter of time.
I'm dutifully reciting what the experts tell me offline.
> Not sure why you keep calling political entities 'experts'. They are definitely experts of their political domains, but this claim of their prime importance on climate change matters seems to be your own.
I'm not, I'm calling the ruling class experts at ruling and running society.
> To go back to what I'm guessing is your concern:
That's not my concern.
> No one's coming to steal your right to drive a Tesla, but more people might just opt to not own their own vehicle, as public transport options improve. If 50 years from now, people are able to use shared transport to get door-to-door from city A to city B, and at a similar (or better) speed, for less money, the demand for vehicles may drop. As autonomous vehicles are getting better, it's only a matter of time.
For the commoners, of course. Naturally the experts would still permit themselves to fly around in their private jets and yachts, etc. It's for the greater good, according to the experts.
