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Electric Vehicles

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For a quick fix use the “Defrost” mode. This will automatically engage air conditioning and a high fan speed, directing warm, dry air to the windshield and often the front side windows. This can heat the glass to aid clearing snow and ice while removing condensation from the inside. As visibility returns, you can turn down the noisy fan.

Air conditioning is the key. Cold air may be the last thing you want in the winter, but remember, this mode isn’t called “chill”—it is “air conditioning” because it dehumidifies the air. You can still set the temperature to a comfortable level and enjoy warm, dry air from the vents.
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Is this the reason my clothes dryer turns on its air conditioner?
 
ZirconBlue said:
I don't know what cars you've been driving, but any modern vehicle I have been in, the AC compressor running does not at all cool the defrost air.
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Technically, it does (that's how it dehumidifies it), it's just that it heats the air up again after cooling it. That's how you produce warm dry air. If you know the air is dry enough already, you can switch off the AC part of the defrost to save a bit of energy.
 
xterra said:
Is this the reason my clothes dryer turns on its air conditioner?
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Funny reply, but not actually an equivalent problem. You don't generally need to worry about your wet clothes being cold enough to create condensation on them.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Lithium currently sells for ~US$26 per kg. It is not particularly rare and new sources are constantly being discovered. The lithium in electric vehicle batteries is 100% recyclable, and some car manufacturers (Nissan, Renault) are already doing it.

Indium currently costs US$447/kg, 127 times cheaper than Gold (another metal widely used in electronics) which is currently trading at US$57,000/kg. Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is used to create the very thin transparent electrodes used on LCD screens. It makes up less than 1% of the cost of a typical LCD display. It could be recycled from used TVs etc. but at current prices mining is cheaper. If for some peculiar reason we 'ran out of' Indium then other materials would be used.

Your 'depends on rare elements that we might not have enough of, even if we don't care what we do to the environment to get them' is nothing more than FUD.
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My car's electronics only uses unobtainium. They have to mine it on a distant planet.
 
ZirconBlue said:
I don't know what cars you've been driving, but any modern vehicle I have been in, the AC compressor running does not at all cool the defrost air. Coincidentally, I just got this tip from Consumer Reports earlier this week:
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If the air conditioning is running, it is cooling the air. The heater may be able to overwhelm it, but it's how air conditioning works. The evaporator cools the air. I was going to go on an on about this, but will just say that in a climate like Vermont's where it is humid and rainy much of the time, defrost without AC works better as well as using less energy.

And I've been driving modern cars for long enough to know that the CU article is largely bunk anyway. Ice will not melt until the car has warmed up enough to produce heat. The defogging might occur a little bit faster on the inside, but the AC will not help the outside even a little bit, nor will it melt the frost on the inside if there is any, until the heat comes up. Cold air does not melt ice. Heat does. If you come out to your car and the windshield is frosted up on both sides, as is often the case, you'll have to scrape it and warm it up.
 
Ziggurat said:
Technically, it does (that's how it dehumidifies it), it's just that it heats the air up again after cooling it. That's how you produce warm dry air. If you know the air is dry enough already, you can switch off the AC part of the defrost to save a bit of energy.
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If I had a car that allowed that, I'd be happy. Most of the air conditioned cars I've had did not allow this. The defrost switch turns on the AC and you can't turn it off. I did find a button code for the Hyundai that supposedly turns off the "defrost logic" and it appears that when this is done, the AC engages in a different way, indicating it's on (which it never did before), and allowing me to turn it off. I have yet to look at the engine to see if it's really not engaging then, but it's hopeful. No such option exists for my GMC truck, and none as far as I know for the Honda CRV.

Of the various air conditioned cars my wife and I have had over the years, all past the mid-80's had default AC on defrost, and the Hun is the first I'm aware of that has a bypass other than pulling a wire or disabling it otherwise, and that is a code rather than a convenient switch.
 
bruto said:
And I've been driving modern cars for long enough to know that the CU article is largely bunk anyway. Ice will not melt until the car has warmed up enough to produce heat. The defogging might occur a little bit faster on the inside, but the AC will not help the outside even a little bit, nor will it melt the frost on the inside if there is any, until the heat comes up. Cold air does not melt ice. Heat does. If you come out to your car and the windshield is frosted up on both sides, as is often the case, you'll have to scrape it and warm it up.
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If you're running the defrost because snow is still falling on your car as you drive, and you also need to defog the inside because the cold windshield is producing condensation from your breathing, then 1) the engine is often already warm, and 2) if you're getting condensation, you need the air to be dried to counteract the increase in humidity caused by passengers in the car.

In fact, from a safety perspective, defauly handling the case of fogging up while driving is far more important than default handling a cold start. It can be unsafe to stop driving, and you want the driver to have to perform as few operations as necessary to defog their windshield fast, so having the default set to handle such a case is actually the right thing to do. In contrast, if you're trying to de-ice the windshield before you start driving, you have some time to properly adjust it as desired.
 
bruto said:
If I had a car that allowed that, I'd be happy.
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I don't recall seeing a modern car which didn't.

No such option exists for my GMC truck, and none as far as I know for the Honda CRV.
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What year CRV? Until recently I had a 2008, I'm pretty sure I could do it on that.

Of the various air conditioned cars my wife and I have had over the years, all past the mid-80's
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Mid-80's is ancient for a car.
 
Ziggurat said:
I don't recall seeing a modern car which didn't.



What year CRV? Until recently I had a 2008, I'm pretty sure I could do it on that.



Mid-80's is ancient for a car.
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I have yet to see a car other than the Hyundai that allows full defrost with the AC completely off. No Jeep Cherokee or Liberty between 1987 and 2006 had that, nor, as far as I know, the 2017 Honda. Nor my former Ford Focus, my wife's former Volvo, and certainly not my 2002 Chevy pickup nor my current 2007 GMC.

As for the default safety issue, I can't think of many things easier than turning up the heat on a cold day. Turn up the heat, turn on the defrost, and drive. Of course it helps if the heater controls are nice and tactile too.

I'll have to look deeply in the instructions for the Honda to see if there's something I missed. The cheapskates put most of the more detailed instructions on a CD instead of a book.
 
The EV6 might be better than the Tesla model 3.

After the recent turn of this thread, I was aware of all the buttons in the Hyundai. I was able to adjust my wing mirrors without asking the salesman having to hunt through menus on the touch screen. Same thing when I decided the aircon (leave it) was a bit warm.

The drive is comparable to the model 3, it's smooth and responsive. HUD may be one of those subtle little upgrades that suddenly you can't imagine driving without.

Hmm... careful weighing of options must now occur
 
If that F-100 has a standard or long bed, it would serve me much better than the short bed electric F-150. The F-150 is nice, but if I can't haul my ATV in it, then it is useless to me. :)
 
Ranb said:
If that F-100 has a standard or long bed, it would serve me much better than the short bed electric F-150. The F-150 is nice, but if I can't haul my ATV in it, then it is useless to me. :)
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The Ford crate motor does open up a lot of options for retrofits that can make up for some great vehicle types not widely available as EV yet. I know they will mostly be used for stuff like the classic F-100, things for rich people to drop into their favorite toy, but I'd love to have one to put into a work van. Apart from driving to conventions or taking my brother to chemo, most of my driving could be done with a sixty mile range and something that can get construction supplies and steel the ten miles from the various yards would really help my side business. But an E-Transit is like $45k, which isn't that much for a new work van of any type, but still not as cheap as a hull with a blown engine, the battery, the crate motor, and whatever I'd have to trade my buddy for use of his lift (probably a bowie).
 
Nice idea on the truck. But I'm pretty sure, despite the article, that that's a '79, not a 78. I had a 78 F-150 and it had the last year of round headlights.

That said, I like the idea of a crate electric rig you could just drop into an old truck. Latest motor technology on a robust, gadget-free platform that can carry a real cargo and do some real work.
 
bruto said:
Nice idea on the truck. But I'm pretty sure, despite the article, that that's a '79, not a 78. I had a 78 F-150 and it had the last year of round headlights.

That said, I like the idea of a crate electric rig you could just drop into an old truck. Latest motor technology on a robust, gadget-free platform that can carry a real cargo and do some real work.
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And with a bed you can actually reach into.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Images going around of a concept F-100 retro EV truck.

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