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Electric Vehicles

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crescent said:
In that regard the Leaf is about the worst EV out there. Nice looking cars, and about the lowest cost major brand EV - but the batteries just don't hold out long compared to the competition.
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OTOH, you can buy a used one for next to nothing and drive it into the ground. :-)
 
If you go on a major car selling site (I used Autotrader) and just basically list car for sale, filter by electric only, and sort lowest to highest you get like a dozen pages of Nissan Leafs (ignoring one or two kit cars and those weird halfway road legal glorified electric golf cart kind of cars) before you get to anything else, so they do seem to be the "cheap" EV right now.
 
JoeMorgue said:
No safety features, if you get into an accident just die like real men.
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True enough that older cars, even those from recent years when safety standards were being stiffened, don't crash as well as newer ones, but it is also true that you could make a nice safe, modern car without a lot of the added features that most new ones have. I'd love to have a car with the true safety features like the engineered crumple zones and airbags and whatnot, without the electronic gadgetry.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Sorta. As in EVs are part of the "Culture War" in a way other cars just aren't, so you have to factor in "Idiots on the Right are going to **** with you just because" to some degree.
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True. Like the idiots who "roll coal."

"I like breathing smoke, ya weak-ass commies!"
 
A week and little over 100 miles into Mrs Don's experience of electric car ownership/operation.....

Consumption so far has been a little over 4 miles/kwh in a mixture of rural and town driving (but no dual carriageway or motorway driving. Mrs Don has topped up her charge at home with a "Granny Charger" (a charger simply plugged into a 13Amp 240v socket) and also briefly for free at our local Tesco supermarket. Topping up was super-easy and there's usually one or two (of four) chargers available.

Mrs Don loves one-pedal driving and it's only taken a few minutes for it to become second nature. She's also loving all the features of the car (though strictly not a function of an electric car, merely a modern one) and so far so good.

Unfortunately, the Fiat 500e is a tiny car so I'll keep having to drive to band practice (and sticking to shandies in the pub afterwards) because fitting a guitar, keyboard, stand and gig bag in it is an expert-level game of Tetris.
 
Filippo Lippi said:
One-pedal driving is how cars should have been from day one

Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk
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I used to have an old Buick Skylark that could do one-pedal driving, but it did it opposite to the way electric cars did it.

The carburetor was set with an idle that was too fast. Let off the brakes and it would accelerate as a rate that was just on the low side of good enough for most city traffic and keep going up to a about 30-35 mph. So long as I stayed in town, I could drive without touching the gas pedal at all. (It was a two-speed automatic, for whatever that's worth).

Had to practically stand on the brakes to get it to stop, but that's another story.:D
 
The Model T, like many tractors, approximates one pedal driving because although it has a hand throttle, it has enough torque that you don't have to feather it to take off. A tractor is generally set to a given engine speed for the PTO, and you choose the gear for traveling speed. Modern tractors with automatic transmissions come even closer, since road speed is governed by the pedals (one forward, one reverse), and braking is rarely needed.

One pedal driving should be pretty simple on a vehicle that does not idle, has no clutch, and needs no transmission. Or one lever, which ought to be a real boon to handicapped drivers.
 
How does controlling braking intensity work with the one-pedal setup?
 
The further you lift of the throttle, the more the engine brakes, presumably to the point where the electronics start feeding in real braking
 
Filippo Lippi said:
The further you lift of the throttle, the more the engine brakes, presumably to the point where the electronics start feeding in real braking
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"presumably"? You drive one of these right?

If I have the pedal at a position for 60 MPH and move it abruptly to the position that usually gives me 30 MPH what happens?
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
"presumably"? You drive one of these right?

If I have the pedal at a position for 60 MPH and move it abruptly to the position that usually gives me 30 MPH what happens?
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Given how brushless motors work, with digital control switching the windings, I *guess* one could set it up to directly relate to motor axle RPM and thus speed, rather than an analogue of a throttle.

ETA. I think that would probably have to be the way it works if you include regenerative braking.
 
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RecoveringYuppy said:
"presumably"? You drive one of these right?

If I have the pedal at a position for 60 MPH and move it abruptly to the position that usually gives me 30 MPH what happens?
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In Mrs Don's Fiat, the car slows to 30 MPH in pretty short order, but not as dramatically as if you'd jammed the brakes on.

edited to add....

According to the car documentation, the brake lights will come on once the regenerative braking exceeds a certain threshold. The retarding force of the engine in "Regen" mode seems considerable so I'm not sure you'd need to use the brakes in anything other than an emergency stop situation.
 
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The Don said:
In Mrs Don's Fiat, the car slows to 30 MPH in pretty short order, but not as dramatically as if you'd jammed the brakes on.
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So plenty of people drive these things so it must work, but I'm having a hard time understanding the learning curve for coming to a stop at a precise point. Somehow I can't see how that just comes naturally or even quickly. It would seem to me to be a whole new skill to be learned.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
So plenty of people drive these things so it must work, but I'm having a hard time understanding the learning curve for coming to a stop at a precise point. Somehow I can't see how that just comes naturally or even quickly. It would seem to me to be a whole new skill to be learned.
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According to Mrs Don (I've not been allowed to drive "Alva" yet - or possibly ever :o) it's just a matter of modulating pressure on the pedal. In that respect I guess it's no different to learning how to modulate the brake pedal to come to a smooth stop at a precise point as opposed to just mashing the pedal and stopping as quickly as possible.

A couple of weeks ago, I drove a friend's eGolf for about 4 miles/10 minutes on the mild regenerative setting and IMO it was no different than having a lot of engine braking. I honestly didn't even think about it, it was so natural. :confused:
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
So plenty of people drive these things so it must work, but I'm having a hard time understanding the learning curve for coming to a stop at a precise point. Somehow I can't see how that just comes naturally or even quickly. It would seem to me to be a whole new skill to be learned.
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Takes very little time, I've driven them a few different times for work and it's pretty natural.
 
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