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Electric Vehicles

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bruto said:
I would expect electric cars just to kind of smolder, unless you're really lazy about extinguishing. For real aventure, stick to gassers.
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Depends whether the lithium batteries catch fire or not. If they do, it can be rather disconcerting, as Richard Hammond found out.

 
jadebox said:
As an aside, I have been considering getting dashcams for our cars. I think seeing all the dashcam videos online has made me a little paranoid.
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Same. Some close calls while pulling a trailer have me seriously thinking. Especially since one was a cop. I know who would take the blame in that little argument if I don’t have video.
 
bruto said:
Like the time I rolled up to the shop in our then-commissioned 1960 Valiant, and a co-worker came rushing out yelling "Flames! Flames!"
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I remember Click and Clack did a show on the 10 ugliest cars. They said whenever they saw a PT Cruiser cruiser with flames on the side, their only regret was that the flames weren’t real! ;)

As an aside, our Honda Element made their list. Their question was what element Honda had in mind - uglytanium???
 
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Fast Eddie B said:
I remember Click and Clack did a show on the 10 ugliest cars. They said whenever they saw a PT Cruiser cruiser with flames on the side, their only regret was that the flames weren’t real! ;)

As an aside, our Honda Element made their list. Their question was what element Honda had in mind - uglytanium???
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I hope that Valiant made the list. Wrong thread here to go into the details of its mechanical decline, but it was very nasty. It did have the virtue of having, at one point, lost part of its designation emblem on one side, so I was able to paint in the gap: It was thereafter the "Violent." Here's a picture of a nice one. Ours was that color, except faded and with rust holes.

http://classiccarsmarks.com/images/full/1960-plymouth-valiant-station-wagon-034suburban034-2.jpg
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Sounds like a great choice. Enjoy!
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Thanks. I'm thinking of this as a transition car. In a couple of years, I hope there will be a plug in option for a pickup to where most days I'll never have to engage the gas engine at all. Until then, this is a good option.
 
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Mrs Don experienced some range anxiety in the middle of the night. She's due to take her mother to Bristol for a Covid test prior to her going back to the US tomorrow. It's a 65km round trip. When she woke me at OMFG-o'clock this morning her car was showing 50%+ charge and a predicted range of 148km.

Her car is now plugged in and charging at approximately 15km of range an hour - nearly 50 km have been added so far. She is still a little anxious but there's still a couple of hours until she leaves (though the charging rate is slowing noticeably).

I think she's going to have to learn to trust the range predictor.
 
The Don said:
I think she's going to have to learn to trust the range predictor.
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My i3 does a pretty good job of estimating range especially if you enter your destination in the navigation system so it has an idea of how fast you will be driving. Of course, the estimate is updated as you drive and gets more accurate as the remaining range nears zero. And the car will stop when it reaches zero. So, it is going to appear to always be correct if you just pay attention near the end of a trip.

The accuracy near the end actually helps reduce anxiety. If the navigation system says you have two miles to your destination and the car reports that you have three miles of range remaining, you will make it to your destination.

I have experienced far fewer of those "am I going to make it" moments while driving my EV than I experience with our gas-powered vehicles. Not only is the range prediction accurate, but the car is pretty much always "full" when I get in it at home.
 
The Don said:
Mrs Don experienced some range anxiety in the middle of the night. She's due to take her mother to Bristol for a Covid test prior to her going back to the US tomorrow. It's a 65km round trip. When she woke me at OMFG-o'clock this morning her car was showing 50%+ charge and a predicted range of 148km.

Her car is now plugged in and charging at approximately 15km of range an hour - nearly 50 km have been added so far. She is still a little anxious but there's still a couple of hours until she leaves (though the charging rate is slowing noticeably).

I think she's going to have to learn to trust the range predictor.
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42kwh battery? She should have been fine, unless she was hoping to do it at 100mph. Lots of on street rapid chargers in Bristol, too
 
Filippo Lippi said:
42kwh battery? She should have been fine, unless she was hoping to do it at 100mph. Lots of on street rapid chargers in Bristol, too
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Yes, the 42kwh battery and she ended up using just over 10kwh on the trip.

She left with approximately 75% charge and returned with around 50% charge.
 
Interesting article (sorry, it's from the daily mail) about how many lower-end supermarkets and fast food restaurants are seeing more customers after installing ev charging stations.

(Although I don't know how they determine that the charging station is the reason for the increase and not just general economic improvements)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-flock-cheaper-electric-vehicle-charging.html

Sent from my moto e using Tapatalk
 
Segnosaur said:
(Although I don't know how they determine that the charging station is the reason for the increase and not just general
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If the store is a chain, they can compare sales between stores with and without EV stations and adjust the figures based on past sales at the stores to get a good idea of the difference.

We (again) charged my car at a free Level 2 charger while eating a takeout pizza the other night. Six miles of range was added which amounts to about 20 or 25 cents worth of electricity at the cost I pay at home! Woo hoo!

So, the cost to the business isn't much of an issue and it really does affect, slightly, which businesses I patronize.
 
Mrs Don and I went out to dinner and a big band concert on Friday. For the first time we plugged into a commercial 7kw charger and actually paid for electricity in the wild. We didn't need to, but Mrs Don wanted a dry run with me around.

In 3 hours we added almost exactly 50% of charge for a little over £7 and the whole process was completely painless.
 
Someone, elsewhere, said that they were getting "worse miles/kwh because of the rise in the price of electricity." I corrected them. I thought you would appreciate the irony
 
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