Electric Vehicle Thread!

[eastmen]

Yeah, the Volt platform is pretty badass in that sense. One of the folks at my office grabbed a "broken" one really cheaply last year; it had a bad battery pack. Turns out he was able to buy several more used battery packs online also cheaply, and was then able to find and swap out the broken one for a used working one.

His commute is about 20 miles each way, and it can run all-electric for the entire commute so long as he isn't pushing it hard or needs the heater / AC on blast. And if he does push it, or need the heat / AC, then the little motor kicks on and starts charging it all up. I think he said he was on the same tiny tank of gas for like four months, lol... He does plug it in every night, although just using one of the tiny 120v / 15A plugs which are standard in the US.

Yea its a real shame they didn't continue it. The volt itself was just to small. Could barely fit into it at 6'4. The trax isn't much bigger but the way your sitting is changed. It's hard to explain but its more like a regular chair where as the volt is more like sitting up in bed.. so i just fit better in those types of chair styles .

 

[Albuquerque]

The AER of that Mitsubishi is only 24 miles.

I think some Kia PHEVs are just over 30.

RAV4 Prime is 40 miles AER.

But I guess these manufacturers don't make giant SUVs.

PHEVs do not need a lot of "range", in the same way standard hybrids don't need big batteries either. The crux: ICE powertrains are least efficient when accelerating from a stop; all-electric powertrains are most efficient when accelerating from a stop because maximum torque of an electric motor occurs at zero RPM. As an aside, this low-speed efficiency of electric motors is why diesel-electric trains are THE most efficienct way of moving epic tonnage across land. As such, using an electric motor to get an ICE car moving can make an incredible difference in overall efficiency where it matters the most.

 

[Sxotty]

The AER of that Mitsubishi is only 24 miles.

I'm pretty sure it is 38, I encourage you to double check. The older model was less.

All things considered, and with about 200 seconds of Google searching to catch myself up a bit, the Outlander PHEV looks like a solid capture of the PHEV SUV crossover 7-seater niche. It seems to get acceptable or better reviews from everyone, it is reported to get excellent fuel mileage, and depending on who you ask the general Mitsubishi reliability seems to have gone up in the past handful of years. Combined with a very affordable sub-$40k MSRP, that might be a pretty solid buy for someone in your place.

Man, but that thing fell out of the UGLY tree and hit every UGLY branch on the way down. Just IMHO of course...

Yeah it is perfect for someone who lives in mild climate and wants to take it on long trips. I think silent Buddha described a lifestyle that would fit him perfectly. It is ugly to me as well. It didn't even have nice paint options. All super boring, but the deal breaker is that I already have a car for long trips. We take a super crew f150 which seats 6 and carries lots of junk for us.

If you are in the US you can get a Pacifica PHEV.

It is more expensive than outlander and had same issue for cold weather in town. If it was our only vehicle maybe. I actually was cross shopping the Pacifica and f150 when I got the truck. It was less than 30k for truck with 14k miles on it. A phev Pacifica was much more expensive.

 

[orangpelupa]

me want BEV, me have no 60k USD for Ioniq 5,
me ask toyota about Prius prime phev, TOYOTA says no plan
me back to borrow mom's ICE car

because my dad blew up my (and mom's) savings to build a house -___-

hopefully the battery factories will be in full production this year, so more and more brands would be able to manufacture cars here, thus pressuring BEV to be lower priced.

PHEV would be ideal for me due to i mostly only drive less than 20 km a month. and only go long trips, hundreds of KMs (with no charging infra) a few times a year. but toyota being toyota, probably they would drag their feet forever

 

[Albuquerque]

Man, that new Prius looks badass to me. Are they not shipping it to your end of the world?

 

[orangpelupa]

Man, that new Prius looks badass to me. Are they not shipping it to your end of the world?

due to our very high import tax (IIRC, 100%), only "high class" vehicles gets imported here like KIA EV6, Tesla (various models), porsche (various models), etc.

While most cars need to be manufactured locally in indonesia. to avoid the very high import tax.
currently, toyota still hasnt imported prius, and hasnt announced any plan to manufacture and sell prius here.

although, its maybe because toyota is till waiting for battery plants (LG, CATL, britishvolt) to be fully running in indonesia. just pure speculation

 

[wco81]

Man, that new Prius looks badass to me. Are they not shipping it to your end of the world?

Some people don't like the new design because it's not as roomy as the previous model.

Apparently the old Prius offered more space than you'd think it would have.

 

[Albuquerque]

Some people don't like the new design because it's not as roomy as the previous model.

Apparently the old Prius offered more space than you'd think it would have.

There were several Prius models, I think it depends on which one you compare with? Either way, it looks like a pretty solid offering IMO. And honestly, I'm over listening to Americans cry into their sugary caffeinated drinks about how cars aren't big enough.

I personally believe the US needs to STFU about "needing" big fat cars; this whole era of bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger is patently insane even before EVs showed up. The modern ICE pickup trucks are getting to the point where the factory hood line can be higher than most adult women and weighing two and three tons even before being saddled with batteries and electric motors. And for what? A single adult to drive 50 miles round trip daily direction to their cubicle? Oh but we need that "truck bed" four times a year when all your bros go out camping or something. Cuz, you know, a hatchback couldn't hold that 96 gallon YETI cooler full of beer and hot dogs.

/Soapbox

 

[wco81]

Well EVs probably give new life to those gigantic trucks.

In 2008 when oil went over $100 and there were predictions of $200 oil in the not too distant future, sales of SUVs and big trucks plummeted. In fact the Hummer brand was discontinued then.

Now, big EV trucks don't require $200 at the gas pump and Hummer is back as an EV, though a very big and heavy EV -- probably waste of batteries since they could have built 3 mid or compact EV SUVs with all the battery capacity in a Hummer EV.

 

[orangpelupa]

Holy Molly.

Turns out in my region 15 dollars can get gas for 1-2 weeks. But for BEV, it can be for 1-2 months.

 

[tuna]

Well EVs probably give new life to those gigantic trucks.

They are really good for killing pedestrians as well. You might not even notice when you hit them!

 

[Sxotty]

I find my truck very useful. I had to buy new tires after my last big trip in a smaller crossover. I had 4 bikes on hitch rack and a box on top and it made it sit so low in suspension it ruined the tires. You need air bags for that. I put stiffer springs on half way through the trip. The truck handles it easily. I drive it fifty percent of the time with a load. Otherwise I drive a smaller lighter vehicle. I agree that commuting in trucks is silly but they really are handy.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

https://www.eetimes.com/how-much-power-do-autonomous-vehicles-use-a-lot/

February 27, 2023

A 12-page paper from a team at MIT and published in IEEE Micro looked at the energy consumption required to support the processing power of autonomous vehicles
...
I suspect that for designers of autonomous vehicles, their greater immediate concern is the heat load that the processing system adds to the vehicle. In addition, drawing nearly 1 kW continuously from the vehicle batteries reduces all-important range.

There are other aspects of these vehicles that I haven’t seen mentioned much when reading the usually optimistic stories in the general media describing how they will reduce accidents, save lives and so on (and remember, the pundits said these vehicles would be on sale to the public by 2020). The first is how much the full Level 5 capability would add to the cost of the car. I’m guessing (sorry) that it is likely between $5k and $20k, but those are just guesses.

In addition, the cost of ownership will likely be much higher with more complex regular “tune-ups” (imaging-system alignments, for example), and certainly insurance and repair costs will be higher (maybe fewer accidents but much higher per-incident repair costs). These facts are conveniently overlooked by promoters of these vehicles, who assume that almost everyone will run out to buy one as soon as they are on the market or need to replace their current vehicles. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Despite my issues with the study and its model, I think the issue the authors raise is an important one. The authors conclude that there would have to be a sharp drop in processing-system power consumption by the vehicle “smarts” to reduce aggregate power use significantly and give some suggested numbers. Better, less processing-intensive algorithms will also help, they added.

 

[Deleted member 2197]

Ford’s self-repossessing car patent is a nightmare of the connected-car future

Ask yourself: who is this for?

www.theverge.com

 

[wco81]

The EU and UK are peeved about the Inflation Reduction Act and it appears their main problem with it are the EV subsidies.

It would force car manufacturers in those countries to build up battery manufacturing and component sourcing in the US, though I thought that the content requirements allowed countries with which US had trade treaties to meet those requirements

Maybe NAFTA countries are okay, so if Canada or Mexico wanted to go heavily into battery manufacturing, they could do so.


They're also not too happy with the Chips act and the Buy America push from the Biden administration. The dirty little secret is that Biden has kept a lot of the tariffs Trump first imposed on the EU and China.

 

[AlphaWolf]

The EU and UK are peeved about the Inflation Reduction Act and it appears their main problem with it are the EV subsidies.

It would force car manufacturers in those countries to build up battery manufacturing and component sourcing in the US, though I thought that the content requirements allowed countries with which US had trade treaties to meet those requirements

Maybe NAFTA countries are okay, so if Canada or Mexico wanted to go heavily into battery manufacturing, they could do so.


They're also not too happy with the Chips act and the Buy America push from the Biden administration. The dirty little secret is that Biden has kept a lot of the tariffs Trump first imposed on the EU and China.

Ya the inflation reduction act cannot apply to manufacturing in Canada and Mexico as that would be a violation of the trade agreement. Of course the US often doesn't give a shit and applies illegal tariffs that get battled out in court.

 

[orangpelupa]

No wonder the BEV supply chain investment in Indonesia is slowing down.

Biden's "made in America" move does work

 

[wco81]

No wonder the BEV supply chain investment in Indonesia is slowing down.

Biden's "made in America" move does work

Does Indonesia have a lot of lithium or cobalt?

Seems like China has kind of secured big supply chains for those, as well as processing.

 

[AlphaWolf]

There's about 5kg of lithium in a tesla and about 60kg of copper.

 

[wco81]

WaPo has a big article about the chaos behind the scenes at Tesla in their FSD development.

First, engineers resisted removal of radar and Musk overruled them. There wasn't some engineering support for the decision.

Second, the development approach is chaotic and scattershot.

To deliver on his promise, Musk assembled a star team of engineers willing to work long hours and problem solve deep into the night. Musk would test the latest software on his own car, then he and other executives would compile “fix-it” requests for their engineers.


Those patchwork fixes gave the illusion of relentless progress but masked the lack of a coherent development strategy, former employees said. While competitors such as Alphabet-owned Waymo adopted strict testing protocols that limited where self-driving software could operate, Tesla eventually pushed Full Self-Driving out to 360,000 owners — who paid up to $15,000 to be eligible for the features — and let them activate it at their own discretion.


Tesla’s philosophy is simple: The more data (in this case driving) the artificial intelligence guiding the car is exposed to, the faster it learns. But that crude model also means there is a lighter safety net. Tesla has chosen to effectively allow the software to learn on its own, developing sensibilities akin to a brain via technology dubbed “neural nets” with fewer rules, the former employees said. While this has the potential to speed the process, it boils down to essentially a trial and error method of training.


Rivals at Waymo and Apple take a different approach to autonomy, by setting rules and addressing any breaches if those constraints are violated, according to Silicon Valley insiders with knowledge of company practices, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Companies developing self-driving also typically use sophisticated lidar and radar systems which help the software map out their surroundings in detail.

How Elon Musk knocked Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ off course — The Washington Post

Before he took over Twitter he wanted to make Tesla cars drive themselves.

apple.news

Third, removal of radar led to real world results.

A rise in vehicle crashes


After Tesla announced it was removing radar in May 2021, the problems were almost immediately noticeable, the former employees said. That period coincided with the expansion of the Full Self-Driving testing program from thousands to tens of thousands of drivers. Suddenly, cars were allegedly stopping for imaginary hazards, misinterpreting street signs, and failing to detect obstacles such as emergency vehicles, according to complaints filed with regulators.


Some of the people who spoke with The Post attributed Tesla’s sudden uptick in “phantom braking” reports — where the cars aggressively slow down from high speeds — to the lack of radar. The Post analyzed data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to show incidences surged last year, prompting a federal regulatory investigation.


The data showed reports of “phantom braking” rose to 107 complaints over three months, compared to only 34 in the preceding 22 months. After The Post highlighted the problem in a news report, NHTSA received about 250 complaints of the issue in a two-week period. The agency opened an investigation after, it said, it received 354 complaints of the problem spanning a period of nine months.

Tesla was also sensitive to online reactions and adjusted FSD software to respond to criticism.

Tesla’s method has at times proven problematic. Around two years ago, a popular YouTuber captured footage of the software struggling to navigate San Francisco’s famously winding Lombard Street in a video that garnered tens of thousands of views. So Tesla engineers built invisible barriers into the software — akin to bumpers in a bowling alley — to help the cars stay on the road, Bernal said. Subsequent YouTube videos showed them operating smoothly.

So not real improvements, just a hardcoded workaround for a specific location.