Downcast about EVs
Discussion
clockworks said:
As somebody posted earlier, it's the price premium over a similar IC car that's stopping me now.
I've only bought 2 new cars since a change of career meant giving up the company car. The two new cars were both small and quite cheap to buy. Everything else has been at least 2 years old, bought for not much more than half the original retail price.
I'm looking to replace a Skoda Superb 280 with something reasonably big, and not too slow. It just doesn't get much use. There are quite a few EVs on the market now that would be suitable for me. The range and performance issues are pretty much sorted now. The cost of buying new is just too high, around £10k more than the equivalent petrol or diesel version, and most of the older models just don't appeal.
I guess things might be different in 2 or 3 years, when more EVs are available to buy secondhand. How will prices hold up on the secondhand market? My feeling is demand will outstrip supply for quite a few years, so anything electric and remotely interesting won't depreciate as much as a similar IC car.
I just don't get the massive premium. It's like you have to pay for the batteries and other electrical gubbins, as well as the engine and gearbox that you don't get. I get that a battery pack costs £6 or £7k, and the motor/electronics add another grand or two. There's the £10k premium. The manufacturer must have saved around half that by not building the IC drivetrain though, and that cost saving isn't reflected in the retail price.
Even at a £5k premium, it would be 50,000 miles before the reduced running costs of an EV made financial sense. That's 10 years for me.
I suspect that is simply how most of us view it. I could swap the wife's runabout for a mid sized EV but it's only ten years old with 30k on the clock and plenty of life left in it. An EV would be an infinitely better product for what it is used for. But the numbers don't yet add up. A few more years wear and tear and a few more years of the electric Mini being on sale and it'll almost certainly start to add up. I've only bought 2 new cars since a change of career meant giving up the company car. The two new cars were both small and quite cheap to buy. Everything else has been at least 2 years old, bought for not much more than half the original retail price.
I'm looking to replace a Skoda Superb 280 with something reasonably big, and not too slow. It just doesn't get much use. There are quite a few EVs on the market now that would be suitable for me. The range and performance issues are pretty much sorted now. The cost of buying new is just too high, around £10k more than the equivalent petrol or diesel version, and most of the older models just don't appeal.
I guess things might be different in 2 or 3 years, when more EVs are available to buy secondhand. How will prices hold up on the secondhand market? My feeling is demand will outstrip supply for quite a few years, so anything electric and remotely interesting won't depreciate as much as a similar IC car.
I just don't get the massive premium. It's like you have to pay for the batteries and other electrical gubbins, as well as the engine and gearbox that you don't get. I get that a battery pack costs £6 or £7k, and the motor/electronics add another grand or two. There's the £10k premium. The manufacturer must have saved around half that by not building the IC drivetrain though, and that cost saving isn't reflected in the retail price.
Even at a £5k premium, it would be 50,000 miles before the reduced running costs of an EV made financial sense. That's 10 years for me.
My generic car is the one that gets used when I'm tired or being lazy. EV would be perfect for that. The car sits around a lot and either gets used for local journeys or big runs. It's only three years old so normally it would have at least another ten years to go. However, as the most common big run is into the centre of London I suspect that my normal time horizon will be shortened and I will look to swap it for a big hybrid as that won't impinge in any long distance usage yet mean all the local stuff is clean, cheap and easy. The hybrid Land Rover Defender would be the obvious switch as it'll just do everything without compromise.
And then there are the silly cars. They'll just stay as they are, get sold when I want and new classics bought. I don't see anything happening that will stand in the way of that in my driving lifetime, I probably only have thirty years of driving left, by which time I will have bought a flying drone and be dead at the top of a for tree somewhere.
As for current EVs, few hold any interest for me and I consider most to be a complete piss take of any ecological reasoning but no one or no rules are telling me that I must buy one so I don't care at all. I'm certainly not seeing any sane logic in getting distressed by EVs. I just want the eco twaddle and subsidies to affluent punters to come to an end as promptly as possible, for them to have done the job of pushing a commercially viable market to exist because I genuinely dislike command economics.
DavidJJ said:
trickywoo said:
Prepare to be disappointed. The noise you hear now is road / tyre related which may actually get worse with heavier EVs.
If LGVs go electric it may help a bit but I’ve heard minimal talk of that.
Have an A road outside and not fussed about tyre noise, but fart-can exhausts and remaps that sound like machine guns can fIf LGVs go electric it may help a bit but I’ve heard minimal talk of that.
k right off, so I guess that will reduce in time (unless they become a trim level too...) Obviously that will take long enough to meaningfully happen that I'll be in a home by then and/or deaf anyway 
MikeStroud said:
I expect EV cars will have a new set of issues but there have to be far fewer of them than you get with an ICE.
There will be fewer, but one of them will be a spinning blue circle on your display accompanied by complete inability to move off the line. Can't call the helpdesk because your phone is integrated. Car hasn't got a restart button because no manufacturer would admit that it needs one. Only thing you can do is leave the car, walk 50 m away, wait 5 minutes and then try again with your fingers crossed.Sony can't get my TV to work reliably, so what chance a car?
Crafty_ said:
Lets just hope that people who want to keep a toy/classic won't get victimised post 2030 for killing all the fluffy bunnies. Lets presume for a moment the effect those remaining cars will have on the environment will be negligible I don't think it will stop an agenda to force them off the road should politicians/green groups decide to target them - even if there are bigger fish to fry pollution wise.
Speaking as the owner of several ICE-engined vehicles, none of which I'm planning to part with any time soon, I suspect that whilst the effect we continue to create may be negligible, unfortunately we'll also be an extraordinarily easy target. 100% tax increase on petrol? Simple to implement and only us in the minority will be able to complain. Road tax at £2k? £3k? £5k? Well sir, you could always avoid that and use our helpful grant to buy a new WangChung hatchback.....For:
Instant accelerator response that no ICE can match, esp. on a standing start. I reckon a Leaf will outrun almost any petrol engined car from the traffic light to the other side of the intersection.
Torque throughout the rev range to make a big V8 feel weak
No complicated engine with hundreds of moving parts to break and service
No complicated gearbox, neither manual nor auto, with dozens of moving parts to break and service
No drony boring engine noise
Put the weight where you want it, better handling and balance potential than any ICE. All nice and low and in the middle.
No big engine or gearbox to get in the way of suspension parts - can have better suspension.
More room inside
Easier to design effective crumple zones
Cheap to run, cheap to fuel
Fewer visits to petrol / charging stations (if you're lucky)
No need for modern high bonnets to give pedestrian clearance over hard engine parts.. Potential for much sleeker looking cars (pay attention, Porsche and BMW....)
No noisy diesel taxis clattering away in the street at 6:30am waiting for a neighbour to appear, or at 11:30pm waiting for a drunk guest to appear from a neightbour's house.
No tank full of flammable fuel to cook you in a crash
A motor that is perfectly suited to driving a car. Needs no gearbox to cover for its lack of flexibility, can provide linear braking as well as acceleration, no holes in the torque curve (or tabletop, really), needs no clutch to compensate for when the car is stopped with the engine still turning but the wheels aren't.
Not wasting energy at a standstill
Against:
Heavy
Refuelling takes ages
No exciting multi-cylinder engine screaming in ecstasy
No gearbox to play with
Not a lot of choice on the market, and styling of current models is either unadventurous, wacky, or is a blob like all modern Porsches.
Not cheap
Not best for cross country trips (yet)
Battery pack that when it catches fire, can keep reigniting itself for days.
A fuel source that is not well suited for cars. It's heavy, low energy density, can't be refuelled in 5 minutes, can't be refuelled by the AA when stranded at the roadside.
For me, most of the doom and gloom of future motoring is about congested roads, safety features that take decisions away from the driver (not a bad thing, I agree, just something that makes cars less fun), self driving, automatic speed limit restricting, auto braking.... all of that is coming whether the car has an ICE motor or an electric one. It's not EV's fault.
For the rest, for me the pros outweigh the cons, and while ICE engines are well supported by infrastructure right now, I am old enough to remember, for instance, South Africa in the 1980s, before mobile phones, before satellite navigation, before motorway service stations were a thing, before there was a petrol station on every second block. If you ran out of fuel you could be stranded for hours and have no idea which way to go to find fuel or a phone. Maybe the UK was better back then, but even here I would still think that the car came first, the infrastructure built up over time to support it. It will be the same for EVs, but quicker, no doubt.
If they want to build exciting cars with electric engines, cars that are communicative, balanced, agile, ride beautifully down your favourite b-road letting you glide through the bends and warping time between them, enjoying a dab of oppo, they will do so. If they don't want to do that with electric engines, they're not going to do it much longer with petrol engines either.
If there's a market for a driver's car, whether it's EV or not, someone will build one. If driver's cars are legislated out of existence, ICE engines won't have saved them.
You lose the gearbox.. which we are anyway as nearly everything goes auto, but regardless, while some manuals are nice to use, most aren't particularly involving, and for me, having sampled electric power, they're just a reminder of the inherent weakness of ICE.
You lose the sound, but as others have said, for nearly all cars on the road now, the engine sound isn't interesting anyway. It's just a noise. Happy to go without. For me, the sound is more or less already lost. Long gone are the days when carburettors and long pauses between gear changes would produce a satisfying overrun growl that was half of the pleasure of a good sounding engine anyway. A modern V8 with almost instant auto gearchanges can't compete for complexity or variation of interesting sounds... and I remember watching the cars one year at the Italian Car Day at Brooklands. At one point Mercedes Benz World opened up their circuit to allow the cars to do some parade laps and accelerate away up the straight. A Ferrari.... F430 if I recall, maybe a 360, went howling up the road. It sounded nice, cultured, quite complex with changes to the quality of the sound as it went up the rev range, and then when he was about half way up the Countach behind opened the taps and the Ferrari couldn't be heard. And instead of this carefully engineered mix of sounds from the Ferrari, the Countach just went RAAAARG and drowned the whole lot out. Natural V12 in anger that frankly made the Ferrari sound synthetic and overly processed.
An AMG V8 sounds good on the move, but when my neighbour starts his, it sounds like he's just dumped a wheelbarrow full of scrap metal from his first floor window into a skip. And it's that way by design. Engines never used to have to clatter down the stairs on startup. To me it's like they're a great band and wrote a great song but then got Stock, Aitken and Waterman to produce the album. There's too much intent in modern engine sounds drowning out the natural quality anyway.
So for me, modern engine noise is rarely something to get excited about. It's contrived and synthetic even before they start piping crap through the speakers, and if that's how it is, may as well pipe motion sounds through the speakers of your EV and make it play whatever you want. If you want your Ferrari Energiser Bunny Sport Plus to sound like a Tie Fighter, Concorde or Saturn V rocket, at least it doesn't have to drown out an engine to do so.
Instant accelerator response that no ICE can match, esp. on a standing start. I reckon a Leaf will outrun almost any petrol engined car from the traffic light to the other side of the intersection.
Torque throughout the rev range to make a big V8 feel weak
No complicated engine with hundreds of moving parts to break and service
No complicated gearbox, neither manual nor auto, with dozens of moving parts to break and service
No drony boring engine noise
Put the weight where you want it, better handling and balance potential than any ICE. All nice and low and in the middle.
No big engine or gearbox to get in the way of suspension parts - can have better suspension.
More room inside
Easier to design effective crumple zones
Cheap to run, cheap to fuel
Fewer visits to petrol / charging stations (if you're lucky)
No need for modern high bonnets to give pedestrian clearance over hard engine parts.. Potential for much sleeker looking cars (pay attention, Porsche and BMW....)
No noisy diesel taxis clattering away in the street at 6:30am waiting for a neighbour to appear, or at 11:30pm waiting for a drunk guest to appear from a neightbour's house.
No tank full of flammable fuel to cook you in a crash
A motor that is perfectly suited to driving a car. Needs no gearbox to cover for its lack of flexibility, can provide linear braking as well as acceleration, no holes in the torque curve (or tabletop, really), needs no clutch to compensate for when the car is stopped with the engine still turning but the wheels aren't.
Not wasting energy at a standstill
Against:
Heavy
Refuelling takes ages
No exciting multi-cylinder engine screaming in ecstasy
No gearbox to play with
Not a lot of choice on the market, and styling of current models is either unadventurous, wacky, or is a blob like all modern Porsches.
Not cheap
Not best for cross country trips (yet)
Battery pack that when it catches fire, can keep reigniting itself for days.
A fuel source that is not well suited for cars. It's heavy, low energy density, can't be refuelled in 5 minutes, can't be refuelled by the AA when stranded at the roadside.
For me, most of the doom and gloom of future motoring is about congested roads, safety features that take decisions away from the driver (not a bad thing, I agree, just something that makes cars less fun), self driving, automatic speed limit restricting, auto braking.... all of that is coming whether the car has an ICE motor or an electric one. It's not EV's fault.
For the rest, for me the pros outweigh the cons, and while ICE engines are well supported by infrastructure right now, I am old enough to remember, for instance, South Africa in the 1980s, before mobile phones, before satellite navigation, before motorway service stations were a thing, before there was a petrol station on every second block. If you ran out of fuel you could be stranded for hours and have no idea which way to go to find fuel or a phone. Maybe the UK was better back then, but even here I would still think that the car came first, the infrastructure built up over time to support it. It will be the same for EVs, but quicker, no doubt.
If they want to build exciting cars with electric engines, cars that are communicative, balanced, agile, ride beautifully down your favourite b-road letting you glide through the bends and warping time between them, enjoying a dab of oppo, they will do so. If they don't want to do that with electric engines, they're not going to do it much longer with petrol engines either.
If there's a market for a driver's car, whether it's EV or not, someone will build one. If driver's cars are legislated out of existence, ICE engines won't have saved them.
You lose the gearbox.. which we are anyway as nearly everything goes auto, but regardless, while some manuals are nice to use, most aren't particularly involving, and for me, having sampled electric power, they're just a reminder of the inherent weakness of ICE.
You lose the sound, but as others have said, for nearly all cars on the road now, the engine sound isn't interesting anyway. It's just a noise. Happy to go without. For me, the sound is more or less already lost. Long gone are the days when carburettors and long pauses between gear changes would produce a satisfying overrun growl that was half of the pleasure of a good sounding engine anyway. A modern V8 with almost instant auto gearchanges can't compete for complexity or variation of interesting sounds... and I remember watching the cars one year at the Italian Car Day at Brooklands. At one point Mercedes Benz World opened up their circuit to allow the cars to do some parade laps and accelerate away up the straight. A Ferrari.... F430 if I recall, maybe a 360, went howling up the road. It sounded nice, cultured, quite complex with changes to the quality of the sound as it went up the rev range, and then when he was about half way up the Countach behind opened the taps and the Ferrari couldn't be heard. And instead of this carefully engineered mix of sounds from the Ferrari, the Countach just went RAAAARG and drowned the whole lot out. Natural V12 in anger that frankly made the Ferrari sound synthetic and overly processed.
An AMG V8 sounds good on the move, but when my neighbour starts his, it sounds like he's just dumped a wheelbarrow full of scrap metal from his first floor window into a skip. And it's that way by design. Engines never used to have to clatter down the stairs on startup. To me it's like they're a great band and wrote a great song but then got Stock, Aitken and Waterman to produce the album. There's too much intent in modern engine sounds drowning out the natural quality anyway.
So for me, modern engine noise is rarely something to get excited about. It's contrived and synthetic even before they start piping crap through the speakers, and if that's how it is, may as well pipe motion sounds through the speakers of your EV and make it play whatever you want. If you want your Ferrari Energiser Bunny Sport Plus to sound like a Tie Fighter, Concorde or Saturn V rocket, at least it doesn't have to drown out an engine to do so.
Crafty_ said:
EVs are only an extension of what we have now in terms of mediocrity. The times of cars having an interesting trait or design are (mostly) behind us, cars share a lot of tech nowadays and have narrow design briefs, so they all look the same and offer more or less the same things. I agree though it feels like EV will make everything more anonymous and bland.
For people who purely use a car to get A -> B, an EV makes no difference to them, they can get to work or the shops etc just fine, so why not.
Lets just hope that people who want to keep a toy/classic won't get victimised post 2030 for killing all the fluffy bunnies. Lets presume for a moment the effect those remaining cars will have on the environment will be negligible I don't think it will stop an agenda to force them off the road should politicians/green groups decide to target them - even if there are bigger fish to fry pollution wise.
In the wider picture I think as time progresses younger people will be geniunely baffled by the concept of a car enthusiast in the latter half of the 20th century/early 21st century.
Gradually "performance" models will just become trim levels, because people won't be prepared to pay premiums for an EV with an extra n kW output.
Boggo EVs are going to be more than capable of "making progress", especially off the line due to the instant torque as we've all already seen - so what can a performance model provide ?
How long will manufacturers dump big money in to motorsports if we all end up just buying cars as white goods (or more accurately, leasing).
As much as EVs will be (are?) a tech revolution they'll be a cultural one too.
The way I see it at the moment is I'll end up in an EV but it won't interest me in the slightest and I'll just end up buying whatever does the job rather than having any interest or affection for the thing, just like the washing machine really.
pretty well agree with most of that.For people who purely use a car to get A -> B, an EV makes no difference to them, they can get to work or the shops etc just fine, so why not.
Lets just hope that people who want to keep a toy/classic won't get victimised post 2030 for killing all the fluffy bunnies. Lets presume for a moment the effect those remaining cars will have on the environment will be negligible I don't think it will stop an agenda to force them off the road should politicians/green groups decide to target them - even if there are bigger fish to fry pollution wise.
In the wider picture I think as time progresses younger people will be geniunely baffled by the concept of a car enthusiast in the latter half of the 20th century/early 21st century.
Gradually "performance" models will just become trim levels, because people won't be prepared to pay premiums for an EV with an extra n kW output.
Boggo EVs are going to be more than capable of "making progress", especially off the line due to the instant torque as we've all already seen - so what can a performance model provide ?
How long will manufacturers dump big money in to motorsports if we all end up just buying cars as white goods (or more accurately, leasing).
As much as EVs will be (are?) a tech revolution they'll be a cultural one too.
The way I see it at the moment is I'll end up in an EV but it won't interest me in the slightest and I'll just end up buying whatever does the job rather than having any interest or affection for the thing, just like the washing machine really.
Edited by Crafty_ on Saturday 27th February 22:39
Skyedriver said:
Crafty_ said:
EVs are only an extension of what we have now in terms of mediocrity. The times of cars having an interesting trait or design are (mostly) behind us, cars share a lot of tech nowadays and have narrow design briefs, so they all look the same and offer more or less the same things. I agree though it feels like EV will make everything more anonymous and bland.
For people who purely use a car to get A -> B, an EV makes no difference to them, they can get to work or the shops etc just fine, so why not.
Lets just hope that people who want to keep a toy/classic won't get victimised post 2030 for killing all the fluffy bunnies. Lets presume for a moment the effect those remaining cars will have on the environment will be negligible I don't think it will stop an agenda to force them off the road should politicians/green groups decide to target them - even if there are bigger fish to fry pollution wise.
In the wider picture I think as time progresses younger people will be geniunely baffled by the concept of a car enthusiast in the latter half of the 20th century/early 21st century.
Gradually "performance" models will just become trim levels, because people won't be prepared to pay premiums for an EV with an extra n kW output.
Boggo EVs are going to be more than capable of "making progress", especially off the line due to the instant torque as we've all already seen - so what can a performance model provide ?
How long will manufacturers dump big money in to motorsports if we all end up just buying cars as white goods (or more accurately, leasing).
As much as EVs will be (are?) a tech revolution they'll be a cultural one too.
The way I see it at the moment is I'll end up in an EV but it won't interest me in the slightest and I'll just end up buying whatever does the job rather than having any interest or affection for the thing, just like the washing machine really.
pretty well agree with most of that.For people who purely use a car to get A -> B, an EV makes no difference to them, they can get to work or the shops etc just fine, so why not.
Lets just hope that people who want to keep a toy/classic won't get victimised post 2030 for killing all the fluffy bunnies. Lets presume for a moment the effect those remaining cars will have on the environment will be negligible I don't think it will stop an agenda to force them off the road should politicians/green groups decide to target them - even if there are bigger fish to fry pollution wise.
In the wider picture I think as time progresses younger people will be geniunely baffled by the concept of a car enthusiast in the latter half of the 20th century/early 21st century.
Gradually "performance" models will just become trim levels, because people won't be prepared to pay premiums for an EV with an extra n kW output.
Boggo EVs are going to be more than capable of "making progress", especially off the line due to the instant torque as we've all already seen - so what can a performance model provide ?
How long will manufacturers dump big money in to motorsports if we all end up just buying cars as white goods (or more accurately, leasing).
As much as EVs will be (are?) a tech revolution they'll be a cultural one too.
The way I see it at the moment is I'll end up in an EV but it won't interest me in the slightest and I'll just end up buying whatever does the job rather than having any interest or affection for the thing, just like the washing machine really.
Edited by Crafty_ on Saturday 27th February 22:39
The savings over an ICE alternative are getting squirreled away so I can pickup an utterly impractical ICE driven, weekend toy at some point and have the best of both worlds with the minimum of compromise.
I do struggle with the comments about people being unwilling to pay for additional performance. You are still talking about different motor setups (dual, tri, quad) , different suspension, different brakes, torque vectoring, RWD steer etc. so not just different kW outputs?
I went to the Australian Taycan launch this weekend and felt pretty meh.
It's a nice car, sure, but didn't give me any 'fizz'.
I didn't drive it as I had my young son with me, but the price is bonkers too.
A mate swapped his RS3 for a Model X. He loves it, but it makes no sense to me.
I think I will be an ICE guy for as long as it's viable.
It's a nice car, sure, but didn't give me any 'fizz'.
I didn't drive it as I had my young son with me, but the price is bonkers too.
A mate swapped his RS3 for a Model X. He loves it, but it makes no sense to me.
I think I will be an ICE guy for as long as it's viable.
I was a sad about this for a couple of years. Not so much about EVs, as I find the pioneering nature of EVs right now quite interesting, but about the fact that my life's passion (for nice-sounding petrol cars) had, it turned out, been contributing to potentially catastrophic climate change (along, it must be said, with many other human activities). No one likes to be told or realise that the thing they liked is bad for them or others.
The way I have come to terms with it is to get an EV for local duties (a Zoe, cost £7k) and start considering myself as a classic car enthusiast. I always liked classics anyway, so that's no great hardship, and truth be told most cars after about 2005 suck anyway (when EU pedestrian impact regulations came in and basically ruined front-engined car design).
I'm currently still deciding what modern classic to put in the garage, which is a fun exercise in itself, but as long as enough people make the change to EV quickly enough, then there should be room for classic car enthusiasts and their hobby to survive. Embrace EV, I say, and you can then enjoy your "classic" relatively guilt free.
The way I have come to terms with it is to get an EV for local duties (a Zoe, cost £7k) and start considering myself as a classic car enthusiast. I always liked classics anyway, so that's no great hardship, and truth be told most cars after about 2005 suck anyway (when EU pedestrian impact regulations came in and basically ruined front-engined car design).
I'm currently still deciding what modern classic to put in the garage, which is a fun exercise in itself, but as long as enough people make the change to EV quickly enough, then there should be room for classic car enthusiasts and their hobby to survive. Embrace EV, I say, and you can then enjoy your "classic" relatively guilt free.
romeodelta said:
I went to the Australian Taycan launch this weekend and felt pretty meh.
It's a nice car, sure, but didn't give me any 'fizz'.
I didn't drive it as I had my young son with me, but the price is bonkers too.
A mate swapped his RS3 for a Model X. He loves it, but it makes no sense to me.
I think I will be an ICE guy for as long as it's viable.
So did you just look at it or at least get a passenger ride?It's a nice car, sure, but didn't give me any 'fizz'.
I didn't drive it as I had my young son with me, but the price is bonkers too.
A mate swapped his RS3 for a Model X. He loves it, but it makes no sense to me.
I think I will be an ICE guy for as long as it's viable.
Not sure about Aus $ but in the UK the Taycan is actually cheaper than a comparable Panamera.
Taycan 4S - £83,580
Panamera 4S - £92,440
kambites said:
Crafty_ said:
EVs are only an extension of what we have now in terms of mediocrity.
99% of modern internal combustion engines are so utterly bland and uninspiring that I can only see an electric drive-train as a step forwards for mainstream cars. The way people go on, you'd think every internal combustion engine was a rip snorting V8, or even a howling 6. They're not. Most internal combustion engines are bland, soulless, forgettable appliances. You certainly wouldn't miss what noise they do produce, or at least I wouldn't.
I am actually quite positive on the evolution to EV's.
We have an i3 and its just one example of how things could in the future. I am not digging on the Leaf here, but it was designed as a mass market entry to the EV market and was never going to set the world alight. Until manufacturing costs come down, its still going to be a premium product for a lot of buyers. However, it did show the way. But, that was 10+ years ago and the market has evolved. Now we see a plethora of different types and design goals, so its going to be interesting to see where we end up.
However, what is more interesting to me is the vehicle dynamics thing. Its an area what has dramatically developed in the last 10 years and is almost modular these days. VW does a great job of this with common platforms all capable of addressing different markets with very different feeling driving dynamics. The Q5 and Macan share the same basic underlying chassis, but feel totally different. With EV's the opportunity to tune the driving dynamics becomes even more flexible. Want a rear drive biased mode on your 4WD EV? Yep, can do that. Want to have an ESP system that allows complete customizability on slip angles? Yep, can do that (I know its on the McLaren's today, but imagine that coming to your mid-sized hatch!).
We are seeing innovation with the Rivian truck around vehicle dynamics and EVs - tank mode, special off road modes etc. Its an interesting world. I can only imagine the vehicle dynamics teams are coming up with crazy ideas and seeing what might / could work. I just hope that they understand that turning out cheap and effective EV's is ok, but buying, ownership and driving cars is still an emotional experience and we need that going forward. An EV might not hum like a V8, but that cheap and chearful EV hatch can still be fun to drive and have character. From someone who grew up with Renault 5's, original Minis and others - its these that got a whole generation into cars. Lets bring back the fun factor, including handling and driving - and its not always about ultimate speed!
We have an i3 and its just one example of how things could in the future. I am not digging on the Leaf here, but it was designed as a mass market entry to the EV market and was never going to set the world alight. Until manufacturing costs come down, its still going to be a premium product for a lot of buyers. However, it did show the way. But, that was 10+ years ago and the market has evolved. Now we see a plethora of different types and design goals, so its going to be interesting to see where we end up.
However, what is more interesting to me is the vehicle dynamics thing. Its an area what has dramatically developed in the last 10 years and is almost modular these days. VW does a great job of this with common platforms all capable of addressing different markets with very different feeling driving dynamics. The Q5 and Macan share the same basic underlying chassis, but feel totally different. With EV's the opportunity to tune the driving dynamics becomes even more flexible. Want a rear drive biased mode on your 4WD EV? Yep, can do that. Want to have an ESP system that allows complete customizability on slip angles? Yep, can do that (I know its on the McLaren's today, but imagine that coming to your mid-sized hatch!).
We are seeing innovation with the Rivian truck around vehicle dynamics and EVs - tank mode, special off road modes etc. Its an interesting world. I can only imagine the vehicle dynamics teams are coming up with crazy ideas and seeing what might / could work. I just hope that they understand that turning out cheap and effective EV's is ok, but buying, ownership and driving cars is still an emotional experience and we need that going forward. An EV might not hum like a V8, but that cheap and chearful EV hatch can still be fun to drive and have character. From someone who grew up with Renault 5's, original Minis and others - its these that got a whole generation into cars. Lets bring back the fun factor, including handling and driving - and its not always about ultimate speed!
jjwilde said:
Krikkit said:
tommy1973s said:
I'm excited about battery powered self flying personal planes alright. The excitement of being airborne, despite having no flying skills, would compensate.
Not gonna happen in your lifetime, don't get too excited.Drones require computers to function, computers work in binary, either 1 or 0, yes or no, black or white. Flying is very rarely black or white, rather the infinite shades of grey in between. I would most certainly never set foot in a pilot-less aeroplane.
Lil'RedGTO said:
I was a sad about this for a couple of years. Not so much about EVs, as I find the pioneering nature of EVs right now quite interesting, but about the fact that my life's passion (for nice-sounding petrol cars) had, it turned out, been contributing to potentially catastrophic climate change (along, it must be said, with many other human activities). No one likes to be told or realise that the thing they liked is bad for them or others.
The way I have come to terms with it is to get an EV for local duties (a Zoe, cost £7k) and start considering myself as a classic car enthusiast. I always liked classics anyway, so that's no great hardship, and truth be told most cars after about 2005 suck anyway (when EU pedestrian impact regulations came in and basically ruined front-engined car design).
I'm currently still deciding what modern classic to put in the garage, which is a fun exercise in itself, but as long as enough people make the change to EV quickly enough, then there should be room for classic car enthusiasts and their hobby to survive. Embrace EV, I say, and you can then enjoy your "classic" relatively guilt free.
What I did, as posted earlier. One Nissan Leaf. One 2006 (ULEZ compliant, just) Maserati Gransport LE. The way I have come to terms with it is to get an EV for local duties (a Zoe, cost £7k) and start considering myself as a classic car enthusiast. I always liked classics anyway, so that's no great hardship, and truth be told most cars after about 2005 suck anyway (when EU pedestrian impact regulations came in and basically ruined front-engined car design).
I'm currently still deciding what modern classic to put in the garage, which is a fun exercise in itself, but as long as enough people make the change to EV quickly enough, then there should be room for classic car enthusiasts and their hobby to survive. Embrace EV, I say, and you can then enjoy your "classic" relatively guilt free.
cerb4.5lee said:
I noticed this as well when I dropped my car off for a MOT last year and I went for a walk along a busy main road. I didn't hear anyone's engine or exhaust noise and it was just the tyre noise. Electric cars will be worse in that regard because they are much heavier than their ICE equivalents too.
4 cylinder diesels are silent all of a sudden? i'd consider getting your hearing tested. 
Tyre noise has more to do with tread design than vehicle weight, and as most EV's come on very efficient tyres that in many cases are fitted with acoustic sound deadening to prevent cabin intrusion due to the lack of ICE noise I doubt that will be the case.
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