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Electric Vehicles here to stay, for good or bad?

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  • rmantoo

    Cranky old fart: Pull my finger
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    I'm in the oilfield, so I have a built-in aversion to electric vehicles.

    That said, I actually encouraged my wife to wait and get an Audi etron when she bought her latest vehicle, late last year. No dice.

    I think for around town, unless someone is maybe a delivery driver, an electric car or suv makes great sense. I cannot comprehend why every mail carrier, uber and lyft driver don't already drive priuses (priusi?). In Vancouver it seemed like 99% of taxis do.

    For me, I can't see an electric vehicle working for me for a LONG time. I drive too far in a day, and most of that drive isn't near interstates or decent infrastructure... to say nothing of the fact that I think the first oil field guy who shows up on site in a Tesla or eTron is going to be beat to death behind the pits.
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    HKShooter65

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    Ye gads.
    After my administrative conference tonight......

    Good friend traded her 4 year old pristine Tesla S for a brand new one.
    It's a week old.
    She insisted I drive it, though, after 3 chardonnay glasses I declined.
    After her 3-4 chardonnay glasses she drift/slid it around a couple corners with me in the passenger seat and scared the pee outa' me.

    She has the base NON-performance entry level version.
    Takes an eternal 3.7 seconds to go 0-60.
    That is freaking frightening fearsome fast and I cannot imagine "needing" more power.

    For you traditional piston-heads the Ford Mustang GT cannot do 0-60 in 4 seconds on its very best day with all its noise, tire squealing and mechanical hubris! Sorry.

    The electric constant push of energy to one's backside cannot be described in words. No shifting gears. No piston cacophony. No hesitation.
    Just an incessant unending rush of power.

    The 2.4 second 0-60 acceleration of the performance Model S is something I have yet to experience.


    To re-state it:
    God bless Michael Faraday's math.

    Magnetic fields rule!
    Quarter million year old permian basin petroleum is doomed to enter the realm of antiquity.
     
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    rmantoo

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    Do they come in right-hand drive?

    Yes- although I don't know if they're available in the USA with RHD...

    Regardless, there are still more than a few of our local mail carriers who do the whole 'sit in the pax seat and steer from there' thing in left had drive cars... Adding 2nd set of gas/brake to right hand side should be the same as in almost any automatic, and from there, all they do is steer like they do now...
    It just seems like the most logical car for mail delivery, to me, in terms of long term costs- it's jarringly surprising to me that the majority of our local mail carriers drive civilian (not the white traditional mail ones) left hand drive Jeeps...
     

    Brains

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    .. scared the pee outa' me.
    Hope you offered to clean it up at least :)

    She has the base NON-performance entry level version.
    Takes an eternal 3.7 seconds to go 0-60.
    That is freaking frightening fearsome fast and I cannot imagine "needing" more power.
    True, for most people that is seen as excessive. For some people, that's perceived as "adequate".

    For you traditional piston-heads the Ford Mustang GT cannot do 0-60 in 4 seconds on its very best day with all its noise, tire squealing and mechanical hubris! Sorry.

    The 2.4 second 0-60 acceleration of the performance Model S is something I have yet to experience.
    You touched on the actual limitation there. It isn't power, it's the ability to make use of that power. I used to daily drive a well built 1998 Pontiac Firebird Formula. It had a power "surplus" for the street, meaning I simply couldn't use it. Stab the throttle in a low gear at any speed under about 70mph, and all you got was tire smoke. But on ET Streets, the 0-60 time (calculated from 60 and 330 foot times) was in the range of 1.9 to 2.1 seconds. A Jeep TrackHawk will do 0-60 in 3.5 seconds all day long, and it's hauling around 5400 lbs (plus driver). Hennessey's runs like 2.7 seconds. Not bad for a brick.

    In my slow, stock '16 Camaro SS, I raced a Model S P90d one morning from a stoplight (on a private abandoned road in Mexico). What happened? He beat me to 60 alright, and he was about a car length ahead. What happened next? I caught and passed him. The torque curve of an electric motor starts at it's max and slopes downward in direct relation to its speed. Tesla did a very good job gearing the car to be very responsive in the most usable range of the motors' performance, but the physics still apply.
     

    avvidclif

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    No transmission in an EV, just direct drive with electric motors.

    I doubt it hurt the car...the Tundra that towed the Space Shuttle was bone-stock and none the worse for wear.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

    IIRC in the pictures I saw of that "towing" stunt the tow rope went UP to the shuttle. In my study of physics that would lift the rear of the vehicle. The harder it pulled to the point there was no traction.
     

    benenglish

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    It just seems like the most logical car for mail delivery, to me, in terms of long term costs
    Yeah, but it has all the stuff in the middle that makes it impossible to drive from the passenger seat so I think it's a no-go for mail carriers. Then again, I could be wrong; I'm not an expert on Prius interiors.

    I had to look it up because I just assumed that Subaru was still selling right-hand drive vehicles for the mail carrier market. A quick check and it appears they aren't.

    I don't know what the most logical car for mail delivery is. A little research shows a huge variety of solutions out there: old cars with bench seats, sliding seats on tracks, old/surplus right-hand drive vehicles, right-hand drive conversions, partial right-hand drive conversions (just the pedals), etc.

    I didn't see anyone using any sort of EV or hybrid for mail delivery, though.
     

    Brains

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    Are they popular in Japan? If so it "should" be reasonably straight forward to source the RHDs, if the safety equipment doesn't change by location.
     

    benenglish

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    Are they popular in Japan? If so it "should" be reasonably straight forward to source the RHDs, if the safety equipment doesn't change by location.
    I found some mail carriers who were either using or considering RHD cars imported from Japan. Once they're 25 years old, it becomes much easier to bring them in.
     

    rmantoo

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    Maybe because they have to buy their own vehicles?

    Oh, they absolutely do. I just come at this from my own little pov, which is that they don't pay much -something less than $15/hr, up to maybe close to $20 if they have somehow managed to hang on for over 20 or more years, and all expenses come out of their own pocket... those jeeps, even if they're free, would quickly cost a fair bit in gas, and long term, I simply cannot believe they are cheap to maintain...

    Supposedly, mail carriers in some places, like la, dc, and nyc, make up to $60k, but none I've met in texas, so far at least, make anywhere near that.

    The center console shouldn't be a major factor: Our mail carrier spent about $600 to have her gas and brake pedals cloned on the right side, they're the same type of hydraulic extension that driver's ed cars use, and the gas is simply a cable spliced onto her throttle body (or whatever it's called at the top of the intake on a fuel injected car) and she pretty much doesn't use turn signals... her hazards stay on whenever she's actually delivering.
     

    ZX9RCAM

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    I wonder if there is some way to disable the passenger side controls.
    It could make for an interesting ride depending on who was riding along.

    :green:
     

    pronstar

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    IIRC in the pictures I saw of that "towing" stunt the tow rope went UP to the shuttle. In my study of physics that would lift the rear of the vehicle. The harder it pulled to the point there was no traction.

    Straight pull, no tongue weight.

    e18184c2b56c7a55fd198ff193ad53f2.jpg



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    ZX9RCAM

    Over the Rainbow bridge...
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    The Tundra ad stunt was from 2012...not sure I understand the question but does that answer it?



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    We had been discussing the Tesla pulling the airliner.
    Your pic shows a Tundra, and obviously not an airliner.
    I was asking if the setups were similar between the two.
     

    pronstar

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    We had been discussing the Tesla pulling the airliner.
    Your pic shows a Tundra, and obviously not an airliner.
    I was asking if the setups were similar between the two.

    Gotcha.
    Google shows this for the Tesla stunt...looks like they modded a regular hookup

    c4d01713d434d370499a0ee5bdde3656.jpg


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    WT_Foxtrot

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    Actually the Model 3 I drove yesterday with the long range battery has a factory 8 year or 120,000 mile warranty on the battery.

    It may be that cars become like phones.
    Use-up and toss.
    An 8 year warranty suggest that it'll last longer than that for most users.
    Know anybody still using their iPhone 3 from 9 years ago? Likely not.

    Good grief, I hope not! Comparing to a phone? Really? One thing for a $300 phone. Another thing entirely for a $60K vehicle. However I'm one to buy right....sometimes used, sometimes new.....and drive for a decade and still have some value keeping whatever inevitable cost/depreciation to an absolute minimum.

    I'll stick with internal combustion for the foreseeable future.
     
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