Reading this morning’s thread I got caught up in the memories of pickups (vehicles, not attempts). In between thinking about the alternate history of the decline of the United States that can be read in the emergence of “luxury” light trucks and the pseuds who buy up to and more than six figures of rolling signifiers, I began to wonder about what the next few years will bring as we mover nearer to electric-vehicle transition.
From that same thread, inspired by Quinerly’s travels (and search for a new chariot), I returned to one of my favorite fantasies–how to do what many here enjoy: traveling in a house on wheels around all the extraordinary landscape this country has to offer. One of my oldest friends is a pretty hard core RV-er, pulling a humongous fifth wheel rig behind his truck; that’s not for me. When I procrastinate, I go to the classifieds for class B motorhomes: vans turned into microhomes for two.
Purely as vehicle porn, it’s fun to look at the Mercedes Benz-Winnebago confections and similar rolling palaces that run upwards of $180K. Back in the real world, we make good use of our Golden Pass to the NPS, (in non pandemic years) but our habit is to rent a car at our port-of-entry and let someone else change the sheets before we arrive at the motel. But I’d be really curious about how y’all would configure your on-the-road vehicle for less than the cost of a house to make it easy to enjoy weeks to months of peripatetic existence.
Back to the more systemic changes to come: I’m thinking that electric cars as mass-market vehicles are much closer than many anticipate. That guess (worth what you paid for it) turns on the fact that much of the technology for electric cars and light trucks has come along much faster than it might have seemed a few years ago–especially in battery development, but not only there–and on the recognition that the politics of electrification will shift dramatically at noon on Jan. 20th.
This is personal. My family’s next car will be an EV. Our main ride right now is a last-general plug-in Toyota Prius, which is a nod in that direction. But with only 10 miles of electric range (8 in winter), and an electric-hybrid algorithm that doesn’t prioritize all electric drive for those first 1o miles, we aren’t getting the results we hoped from a daily driving pattern that is mostly short trips. (Our second car isn’t so virtuous. It’s a 1998 BMW 3 series convertible that is, alas, falling apart. But since I began commuting by bicycle eight years ago, it does less than 3,000 miles a year even in non-pandemic seasons. One could reasonably see the Prius as a form of penance*…)
Our slightly electric car is running fine (it’s a 2013, and should roll on for a while), so the matter isn’t urgent. But I’m starting to look, and I’m trying to guess what the landscape for new, and especially used EVs is going to look like over the next year, or three, or five. Thoughts?
And re van-life. That really is a fantasy.
Finally: one of the interesting things about EVs right now is that just about every one besides Teslas depreciate really fast. So some quite recent vehicles are available cheap. Jonathan Gitlin, the cars editor over at Ars Technica has repeatedly said on Twitter and elsewhere that the biggest bargain in electric cars right now is the BMW i3–which sells for $50K new (definitely not worth it) but can be had in the mid teens in good shape (low miles and all that) if you’re willing to buy used. The key is a use case that truly doesn’t need the long range (~250 miles and up) that the most recent vehicles offer. That would actually work for my family and I wonder if the pandemic will expand that use case (more work at home, less high-mileage commutes) as another boost to the shift from gas to electrons.
Anyway–here’s an thread that’s open, especially for anything and everything gear-headed.
*The Prius is a perfect penitential vehicle for anyone who’s had too much fun driving serious iron. It’s a fine appliance. It does everything it says it will without fuss. It ambles 0-60, but it gets there, and will cruise the highway just fine. It’s easy on gas, and reliable as hell. And it is more boring than my 7th grade French class. Which is fine. And penance.
Image: Jean-Léon Gérôme, Chariot Race 1876.
PaulWartenberg
I got a hybrid SUV for Christmas from my parents. It runs so well, pretty powerful engine, I’m practically gassing up only once a month at the moment. It surprises me we don’t have more hybrid cars out there. I know the price is high, but damn if you flood the market that should help the expense go down, right?
sab
I would love to hear more about black people on trains after the Civil War. White poeple were shocked at the sheer numbers. Folks looking for lost family.
Does anyone have any idea how many lost relatives were found?
burnspbesq
The automotive writers that I read say that the VW ID.4 has a chance to be the first mass-acceptance electric. Which is kinda ironic given the company’s recent history. A mid-size SUV with a 300-mile range will hit a fair number of folks in their sweet spots, but until there are chargers everywhere that there are now gas pumps … the fate of the electric car rests in the hands of 7-11, Circle K et al.
AM in NC
2 years ago I said good-bye to the 12 year old minivan and got a Honda Accord hybrid. I really wanted an EV, but needed more range, and I looked at the Chevy plug-in hybrid, since most of my daily driving would be all electric, but I just liked the Accord so much better as a car, so I went with that. I’ve been happy with it, and I get more than twice the gas mileage I did with he minivan. Just before the new year, husband traded in his internal combustion car for a plug in hybrid from BMW and he loves it. We anticipate having these vehicles for a good long while, unless a fully EV with longer range comes on the market at not the price of a small house. Technology is changing so quickly, looks like the electric future is finally arriving!
Brachiator
@sab:
Don’t know about black people riding trains as part of a search. But here is a story about ads placed in newspapers.
Delk
Just what I needed.
MomSense
Do jump ropes count as gear? I’m looking for a good exercise jump rope that won’t get tangled and won’t annoy my wrists.
Brachiator
How does the “average cost of repair ” for electric vehicles compare to other vehicles?
NotMax
re: vans
It’s a start. Ford unveils E-Transit electric cargo van with 126 miles of range and $45,000 price tag
dmsilev
Home charging for people who (a) rent or (b) live in condos etc. is also an issue, since much of the convenience and value in EVs is the ‘charge it up overnight’ proposition. I live in a condo building, and we went through some contortions a year or two ago when someone wanted to put in a charger for their EV (a Tesla 3, if memory serves) in the garage. We got it done (power from the communal panel, owner installed a meter on the circuit and gets a regular bill from the HOA for power used), but things like,e this do need to be thought about.
I toured a new condo building last year that had wiring for chargers preinstalled (a drop from each unit’s panel back down into the garage), but there’s an awful lot of existing housing stock which will need retrofits to make it work.
FlyingToaster
I’m planning on trading in my 14-year-old Sienna Limited on this year’s Hybrid version. Since most of my trips are ~7-9 miles (roundtrip to WarrriorTeen’s school & music school), it would be a VAST improvement. I’m getting about 11mpg, on average. We take at most one long trip a year (down to the Cape or up to Vermont or down to Yale — don’t ask). If it’s further than Milford, CT, we move to a train or a plane.
My requirements are seating for 5 teenagers with music cases filling the back. And pushbutton sliding doors and hatch because they’ll never remember to close them. My parents would have killed for that (fond memories of my dad screaming at us to come back and close the effing VW Microbus doors). The SUV driving parents (pre-pandemnic) noted with envy how quick I drop off WT and the girls from up the hill.
Poe Larity
Have a 200 mile weekend Ag route (~3X/month) and am getting tired of renting. But it’s cheap to rent. Considered a lot of beater cars but rationalizing getting something nicer as it being the last car I will own. Thinking RAV4 and it can tow about 1500#, which is enough. Honda Ridgeline would do the trick but too big and not the best of mileage. Everything else 1/2 ton is crap or expensive and uncomfortable.
We had a beater Hilux on the land, but bad mpg, awful to drive on highway and it had a viking funeral in the August fires.
Ann Marie
My older (77) sister surprised me last week when she told me she is buying a Tesla. She’s serious — having a charger installed and everything. I’m a bit envious, but then I don’t even drive, much less own a car.
trollhattan
California seems inundated with EVs–relatively speaking–but I suspect they comprise maybe a percent of the actual fleet. Now that affordable ones like the Chevy Bolt have ranges approaching 300 miles that fact, paired with fast-increasing number of charging locations, will spur their acceptance. And in a decade when folks find out their EV isn’t “worn out” in the traditional sense of cars needing drivetrain replacement at the same mileage, the impacts on the market should be instructive.
Post-millennial kids don’t seem too concerned with car ownership, which makes the Gig Car concept promising. Your choices of where to live open up vastly when you don’t require a parking space.
I cycled to work the last decade (now I commute in slippers) and my car choice as a non-commuter is “anything I want.” In my case, also an utterly impractical and entertaining 3-series cabriolet. Yee-haw. The spouse has a Volvo SUV (now-former soccer mom) and we also have a VW camper, slowly decaying in the California sun. Neighbors have a Merc Sprinter-based RV, IDK what brand conversion. It’s very slick and also AWD, helpful in the mountains.
Alternative-energy related, GE is prototyping a GINORMOUS wind turbine designed to put out a staggering 13 MW. IDK from where to link the article but here’s an excerpt:
As alluded to by Tom, I’ve loathed every Prius I’ve driven. I’ll pass on hybrids and get an EV at such time as it makes sense. Will probably get an in-home storage battery before that.
dnfree
We had a 2013 Ford C-Max hybrid for four years. I really liked it and got excellent mileage, about the same in town or highway. But we lived in rural northern Illinois, and we hit a deer in our other car (a 2014 Cadillac ATS) going 70 miles an hour, and we were uninjured and able to drive back to town. I realized that if we had hit that deer in my lightweight C-Max, it would have been an entirely different story. But I did like that car. Apparently it wasn’t very popular.
Another Scott
Bruce McCall’s Zany Afternoons is highly recommended.
I’ve always liked the Bossmobile Gal Friday Execustreak, 1958 – it would be the perfect vehicle for Plague times.
Cheers,
Scott.
S. Cerevisiae
I wonder how well electric vehicles do in cold weather, here in northern Minnesota everyone drives with a set of jumper cables for when the battery dies. I think cold climates will be the last stand of internal combustion engines.
MobiusKlein
Wife & I bought a Kia Niro hybrid in 2019, and it’s been rock solid. 26 miles range will suffice for most local trips, and gets great mileage on gas too. I’d say it has cut our gas consumption by 75%, which counts as a win in my book.
Knowing we can fill it up for long trips means we don’t need two cars – one for road trips, another for local efficiency. Not sure how the 2020/2021 models go
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Lordstown Motors, based on the old GM Lordstown plant, is a EV company focused on producing electric trucks. IIRC, there’s also some EV battery production facility that’s being built in the area to provide batteries to LM. I think GM helped finance it or something.
I think it’s a great thing. If we must have trucks and SUVs take over the entire car market, let’s at least make them more environmentally friendly
Barbara
Love my Tesla, and the installed supercharger network will be a distinguishing feature for a while. I would definitely look at the BMW electric, but would need to consider the charging infrastructure.
sab
@Brachiator: That is beyond So Sad.
My small city,had a smallish but extremely tight knit black community that came up during the Northern Migration. All these people who kept in touch have developed a community. Other people have moved in from bigger but less in touch communities (Cleveland) have started migrating in. Interesting. Hope it works out. Black or white, we are close-knit and wary of strangers.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
They’re in process of finding out.
Xavier
Cost effective RVing? Buy the smallest one that works for you; the bigger you are the more places you can’t go. Buy used. There are lots of lightly used low mileage units out there. There will be maintenance and repairs on a used one, but there is maintenance and repairs on new too. Public campgrounds are generally cheaper than private ones, and usually have more space and are in better locations, though they may have fewer utilities and amenities.
NotMax
I do kind of drool over the Rivian pickup. But at an estimated $80k+ for a base model, not within light years of being a realistic consideration.
As my yearly distance racked up is now between 500 and 600 miles, total, wouldn’t have a clue about what to shop for. Also no place to plug in at home short of running over a hundred feet of extension cord from the cottage.
Another Scott
@NotMax: I’ve been hoping to get an electric car when I replace my 2004 VW TDI wagon, eventually. Yesterday I was looking (online) at various things, to see what’s out there.
And I came across this short review of an e-Golf that made a lot of good points, I think.
tl;dr – (While there are exceptions, of course) one really, really needs to think long and hard about any electric that has less than 200 mile real-world range.
My VW typically gets 650-725 miles per tank. The idea of having to plug something in several times a week would be a big annoyance.
Plus, there’s the sticker shock thing. :-/
But things are indeed advancing nicely, or were until the Plague. I’m looking to see what the Biden/Harris folks put in place to help speed acceptance and advancement.
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@S. Cerevisiae: Good question. Tesla has made improvements over time because so many people in Northern Europe have bought Teslas. The answer is that the energy that is needed to keep the battery warm reduces the range. There are tricks you learn to offset that but it is an issue. Regenerative breaking also won’t work if the battery isn’t warm. Google some combination of Bjorn, Norway and Tesla and meet someone so enthusiastic about his Tesla in Norway they gave him one for free. He has a lot to say on that subject.
sab
@MomSense: Me also come spring. My teeth will probably all fall out.
Jay
@S. Cerevisiae:
the biggest issue EV’s face in cold climates is the need to run an electric heater to heat the interior of the vehicle and defrost the windshields.
it’s a major power suck.
wmd
I bought a Ford C-Max Energi plug in hybrid in 2017. At the time I was commuting 38 miles one way over the Santa Cruz mountains. The drive train allows me to control whether it is electric only (battery level dependent), hybrid, or gas only.
My commute would be about 10 miles electric only, 7 miles gas only as I ascended from about 700 feet to 2400 feet, 4 miles electric for the final ascent – I’d try to have the battery near zero when I hit the summit. Electric for the remaining 17 miles, at which point I’d try to find a charging station to buy my $0.70 worth of electricity. Reverse commute was about the same in reverse, although the steepness on the Santa Clara side was better for regeneration – battery would charge to 36%; on the return trip I’d be lucky to get to 20%.
A quick look at kbb.com shows used vehicles at about 60% of my purchase price. My current use is almost entirely electric – pre covid I’d drive 6 miles to a bus depot and get on a company supplied commute bus; on rare occasions where I need a vehicle during the day I ride a motorcycle.
I expect my next 4 wheeled vehicle will be electric only.
ryk
We bought one of the new Honda Ridgelines when they came out about four years ago. Probably the only vehicle we have ever owned that the wife and I both love. We plan to keep it forever unless they come out with an electric version.
Barbara
@Brachiator: In the early years it’s less, but we have had more repairs after owning the vehicle for 7 years, and the repairs are not cheap.
bluefoot
My 2003 Honda Civic hybrid finally got to the point where it wasn’t worth repairing this past year. 17+ years and I never had a problem. The only issue was that in really cold weather I needed to start it every 48 hrs or so since the starter battery was tiny. Had it mostly in upstate NY and MA. Shopped around for another hybrid (really wanted a plug in hybrid) but I was amazed at how much bigger newer cars are. Not what I want or need, especially parking around here.
My car ownership has run from 60s muscle cars to the hybrid. Hoping my next car is a plug in hybrid or all electric. Another pet peeve I have about newer cars though: so many controls are on a touch screen. It seems highly idiotic not to have knobs and dials in a car – anything that requires you to take your eyes off the road is silly.
trollhattan
@Jay: Running the AC must have similar impacts in summer, plus Li-ion batteries don’t like heat.
One distinction I’ve read about between Tesla and forthcoming German designs is the Germans won’t allow the battery to be fully drained and are also incorporating liquid cooling. Will be interested to see how they do once they’re out in numbers.
Jay
@Another Scott:
EV’s have become popular in Edmonton.
The reason why is because every Mall, Office Building, etc has a 120v/15amp outlet for every parking space, (free), so you can plug in a block heater for your vehicle.
Instead, free EV charging, year round.
Kineslaw
When I was just recently shopping for an apartment the leasing agents said lots of people were enquiring about car chargers, so many people are thinking about making the jump.
I’ve currently got a 2013 SUV, and am hanging on to it until I can get an electric to replace it. Infrastructure is still an issue, as I make a few 200-mile each way trips a year. There is a difference in a fill-up that takes five minutes vs. one that takes 30.
Van Buren
The first I knew who bought a Prius (kid’s DR.) got rear ended by a truck. He was fine, car totaled. The second person I knew who bought a Prius (SIL) suffered the same fate. Undaunted, I bought a Prius. I actually like it very much. And I was a driver for 40 years before my very first accident, which happened when I tboned a car making on left on red right in front of me. Car was actually fixable.
I want an EV with a 400 mile range, which is just a bit more than the distance from my house to my mom’s house.
Poe Larity
@bluefoot:
Will never own a Tesla for this reason alone. Mustang E-Mach is just as ridiculous.
PsiFighter37
I would love to have a car, especially since it would make local trips out of NYC easier with a little kid. But I just cannot justify the cost of parking in NYC, even if I can afford it. Simply not worth it relative to how much I would actually use the car itself vs. renting a car once in a while for a day trip.
DocH
I’m pulling a 23′ Airstream Flying Cloud with a Ford F-150. I spent last winter kicking around S AZ and the California coast until the day, post-border-closing, of the clusterf**k at the airports. I realized at that point things were out of control, called my daughter in New England and sprinted cross country to hunker down – where I remain to this day. I went with a trailer for a couple reasons. First, I’ve been in love with the silver pods since the days of the Apollo Mobile Quarantine Facility. Second, I like being able to set camp and then drive off in the truck to explore, get supplies, etc. I picked the F-150 because the max tow package had everything I needed (heavy duty receiver, electric brake controls, etc) in one swell foop – factory installed. My routine when I was traveling was to boondock on public land for a week to 10 days, then spend a couple days at a state or national park to take on fresh water and use the dump station. It worked nicely! If I’m still alive and assuming society hasn’t collapsed, my plan is to head back out fall 2021, start the ‘real’ trip at Chaco Canyon and head into Mexico – the organizing theme will be the Mimbres people’s macaw journey(s) south.
NotMax
Asked this once before and no response. Curious how these prices compare to those on the mainland.
JDM
I’m a long time RVer and want to remind people that, while RVs can be terrific vehicles for travel (esp. in the west) the largest portion of the cost of ownership is generally ignored. That’s depreciation. Our RV, which I’m in right now, cost us $35,000 in 2012. There’s been repairs and maintenance since, but in value it’s dropped to between $20,000-25,000 (that higher number would require a dumb buyer and me being a cheat). And that’s for a vehicle where the vast majority of the depreciation had already occurred (our coach when new was $157,000, and it was 12 years old when we bought it. Even getting a good deal initially on a new rig (i.e., better than most people negotiate) you’re talking about $10,000 a year depreciation. And that’s not a super expensive RV. Our neighbor made the mistake of buying his dream coach, putting all his money in it, and now he’s unloading it – he’ll lose between $150,000 and 200,000 plus of his initial $500 grand.
It can be worth it, but keep that in mind.
JoJo las Orejas
Esto va a ser divertido. Mi mamá me lo leerá todo después de que termine sus coles.
Ten Bears
That’s funny; last night I actually broached the subject of trading the Smart car and my old pickup in on a Volkswagon Class A as a family vehicle. Not necessarily even the pickup, it ain’t worth much ‘cept to me and gets driven about once a month – if I get rid of it I’ll need it. The Smart car isn’t worth all that much either, it’s a gas job (gets great milage, ~40) but rides rougher than the pickup and for as little driving as we do isn’t really an issue. The VW my spouse can get in and out of as readily as the Smart car – she hasn’t been able to get in the pickup for over a year, and it’s doubtful she could get into one of the sprinter style (Mercedes) vans or even a full blown Class C.
And we could go places without flying.
There is that $100,000 thing tho …
MagdaInBlack
@Poe Larity: I really dislike that “feature.” We make people stay off their cell phones, then put what is basically a tablet in the middle of the dash. I’m convinced it causes accidents
Eta: my current dream hit the road vehicle is a Subaru Crosstrek.
Dan B
We’ve leased Nissan Leafs for 6 years. There is essentially no maintenance. We charge off the basic household current. Hybrids seem nuts to us. You get the grease, oil, and maintenance with very little EV.
There are variables in range of older EV’s but not much, except Teslas. We’ve changed our expectations for how far we want to travel. Fortunately there are plenty of charging locations and lots of varied terrain within our 2019 Leaf’s range. My Mike guy says there are good EV websites.
Victor Matheson
I have a gray 2009 Prius with 220,000 miles on it. Other than tires, I can count on one hand the number of times I have needed a repair on it. Boring but beautiful. Couldn’t ask more from a car along the affordability/reliability spectrum. And I get lots of mileage telling my students that as an economist I am required by state mandate to own a gray Prius.
The main battery is now telling me it will fail soon (and was actually telling me that last March when I stopped driving) and I will replace it in the next few months with the all-electric Hyundai Kona or Kia Niro.
Cowgirl in the Sandi
In our EV history, we started with a plug-in Prius which was fine for us at the time (except that it drove like a go cart). The charge was great for around town errands and we had gas for longer trips. Also, could plug it into the wall – no need for chargers.
Then we wanted to go back on the road and got a Tesla X and an Airstream Bambi. Good times but eventually, the focus of the trips became charging stations rather than serendipity which was no fun. However, if you’re going on the road in whatever configuration, take MUCH LESS than what you think you’ll need. We were on the road for 2 years with an Airstream 28′ and a Ford 150 that was a great experience – but we had WAY more stuff than we needed.
PS Quinerly – check out Bisti Badlands – absolutely AWESOME and when we were there – only 7 other people!
.
RaflW
@NotMax: One can hope that a longer range variant comes down the pike (or maybe the RV conversion folks can sort out a battery upgrade?). The Transit seems like it’d make a decent Class B RV.
raven
Well shit, I walk away and a truck thread pops!
62 GMC Shortbed, 304d V-6. It was a Standard Oil fleet truck.
Jay
@NotMax:
in BC, it’s $0.08 per KWH, (Canadian),
$0.063 USD
JoyceH
Hey, I LOVE my Prius! And I think it’s very elegant looking. It’s a black 2009. I bought it used a couple years ago, and it drives beautifully and has gobs of leg room in the back and cargo space in the trunk. But I’m probably going to sell it, because last year I inherited my sister’s 2019 Ecosport – and now that I have the backup camera and the heated seats, I find that I want these amenities! I’ve always felt kind of guilty about the Prius because I don’t really drive enough to justify it. I’m retired, and even before the pandemic and the inherited other car, I’d mainly drive to the grocery store and the Y, both less than a 10 mile round trip, and dog class once a week. So when things get back to something approaching normal, and we’re interacting with people again, I’ll probably be looking for someone with a long commute who would appreciate that 50mpg.
JaneE
The EVs Lucid is touting look interesting, even if the price is horrifying. The “reasonable” ones at under 100K will not be the first out. Still, 400-500 mile range in two or 4 wheel drive looks very much like what I would like to see in a car. I did get spoiled by going 500 or more miles in my Prius without gassing up, but that was about 90% just cruising down the highway.
NotMax
@MagdaInBlack
Yes, yes, yes. Really, do I need to see displayed what the temperature and humidity is inside? I happen to come factory equipped with something called “skin” which tells me if it is too hot or too cold.
Tom Levenson
Just to check back in: a plug-in hybrid with adequate room for my wife’s work (production design and installation art) and a ~45-50 mile electric range would satisfy all our needs. As a first/only car in an all EV version, I’d like something that offers around 300 miles of range (so that we get 220-250 in winter)–though, really, the 250 mile range of a whole bunch of models would probably be fine. As a second car; we’ve starting spending a fair amount of time in a small town about 40 miles from our Boston home, so a real world, winter range of 100 to 110 miles (there and back if we had to dash) would actually cover almost all of our driving, leaving our venerable and admired-not-loved Prius as the work hauler and take the kid to college vehicle.
Given that I viscerally loathe buying new cars, given both the experience and the dislike of paying the depreciation surcharge of the first couple-three years of ownership, that’s the most likely route for us. If I hit the lottery I might buy a new one, and maybe even a Tesla (though I dislike the ergonomic choices of the new models, and really dislike Elongated Muskrat).
raven
Sort of my 1st truck, M35A1 Multifuel,
Here’s an “action shot” as the engineers clear a mine in the road. I didn’t know this picture existed until I went to my unit reunion a couple of years back. I have no shirt and my hand behind my back,![]()
Robert
7th grade French at Willard? Was that Mlle. R**** ?
I have a Prius now, but before that I had a series of exciting cars, including a BMW M5. That was a wonderful car when it didn’t need expensive parts. But I’m married now so I no longer have to deal with display behavior. The Prius is completely drama-free and, since I’ve been working at home and the kids have been attending school remotely since March, I think we’re on our fourth tank of gas since then. Maybe third.
raven
We also have a KIA Niro hybrid with both a gas and electric motor. It’s nearly 2.5 years old and only has 16,000 miles.
Tom Levenson
@Robert: Yes Willard. But Mlle Prisk.
One of the three French teaching Prisk sisters, who shared a house in the Berkeley Hills and kept ocelots.
Quinerly
@DocH: I think I love you.
Tom Levenson
@raven: plug in or no?
raven
@Tom Levenson: No, they have one but that’s not what we were interested in. Of course we by something that gets 58 mpg and gas prices “tank’!
raven
@Tom Levenson: However, the M35a1 will run on gas, diesel, jp4 and perfume!
surfk9
@DocH: Got the same trailer last March. Tow it with a Tacoma 4X4. I love the rig. The trailer tows like a dream and is a perfect size for my wife and I. Last summer we took a three week trip through Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona then back up to Northern CA. The trailer worked perfect. My next project for the trailer is to upgrade to solar and a Li-ion battery for boondocking.
RaflW
@MagdaInBlack: I would love a Subaru Crosstrek. I’ve been very happy with my Outback, which I can coax about 30mpg out of at highway speeds.
At the time, the 2015 Crosstrek was just a little too gutless and noisy (rented one in CO for 4 or 5 days, and it managed I-70 up to Lake Dillon fine, but with a lot of whining and ‘gear’ hunting of the rubber bands).
I test drove a ’15 Crosstrek hybrid and it was a much better driving experience, but as a mild hybrid, not worth the extra cost and complexity for the small efficiency gain. It was a strange way to add torque!
Alas the newer gen. Crosstrek hybrid was CA-only (more or less) and I couldn’t really learn that much about them in the midwest. Not sure Subaru is importing any hybrids for the ’21 model year? All they can make probably sell better in other markets anyway.
Ronno2018
Cars and roads are terrible for the planet but there is definite joy in zooming over our beautiful country in a modern car (well over the non suburban unplanned sprawl parts of it).
There is plenty of land use changes we can do to make it better for everyone. This is a good twitter follow — https://twitter.com/BrentToderian?s=20
NotMax
@raven
Come the apocalypse, think Sherp.
;)
Tom Levenson
@raven: I’ve known perfumes for which this application is the only reasonable use.
RaflW
My dream car is an Audi e-tron (rode in one as a front seat pax for like 3 miles in Sarasota a year ago). My partner will not brook us spending that kind of money, nor flaunting such bling.
So we’ll probably replace his 20 y.o. Corolla with 168,000 miles on it (all accumulated before March 2020) some time this year with, perhaps, a Corolla hybrid. Which honestly is fine with me, because my lust for fancy is dumb.
The worst car I’ve had in the past 20 years was a Volvo. Best, a Subaru. Lesson: practical is … practical! (In fact I went from Forester to V70 to Outback, so that flirtation with fancy was all the learnin’ I needed). I average 8 or 9 years per car, so I’ve got time on the Subie.
Quinerly
@Cowgirl in the Sandi: Bisti and Chaco have been on my list for 10 trips. Since I’m out there usually in the winter something always stops me. In March I was in Farmington for a week and had Chaco all lined up… Guide friend of the Canyon de Chelly guide. Then Covid was hitting the Reservation and I had to high tail it to Cerrillos to pick up JoJo who had stayed with a friend after I had left Santa Fe and gone to Gallop, Window Rock, and Farmington. Something wasn’t feeling right to me at 4 Corners area around 3/13 so I was focused on grabbing my puppy and just driving. Made it to Tucumcari in the middle of the night exhausted but with a well behaved JoJo.
Chaco and Bisti are a must for me in Sept or Oct. Plan to just go from my Santa Fe base and sleep in the yet settled on vehicle. As my dad would say, “I’m so ready to get on with the getting.”
Tom Levenson
@DocH:
@surfk9: I’m not checked out on trailer driving, and at my advanced age, don’t want to cause my immediate environment to suffer as it would while I learned. I get the value of being able to drop the trailer and use the tow vehicle as a runabout, but for me the Class B van approach just seems right.
My wife has less then no interest in that kind of travel, however, so while I might be able to persuade her into a week’s rental, just to humor me, I think that even post retirement (a few years off) it is unlikely I’ll be vanning about these United States. Vicarious thrills for me (and paying up to stay in the lodges).
JoyceH
BTW, why do car makers sometimes give cars such indescribable colors? When I went to retitle the Ecosport, the lady at the DMV gave me a form to fill out, and there was a block for color. I thought about it long and hard and finally put “orange”. When I turned in the paperwork, she looked at the original title and said, “this says it’s brown”. I said. “Okay, go with that.” Puzzled look. I elaborated – “It could go either way – it’s orangish-brown, or brownish-orange. Hey, the official name of the color is Canyon Ridge!”
patrick II
@S. Cerevisiae:
The two main problems for starting a gasoline engine car is the reduced capacity of lead-acid batteries in freezing weather and the high amperage required for cranking a cold engine with thick motor oil.
Lithium batteries are affected by the cold, but less so and, in all electric cars, they are required to turn over an electric motor, not a thick oiled gasoline engine, do less amperage required. Plus, if you are charging overnight at home, even the small inefficiency due to cold should not be a problem in the morning. Good luck getting home though.
MagdaInBlack
@RaflW: I work for a big collision repair group, so every time a Crosstrek comes in, I check it out., maybe do the test drive ( because women notice diff things than men on a test drive, we’ve learned)
I like them a lot =-)
frosty
@Quinerly: Following up: we’ve got the GoPower 80W, should have bought the 120. I had it wrong this morning.
Quinerly
@frosty: the 80 is probably all I need… Or less? I’m flying blind on this. Just learning. Friend out there who lives off the grid was going to help me with advice once I get focused on it. I don’t see me sleeping on a bed in a truck with a Cattle Dog mix who is like Velcro more than 4 nights at a time. Thanks.
surfk9
@Tom Levenson: I am fortunate in that my wife did a lot of tent camping when she was young. The trailer is a really sweet upgrade for her. I understand the driving issue. Airstreams are known for being easy to tow. You might be surprised. Its usually the backing up part that puts most people off.
Quinerly
I stumbled on this in my research. Thought it was interesting:
https://www.hiatuscampers.com
DocH
@Quinerly: *bats eyes alluringly* Checked the earlier thread – Bisbee is A+. If you are at all interested in bicycles, check the Bisbee Bike Brothel – combo bike shop/museum. And Dead Horse SP /is/ a great place to stay.
CaseyL
Thanks for this thread, Tom!
RVing has become a minor obsession for me. I fantasize about going full-time RVing after retirement, and just going from beautiful spot to beautiful spot. Subscribing to YouTube channels like KeepYourDaydreams and Less Junk, More Journey fuels those fantasies something awful. But I have 2 cats and one shop-intensive hobby. So when I look at RVs that accommodate both cats and hobby, I’m looking at 35-foot-plus toy haulers or rigs with bunkrooms, which would require ginormous trucks to haul. Yikes.
Plus, I have no mechanical aptitude whatsoever. If you’re gonna seriously RV, you absolutely need to know how to install/modify/fix things. All the things! (Renting for a week or so is probably safe; CruiseAmerica has an excellent reputation on the care and maintenance of their RVs.)
I wanted an e-car to be my next car, but then had to replace my 1995 Honda Wagon (which I adored) ahead of schedule, due to its AC needing total replacement to the tune of $2300, which is more than the car was worth. For me, the most serious drawback of an e-car is charging it. I don’t have a charger where I live, nor is my townhouse complex likely to install that kind of infrastructure any time soon – or ever, really. I got a Scion xB, which I also love dearly, but feel vaguely guilty about since it isn’t even a hybrid.
I don’t honestly see the attraction of Teslas. I worked for about a month at an auto body repair shop that is one of three in the state certified to repair Teslas, and the shop was directly across the street from a Tesla mechanical repair shop. So I had a chance to see… things I didn’t really want to know. Like:
How you need a log-in to even enter and start the car. And therefore need to call Tesla or a Tesla shop for a reset if the login fails.
How the driving-assist abilities rely on sensors which are everywhere under the car’s outer skin; how nearly any accident, no matter how small, requires hugely expensive repairs (precisely because of all those sensors) and therefore takes forever to even get scheduled, never mind done.
How Tesla owners, at least the ones who came to our shop, very strongly tend to be wealthy entitled assholes.
Oh, and also? Other than the Roadster, which was first generation and not even made anymore, Teslas to me look…well, not ugly, but very unexciting, visually.
If I go e-car at some point, I’d like it to be from a car company headquartered in the US. Fortunately, US car companies are rolling out some really fine models, which can only improve even more in the next few years.
tybee
@Tom Levenson:
vacationing in a Class C or Class B will make you a very conscientious list maker. :)
fortunately, SWMBO is a world class champion maker of lists. i can’t think of anything we have forgotten after we set up camp.
and boondocking is THE way to go camping.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Better actually, there is far less mechanically to wear, break, go wrong, service regularly. All the electrical stuff is pretty well known from industry, other than the battery stuff and that’s pretty much not as big an issue as many try to make it.
And along the same lines the main difference is what you have to do to charge. You put gas in your car and you have to go to a gas station to do that. Sure we’ve been doing this our entire lives so it seems normal. Hell it is normal. But if, and yes it’s a big if, you can plug your car in overnight, say in your garage, it’s far less of a hassle. Most gas vehicles go 250-350 miles/tank so the reality is that an electric car is not an issue. Now if you travel long distances, it is a minor issue but an issue none the less. Not as much as some are making it. The big thing is that we’ve been doing IC cars for decades and we are used to them and their problems. All of you over 60, how much better are today’s cars than the one’s you drove in HS? Just a bit? Electric cars have all of that history to use to their advantage and they are. The transition will take a long time here because so many demand to live in the past.
@burnspbesq:
The VW ID4 and ID3 are really game changers. Fancy, but not as fancy as say a Tesla and not near as expensive as the average Tesla. They should work well and have reasonable “tank” capacity. They are reasonable sized and work. They are already being mfg in large numbers with major plants building only electric cars. And VW has been building electrics for a while, the E Golf and the iUP. We just don’t see them here in the states. VW is readying production in TN for ID 4 for next year. The number they can build should be more than anyone else, which will bring the cost down. And if they bring the ID 3 here and produce it, that will lower the cost for a really good electric car even more.
trollhattan
@RaflW:
My hiking buddy bought a Crosstrek he’s pretty fond of. Picked it mostly because it’s a stick, which is so very rare these days.
IIRC gets mid-30s MPG on the highway. But of course guys always lie about their mileage so one has to look at the readout to find out the actual.
Fair Economist
Hubby got a Tesla Model 3 this spring and adores it. We are done with gas cars; primarily for the ecological benefit but also because I’m sick of transmission problems. I’m currently driving his old small SUV, and when it needs to be retired I’ll get something electric.
The Model 3 is likely to be the best selling car (not including SUVs) of any type in the US this year, so I’d say the mass market acceptance is already there. I think interest in electric cars is going to explode over the next few years. Lifetime ownership costs are already comparable, and purchase prices will be similar in a few years. Also, because electric cars have vastly better acceleration, gas cars are quickly going to get a dowdy image. By 2025 the norm people will be trying for is one electric and one gas, which means people would want electric cars to be half or more of new purchases. I doubt the industry will be able to supply that, but electric cars are going to be hotshothot this decade.
I do think people will keep 1 gas car per family for a while because electric is not good for long road trips. A full battery plus a fast recharge over lunch can get you 400-500 miles, but more than that per day is a pain. The rational thing to do would be own electric and rent for road trips, but people aren’t rational.
Quinerly
Teardrop porn. Crazy link. There’s a teardrop that’s less than 300 lbs made out of chicken feather composite. Company is in Santa Fe. I hope to visit with one just to check it out.
https://www-menshealth-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.menshealth.com/technology-gear/gmp29614439/best-teardrop-campers/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQHKAFQArABIA%3D%3D#aoh=16093653227989&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From %251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.menshealth.com%2Ftechnology-gear%2Fg29614439%2Fbest-teardrop-campers%2F
SFBayAreaGal
@raven: My first truck was an Okinawa rebuilt deuce-n-half ton truck. I still remember her identification number B-55. I loved driving her around Ft. Lewis and out to Yakima.
West of the Rockies
A house on wheels is nice and all, but if I’m going to have a moving house, I’d prefer it had legs and came with a door with a dial that allowed you to exit into distant landscapes.
Why, yes, I do love Howl’s Moving Castle.
Tom Levenson
@surfk9: My wife also did a ton of camping early on. Two continents in a family of 7 in a VW microbus. She does not feel the need to echo the experience, even in an upgraded version.
Also my touchstone for vehicle-exploration. Could it get into a place like this. That’s near my family’s now 50 y.o. summer cabin, so I go there every year in that most invulnerable of vehicles, a rental car. But there’s no way a trailer makes it the last mile. A van yes. But not a trailer.
brendancalling
I know a couple of people doing van life right now, and they seem to be pretty happy with their choices.
I’m driving a Ford Transit Connect Xl. TBH, I wanted the cargo version, but it only seats two. At the time, I was still a performing musician, and needed an extra bench seat. That said, the family version is just peachy. It’s build on the same van chassis, and the seats fold down to the floor. With one bench up, I can seat a 4-5 person band, and all our equipment fits in the back fine.
The only thing that I’d change is the drivetrain: it should be RWD or AWD. FWD isn’t so good in the snow.
Tom Levenson
@Ruckus: I really hope they do bring the ID3, aka the real electric Golf.
Don’t need the size and bulk of the ID4. The Golf has always been the German answer to the old Saab 900 3-door–a seemingly small vehicle that can swallow more stuff than seems possible. (Think Terry Pratchett’s Luggage.) An electric version of that with more than 90 miles range would be great.
VOR
I have a 2013 Prius-V. Gas in my area was $4 per galloon when I bought it and I thought the price would rise to $6/gallon. So I prioritized MPG. Instead, gas dropped to $2 per gallon.
I agree, the Prius has been utterly reliable with minimal repairs other than standard maintenance like wipers, tires, etc… In Eco mode it is not exciting to drive with stately acceleration. But it does hold speed on the highway very well and is a quiet ride. Power mode actually feels like driving a normal car so that’s what I recommend to anyone who hasn’t driven a Prius.
I’m looking for something new and am torn. My heart says the new electric Volkswagen ID.4 is interesting. But I have a fairly regular 300 mile drive and there are only a couple charging stations on the route. I could do a Toyota RAV-4 hybrid, which gives me decent gas mileage with AWD, more space, and 1500 lb. towing ability. Or I could say screw MPG at $2/gallon and go for something conventional like a Honda CR-V or Subaru Forester, defer electric for another 5 years.
trollhattan
@Tom Levenson:
Random RV observation, at least in the West: the larger the rig, the older and more decrepit-appearing the driver. Not necessarily cause for concern on a rural interstate but absolutely terrifying on, say, a cross-Sierra 2-lane. Quadruply so when they’re towing the Avalon.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
Don’t base all your electric car doubts on Tesla. The car, from a technical point is very good. The company less so. The manufacturing did not get off to a good start, as some of the building designs were dated, but that seems to be getting rectified. The big problem with Tesla is I think, the owner of the company and how he feels he/the company needs to have complete control of the process of actually owning the car. Some of that is the no dealers and that the repair is so closely controlled and that they can shut off your access to their Supercharger sites if they want, along with not selling you parts if you do need them.
Quinerly
@tybee: my friend I mentioned in the previous thread who is on her third van and can’t get settled has the Mercedes now. She’s into this girl traveling group where they meet and hang out at a designated campground and do crafty things. Not my bag at all. She also gets very excited about parking for free overnight at Cracker Barrel. I can’t even…. Never mind. I have some BLM spots on my radar and I’ve never eaten at a Cracker Barrel much less slept in the parking lot.
CaseyL
@Ruckus: I’m not, honest! I’m all for e-cars; I just don’t see the point of the Tesla, specifically.
surfk9
@Tom Levenson: That might be a bridge too far. My rig is 42 ft long front bumper to rear. Probably be tight getting it up there.
Calouste
@S. Cerevisiae: Norway, a country not exactly known for its balmy winters, is IIRC ending sales of ICE cars in 2025. So you’d think cold temperatures aren’t that much of an obstacle for electric vehicles.
Quinerly
@brendancalling: I looked at the Ford Transit about a month ago. They now have a 4WD one but way out of my price range for what I’m willing to spend. There seem to be no used ones. I then switched my search to Toyota Siennas AWD but don’t like the low clearance.
trollhattan
In case it escaped anybody’s attention, Elon is such an eternal adolescent he has built a lineup of models named S 3 X Y
Also, the Roadster looks cool to this day because is it is built on a Lotus shell. I find the S looks good for a monstrous sedan (nice lines and proportions), the 3 is okay (and huge inside) and the X is just weird. Yet to see the Y.
trollhattan
@Quinerly:
Lacking Cracker Barrel there’s always Walmart. :-)
namekarB
Actually, freeway offramp restaurants and hotels are investing heavily into charging stations. The bigger problem is finding fast charging stations vs normal charging (found at hotels)
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: Would that fall under the ” Glamping” definition?
Like you, no ty, camping requires solitude and a campfire. Def not asphalt and street lights.
Kelly
Our 2001 4runner has required only standard mechanical maintenance since we bought it new. However we replaced the back bumper due to rust and the front bumper will need replaced soon. Our mechanic checked structural integrity and we’re good so far. I see the possibility the drive train going strong as the body slowly rusts away. Last time I opened the sunroof it was very, very slow to close. Some ground up plastic in the tracks. But for the plague I’d test drive a Honda Ridgeline.
Our RV notions are small trailers. The Aliner folding trailer is 3500 lbs fully laden 68″ high folded, 126″ open. Easy tow for many vehicles. The tall a frame configuration feels roomy. The other idea is an enclosed cargo trailer I’d convert into a camper. We’ve tent camped forever so any hard sided shelter is a step up in comfort. You can order cargo trailers with windows and a side door. Easy to load whitewater raft gear, kayaks, bicycles and such thru the big rear doors. Due to increased height and weight we’d need a stronger tow rig but the Ridgeline would be fine.
Ruckus
@Tom Levenson:
The two cars are built on the exact same platform so the real diff is in the overhang. I’ve not been able to see any details, like WB or OAL/width but I’d bet that while it’s bigger, the ID 4 isn’t all that much bigger than the ID 3. The ID 3 must be lighter as the max battery capacity is the same as the standard ID 4, while the standard is less, which reduces the cost nicely while only slightly reducing the range. And I agree, for me an ID 3 with the normal range battery would be great.
The big thing to remember is that if you can plug in at night, range is almost never an actual issue. And that can be a 110V plug or the 220, which is a lot better for charging. It’s not a fast charger but it’s also not a big deal as you can charge one overnight with a 220 charger.
People seem to be fighting the concept over range because they can refill a car in 10-15 minutes most anywhere. How many of us travel 100 miles a day regularly? Likely far fewer than will admit it. And of course there are some who travel substantially farther. But why?
Kent
Late to the thread here. But my youngest daughter is about to turn 15 and she informed me that she wants an older car that she can paint up and decorate. We live in the Portland metro where that sort of thing is not uncommon. She is a pretty edgy woke-sort of kid who couldn’t care less about fancy cars. She would rather have one that makes the neighbors in our HOA nervous when she parks it in the driveway.
Personally I’d just like to get her an older used Nissan Leaf that still has enough range left in it for all her local driving around town. But I suspect that isn’t going to be “edgy” enough for her. We saw a 1970s era Mercedes sedan the other day and she said “Oooh Dad, that’s the kind of car that I want.”
I want to at least put her in something with air bags and anti-lock brakes.
Suggestions?
frosty
@Quinerly: We had to hit a Cracker Barrel last year when Ohio shut down all the state parks AND RV parks. Not too bad – we had pecan pancakes for breakfast. OTOH some of the BLM campers we saw near Lake Havasu looked too sketchy for my tastes.
J R in WV
@Brachiator:
I don’t think there’s nearly so much to break on E-vehicles. So even if a given repair is high-dollar, if you only need a repair every few years… so what?
On the other hand, our last VW (and I do mean LAST VW!) had two major repairs at about 30K. Main Drive Shaft Bearing nearly $4K and one wheel ABS sensor and wheel bearing over $2K — traded for a Mazda asap.
DocH
@surfk9: I’m going to do a Li-ion upgrade too. Mine came with a small solar panel on top and I added a second panel (external) to the mix. The nice thing about the external is that you can put the trailer in the shade and the panels in the sun!
CaseyL
@Ruckus: I hardly drive at all during the week even in normal times (Park & Ride, grocery store, maybe a local hike destination). But I do like the occasional Road Trip! to, say, Oregon or Eastern Washington. And summers – again, in normal times – I often drove a hundred miles or more at least once a month to go hike in the mountains.
IOW, the issue isn’t whether people “never” drive long distances. As you say, most people don’t. But once in a while, or seasonally, a lot of us do.
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack: she’s too tight to pay for a spot between point A and point B and too scared to be out somewhere by herself. I’m realizing that I’m sounding like a bitch. With that said, she’s more of an acquaintance than a friend. The van stuff has been going on for a few years. Lots of FB posts redecorating these vans. She was mortified that I slept in my Ford Escape with Poco in Utah on legs of my 2017 trip. Apparently, “we are all getting too old for that kind of thing.” It’s not like I was at a Cracker Barrel… I was in the middle of nowhere 2-3 times and at Capitol Reef NP in a campground. ?
Quinerly
@frosty: ?
Jager
I’ve always been a car guy, I’ve owned 56 cars over the years, my first new car was a 69 Camaro Z28, I’ve owned Porsches, BMWs, Mercedes, a Jag (what a pain in the ass). Here’s what we’re down to in 2021: Jeep Grand Cherokee Overland V8 4×4 with the towing package, we share a 16-foot Airstream with 2 other couples. The Jeep pulls the little Airstream like it doesn’t exist. My wife is on her 2nd Chevy Volt, 40 plus mile electric range with the gas generator as backup. It’s perfect for her commute. I have my 2008 Corvette Z51 (high-performance suspension and brakes with the standard 428 hp engine. The Corvette gets amazing gas mileage, I’m seldom under 20 in town and average 28-30 on the highway. It’s a 6-speed manual, at 70mph the engine is running at 1750 rpm in 6th gear. One night coming back from a weekend with friends in Scottsdale, I was driving 85 on I-10. The highway was flat and there was no wind. The gas mileage readout on the computer was showing 34 mpg. We were passed by a Prius, had to be the only time in history a Corvette was getting way better mileage than a Prius. We were passed by a jacked-up Ford F250, the guy had to be going at least 100, half-hour later we saw red lights everywhere, he had rolled it end over end in the median.
J R in WV
@bluefoot:
THIS! Should be prohibited by federal safety folks, OR the insurance folks. Only thing I hate about the Mazda is touch controls… They Gotta figure out how to use buttons and knobs and twist dials to make everything work.
Super Dave
@trollhattan:
I spent a good part of my career as a field engineer, doing diagnostics on high speed centrifugal machinery (think turbines, generator, pumps, compressors, etc.). I worked on many steam turbine generators, coal fired, gas fired and nuclear. While admitting 13 MW is huge for a wind turbine, a typical steam turbine generator will produce from 50 to 1,350 MW. A decent sized hydro turbine generator is around 150 to 250 MW. It takes a bunch of wind turbines to produce a bunch of electricity. And it takes a bunch of maintenance as well. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for renewable energy. I’m just trying to provide some scale, for those who may not be familiar with power generation.
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: You’ve just described why some of us prefer to travel alone or with a canine companion ;-)
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
How does the “average cost of repair ” for electric vehicles compare to other vehicles?
Makes sense. What about repair costs from an accident?
I don’t have any feel for the degree to which a moderate to significant accident might or might not cause more damage to an electric vehicle.
Or, what is the minimum about of damage to “total” an electric vehicle?
ThresherK
@dnfree: Lightweight and less safe?
Not really knowing them specifically, my search shows curb weight of the ATS and C-Max are listed as basically the same. No snark: Am I searching for them properly, or are there submodels and options affecting the number?
Quinerly
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@J R in WV: I borrowed my sister’s fancy Lexus a few months ago. After a week I still hadn’t figured out the radio, or what I guess is called “the entertainment center”. Too much reliance on the screen
Jager
@Brachiator: A huge problem Tesla has is a shortage of spare body parts, I read about a Tesla S in LA that sat for almost a year waiting for a fender, grill, and hood.
Cowgirl in the Sandi
@Quinerly:
Can’t remember if it’s been mentioned, but Harvest Hosts is a nice alternative – they allow you to camp free in wineries, cheese shops, orchards, etc. They only ask you visit the shop and perhaps buy something.
I'll be Frank
after she had put 125,000 on her 2016 MKZ hybrid, I tried to move the Sig O into the plug-in Volvo S90 while we wait for improved ranges out of electric cars. No, no, no. If all we are doing is buying a short-term car until there is an acceptable electric, then it is loudness and funness now is what matters. She now has a 2017 Maserati Ghibli. Very sexy, very loud, very fun. There’s a pandemic you know.
CaseyL
@Quinerly: Yikes! Good for you, getting out of there. I’d be worried about getting knocked out or worse and then my van stripped : (
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack: I really can’t imagine doing these trips that I do now with anyone. I have become very selfish about them. I dolove people and for the most part prefer meeting locals/fellow travelers and having those usually brief interactions and then moving on. If I wanted to sit around in an organized campground with a bunch of folks socializing, I would just hang out at my neighborhood bar and save the travel money.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
Great. Elon has done a huge thing for the automotive world and the future by building the Tesla, and bringing modern electric cars into the mainstream. He’s also a spoiled brat who seems to believe that we should all bow to his magnificence. I’m not thrilled either.
Remember a hundred, hundred and ten yrs ago electric cars/trucks existed and worked better than IC versions. Lots of cities had, up until the 50s electric busses and trollies for mass transit. The LA Metro system is full electric and runs on tracks long unused from that era. But vehicle batteries were lead acid, which is far heavier than current modern day electric car batteries and much more maintenance intensive. But so were IC cars back then. The big thing was that batteries were very heavy crap and gasoline became an industry.
A side note, Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman rode electric motorcycles from the tip of South America, starting in winter, to LA, in 2019. The support crew drove 2 Rivian prototype pickups. It was a bit of a issue, the electric bikes, because their range was about 150 miles max, less on a less than ideal day. They managed. The show, The Long Way Up was very interesting to me as a long time motorcycle rider and as a person with a massive electric vehicle interest.
As someone who uses 3 phase electric motors every day at work, have done maintenance on 3 phase motor generators and much electronic equipment in the navy decades ago, I see electronics and electrical vehicles as what we will all be driving, not that far in the future. Other parts of the world will be doing it far sooner because they taxed gas far more reasonable than we have in this country. That means that a gallon of gas costs far more, making people far more willing to get rid of gas powered cars. We would be as well if there wasn’t so much money being made by the oil industry. Remember you don’t even have to change the oil every so many miles in an electric car. There is no transmission to wear out and replace.
Quinerly
@CaseyL: I still think about that interaction and am 99% sure they were up to no good. And I think the dog was part of it. They asked me a couple of times during the brief interaction if I had a dog with me in the car. Strange.
Quinerly
@Cowgirl in the Sandi: frosty mentioned it. I also found hipcamp yesterday. Lots of interesting places there. I’m hoping to camp at a winery between Las Cruces and El Paso in December.
Uncle Cosmo
@raven: Interested in hearing more about your experience.
I’ve been considering a Niro hybrid after two Kias (a 2008 Spectra totaled in a spectacular accident 4 years later that everyone walked away from, and a 2012 Forte [same size] coming up on 54K miles). I’d love a plug-in hybrid but I couldn’t charge it at my city row house (unless I parked in the back alley and ran the charging cord 50′ from the house).
As little as I drive (10k/yr max) my best option may be leasing a non-plug-in hybrid (if they even still exist!) & then surveying the field 3 years down the line. Maybe by then the local charging infrastructure will have caught up. Maybe by then I’ll throw in with my brother & we’ll build or buy a house out in the boonies with an in-law apt for me & I can build in a charger. Maybe by then I’ll have moved to Europe…
catclub
bronze? copper?
trollhattan
@Super Dave:
I’m hoping to see ten of them within view of each Trump golf course. Donny will love that!
The local utility is in process upgrading their oldest wind farm. The replacement turbines–22 in all–will generate 92 MW. Can’t find a reference for how many they’re removing, just that there will be fewer, generating more power on completion.
To your point, my current employer has a hydro plant with six turbines combining for 819 MW. Three are pump-generators that return water to the reservoir when power is cheapest. California being California, some years are better than others WRT how much power makes it into the grid.
CaseyL
@Quinerly: “No dog, but I do have a pet spitting cobra. Wanna meet her?”
JoyceH
@catclub: Noooo… Bronze and copper are too bright, this is more muted. I think the name Canyon Ridge is supposed to evoke some butte in the Badlands or something like that.
m.j.
This morning I went to the auto parts store to buy a bulb for my headlight. I walk in and not a single customer except for me is wearing a mask. All the employees are in compliance, but the snowflakes making their purchases can’t be bothered.
JustRuss
Unless you really want to put your mechanic’s kids through college, avoid anything that combines old and European, except maybe a Volkswagen. You really can’t beat the Japanese for long-term reliability. Maybe a Nissan Cube or first-gen Scion xB is funky enough for her?
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Insurance companies surely have a handle on accident costs and hurdles for EVs. What does collision cost on an EV compared to a traditional car? That’s what I’d want to know before plunking down my money.
My MIL in her 70s totaled two Prii and walked away both times. Highway wrecks to boot. They’re tough little buggers but I suspect are more likely to be totaled versus repaired on account of the complexity.
trollhattan
@JustRuss:
My stealership’s shop rate is $210/hour. IDK how that compares, as I tend to drive cars a long time and use indy shops for things I can’t do myself (a list growing exponentially, the newer the car).
Quinerly
@CaseyL: good one.
Tom Levenson
@surfk9: Never happen
?BillinGlendaleCA
@dmsilev: Garage? Sheer luxury. I park on the street.
Rwutt
We have had a 2013 Plug-in Prius since February, and I’m not sure I understand the comment about prooritizing EV mode: we can set ours to EV mode, and it will nor start the engine until it runs out of range, or until you ask for heat, which depends on the engine. On most of our drives – short trips around town – it runs on electric power the whole time, and show over 100 MPG for the trip. In longer trips, it will switch to Hybrid mode, at which point it will get somewhere around 50 MPG average. Net result: average of around 80 MPG for 10 – 11 months of ownership. Yes, like everyone we’re driving less. But even when we get back to normal, and include more longer trips, I expect it to get well over 50 MPG average.
As for being boring: 0-60 time would easily beat my old Porsche 356, BMW 2002, or MGB. (Audi A4 and Miata NB are something of a different story) And it easily keeps up with any traffic, including interstate traffic in the West.
And since 4 to 8 plug-in Prius batteries can be produced for every individual Tesla or similar, there’s a big energy savings there.
trollhattan
@JustRuss:
My kid goes through stints of sending me AutoTrader listings {“hint-hint”}. One of the latest was a Jag XJS convertible V12. Low mileage; nice starter car for a teen.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
Yes we sometimes do drive longish distances. Next Monday I have to drive 90 miles round trip to the VA. But I also had to charge my IC car’s battery because it sits so much about 3-4 weeks ago. I live a mile from work and walk regular. My car is 4 1/2 yrs old and has less than 12,500 miles on it. I’ve serviced it 4 times, even though the service light has only come on once. I get notices that it should be ready for service every 2 or 3 months from the dealer. My insurance company tries to say that my normal driving is 12,000 miles a year and get snippy sometimes when I tell them no, it’s less than 4,000/yr.
The point is that a long trip isn’t a lot different – depending on where you live, you just have to stop for charging at a fast charger and you can eat while you do that. The infrastructure around you is the important issue. IC infrastructure is all around us, it’s had 100 yrs to build up. Electric car infrastructure can be build up easily, the supply is all around us. And doesn’t have to be shipped half way around the world. What do we do when that gets more expensive? Why not make renewables – solar and wind much more normal and actually reduce our pumping/transporting/refining/burning of fossil fuels. The ship I was stationed on used to take on 20,000 gallons every 2-3 days when on station. We could cross the Atlantic and go 10 days without any problem, that’s only what 60,000 gallons. How many gallons of a non-replaceable fuel does your car use every year? My use is about 85-90 gallons a year at about $3.00 per that’s about $250-275.
SiubhanDuinne
@JoyceH:
My vehicle’s official paint colour is “Mocha Steel,” which always sounds to me like the stage name of a stripper in a seedy night club.
trollhattan
@m.j.:
Auto parts and big box hardware are two businesses I have not been in since March. Have zero faith in their clientele.
NotMax
@J R in WV
One vehicle I owned had all sorts of switches (on/off) and dials or sliding knobs (off/low/medium/high) on the instrument consoles.
Thing was that, in no discernible pattern, half operated by manipulating them vertically and half horizontally. Not all that difficult to get used to but the look of the layout was schizophrenic. Front split bench seats electrically adjustable by a single control down by the floor for height, depth and tilt. To raise the seat one needed to press the control down; pulling it up lowered the seat.
Jager
@Ruckus: My neighbor is a retired aerospace engineer, Randy is an old hot rodder, he has a 41 Ford “resto-mod” Modern drivetrain with a Green Chevy crate engine, suspension, etc, etc. We were talking the other day about EVs, Randy said, “in the future kids will be sitting around talking about adding extra winds of wire on the electric motor so they can wring some more performance out of their old car.” BTW his old Ford with the modern powerplant only gets about 12 mpg, heavy, and no aerodynamics at all. But, it’s really nice.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Too perfect. “Gentlemen, start your engines because here comes ‘Mocha Steel’!”
Mine is Black Sapphire, which is another way to say black. And also metallic, which one can or cannot see, depending.
El Cruzado
Waiting to see if VW doesn’t screw up the EV microbus and will be happy to get one as long as it doesn’t approach Model X prices.
My ideal garage would be that and a stick shift roadster as a weekend car. No need for a new one there, not that they are making them anymore (either too small for me or far too expensive).
Tom Levenson
@Quinerly: My cousin bought a Honda Odyssey after looking at the Sienna for cross country travel with 3 cats. She’s been back and forth twice already from MA to WA, and is somewhere west of VA right now on her third trip since October.
She’s got an air mattress and a bucket potty, and she packs all the food/water she consumes on the 5 day trips and it seems to work well for her. She is, of course, crazy. (And a great human.)
Ken
Ah, but can you make the left and right halves of your body different temperatures? I’ve never seen the need for that in cars, but then I grew up when “I’m driving so I choose the temperature and the radio station” was the rule.
Ruckus
@S. Cerevisiae:
One of the reasons range is reduced on an EC vehicle in winter is that the batteries have to be heated to a minimum temp, actually for longer life and range. The Nissan Leaf has been sold for over a decade and does not have battery heat and still works fine. Someone I know of has an original 11 yr old one and has lost about 10 miles of range, total, and lives in the UK, not horrible in winter but it does get coldish.
Emma
@NotMax: those charging rates seem pretty reasonable. Blink is one of the main charger companies in WA and OR, and their Level 2 rate is $0.39/kWh ($0.49/kWh for people who don’t bother making a free account). Fast charging is $0.49 (or $0.59)/kWh. No price-change depending on time of day, so Maui’s rate is a great deal, especially if you plan to charge at lunch on the weekend.
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: Stories like that are why I want something where I can get from the mattress to the steering wheel without leaving the vehicle. That and maybe a few too many slasher movies =-)
trollhattan
@Emma:
I’d want to know if I can charge in Hana before taking that particular drive. Just sayin’.
OTOH brake regeneration must be amazing coming down from Haleakala.
Emma
@Kent: I realize this may not be the wisest thing to say to a teenager, but you can tell her about how much fun it is to drive a Leaf (or any EV). I used to be the one rolling my eyes at assholes who felt the need to gun it when the light turned green, and now I’m one of those assholes :D The acceleration is SO good in the Leaf that “gunning it” at the greenlight is just the normal acceleration.
Hungry Joe
We have ‘15 Leaf and ‘20 Bolt, so we’re all electric, complete with a home charger. Range: Leaf 85-90, Bolt 250-260. Less if A/C is on a lot. Heaters aren’t great, but we’re in San Diego so on even the coldest early mornings (low 40s) the heated seats and heated steering wheel are all we need. No long, long trips yet, but when we do take one we’ll either allow time for searching/charging, or rent one of those old-fashioned gas-users.
The only real inconvenience: Since we never go to a gas station, the windows are usually dirty.
bluefoot
@RaflW: A friend of mine has an Audi e-tron. She loves it. Commutes from SF to Redwood City (or did, pre-pandemic, now she’s WFH and the car hasn’t moved in months except for street cleaning), and is able to plug in both at work and at home.
rikyrah
Tom Levenson
@Rwutt: We have the same car–a 2013 plug in Prius. And even in EV mode, it will decide to run the gas motor at a variety of cues–hitting the accelerator just a little too hard at a green light and so on; it will then take a while to return to EV mode, even if we toggle it on and off.
I’ll check again, but when I last researched it, the answer seemed to be that EV meant, EV if I feel like it…
Quinerly
@Tom Levenson: I like her! The clearance on the Honda and Toyota Sienna give me pause. I’m probably over researching, over thinking. Looked into the aftermarket lift packages for the Sienna. Gets you about 4 more inches. Right now to the dismay of most around me, I’m leaning Tacoma with basic no frills camper shell. I think I’ll get more use out of a truck at home too. I was already to pull the trigger on a used Sienna but I really have nowhere to store those middle seats when I take them out. Plus, some other stuff. Yes, I’m over thinking it all… Thanks!
Ruckus
@Poe Larity:
Many of the new electrics run Apple or Android car play. I wonder if someone will make verbal controls for all of the stuff that one normally needs to touch, heater, wipers, lights, and you won’t need knobs – or touch. Also while Tesla is all touch, many of the others have some controls that are either knob/button or electronic rather than one or the other. Actually I don’t wonder at all, of course they will.
Emma
@trollhattan: Yeah, I don’t know anything about Maui’s geography or infrastructure, just answering the question on rates. And that’s not even considering the free stations that may or may not be around. I did a round-trip of around 350 miles one summer and relied almost exclusively on free chargers.
Tom Levenson
@Emma: When we do move on from our current main ride, the might 2013 Prius Plug-In, it will likely waterfall to our son. It is the perfect first car for a young driver: not powerful at all, holds a ton, and drives in a completely neutral fashion.
Let him do the exciting stuff on his own dime.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Public charger closest to me is 39 cents/KW so about the same. One thing nice about the VW ID 4 is that 3 yrs fast charging at Electrify America comes with the car in the US. How long that will last is anyone’s guess.
Quinerly
@MagdaInBlack: and now you bring up why all my male friends here are anti truck for me. Although they are mostly hung up on my having to get out of the cab with JoJo in the rain to get to the truck bed. Never mind that it never rains where I’m going and if it did I could get wet going to a motel room. No one seems to be on “Team Tacoma.”
VeniceRiley
Looking at these, in 2 or 3 years out to pick up used
https://www.caranddriver.com/mazda/mx-30
NotMax
@Ruckus
Whole new road trip game for the kids in the back seat.
“Alexa, play death metal at maximum volume.”
“Alexa, open all the windows. Alexa, close all the windows. Alexa, open all the windows.”
:)
Stuart Frasier
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The Lordstown Endurance truck design is pretty laughable from a technical standpoint. That whole thing looks like an investment scam like Nikola. Their Pence campaign rally also left me with a very sour taste. I hope they crash and burn.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I got a used chevy bolt coming off lease last September. I commute 60 miles a day and I love, love, love it. Driving my wife’s newish internal combustion auto feels moving from a car to a tractor. EVs are so much smoother. We were generating more electric than we were using from our solar array so that was a motivating factor. Even so, electric is one quarter to one third the cost of gas and no oil changes or $3k exhaust repars. Buying used helped ease into the new technology.
trollhattan
R.I.P. Paul Westphal. Player (USC, Celtics, Suns), coach (Suns, Kings), Hall of Fame, good human being. (Cancer, not COVID if that matters.)
trollhattan
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Having used Gig Car Bolts I’m astonished how quick they are. And yes, very little NVH to use the industry term.
Cowgirl in the Sandi
@Ruckus:
Just a quick comment about Tesla controls. We used to have an X. To open the glove box, you pressed a button and voila – it opened!
Now we have a Y and to open the glove box, you have to go to the little car icon, then choose the glove box and then it opens. ARRRGHHH!! I guess pressing a button was too easy!
frosty
@Quinerly: It depends on what you need electricity for. I have a spreadsheet where I did the calcs. Added up all the things that use 12 VDC power, avg hrs per day, amps per item, and came up with needing 39 AH per day, of which 28 were for the refrigerator and water pump. The 80W panel puts out about 12 AH/day in New Hampshire, 25 in the southwest so my guess is that it would be OK for you.
GoPower has a calculator on their website. You’ll also have to figure out what you’re charging. For me it was the trailer battery, so it was easy.
https://gpelectric.com/rv-solar-sizing-guide/
ETA: going to go back and read the whole thread now.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Supposedly Elon wanted to bring out a Model T but Ford nixed it.
Cheers,
Scott.
MagdaInBlack
@Quinerly: I would love a pu with one of those campers with the bed over the cab, except for that one reason.
4 Runner maybe ?
Eta: I’m sure there are custom kits to put a door to the cab, there are custom kits for everything. if ya wanna pay for it.
Edmund Dantes
This raffle is running again. VW bus in Tesla batteries.
link
Emerald
@trollhattan: Ah! I went to high school with Paul Westphal. I knew he had brain cancer, but hadn’t seen any update in awhile.
Incredible talent. Watching him on the court was like watching ballet.
RIP Paul. He sat behind me in speech class and used to throw paper balls over my head into the wastebasket.
Dan B
@NotMax: WA state is 9 cents per KW hr. A lot of our electricity is hydro so no difference between day and night although Seattle City Light, a municipal facility, is encouraging solar PV to cover population growth.
Emma
@Tom Levenson: XD
After inheriting and driving my family’s 2000 VW Passat station wagon for over a decade, I was happy to make the switch in 2019. A good old reliable tank it was, but the insides were falling apart by that point, and I sure as heck wasn’t gunning it anywhere, so I’m making up for lost time…
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
I think a buddy of mine once married a stripper from a seedy night club named Mocha Steel. Turned out about like one might think, she left his dumb ass.
Scout211
@Quinerly:
I’m very late to this thread but we have had 3 different Toyota Tacomas (first two being a “pickup” since the names Tacoma and Tundra weren’t being used yet). The first one we used for camping, with a canopy and a removable bed liner. We got the long bed and it was long enough to sleep in very comfortably. The second pickup was a 4WD 1992 (gave it to our grandson in 2015) and we didn’t get the long bed. We had a canopy on that one, too, but could only sleep in it with a foam pad and with the tailgate open because it wasn’t quite long enough since it wasn’t a long bed. We used our tent for the most part but slept in the truck bed if it was raining. Our current one is a 4WD 2010, no canopy.
It’s rare to find a Tacoma that is a long bed but the one that had the long bed was the most comfortable for sleeping. Be sure to get a canopy that has windows you can open, with screens. It gets stuffy in the truck bed.
All three Tacomas were very good trucks and the ’92 is still running. Grandson loves it.
frosty
@Xavier: I agree with everything you wrote. We started by buying my in-law’s small Coleman’s popup, moved to a bigger one when we added a kid. Moved to a 15 ft hard-sided trailer when we got tired of walking to the bathroom at night. Too small, moved to a 20-footer, bad layout, now with a 27-foot one that suits us well.
We buy new and eat the depreciation. As for maintenance, every new one has needed work. The people in Indiana who crank these out don’t quite finish them. F’r instance, a plumbing leak in the kitchen sink drain because the fitting wasn’t tightened. Used may need some maintenance but not frustrating crap like this.
We prefer state park campgrounds to anything else. I’m finding that the larger trailer limits the number of sites available. 20-25 feet seems to be the sweet spot for interior space and site availability.
@Xavier:
Kent
Of course it has nothing to do with performance. She has no frame of reference for that anyway. It’s all about looks and style. She is a kid who has a large vinyl record collection of vintage stuff from the 60s and 70s and wants a car to match. Something Bob Dylan or Neal Young would have driven ca. 1969 you know what I mean!
But I think when it comes to the reality of HS car use, the “free” electricity she can get from home will outweigh having to fill up an older gas car at the gas station with her pocket change. And I like the idea of knowing she can’t get too far from home! If she ever has reason to do a road trip, she can swap for my Prius for that day. Her HS is 4.3 miles from our house and there are no conceivable HS errands for shopping, music lessons, jobs, etc. that will cause her to put more than 30-40 miles in per day. More likely 10-20 max. So an older Leaf is basically perfect. The “teen” parking spot is along the side of the house as my wife and I have both garage spots claimed. So it will be a trivial exercise for me to mount a charging station on the side of the house where she will park. The main breaker box is actually right on the other side of the wall from where she will park so I’ll only have to pop in a new breaker and run 3 ft of wire through the wall to the outside where I’ll mount the charging station. We currently pay 8.16 cents per kWh so charging a Leaf or any other electric car will be reasonable. And there are a bazillion charging stations in the greater Portland metro area so she’ll be find if she ever gets stranded.
Ruckus
@Jager:
My boss is a car and boat guy. As was his dad before he passed. Not even going to list the cars, but they both have/had boats with
bighuge Chevy V8s and twin turbos. Boss rebuilt his a couple yrs ago and had it broken in and dynoed – 1000hp. And it sounds like it. If he knew I like and wish I could purchase one of those new ID 4s that VW is bringing in, he’d probably freak out. OK maybe not out loud but still…frosty
Pet peeve of mine, too. A couple of years ago I went shopping for a Mazda 3. I bought the 2014 because it was the last year with knobs for the radio and heater. It’s a great little car, I’ve gotten an honest 40mpg* when I had mostly highway driving. If I can get 200,000 miles on it like my dearly departed 1990 Miata it will be the last car I ever own.
* Overall better mileage than a lot of hybrids.
Ruckus
@Tom Levenson:
All of the good ones seem to be in some way. A bit crazy that is.
Frank McCormick
“I’m thinking that electric cars as mass-market vehicles are much closer than many anticipate. ”
Electric cars seems to be a pretty good example of catastrophe theory — decades of development with a relatively quick practical “solution”.
WaterGirl
@Calouste:
ICE cars?
frosty
This is why we have a trailer, too. If you look around, everyone with a motorhome is towing a vehicle. People with the Class Bs Tom is thinking about have to unhook all the utilities to drive off for the day. I prefer only dealing with one engine, and that one being a vehicle that doesn’t sit for 6 to 9 months a year.
Quinerly
@Scout211: I’m looking at the 6ft bed Tacomas. I can actually sleep in it crossways with a great piece of very thick, heavy foam on a platform. I have the foam from when I used it in 2017 in my Escape. As I said previously this is a multi month road trip with lots of stops and 2 month of it in Santa Fe. I don’t see myself over 4 nights at a time sleeping in it. Thanks for your support of “Team Tacoma.”
Ruckus
@NotMax:
I knew there was a reason I don’t have kids. And only just a bit before my time……
Lapassionara
@Quinerly: the trip sounds wonderful. BTW, we spent a lovely day driving through southern Utah in the 1970’s. There were numerous national parks, several of them nearly deserted. My favorite was Capitol Reef National Park, which I had never hear of. Maybe you can take a few days and head there.
Dopey-o
NO! Just NO! I became to recipient of a 1970s Mercedes White Elephant. Poor mileage, poor performance, underpowered. Expensive to maintain and to repair. $900 for every trip to the shop. Good luck finding parts.
They are massive and heavy, which does not translate into safe in crashes. When they start to rust, everything goes. I am currently trying to find a pair of floor pans and a section of frame to replace the rust under the steering box. I haunt a few Mercedes forums and am amazed at how much trouble so many people sink into these cars.
I have 30 years of experience driving and maintaining ridiculous cars, and do most of my own work. There is no way any rational person should own one of these cars!
Put her in a Honda Civic and give her a $200 gift card at a local arts & crafts store. And sleep soundly thru the night.
Ruckus
@WaterGirl:
Internal Combustion Engine – ICE
Just a new shorter way of saying, which we didn’t need at all until electric started to be built in production and are starting to take off.
Stuart Frasier
@Kent: Have you looked at the Fiat 500e? They can be had for similar money to used Leafs and the batteries have held up a lot better. They are also cute, easy to park, and fun to drive.
raven
@Uncle Cosmo: We like ours. It has great legroom and it drives just like a regular car. The lane change alert works well and I’k get the automatic interval sensor as well.
Quinerly
@Lapassionara: Capitol Reef is a favorite! Actually slept there a couple of nights in my Escape in 2017. Also, stayed in a neat cabin in Torrey. Really love that area. That was my 7500 mile driving trip… 7 weeks. Hit all the NPs in Utah, St. George, Kanab, Page, a bunch of SPs, Grand Canyon, and Bears Ears and Bluff area, Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly for the first time.
Tom Levenson
@VeniceRiley: I’m guessing that within a couple of years there will be at least a half a dozen decent mini-suv EVs. Like you, I’m hoping for some bargains a few years after that.
Kent
I have not really started to shop. She won’t get her license until May 2022 so we have some time yet. She turns 15 on May 1st so we have some time yet.
But for example I see 66 used Nissan Leafs for sale within 50 miles of our zip code in the Portland metro, but only 17 Fiat 500e models and 22 used BMW i3 within the metro area so the Leaf is by far the most popular but there are other options. To my mind the BMW i3 is the coolest looking of the little compact electric cars. But I haven’t really comparison shopped them against the Leaf and they do cost more. But the older used ones can be found for $10-12k if you look.
Hopefully by summer 2022 there will be even more good options and some of the cars available now that are out of the price range might be more reasonable. Until then she gets to learn to drive in dad’s Prius and mom’s Highlander. And maybe, on occasion, big sister’s Kia Soul.
Immanentize
I know I’m late to the thread and have not read it all — but those lusting after a Subaru Crosstrek, which is a very nice and popular car up here in the not-wilds of New England, please know —
A Crosstrek is just a Subaru Impreza 5 door with a different suspension set adding a bit of clearance (3 inches, I think it is). You can get a used Impreza 5 door for so much less than a used Crosstrek and just jack the suspension yourself and voila! That retro fit will save you thousands.
frosty
@Quinerly: We haven’t had interactions like that while camping. But way way back when I was hitchhiking I developed that kind of intuition. Just asking how far the driver was going and getting the answer was enough to gauge whether or not to take the ride.
Emma
By the way, this is a development in the past day where my mouse (not wireless) is disconnecting and reconnecting every minute. The junction where the wires connect to the mouse is exposed, so I assume I have that to blame. Anyway, now that I have an excuse, I’m thinking of giving ergonomic mice a try. I have small hands, so the Jelly Comb wireless one for small hands is my first choice, followed by the Anker one with over 27,000 reviews. Anyone have thoughts about those, or ergonomic mice in general? (I don’t have any pain or discomfort, but I’d like to think that I’m being proactive…?)
zhena gogolia
Still talking about cars?
Martin
So, the thing people don’t intuitively grok is that a 12 mile range plug-in hybrid will probably be in EV mode 90% of the time, provided you don’t have a daily commute longer than 12 miles.
So as part of our household carbon emissions draw down, we went with a cheap used plug-in hybrid which dropped our emissions considerably. We’ll eventually get a full EV, but I’m not yet convinced that EVs have hit their final design form.
Pairing with that we replaced another vehicle with an ebike for me. If I need to haul a lot of stuff, I still have access to the car, but 95% of the time, I’m just hauling me and a few pounds of other stuff. So I have a class 3 (28MPH) ebike, with a 650Wh battery for about 50 miles of range, compared to a 100,000Wh battery in a Tesla (15,000Wh for comparable range). Not having to haul around 4000lbs of steel to move a 200lb human does wonders for your efficiency.
The reason why I don’t think EVs have hit their final design form is that the primary problem with climate change is waste. Conservation is not only the most effective way to address it, but also the cheapest. I bought the Bentley of ebikes and new it cost a bit more than half of the used plug-in hybrid. It has longer battery range. It’s infinitely cheaper to operate – insurance, parking, maintenance all radically cheaper than the car – and while it can’t haul as much as the car, 95% of the time it is hauling as much as the car. I can bring home curbside pickup, I can get a decent haul of groceries – not the week+ costco run for a family of 4, but probably half of that.
So our goal isn’t no car, it’s less car. We still have plenty of range with the hybrid, but it’s electric almost all of the time. We have the bike for me for going to work (whenever the fuck that happens again) and the usual daily errands, and I get some exercise along the way. If it’s absolutely pitching down rain, I still have the option of the car, or Lyft, or the bus, or whatever. Sometimes it’s less convenient, but sometimes its more. It could take me up to 45 minutes to get to or from work, depending on how bad parking and traffic was, but it’s a reliable 25 minutes on the bike which is equal to the fastest the commute ever was.
But Gitlin is right on the i3. It’s the most forward looking EV on the market. Battery durability is going to be a key feature, and Tesla is positioned well (but not uniquely) on that. But Tesla needs to drop weight from their vehicles. The i3 is 1000lbs lighter than a comparable range model 3. Single pedal drive is key to efficiency. BMW really did some good work on the i3.
WaterGirl
@Ruckus: Thanks! Not being a car person, I had no idea.
RSA
@Jager: Nice bit of personal history!
I like cars, and I’ve driven older cars, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes for fun. Cars I miss include a 1965 Impala I drove in college in the 1980s and a two BMWs (a 1994 E36 and a 1998 Z3) I had in the mid-2010s.
One of the things I’m curious about is what will happen with EV cars as they age. ICE cars can be kept running for a long time with incremental maintenance and incremental cost. For an EV car, the battery will eventually wear out after 10 to 20 years, and I’ve seen replacement costs between $5k and $10k.
That cost may go down, but suppose it doesn’t? Right now it’s not unusual to see a car from the 1990s, and of course we still see old Beetles and Mustangs and so forth tootling around. $5k is a relatively big bump to keep an older car in service; they might end up just going away. (From the cars-as-appliances view, there’s nothing wrong with this.)
frosty
@MagdaInBlack: Back in the 70s I had a Datsun pickup (1600 thrashing cc 4-banger) with a cap over the bed. I had a car upholstery shop take out the windows and put a boot between the cab and bed. Problem solved, no getting out in the rain!
wmd
@dnfree: I hit a deer in my C-Max Energi going about 45 mph. Minor damage to the front panel (crack about 9 cm long).
Poe Larity
@Kent: Find an old Prelude or Volvo. Should be plenty of latte drinking Volvo drivers in Portland.
Another Scott
@Dopey-o: Let me guess – a 6.3??
At least it didn’t use curved tappets. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: Have you visited White Sands? A photographer that I follow from that area(actually lives in Silver City, I think General Stuck lived close to there) shoots there and the photos are amazing.
Geminid
With the wind and solar electrical generation reaching cost parity with natural gas, a carbon free electrical grid is just a matter of time and financing. Although there will be supplemental natural gas generation, as is done now in California. Electric passenger and light cargo vehicles will reduce a large part of our transportation carbon footprint by 2035. Long haul trucks and air transport are tougher problems. But there will be a lot of electric school buses coming on the roads the next few years. Besides cutting CO2 emissions, they will give kids a break from diesel exhaust.
Quinerly
@frosty: I don’t think those folks would have even tried to engage if a dog had been with me. I’m a little concerned about JoJo. He is very friendly with strangers. Full body wiggle, tail wags if someone even looks at him.
Stuart Frasier
@Martin: There is no comparable range i3 to the Model 3. The newest 120aH car has an EPA range is 153 miles. It actually uses slightly more more energy per mile than the Model 3, despite the lower weight, due to a less efficient drivetrain and worse aerodynamics. That said, the i3 is a brilliant city car and a bargain if you buy off-lease. Two of my friend have bought them, each for less than $15K, although they are early 60aH cars that only have a range of about 80 miles.
JAFD
@PsiFighter37: There are a couple of Enterprise car rental offices within walking distance of Newark Penn. One can check their website, get quotes for various vehicles on various dates (hint: if you can, reserve a couple of weeks in advance, you can always canec of plans change or bad weather…) (I don’t own car, but rent one every couple of months.)
Lapassionara
@Quinerly: there is some amazing scenery!
Quinerly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: White Sands twice. Last go around was when Trump shut down govt. Messed with my Carlsbad days. BUT I was first in the gate with Poco after WS had been closed for several days and a wind storm. Everything was pristine. No tracks, wind swept. Plows cleaning the roads. It was incredible. I’ll probably hit WS again this year in December. I want JoJo to see it. (in my next life, I want to come back as one of my dogs?)
Quinerly
@Lapassionara: love that drive out of Capitol Reef heading to Hanksville. I think it’s Hanksville. On the way to Goblin Valley SP.
Quinerly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: meant to add that I’m going to make it to Silver City and Gila in Sept or Oct. Been to Deming (weird) but Silver City area is my last unexplored part of New Mexico.
Tim C.
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937: I too am a Chevy Bolt owner and I think it’s quite frankly the bees knees as well. Love the range, love the handling etc.
The big thing to look for is battery degradation. Tesla’s, in addition the cultural appeal, have a thermal management system that keeps the battery from going too extreme and losing much of it’s chargability. The major downfall of the leaf and why it’s so cheap on the used market is that the Leaf lacks such a system. The Bolt has only been out for 3-4 years but it does have the thermal management system. It’s not pretty like a Tesla, you won’t look as cool as you will in a Tesla, but it’s an amazing car. Though.. yeah, the recall is a problem. Good news is that Chevy will be replacing the battery pack on the effected models.
danielx
@Dopey-o:
Don’t complain – I once had the dubious distinction of owning a 1975 Fiat Sport Coupe. Found out later the entire production run had been recalled for rust issues, too late to make a claim. Everything broke on that car, including the damned steering wheel. Eventually I paid somebody 65 bucks to haul it away, just after acquiring a BMW 320i – best car I ever owned.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: The photographer that I follow, Brent Hall, shots alot of his stuff in Silver City, pretty place.
Dan B
@Brachiator: Repairs on electric vehicles with minimal sensors are average. We had a Leaf totaled twice. T-boned cost $4,000. Sideswiped by a postal truck. Ripped the entire side from stem to stern . Insurance company wanted it repaired. $9,000. The batteries are quite well protected as is the motor.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@danielx: FIAT(Fix It All the Time).
zhena gogolia
Sigh. Still talking about cars.
SFBayAreaGal
@frosty: I had a Mazada B1600 pickup truck with camper shell in the late 70s. At the time, my mom, 2 of my sisters and I worked for the same company. Two of us rode in the cab and the other two rode in the back of the truck. There was a big foam pad in the back of truck.
NotMax
@Emma
Not a fan of wireless meeces. Earlier in the year when needed to replace the old workhorse mouse when it became finicky got a Razer Viper Mini (wired) which I like a lot, so far as feel and responsiveness. While I don’t happen to have small hands it’s a comfortable fit regardless, using a mousepad with built-in wrist rest. For small hands, maybe even better. And as it uses internal optical switches, the clickiness is gentler on arthritic fingers. Cloth-covered cord an added plus, in my book.
With the free Razer Synapse app installed, one can fine tune a lot of the features, and even (thank you!) dim or turn off the lighting and/or also have the lighting shut off simultaneous with when the the monitor is sleeping. Shallow learning curve to get used to the two side buttons (I have set one for copy and the other for paste via Synapse, but those are far from the only choices).
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Whaddaya wanna to talk about?
Super Dave
@trollhattan:
I’ve been out of the field work since 1998, but in the 80’s I did a lot of work at LADWP’s Castaic hydro pumped storage plant. Not sure of the current status, but back then, they had 6 units rated at 250MW each, for 1,500 MW available when all units were turning. It was an impressive plant. They could put 1,500 MW online in under 6 minutes. The rotating mass was around 760 tons (each), as I recall. They had 3 operating modes, pump, generate and synchronous condense. The condense mode was used for power factor correction for the solid state inverter station in Sylmar CA, which I believe was the terminus for a 500 kV DC line from the Pacific Northwest. LADWP purchased power from the nuke plants in Washington on long term contract, used to pump water back up the hill at night, and the generators were used as peakers during the day. They made money on the difference between pumping costs and sales of peak power. Wondering who your employer is, if that’s not to personal. I worked for an electronic equipment manufacturer based in Minden, Nevada, called Bently Nevada. The business was purchased by GE in 2001, so I spent the last 11 (miserable) years of my career as a GE employee. Such is life.
oatler.
Chuck Todd has Ron Johnson on MTP tomorrow . I have no words.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
Anything else.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@oatler.: A subject on which self-described paleo-conservative Tom Nichols approvingly quote-tweets Media Matters– a group Bill O’Reilly once declared the equivalent of Fidel Castro, with no more irony than logic.
Emphasis added. I hoped when they gave Nicolle Wallace his hour, it was a sign Chuck was being eased out
Immanentize
@NotMax: @zhena gogolia:
Ok, Trains!!!
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
Was there anything luscious or special on your New Year’s menu?
Geminid
@Geminid: A September 26, 2020 article by the World Respurces Institute broke down 2019 US transport sources of green house gases: cars and light trucks, 59%; medium and heavy trucks, 23%; airplanes, 9%; rail, boat, and other, 9%. The entire transport sector accounted for 28% of greenhouse gases, the largest sector. Electrical generation was right behind at 27%. Concrete production accounts for around 8% of GHGs produced worldwide.
NotMax
@Immanentize
And chocolate!
;)
JustRuss
@Emma: I work in IT. Everyone in my office uses that Anker mouse. They’re great. And the batteries last about a year, which is way longer than most wireless mice. Highly recommend.
Immanentize
@NotMax: oh that is so great! I would love to have a ride in a Toblerone.
Ivan X
It has been super weird living in NYC for 22 years and now that I have moved to Santa Barbara, owning a car again. It is more pro than con — being able to just go anywhere is a great feeling — but that’s largely supported by not having to drive around in a large city, which I hate. There’s no real traffic here to speak of.
We bought a 2010 Subaru Outback (fancy Limited version with the luxe trim) and while I wouldn’t say I love it, I certainly like it, and it’s been amazingly useful. The amount of stuff you can put in it seems to defy the laws of physics, without it feeling like a totally huge car.
I’m pretty sure we’ll eventually get a 2nd car and it will be an EV. Getting an EV as our only car just didn’t feel practical.
Quinerly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: these are great. It’s a beautiful area. I’m told it’s heavily Trump country. Southern New Mexico is very different from Northern. I learned that in Deming and Las Cruces
mrmoshpotato
Congrats to the Badgers on their Duke’s Mayo bowl win.
And on breaking the trophy.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
No, we were finishing up the brisket I made for Christmas
ETA: Time to cook now anyway. BJ didn’t entertain me during my pre-dinner hour.
sab
I agree that all kids first cars should be Honda civics. Safe, boring, completely reliable.
ETA: Also do well in crashes. Two of ours have been in crashes- one hit a train (!), the other was car six in an eighteen car winter weather pileup. Both cars were repaired and back on the road within weeks, and all the people were fine.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Wow. LOL
Geminid
@Super Dave: Dominion Power built a pumped storage generation plant in the late ~1960s, 70 miles southwest of me in Bath County VA. The pumped storage helps balance out production from their 4 nuclear plants, which they want to keep running at a constant rate.
Emma
@NotMax: Good to know, thanks! Turns out my brother also has a Razer, but not the same as yours. His is wired because he wants the faster connection for multiplayer gaming, but I hate multiplayer games, so not an issue for me lol.
@JustRuss: also good to know, thanks!
Geminid
Aha! Just saw a Chevy Bolt ad at the top of this post. A Manassas VA dealer.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
This very night?
:)
Embra
We leased a Leaf from 2013-2016. Fun car to drive; I referred to it as our second car that we drove 90% of the time. Winters around Gettysburg aren’t severe, but the reduced range of the unheated battery meant that I had to be stingy with the heat. Heated seats and steering wheel helped, but my toes were often cold.
The Bolts and BMW i3s coming off leases are great deals, knocking off a lot of the up-front depreciation. The i3 is a lovely little car, but I decided to go with a 2017 Bolt that had 32K miles on it (I love being back in an EV!). It would be my only car, so I wanted the extra range it afforded over the i3. I feel comfortable using the heater as much as I want. I can charge in my garage, so I have the luxury of thinking as gas stations as PITAs. Bolt batteries seem to be holding up well over the long term with their thermal management. As mentioned above, not flashy, but the hatchback design works well for my needs. And the 3% of the time I need a bigger ICE car, I can borrow or rent…no big deal.
Somebody asked about maintenance expenses. I think the general sense is that they are much better than ICE vehicles. As mentioned, no oil changes. No tuneups, no plugs, no head gaskets, etc. The electric motors are very reliable. Looks like tire rotation, wipers, and maybe a new set of brake pads every 100K with the regenerative braking.
If EVs work for you, they’re great. There will be some good models coming out in the next couple of years. Batteries *should* get cheaper; hope the new administration beefs up the incentives to move us more quickly towards them. But they probably work best for most families who have two cars. The plug-in hybrids are a good transition for those who want only a single vehicle.
The Fat White Duchess
@sab: Have you read “The Warmth of Other Suns”? I don’t remember seeing anything about the lost families, but there’s quite a lot about the role of trains in the Great Migration. And it’s a beautifully written book.
raven
@The Fat White Duchess: Great book.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
BTW (it was a crowded thread and a fast moving one), have the impression you would cotton to both the films mentioned this morning.
Another Scott
One for zhena gogolia (not car-related):
VP Nixon’s remarks in the Senate as he presided over the certification of the 1960 election results (which he lost).
Well said.
(via dick_nixon)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
@The Fat White Duchess: Different migrations separated by 50 years.
Sab is talking about the aftermath of the Civil War when slave families were trying to reunite their lost families separated by the slave trade. Not kids lost on the train. The Warmth of Other Suns is 50+ years later during Great Migration when rural black sharecropper families were fleeing the Jim Crow South.
Dan B
@RSA: It seems that you’re not factoring in the annual maintenance on ICE cars and the cost of replacing transmissions, engines, etc.
My Mike guy says the million mile battery is coming so replacement will not be an issue. In addition a three hundred mile range battery will be average soon and at ten years age will still have more than 200 miles of range, possibly much more.
debbie
@Another Scott:
It was damn gracious. I’d bet Gore’s was the same, and I’m certain Pence’s will be vapid and pointless.
Kayla Rudbek
@Emma: I have a 3M ergonomic mouse that puts my hand into a position close to using a joystick, with the click control on top of the vertical hand grip and scroll control on the side of the vertical hand grip. They make them in 2 sizes, and I tend to buy mine off eBay as they are cheaper there. I don’t recall if there’s a left-handed version or not. My only problem is that my work IT has locked down my work computer so much that I can’t use my ergonomic mouse with my work computer.
Cheryl from Maryland
We would love to have a hybrid or an electric car except for two serious issues – part of the strategy to make a car fuel efficient is the size, and our town house development would have to spend serious money for charging as all parking spaces are outside in a general parking area. Spouse is unable to drive comfortably in the largest electric SUV. As for my HOA, I’ve spent 6 months to get them to mostly agree to a Little Free Library, and I get blank looks when I talk about cool and energy saving roofs. I do not have the bandwidth to try to get charging stations for the parking area even if spouse could fit in an electric vehicle.
Uncle Cosmo
@RSA: The car I miss is the one Dad bought for $300 after my freshman year in college for my commute, one of the first Chevy II’s ever made (literally at midyear of the 1962 model year). Extremely basic – maroon, 4-cylinder engine, Hydromatic 2-speed automatic transmission 8^O, AM radio & heater, but that little beast was nimble and I enjoyed the heck out of it. The only other auto I’ve owned that’s been as much fun is the Titanium-Grey Lady, my current 2012 Kia Forte – whose city gas mileage is somewhat lower than that Chevy II over 50 years back, when gas at anything over $0.299/gal was highway robbery.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Ah, the days when you could tell the attendant to fill ‘er up, hand over a fiver and get change back. Good times.
;)
Chris T.
I have not driven an i3, but I have been a passenger. It’s a decent car, but like the Prius, seems boring. I also personally hate the outside style, which looks to me like a plastic car jumped on top of a metal car and is in the process of eating its way through it.
I think the Audi (e-Tron), Porsche (Taycan), and Jaguar (I-Pace) are probably fun. Teslas can certainly be fun (have been a passenger in multiple different S models), but their style is lacking, and for the price of an S or X it should have a nice interior, not a cheap plasticky one.
I tried sitting in a Bolt and I don’t fit in the seat. For that sort of price I’d look at the Kia and Hyundai EVs, I think (not that I have personally).
Ransom
Seems like folks are catching on to using depreciation of non-tesla EVs to work for you, but you can still find some deals. Since OP mentioned Mercedes (the RV conversion) I will say that we’ve had a great experience with a 2014 Mercedes B-class EV. This car was only made as an EV 2014-2017, and the 3 year lease 2017’s are on the used market now. This car was ~$50k new; used you can commonly find them with low low miles for under 20k. Ours had 25k miles and we paid $17k. This is a front wheel drive car, with drive and batteries sourced from Tesla.
Pros:
Solid, great build quality, fun to drive and pretty quick.
5 seats (compare to basically everything else at this price point is 4 seat, e.g. leaf and BMW i3).
hatchback (before the tesla Y your hatchback choices were Tesla X and Chevy Bolt, both far more expensive than this.
10kw onboard charging, so I can full charge in 3.5 hrs at home.
Cons:
One of the least efficient EVs
Poor cold weather range. Nominal range is 87mi, I would commonly see over 100mi in summer but East Coast winter means about 65mi range.
No DC fast charge, but with this short range, who would want to stop every hour on a road trip to fast charge?
Could be used Chevy bolts are looking good compared to this. I see that 2017 Bolt used might be 4-5k cheaper, and the Bolt has much more range. But we hardly ever use our Sienna minivan anymore. Just hoping that we can replace that eventually with an EV minivan.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@zhena gogolia:
@NotMax: Are we trying to graft an open thread onto this one are is there going to be actually be one sometime?
Tom Levenson
@Martin:If you’re still around this dead thread: what e-bike. I’m contemplating one, maybe one of the cargo models, as my “convertible” when I finally give up on my ancient BMW.
MisterForkbeard
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: At some point, Watergirl will notice that there hasn’t been a new thread in forever, glare at the other front pagers, and make one.
It’s usually how it goes down. And then later tonight 5 of them will bigfoot each other.
NotMax
@Ceci n est pas mon nym
Well, this one is labeled Open. Practically all B-J threads sooner or later evolve to Open status, anyway.
:)
Uncle Cosmo
@NotMax: Gas wars, doghelpme, gas wars! Nineteen point nine cents a gallon and dropping daily! :^D
Not only that, but if you bought more than 8 gallons, they’d throw in a drinking glass. We had complete sets of gas-station giveaways when I was a kid.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Was going to mention the drinking glasses. Also trading stamps. And cool dinosaur toys at Sinclair stations.
:)
debbie
@NotMax:
Also steak knives. I still have a couple that have to be around 50 years old.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NotMax:
must’ve been a competitor who had the Noah’s Ark with collectible pairs of animals, two-by-two. I don’t remember which chain, but damn I wanted that boat
pat
My first car, purchased when I graduated from college, was a Candy Apple Red 1967 Mustang. (I was accompanied to the car dealer by my fiance, father and BIL.)
I drove that car until the floorboards rusted and it would only go to work and back without overheating. 100,000 + miles.
Then I got my first Subaru (no males in attendance, altho my husband did plant the idea of a 4WD Subaru when we saw the commercial of it being driven up an Austrian ski slope). 4 speed manual, 1982. Soon traded for a 5 speed manual Subaru, also 4WD.
Then a couple of Saabs, my favorites, until they were no longer available.
Then a VW Jetta diesel, TDI, 6 speed manual, 45-50mpg. Loved that car, a wagon. Twice stopped for diesel to have some old fart tell me “Ma’m, that’s diesel”.
After the scandal over the emissions, VW bought it from me with enough to buy my present VW Golf, hatchback, 5 speed manual, with Sirius XM satellite radio tuned to Symphony Classical. And no stupid touch screen, just normal knobs to turn. 42,000 miles, will get new tires on Monday because in the last couple of light winter snow falls I was kind of slipping and sliding and the tread is in the yellow range.
I like the car, I like the dealer, I love that I don’t have to deal with all the computer junk they are putting into cars like my husband’s Audi 6. Hope to be driving this car for several more years.
And I really like the manual transmission. When it’s icy, I will decide when to shift, thankyouverymuch.
That’s my car history, except for learning to drive on a 1957 Chevy. Yes I am old.
Bet I just killed this thread. Heh.
Mary G
Excuse my lurch back to politics, please, but Romney put out a barnburner statement on the attempt to overturn the election:
I hate having to approve of Mitt fucking “Corporations are people, my friends” Romney, but he has more balls than the entire Republican caucus
ETA: The end: I could never have imagined seeing these things in the greatest democracy in the world. Has ambition so eclipsed principle?”
Another Scott
@Tom Levenson: I found this page that talks about eBike batteries and range. It sounds like Martin has something with a “Super Extended” battery.
https://www.juicedbikes.com/pages/real-world-range-test
Happy hunting!
Cheers,
Scott.
Stuart Frasier
@Chris T.: I’ve put a lot of miles on my boss’s Model S. It handles very well for a car of its weight. As you said, the interior is sub-par for what it cost. However, I’ve driven a few loaner cars from Tesla that had improved materials and fit-and-finish. The rumor is that there is going to be a proper interior refresh soon. The software does keep improving, which is pretty amazing for a car that he’s had for 7 years and the battery is still reporting more than 95% of its original range. I’m trying to convince him to buy a Taycan, though.
BellyCat
If you go in for mobile living, the equation to solve is: do you lose your house when you vehicle breaks down or needs service (with a van or RV) OR do you lose the ability to be in stealth mode in an urban setting (with a trailer).
Spent 5 months out west a few years ago with my 1957 Airstream, boondocking off-grid the whole time. Lifetime memories from that trip.
WaterGirl
@MisterForkbeard: I never glare! :-)
I just texted John, wondering if perhaps he has something to say and a burning desire to say it. If nothing goes up soon, I will jump in.
Immanentize
@NotMax: Dino Soap!! I had a bar but my nephew took it and used it! ?
MisterForkbeard
@Mary G:
Republicans never HAD principles. All they ever had was pursuit of power, that they pretended had a noble purpose to it. Nope – it’s always been about them, getting more money and more power, and pwning the liberals, minorities, and women. That’s it.
Brachiator
I had not thought about it before, but do any electric vehicles come with manual transmission? Can’t see the point of it.
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Did not resort to der Google but (very) possibly faulty memory is suggesting that may have been at Flying “A” stations?
Chris T.
Hard to say because prices on the mainland are all over the map.
There are legal issues with charging per kWh, as it turns out. These are slowly being fixed but it will take a long time before they’re really truly properly fixed.
I have several EV charger network cards and have experimented with them in parts of CA, NV, and UT (back when I had a plug in hybrid and was driving that route). Prices were anywhere from free to a couple of bucks an hour (this is where the per-kWh issue came in). CA had a lot of places where you could plug in for free for 30 minutes or an hour or so, depending on the shop (Target, restaurant, etc) and then it went to $2/hr or more. The max charge rate on these—old style 240V, not fast CCS—was 7 kW (7 kWh/hr) so that’s upwards of $.28/kWh since the actual charge rate was invariably slower than the “speed limit” of 7 kW.
The more modern 50 kW chargers … well, there’s one near me that charges $.20/min or $12/hr. Again, 50 kW is the “speed limit”, and your actual charge rate will generally run maybe half that, depending on too many factors to count. If you charge for 60 minutes and hence get 25 kWh for $12, you’ve just paid $.48/kWh.
I would really like to see these go to a combined per-kWh / per-minute pricing system because the price should drop if they’re not actually delivering at 50 kW. However, if you hog the space after being fully charged, you should still pay (maybe MORE), otherwise people will use them for parking…
There is one other really big issue and that’s reliability of the damn things. Fortunately I had a plug in hybrid because many of the EV chargers in NV were constantly broken, or had even been torn out. The fast food places that had them didn’t care because they didn’t actually own the charger or make any money off it.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
The Claude Rains one sounds intriguing. I’ve never heard of it.
zhena gogolia
@Another Scott:
Nice.
MisterForkbeard
@WaterGirl:
I heard that if you say “watergirl” three times in front of a mirror, she makes a new thread. Or Tom does it, I guess.
Thanks! :)
Tom Levenson
@WaterGirl: Just put up a cat thread.
Jay
Another Scott
@Brachiator: Tesla very early on (before Musk was involved) kept promising a 2-speed transmission. It never happened (the torque in the electric motors is too much for most/any transmission to handle). AFAIK, every electric car one can buy is a single-speed, direct drive system with no transmission.
I would hope that people are continuing to work on the problem – it seems to be the simplest way to potentially dramatically increase the range between fillups.
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@Mary G:
Thank you.
MisterForkbeard
@Jay: Oh boy! They might show evidence? That’s new.
Dan B
@Brachiator: No shifting electric motors. The motor just goes faster. It makes for a very smooth ride.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
If pressed to capsulize, would describe it as a leisurely, almost meandering noir effort. One thing I did particularly notice is that no attempt was made to disguise how short a fellow Rains was. Plus it was a pleasant change to see him in color.
Lurker
Have been driving a Tesla S85 for almost six years (2015 Model year). Love the plug in, range, acceleration, no gas or oil changes. Also, the few little problems have been fixed in my driveway for free from the Tesla Rangers. Tesla sends an update about once a month over the internet at night. The only issue is the phantom or vampire miles. The car loses about 5 miles of range a day or about 2 Kilowatts. We got it as a 25th wedding anniversary present for ourselves. My wife refuses to drive it because people are always dinging cars in the hospital parking garage. Tesla does have a sense of humor – It has a fart app that makes the sound come from under the four seats.
Chris T.
Yes – good paying jobs, but hard work! This is actually a good thing.
(People don’t realize that the electric generation industry is the biggest enterprise on the planet.)
RSA
@Dan B:
Maybe I expressed myself badly. My hypothesis is that for most people car ownership is a few to several hundred dollars annually–incremental and affordable. When it comes to a large cost like engine or transmission replacement, they’ll just sell the car or junk it. A surprising number of cars go on for decades, though, without those large costs.
EVs may have a different pattern of expenditures, again based on idle speculation about whether battery prices stay the same.
Chris T.
Remember also that “gasoline” was that nasty toxic waste byproduct of getting the Good Stuff out of the oil. Finding a way to sell it, well, whoo-hey!
RSA
Cool! I discover that the Chevy II became the Nova. Something about those iconic 1960s cars… My Impala had a straight six with a three-on-a-tree transmission, and it wasn’t anything special in the way of drivability, but it was the first car I bought with my own money, I think. That ran, at least. :-)
Stuart Frasier
@Another Scott: The Taycan has a 2-speed transmission. It is to increase the top speed of the car. Multi-speed transmissions wouldn’t improve the range of an electric car.
Searcher
@Super Dave:
To a certain extent, I’m also just kind of fine with this?
If we were able to build 2 million 13MW turbines overnight, to supply 26TW of electricity to the world, it would also be like pretty reasonable to have 100 people per turbine (200 million altogether), worldwide, maintaining the turbines full time.
People gotta do something.
Chris T.
@Dan B: You’re talking about the rate you pay at home for electricity. That’s quite different from what you pay at an EV charging station.
(If you have a garage or can plug in at home, that’s great. It’s what I do. But if you don’t, that’s where the complexity kicks in.)
Oh, I should add: electricity in PG&E-land (northern Calif) was about $.50/kWh at home (and I’m not kidding, that was the Tier Five rate) which is why I put solar panels in. With the panels and the EV I was on a different rate schedule, EV-A, which let me charge the car at night for $.16/kWh. It’s changed some since then, and I’m no longer in PG&E-land.
Another Scott
@Stuart Frasier: Thanks for the info about the Taycan. But the second gear will/should indeed help.
AutomotiveNews:
The benefit is likely to be small in this particular setup (mostly single-speed front motor, adding 2nd motor with the 2nd speed for extra performance).
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Xavier
@Lapassionara: If you’re going from Santa Fe to Capitol Reef, UT Hwy 95 from Blanding to CR is not to be believed.
Chris T.
Yep, that’s the Pacific DC Intertie, runs up the other side of the Sierras (along US395) vs the Pacific AC Intertie which runs up along I5.
Curiously (well, not if you think about it), for long range high power transmission, DC is better than AC. If we put a lot of wind power in the Dakotas, for instance, we’ll want a big DC intertie from WA to ND or something.
RaflW
@CaseyL: “the issue isn’t whether people ‘never’ drive long distances. As you say, most people don’t. But once in a while, or seasonally, a lot of us do”
We’ve talked about having a short to mid-range EV and just plan to rent an ICE vehicle for long trips. I wanted to make a run to CO this September and the BF needed our one reliable car to go check on his ailing dad, so I rented. Turned out it cost me less than half the cents/mile of driving the Subie if I’m decently accounting for oil changes, tire wear, reduced resale value of a higher mileage car, and the risk of something wearing out/breaking sooner.
Helps quite a bit that we live 1.1 mi from a Budget car place downtown, so I literally walked to go get it, and after the return.
Uncle Cosmo
@RSA: After I nearly flunked Drivers Ed in summer school** Dad taught me on the family wheels – a ’63 Biscayne 3-on-the-column, no options but AM radio (for the O’s games) and heater. Drive up a little-used street, pull past the entrance to a parking lot, back into the entrance, drive down to another lot, pull past, back up, repeat ad nauseam.***
** A in coursework, C for the course. The instructor said he’d flown in bombers during The War & was never so scared then as he was when I got behind the wheel.
***Turned out the reason I drove the school’s ’66 Plymouth so badly was its power steering. No road feel at all, touch the wheel & it practically spun. (I think they fixed that eventually, but since then I’ve never been tempted to buy a car from Chrysler Corp.) Couldn’t parallel park to save my soul – until the Biscayne, because without PS it was physically impossible to turn the wheels until the car was in motion, & that was my One Weird Trick.
RaflW
@pat: “Then a couple of Saabs, my favorites, until they were no longer available.”
I bought a used 900GLE 5-door in 1984. I loved that car, but man it was a hassle to get repaired in Texas in the 80s! As someone else said in the thread, it could swallow an amazing amount of stuff.
My dad didn’t want to drive his company car to Canada for an Xmas ski break from from CT one year (my Saab stayed there college freshman year). We fit four adults, all our ski clothes, and a dog for the drive to Mt Tremblant! We did pack very efficiently. And the dog was only about 18 lbs.
New Style in Parsons
Tesla Model S owner for nine months after old Honda began multiple serious break downs at > 200K miles and nearly 20 years. I looked at hybrids but waited long enough that I just jumped straight from ICE to EV once I had wrung everything economical out the Honda. Tesla acquisition cost was high but not not greatly more than many ICE vehicles I see in the hospital parking lot… and I did not miss going around to dealerships for the purchase. Tesla operation cost is low, round-trip commute most days for me is 40-50 miles, some days a hundred, recharge at work in Portland is free, my home garage chargers work fine, I am on mostly hydroelectric grid but cost is still cheaper than fossil fuel, I do not miss going to gas stations. Battery life for longer trips is fine, I can go to Seattle and back w/o needing to recharge (obviously do not use this car if driving cross-continental with the whole family). Current Model S is way, way better quality vehicle than the first cars Tesla put out years ago. The ride is smooth and quiet and powerful. The greatest surprise was how much better I enjoy driving the Tesla than anything else we have owned (Toyota, Subaru) or have rented.
The center console touch screen is annoying in the way of over-featured new technology, but several controls/features work fine by voice command and from steering wheel buttons and steering column levers… like a ‘normal car’. I set climate controls, navigation, radio station or Spotify, etc before I take off to minimize the need to spend time staring at the center screen. Auto-drive features are a really nice bonus for time spent on I-5. I agree that for people who want to spend $60 to $90K for a new vehicle, EV’s will take over the new car market fairly quickly.
I got on the deposit list for Rivian electric SUV, expect to get it at end of this year, mostly out of curiosity re new EV brand and desire to larger vehicle when needed, still will run off of house solar panels and grid electricity. I see a coming surge of interest when the first big wave of EV SUV’s/trucks hits the global market, and as EV power and battery life improve.
Buying these EV’s is an expensive game to play, is partly to have high-performance + high-safety + high-comfort vehicles at this point in my life, also is a put-my-money-where-my-mouth-is thing when it comes to being an evangelist for taking down the fossil fuel infrastructure and doing what I can– in a comparatively microscopic way– to fight global warming. Take that, Donald Fucking Trump.
rjnerd
The average American driver can manage just fine if they have access to an ordinary wall outlet while they sleep. In 8 hours a wall outlet can add 40 miles of range, the average driver in the US (pre pandemic) only drives about 35.
If you can charge while sleeping, perceived time to charge is 30 seconds, 10 to plug in when you get home, and 20 to unplug and hang up the cord when you leave. You get over range anxiety relatively quickly if every time you get in the car, its “full”. Imagine that there were pixies that came around each night and topped up your gas tank.
Right now when people envision driving an EV, they fall into the gas car trap – where once a week when its close to empty you have to go someplace out of your way, and wait around while they add fuel. Those that have lived with an EV for a month or so, realize the “time to charge from empty” isn’t something you think about, as in normal use, you never do that.
For parents of driving age teens, there’s a special bonus, you won’t get in the car the next morning, to discover that the kid took the car, and left it with the gauge one needles width above empty. And it will inspire some creativity, they will have to come up with something other than “for gas” when attempting to justify an extra withdrawal from the first parental bank.
We are making progress on getting very high speed chargers roadside, so you can make a long trip. The problem we really need to solve are all the people that live in urban areas, etc that have to park at the curb. In the case of apartments that have lot parking, adding chargers can happen. Around here, the various new apartment buildings going up are including charging. They even add it to the “now leasing” banner, along with the gym, the express bus downtown, and in-unit laundry facilities…
The problem will be in the the dense residential semi-urban areas, (for those familiar with it, someplace like Somerville, or Cambridge, MA.) Around here they were “streetcar suburb” built up in the 1920’s, (or earlier) with things like row houses, or two and three decker houses that don’t have off-street parking.
Basically you only need a very fast charger when you are on a trip that would have you buying gas more than once a day. Tesla reports that their drivers mostly charge at medium or slow chargers, presumably at home or office. Only 10% of the charging takes place at high speed charging stations.
In my case, the EV turns 6 in 5 days. Its a VW e-Golf with only a 90 mile range. No, its not an “only car” there is also a stinkpot that gets so little use that I had to put a battery tender on it pre-pandemic, as it could go weeks between when I needed it. (it only gets used when I have something bulky to move, or a very long trip. I have to take it instead of the EV now and then lest the gas in the tank go stale. Modern ethanol spiked gas won’t last more than 6 months unless you add a stabilizer)
For the first year plus we did fine with just wall outlet charging. I did eventually install a medium speed adapter, when the VW supplied wall outlet unit proved not as weather resistant as it could be, and could see having to replace it again once not under warranty.
If someone comes out with a micro-van EV with primary vehicle range, I will happily trade both vehicles for one. (VW did build a microbus inspired prototype a couple of years ago, but while they did go far enough to make an actual driver out of it, no sign they will sell it, never mind import it to the US)
RSA
LOL. And I’d thought the vein of driver’s ed stories had been completely mined out.
Geminid
@Chris T.: Siemans is putting high capacity electrical transmission lines underground, moving power from North Sea wind generators to central and southern Germany. I believe they use DC. There is also a proposed 349 mile line from western Iowa to Illinois that Siemans will help build. Much of it will run along a railroad right of way. While underground lines are as much as twice the the cost of overhead, popular resistance is much less.
RaflW
I think for us for the 2000 Corolla replacement (it was purchased in part because it was one of the best MPG cars of it’s year + Toyota reliability and decently comfy + two whole airbags, one each!), only question comes down to hybrid or plug-in hybrid. This 2021 car will probably be our longer-trip car for a number of years.
The Subie replacement, ’round about 2024 to 2026, will almost certainly be an all-electric. Time to sort that out later!
Martin
@Tom Levenson: Reisse and Mueller Homage GT Rohloff HS.
It’s a full suspension step-through, belt drive, Bosch drivetrain, and a Rohloff E14 transmission.
So, why I chose it:
I test rode a bunch of bikes and it was hands down my favorite. Not cheap – it’s very much near the top of the price range (and I upsold myself by about 50%), but it’s replacing a car that would cost 3x as much, plus ¼ of it’s cost per year in recurring costs. The other challenge for me is that I have spent a LOT of hours on bikes and benefitted that time from lighter and lighter bikes as I bought up the price range and could afford to do so, and this is a heavy bike. At speed it doesn’t feel heavy, with the pedal assist, but trying to maneuver the bike through a congested space not designed for bikes, which is almost always where bikes are allowed to be parked is a bit challenging, leaving me walking it though things I never would have walked through (but which I was always told to walk).
Feel free to find me in a thread and chat me up about it. Happy to share what I’ve learned.
smike
I had a (’66, I think) chevy panel van that I rigged up for extended stays, camping, etc. I put a captains bed in the back (built of plywood with plenty of storage space under the lid), bought a good ice chest which could hold 1/2 block of solid ice, and had a coleman stove for cooking. I also added a 110 outlet to the rear end, so I could plug in and expand my options. With a good sound system installed, I could pull up to a campsite, position the van, swing the side doors open and just relax. Porta potty was also a good addition.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Remember that an electric motor has max torque at zero rpm. Doesn’t need a transmission.
Sure you may not end up with a car with a 120-150 mph top speed but really have you ever driven a vehicle that fast? I have, a motorcycle, on a race track, in the rain. You do not want to be on a road with everyone trying to go that fast in any weather condition. A racetrack is different in so many ways and everyone has to earn a license and get experience at slower speeds, you know the corners, everyone is going near the same speed, in the same direction and it’s only really, really crowed at the start. And not all that surprising there are still assholes on a racetrack.
Emma
Holy crap. Put in an order for a new mouse less than 5 hours ago, and because it qualified for free overnight shipping, I said sure. My Jelly Comb mouse just got here :O I’ve never been this gobsmacked. WTF.
WaterGirl
@Emma: That’s crazy talk.
Except that I believe you.
sab
@Brachiator: God, that is heartbreaking. 50+ years of searching for some families.
Emma
Feels great so far! Very satisfying “cushioned” feel to the clicking, which is practically silent for anyone who prefers that. It doesn’t position the hand in a handshake pose, but it’s about halfway there. Still gobsmacked that this came from a warehouse to my doorstep within 5 hours, let alone for free (well, “free”). Wonder if the Anker will show up in the next couple hours now…
Emma
@WaterGirl: I know, I would have called it crazy talk too. Well, call me bonkers :D
Another Scott
@Uncle Cosmo: You didn’t like POWER Steering???
A friend had a beautiful ~ 1965 Pontiac Grand Prix like that. You could literally steer it using a feather, it was so over-assisted. Beautiful lines. Horrible, horrible car compared to just about anything built in the last 30 years. But really easy to fall in love with…
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam Geffen
@dmsilev:
I’d also add that for those of us in urban/city areas with only on street parking EVs are basically useless. EVs seem best for suburban dwellers with houses that have garages in which EV chargers can be installed?
Kdaug
@Brachiator: Electric vehicles don’t have transmissions. Full stop
VOR
@Geminid: I used to follow a blog called “The Oil Drum” which covered energy issues. The Obama admin in 2009 set up Change.gov which allowed people to submit ideas. The Oil Drum had a concept called “silver BBs”, smaller solutions than a silver bullet.
One of the silver BBs which I quite liked was to electrify the National Strategic Railway system. This would require working with the railroads to switch their fleet from diesel to electric engines – tax credits, incentives, etc… It would also require building a lot of electric grid infrastructure, including possibly long distance transmission lines along railroad ROW. It was a big infrastructure project to goose the economy and it could be tied to Defense to make it more likely to pass Congress. But of course this idea never went anywhere.
The Quiet One
@Brachiator:
In theory, maintenance for EVs is extremely low. Electric motor are much simpler than IC engines, no transmission, etc. It appears Teslas require a lot of small scale maintenance with a lot of it due to them over-engineering simple things like door handles. Overall though, the basic expensive things like the drive train should be much lower.
Geminid
@VOR: “Silver beebees” is an apt metaphor for the initiatives we must make to combat global warming. They will occur across many fields, including electrical generation and distribution, transport, manufacturing industry, agriculture, conservation, materials science among others. The Obama administration was able to foster some change through the Pentagon as well as the Energy Department. I saw some of the fruits of these initiatives last spring when I drove past Monaghan Airbase, outside of Tuscon Az. and saw solar panels on numerous buildings. Another DOD program invested in alternative fuels. In his excellent article published in March, 2019 by The Journal of the Atomic Scientists, economist Robert Pollin described the total Obama program as “Green New Deal 1.0.”
Climate change proposals got surprisingly little attention in last years Democratic nomination race, Senator Warren put out what I thought was an excellent plan, both holistic and pragmatic. It would be a good template for a legislative program in the new Congress. One reason I was disappointed when the Democrats failed to win a substantial Senate majority was that a truly ambitious climate change program would be delayed. Technology and public awareness of this issue have converged, though, and between the Biden administration and Congress we will still make progress. Not a “grand slam” as I hoped, but maybe as much as a “small slam.”
Robert Pollin’s article is titled “We Need a Better Green New Deal,” and is well worth reading. The same month The Journal of the Atomic Scientists also published an excellent article by British climate scientist Myles Allen, who co-authored the IPCC’s report calling for net zero global greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. It provides a very good overview of the problem, with some interesting comments on “carbon negative” technologies and practices. The Journal… publishes a lot of good work on these questions. They are the folks with the Doomsday Clock on the cover.
RW Force
For those planning trips to Southwest parks this summer. Things have changed because of Covid-19. My wife’s park personnel correspondents report: “Weekdays are like weekends. Weekends are like the 4th of July.” And this from a park Website: NOTICE: Goblin Valley State Park is open. During times of especially high visitation, there may be a wait time to drive into the park. Visit the Utah State Parks COVID-19 webpage for updated information..