I'm sure that a very fast battery swap mechanism can be implemented, for pit stops. If you can do that, you don't even need that fast of a recharge. Nobody tried to retread their tires, after all - you just get new ones.
The 200k Tesla Roadster is expected to have 600 mile range. What ICE car exceeds that? Most ICE are at about ~450 mile range, Model S is at 400 now. There's going to be a lot of battery improvements over the next couple decades pushing EV range far past ICE.
My mid-2010s Subaru SUV has ~550 mile range, and fill-ups take ~5 minutes.
Semis can have 2000+ mile ranges.
I am also excited to see battery densities increase, but so far the way we're getting comparable range in EVs is by allocating a greater proportion of weight to fuel. And recharging is still relatively slow.
Right; see my other comment about recent experiences with a long drive in a Tesla Model S.
nothing beats the distance over time you can get with a gas vehicle, given also how quickly you can add range.
Many years ago, we used to drive from the midwest to California every year, which was two 800 mile days. We covered that 800 miles in about 13 hours, which is an average of 60 miles per hour.
A few weeks ago, we drove 800 miles in our Tesla, and did it in 16.5 hours, which is a little less than 50 miles per hour.
I know not all EVs are Tesla, but it's interesting to see where charging is going (others will follow suit).
Supercharging v3 gives you 1,000 miles of range per hour of charge (approx. if you're in the 20-80% SOC range I think). If you take a 6 min bathroom (or other) break every 100 miles (roughly every couple of hours), you can replenish those 100 miles during that break.
Personally, I find superchargers "too quick", as I tend to stop for lunch with my family when I supercharge, and I find myself having to rush to finish lunch so I can get the car out of the charger for someone else to be able to use it. I wish there was an option to say "charge slower and give that juice to the other guy" (many/most current supercharger "pods" have to share the current flow with another car).
> Personally, I find superchargers "too quick", as I tend to stop for lunch with my family when I supercharge, and I find myself having to rush to finish lunch so I can get the car out…
Pumping gas, I usually do not have time to even squeegee all the windows; I've never wanted to stop for lunch while getting gas.
The routine is different. You fill the tank, then park and get lunch. If you recharge while parked, the recharge time should approximate the duration of your lunch stop. Abundance of chargers may remove the urge to take the car out of the recharger before you finish lunch.
And then the EV has to stop and charge for a couple hours. The ICE stops for gas for 10min. Also, check out records like the cross-country NY to LA cannonball run. Cars used there add additional gas tanks to extend range. I'd bet by the time you added enough fuel to a car to equate the weight of an EV battery the range would be significantly higher than that of the EV
> And then the EV has to stop and charge for a couple hours.
Also, it isn't a couple of hours at all. 10% to 90% charge in model 3 takes about 50 minutes using a V2 supercharger (the most ubiquitous one) and about 40 mins using a V3 supercharger.
And both take much faster to get to lower percentages, due to the charge rate curve looking more like a log(1/x) graph, with rapid charge rate at the beginning that slows down the more your car is charged.
Again, the charge time is non-linear. You can get from 0 to 50% in just 20 mins. And also, if you are doing a long drive, won't you be stopping for 20-30 mins at least every 200-300 miles (roughly every 3 hours)? Just for bathroom breaks, to get some food, to stand up and stretch, etc.? Imo, this doesn't seem that bad at all.
I had the same kind of anxiety over charging too, but since getting an EV and doing multiple cross-state road trips in it and with just tons of daily usage, I found that worry to be unfounded.
Not at all, I recently completed a road trip from Chicago to Blue Ridge, Georgia with a full car (5 people, including me) in a Hyundai Sonata. It was an 11 hour drive. On the way there we stopped exactly once, and on the way back we stopped twice.
If we did this in a Tesla, we would've had to stop far more times, or each stop would have to have been much longer. That's not great.
The EV does not have to stop and charge for a couple of hours. Tesla's V3 superchargers charge at a rate of 1000 miles per hour. Those aren't widespread yet, but the common V2 superchargers provide about 560 miles per hour of charge.
Your average gas pump seems to pump about 38l/min [0]. Using a rather inefficient car with an usage of 10l/100km, you get an added range of 22800 km/h, or 14250 miles/h. So, still a factor 14 to go.
The "miles per hour" charging rate is very misleading. Yes if you wanted to charge a bunch of Teslas to 20% capacity and swap them out after a few minutes each you'd get 1000 "miles charged per hour" But as the battery fills on each car, that rate drops substantially.
If only gas stations marketed their pumps like that. 10 gallons of gas can come out in 1.5 minutes in a Prius resulting in a fill rate of (500 miles range * 40 fill-ups per hour) = 20k mph! We won't consider the time it takes for the next user to get in and put the hose in because Tesla doesn't either.
I am a fan of EV vehicles as well but the long range fill up story is still not good.
You can charge at that full rate to about 80% battery capacity. And none of that matters because 99% of charging is done at home at night. I guarantee the average EV owner spends less time inconvenienced charging their car than the average ICE vehicle owner spends standing at a filthy, toxic gas pump. The only time an EV owner thinks about charging is on a road trip.
I don't know why there is some immune response when pointing out anything negative about an EV at the moment. I just said that the "1000 miles per hour" charge rate is disingenuous at best.
Also it is not true that the supercharger v3 charges at full rate until 80% [1]. The curve drops off quite a bit shortly after 20%. The other points you made, well I never disagreed with that. There are a lot of benefits to an EV, but one clear downside (at the moment) is the long trip charging. This is just a fact and not an indictment about EVs in general
I don't think particulates was an issue (but I couldbe wrong). The main issue was Nitrogen Oxide emissions.
Basically, when not in emissions testing mode, the engine was running at higher temperatures which improves fuel efficiency but generates more NO from atmospheric Nitrogen. Also, the vehicles had insufficently sized or simply missing diesel exhaust fluid (mostly urea and blue coloring) resevoirs, so not enough was injected to react with the NO to hit targets; injecting DEF into the engine also reduces fuel efficiency. There was also something about not properly cycling the special catalytic converter for NO, which would probably show an efficiency difference on long trips.
I sold back my VW diesel and stopped paying attention, it would be interesting to see what the measured real life fuel efficiency is before and after the changes required by regulators.
Gasoline has more than 10x the energy density of Li-ion batteries, with relative efficiency taken into account. I don't expect to see BEV exceeding ICE in range anytime soon.
Long haul trucks can do 2000 miles no problem, and extending the range is just a matter of adding more tanks. For now, there is no real competition over range in ICE cars, but if that becomes a thing, you can't win with batteries.
The only batteries that could compete would be lithium-air, and they are still in research phase, with no large scale commercial use in sight yet.
Energy density is just part of the equation. EV's also can use regenerative braking and recharge when going downhill. That's how Tesla's achieve their mileage. Electric engines are substantially more compact and lighter than similarly powered ICE's, giving more mass and volume budget to add extra batteries.
In the specific case of trucks, in most places you can't demand a driver to do a 2000 mile leg on a single stretch and, with the required pause to rest, it's also easy to recharge. A limit of 700 miles should be considered a reasonable target for truck range on a single charge.
Airplanes are probably the place where internal combustion (or not quite internal, but still combustion, as turboprop and jets are not ICE's) will have a significant share for a long time. Even there, short haul small planes are already electrifying.
It's a PHEV, but my Ford C-Max Energi will do over 600 miles on the 14 gallon tank in long distance driving (full charge gets you 20ish miles of stop and go, or 5 miles of highway, so basically doesn't matter). I'd guess the HEV version should do better, as it has less battery weight, but is otherwise pretty similar AFAIK.
Many cars have 16-20 gallon tanks, so a 14 gallon is fairly small (although 600+ miles is plenty)
Unless someone recently started doing it again trucks don't come with dual tanks anymore and haven't since the OEMs refreshed their designs in the mid to late 1990s.
Off course, and actually more than the trunk, rear seats and even passenger seat in that case, but you absolutely cannot do that to a meaningful usefulness with extra batteries.
When it was new (3 - 5 years old) my Dodge 2500 turbo diesel with a 120 liter fuel tank (31.7 US gallons) went 1,000km (620 miles) per tank. That's highway miles of course but 1,000km per tank is not exactly mind blowing it works out to 23.5 Imperial mpg or 18 US mpg.
An old cow-orker of mine said his old VW Rabbit diesel manual trans did 80 Imperial mpg (66 US mpg) on the highway. I have no way to verify that could be 10% BS. I've seen 50 US mpg stated (60 Imperial mpg). But who know synthetic oil, slim tires, highway miles, slow speeds all that may get it to the 70s mpg.
The VW Jetta TDI I bought in 1999 got over 50mpg on the highway (mid-40s city) and had a 14.5 gallon tank. The longest I ever got it was ~700 miles at an average of 52mpg.
We made a recent long trip with our Tesla Model S, which has about a 325 mile max range. There were plenty of superchargers, but it takes time.
You also end up stopping a lot more than once every 300 miles, because the rate of charge up to 90% is very fast, but the last 10% is very slow. We usually ran down to between 50 and 100 miles of range, and charged it up to about 290-300 miles, which took between 15 and 20 minutes.
It's not terrible, but compared to a gas engine, it's a good bit slower over time.
On the upside, it forces you to have a more 'easy going' drive.
Speaking as a child subjected to routine 2 hour road trips each way (often coming back the next day, once in a while the same day) and occasionally much longer road trips:
Stop the damned car and let your family out for fuck's sake.
Just because you can drive >4 hours nonstop doesn't mean you should drive 4 hours nonstop (I did on a solo road trip earlier this year. I forgot a piece of equipment and didn't realize until I was 5 miles out of town, so I had to 'make up time'. It was still a mistake.) Complaining that you can't drive 6 hours nonstop is some form of insanity that I am not qualified to diagnose.
If I'm traveling with someone, I'll stop every 2/3 hours. But if I'm by myself (and was still in my 20s)? I'm going to optimize every second (Gatorade bottles FTW). No reason other than to say I did...
Done that plenty myself, but eventually I figured out that being sedentary that long starts to affect my alertness.
Getting out of the car and getting the blood pumping makes me much more alert for the next hour or two. At first I didn't want to think about that meant about how alert I wasn't for the previous hour. Now it's kind of hard to ignore.
You're entitled to your opinion but frankly I think it's a wholly moronic one.
Enduring a bunch of whining to get the trip over with sooner is the superior course of action. Yes there's meals and bathroom breaks to account for but that doesn't mean there won't be 4+hr uninterrupted in the car.
Does letting 5yo you out to run around at a rest area really do much good if you're just gonna raise everyone's stress levels right back up by having a meltdown when it's time to get back in the car? In my experience pissing everyone off as you get back on the road worse for morale than enduring a bunch of "can we stop" type whining.
You see so many people in interesting jobs that have an origin story of something that happened to them, a friend, a sibling or neighbor when they were a kid. I just write software, so my stories are perhaps a bit less compelling than the oncologist down the block.
Do you find lasting an entire Boston-SF flight without getting out of your seat "some form of insanity"? Because that's basically the same sort of situation as the 6 hour nonstop drive (although the car seats are probably more comfortable than airline seats).
Seriously?? You call that torture? The spoiled lives we lead here in the west truly makes us not realize hard realities. I can promise you that torture is way more unpleasant than sitting in the airline seat with your nice noise cancelling headphones and watching a netflix show on an ipad. Even as a over 6 feet person I did way more unpleasant stuff in the army compared to sitting a few hours in an airplane seat.
Calm down now, it's called hyperbole. You will encounter it a lot, especially online, so don't take everything you read literally.
Also, we are talking 6 hours, not "a few". And depending on your height, seat recline, and problems with lower back pain, you can bet for some people, 6 hours unable to stand up can be quite painful. Not, "bamboo shoots under your fingernails painful" but not something anyone would want to go through.
For me, the claustrophobia of not being able to stand up would be quite terrible.
Ford is really good at blowing smoke about EVs lately. Like their truck pull demo where the camera shot they released showed only one angle, leading to speculation that there was a massive power cord tether hidden behind the bulk of the truck.
But I appreciate that traditional car makers are finally getting it that people want EVs that are not just golf carts. Too bad this is just another demo but let’s hope they make some of it real.
Note that both development and production still happens in Europe.
I did some digging for my next car and this is what I found: The Chinese owner established newer companies for the Chinese market mostly in China which use their engineering. One of them is a pure EV company.
And that's probably what they expect to sell. Producing 5.9M electric cars is one thing (and that's not easy on its own), but selling them is the problem.
The cynic in me still thinks the EV1 was a honey pot engineered by GM to kill two birds with one stone.
One, get the government off their back. Two, round up all the 'whiners' lay half of them off and demoralize the rest.
It is said, with only a very small sense of irony, that the only vehicle to come from the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles was the Toyota Prius. See, Toyoda thought we were serious, was blocked from joining the partnership (Bush/Gore era protectionism at its finest) and built a brain trust to compete with what turned out to be a bluff. Detroit may be the biggest bunch of learned helplessness foot-draggers there is. It's too haaard. See? We can't do it.
> Like their truck pull demo where the camera shot they released showed only one angle, leading to speculation that there was a massive power cord tether hidden behind the bulk of the truck.
No, it was just a silly physics trick, same as Tesla's Cybertruck pulling the F-150 stunt (which was just because the cybertruck was heavier & therefore had a friction advantage, had nothing to do with being more powerful or anything like that).
As for the train, weighing 1.25 million pounds doesn't mean it took 1.25 million pounds of force to move it, not at all. Just like it doesn't take you ~150 lbs of force to move yourself forward on a bicycle. Wheels are pretty great, and so is a low rolling resistance. A train's steel wheels on a steel track mean super low rolling resistances, and estimates are the Ford only needed around 1875 pounds of force to move that 1.25 million pound train. https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a28506476/ford-electri...
That's well within the capacity of a bunch of vehicles, no trickery required.
1800 lbs of pulling force should be well within the ability of most all vehicles on the road, I think. As long as they have enough weight to keep traction.
I suspect they didn’t actually build a battery powered truck, not even a prototype or demo.
Instead they just bolted a big electric motor into an existing truck, rigged it up to the crankshaft, and wired it up to power. Lame, if true. But it’s just my suspicion and I don’t know if it’s true. It was clearly a PR stunt timed to take some of the limelight away from Tesla.
Why would they go through all that when it's super trivial & simple to just take a battery back and bolt it under the truck bed? An engineering team with a Ford marketing budget & a week of time could trivially do an EV conversion of an existing F150. People do EV conversions as a hobby in their garages at home, why would you immediately jump to such a conspiracy for something so simple?
And the video of the stunt also has a bunch of angles, including an overhead shot, and there's no hint of anything like a power cord and the truck bed is visibly empty?
> Meaning, management lifts their BS restrictions.
Like needing to make money? Many of these cars never see production not because of "BS restrictions" but because they can't be feasibly produced for an amount that they think they could sell the car at. This is the equivalent of a hacky prototype. It has a value, and that value is endorsed by management as well.
I wonder if the street racers and car mechanic hobbyists of the near future will become electrical engineers to effectively do the same thing. Instead of installing better spark plugs or cylinder heads, enthusiasts start playing with capacitor improvements and voltage tuning?
Maybe just with the software but with the hardware no way. On modern EVs it's too complex, miniaturized and tightly integrated to be able to play around.
Anyway, just like with Tesla, I expect that if you mess with the factory software to extract more features or performance you'd normally have to pay for, the manufacturer will void your warranty or lock you out of their charging networks.
The EV future doesn't look good for custom tuning.
People already retrofitting tesla motors inside of vintage Porsches, I’m sure as more EVs end up in junkyards more will make their way into speed junkies hands.
Personally if I could retrofit my 240z with an electric drivetrain I would, I just wanna smoke some Tesla’s off the line :)
ICE look way more complex than EV to me. More moving parts, more feedback loops. I wouldn't be surprised if enthusiasts were able to swap the controller for something else.
But then I perfectly know you are right about the general tendency of integrated and locked-in parts in engineering nowadays.
How will you swap the controller when that's sealed in the motor casing and the other car's computers will be programed to lock-out non orginal parts in software.
The Fast and furious style tuning is super easy on ICE cars but I expect it will be almost impossible in the EV future.
Put in a different motor, I'd guess. They're cheap compared to engines, and people certainly swap those regularly. New ECU perhaps, as necesasry. Modders are going to mod, for sure. And there's no guarantee that Tesla-style anti-consumer behavior will be prevalent with all manufacturers or that it won't get shot down by the gov't. Some manufacturers actually embrace their modding enthusiasts.
Except nobody makes aftermarket motors the same way nobody makes aftermarket engines. Engines are _THE_ most OEM thing in a car as it takes massive resources to engineer and test a new engine design.
I feel like, with most of the HN crowd, you underestimate the sheer complexity of current EV motors. It's not just a spinning rotor in a stator that when you plug it into a battery is starts to move.
As a former EV automotive engineer, the complexity added to the newer designs to maximize efficiency has skyrocketed and so have the points of failure.
One EV project I worked at had the brushes fail after 20k KM needing the motor disassemble and brushes replaced. At another one we had attempted cooling the rotor and from too much vibrations, the coolant could leak inside the sealed motor totalling it.
People expecting EVs to outlast ICEs on reliability are in for a serious wake-up call.
I don't really think EV motors are super simple, but I appreciate just how many moving parts there are in a modern ICE.
I totally agree on the reliability point. ICE drivetrains have really been refined and typically last quite a long time. Last I checked, it's not usually the drivetrain that takes a car out of service anyway, so I don't expect EVs to really change the overall life expectancy.
My Tesla has been great, so far, but there are a lot of oddities that I don't think will age well. I probably won't keep it past the warranty period.
It depends. If you're looking at an old school ICE with limited or no computer then they are super simple to understand and work on. Having tools, lifts, etc are generally the thing outside of reach.
I think one of the reasons older Jeeps (with manual transmissions) are still really popular for off roading is that they are super mechanical and very easy to work on in the field. You can carry with you parts that are likely to break based on what you're doing and fix them yourself with a bit of know-how.
You can also tune them however you like as changing suspensions, axels, carbs, differentials, or even clutches is pretty straight forward if you have the tools. Hell, you don't even need to rely on the battery to start it as you can just push it to get it going. Super reliable in a sort of way if you're in the field and need to self repair.
How much are electric cars limited by raw torque and power? My impression is that a stock Tesla (pricy, but far from "supercar" prices) already has enough torque that it can turn the wheels past the point where they lose traction even up to quite high speeds. (Anyone know what speed?) If so, then the car's performance in that regime is limited not by engine power but presumably by things like the aerodynamics, sophisticated anti-slip electronics, and chassis movement.
What really limits electric vehicles for racing is weight and batteries. Weight is always bad, and batteries are heavy. And batteries can overheat, which means going into limp mode. The overheating seems to be getting solved relatively quickly, but the weight of batteries isn't going to come down drastically any time soon.
They're just different - electric is better in a lot of ways and gasoline is better in a lot of ways. I don't think you'll see electric cars doing endurance racing anytime soon.
I'm not a racing or really car enthusiast, but, don't races have pit stops where mechanics change out the tires and such? Tesla's old 90-second battery replacement tech could be used here. Just thinking out loud.
That's slightly misleading, as that pit stop didn't include refueling. Adding fuel will add about ~10 seconds to the pit stop. But you're still comparing ~10 seconds with ~100 seconds, which is an order of magnitude difference, when many actual races have been lost over 2 second delays in pit stops.
There's Formula E racing, their solution was to have 2 cars and the drivers switched. An interesting company to look at is Lucid Motors they provide a battery pack that lasts all race now.
EVs made explicitly for racing very short distances often have fairly small battery packs and use DC motors instead of AC -- as they have no need for regeneration, the motors are cheaper, the wiring is simpler and the possible torque is insane.
Their chief limitation is managing heat, and maintaining the DC motors themselves.
They would also have to consider how the mass of a battery affects safety as a car goes airborne and hurtles toward other cars, fences and spectators, as well as establish the right protocol for when batteries catch fire, etc.
A stalled car in Formula 1 (last race year?) cause the driver to have to "hop" out of the car with both legs at the same time. This was to prevent a possible ground path from one leg to the other as a result "stepping" out the car.
Not at high speeds! Or at least, not in a way that's unique to electric motors. ICEs use multiple gears, but it's a similar overall torque picture. (Try multiplying out ICE torque with its gear ratios some time!)
Torque is k*HP/rpm, whether electric or ICE. If you can slip the wheels you can go faster. It's well known in the supercar world that you can often do a great estimate of top speed based on HP alone, given how aero dominates at speeds above 100mph and these cars aren't wildly more drag-efficient than one-another.
At high speed you can increase downforce and thus grip at the cost of increased drag. At lower speeds your limited to the tires which are effectively independent of the rest of the car. At high speeds wind resistance eventually dominates so:
Top speed ^3 * cross sectional area * drag coefficient = HP.
Which is why supercars are so low to the ground, having 1/2 the cross section effectively doubles your horsepower. Though that’s assuming the car can handle the forces involved.
At what speed to you expect the Tesla to be engine-power limited rather than traction limited? (I certainly didn't intend anything like 100mph, but I was thinking like ~40mph.)
For raw 0-60 times a big "advantage" of the Teslas are actually their massive curb weight. There's no shortage of gas cars that can also spin their wheels at launch (or even after shifting to 2nd gear). The limiting factor for a launch is mostly friction, and you can get more friction by either increasing the tire's contact patch (such as wider tires) or by adding more weight. Yes that's now more weight you need to accelerate, but assuming you have enough power it's still a net-win.
That weight is terrible for all sorts of other reasons, but that massive ~4,900lb curb weight combined with all-wheel drive is a major factor in the Model S's 2.3 second 0-60 times.
It would be interesting to see them pop up on a quarter mile drag strip. Probably they already have, I just haven't been to drag races for decades.
I remember them being quite the experience though. The eye burning fumes in the air. The sound so violent that you feel like the thing could turn the entire track into a crater. When the things took off you could feel your organs shaking.
Not sure you can replicate that experience with an electric car. More likely tastes change and maybe drag racing dies out. Those races were the pinnacle of the ICE experience for me though.
I had the experience of getting an all access pass to an NHRA event at Bandimere in Colorado a few years back. I stood behind the start line, about 15 yards for most of the event. Being that close to a top fuel drag car at launch was a sensory experience: extreme noise even with plugs inside of over-ear protection, sound waves pushing me back, bits of rubber hitting my legs, and a little bit of "rain" from the water in the exhaust falling.
The 1950s and 1960s were the heyday of the dragstrip. Look at movies of that period. They look so slow. Many production cars today could easily outrun "hot rods" of that period.
It's been a long time since power was the problem in racing. It's all about keeping the wheels on the ground now. If you're burning rubber, you're not getting max acceleration.
There is already a large market of jailbroken and aftermarket ECUs as well as alternative firmware for tractors because of this. If it gets popular and stays legal, people will find a way around it.
Right, aftermarket, or make it yourself, is what I'm talking about. Your ability to tune is currently limited by access, you need to get the access before you can tune, one way or another.
My next hobby car is going to be something purely mechanical. New cars are virtually impossible to work on and have mountains of compromises to deal with.
I am not enjoying having a computer constantly between me and the road. I also don't like the new lower bound for car weight due to all of the modern safety regulations. Even if you have a modern car with a ton of power, you can never truly compensate for the physics equation imposed by all of that weight.
For example: A 1988 Honda Civic weighs somewhere in the realm of 2000-2200 lbs. A 2020 model year weighs somewhere between 2700-3000 lbs. This makes a huge difference in how a car feels to drive, especially at extremes that are more likely to be explored by enthusiasts.
Something like a BMW M3 E30 would be a dream hobby car for me. There is a reason the 80s-90s model years are starting to go up in value. Car enthusiasts want that sweet spot of purely analog controls, but also with working factory A/C.
It seems like that should be easier with an electric drivetrain. Much of the complexity of modern vehicles is the controls for the fuel injection, transmission, timing, and the like. An electric motor—perhaps even without a transmission—is a hell of a lot simpler.
Simpler yes, but potentially more dangerous. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that electricity can kill you awfully damn fast and without any warning. This is usually not a problem for hobbyists because the total amount of energy in a typical battery is low and the internal resistances are high. But when you're powering a vehicle, especially a high-performance vehicle, those usual safeguards are intentionally removed. So caveat hacker. Caveat mucho.
Also, LiPo batteries can explode if you're not very careful with charge and discharge discipline. Even the small ones in cell phones can do significant damage that way.
Hopefully we will get to a point where we have an LSx of electrical drivetrain. Something that is cheap, powerful, ubiquitous, and easy to install.
Right now though we have some disappointing (from a power perspective) electric drivetrains from Prius' that can be swapped or a powerful but DRM'd Tesla drivetrain that is more work than it's worth.
Well until someone builds millions of pickups and vans with the same EV drivetrain we're not gonna have an LS of EVs. The reason people like the LS is because it's everywhere and cheap. Everything else follows that.
People love to say this is due to regulation, but it really isn't. Safety regulations in the USA for automobiles are not terribly strict. It adds weight, for sure, but you can buy a 2100lb Mitsubishi Mirage with a stick shift. So mandatory safety aren't the biggest contributor to inflated curb weights.
Size inflation is predominantly driven by NVH and interior volume requirements from consumers. Dodge doesn't have to make the Challenger Hellcat a 4500lb two-door car. This car isn't fat for safety reasons, in fact, it score pretty damn low on safety tests.
Manufacture make heavy cars it because customers want gigantic, comfortable cruisers, with big engines, all-wheel job, 20" wheels on 265mm-wide tires, heavy duty lifted suspension, and full-length under-body trays.
Honda isn't immune to this, they don't even sell a car today that's as small in volume as your 88 Civic. The closest would be the discontinued CR-Z, which was a hyrbrid, or the no-long-sold-in-the-US Jazz/Fit, which is still quite a bit larger but only 2600lbs with a stickshift.
I love old Hondas, and you're right, they have a driving sensation that's impossible to get with modern cars. But don't blame regulations for Honda changing their ways, blame consumers. If people wanted a Civic with a 90hp engine, stick shift, four-wheel double-wishbone suspension, and 13" wheels, they'd sell one. Mitsu still does (for now).
>There is a reason the 80s-90s model years are starting to go up in value. Car enthusiasts want that sweet spot of purely analog controls, but also with working factory A/C.
People have said this exact thing for decades. It's because people old enough to remember being carted around in those cars as kids are finally getting old enough to be settled down and wealthy enough to have project cars. It has nothing to do with the vehicles themselves.
Within any given decade the things the rich kids got carted around in (or their dad commuted in) always command a premium.
> My next hobby car is going to be something purely mechanical. [..] For example: A 1988 Honda Civic
A 1988 Honda Civic isn't purely mechanical. It still has an ECU, for example. It still relies on electrical sensors for basic operation.
> Car enthusiasts want that sweet spot of purely analog controls, but also with working factory A/C.
There's no shortage of new cars that still offer that, too, or recently used. You don't have to go back to the late-80s to get that. It seems to be mechanical steering combined with low curb weight that you're actually focusing on, which is still a market segment receiving new models. You've basically described every Porsche up until the 2012 model year, for example (when they first introduced electronic steering). Or the entire Lotus brand. Or specialty cars like the Alfa Romeo 4c, Toyota/Subaru FRS/GT86/BRZ, etc...
And, of course, you can't forget the king of sports cars - the Mazda Miata. 30 years later & it's still just as light as it's always been. And just as good.
> Something like a BMW M3 E30 would be a dream hobby car for me.
There's so much more to a car than spec sheets, and you should absolutely chase your dreams, but realize you can also basically buy a brand new M3 E30 today. The power, weight, size, etc... of the E30 is withing spitting distance of the GT86.
Both are front-engine rear-wheel drive. Both have manual transmissions (although a 6-speed in the GT86 vs. the 5-speed in the E30). Both have a ~2700lb curb weight. Both have a 101 in wheelbase. The 86 is a bit shorter length, bit shorter height, and a bit larger width, but all within a few inches. Both have a 4-cylinder engine at around 200hp, and both rev to about 7000 rpm. Both have responsive, playful suspensions, and direct steering feedback.
Regulations definitely didn't kill anything here as the same core specs still exist.
Lots of dedicated automotive hobbyists end up being specialized mechanical engineers. They might not know the formal math behind systems, but they have a reason to learn. Today's hobbyists might look up tables for calculating fueling requirements for the expected airflow of their setups, as tuning an engine invariably means figuring out airflow volume for an intake setup, then calculating injector duty cycles to deliver a set volume of fuel over a specific timespan.
I doubt there will be many people modifying new EVs due to their complexity. But people are definitely converting old cars to EVs and that requires a pretty deep knowledge of EE principals.
Already done! NEDRA [0] is the north American drag racing scene that has been around over 20 years. Much of the best DC EV equipment was developed by the hobbyist market. Perhaps the most impressive example of hobbyists becoming electrical engineers is the self-taught inventor of the Zilla DC motor controller [1], which is still a force to be reckoned with in performance EV conversions. Electrathon [2] is a series that's highly accessible to high schools and individual hobbyists - the goal being to cover as much ground as possible in one hour on one kWh.
EVs are comparatively easy to get started on as a hobby. The production EVs are only making it easier by populating the secondhand parts market, and electric drivetrains are much simpler and easier to fit than ICE conversions.
Yea, it seems like the whole off-road community has been drooling over the bronco as a possible jeep alternative. They seem to have finally figured out that there are some wide open markets out there.
The Wrangler is hard, hard, hard to compete with. It's had several competitors, and none of them survived. They don't survive because Wranglers are terrible daily drivers. But Wranglers aren't terrible because they're a Jeep, they are terrible because of the compromises Jeep needs to make for the Wrangler to maintain offroad credibility.
Thus, most people tolerate Wranglers because A) they enjoy it, B) they like the image driving one projects. It's really not any different from a Dodge Viper, it's a terrible car that people drive mainly for image, or because melted shoe soles and burned legs are worth it for the fun.
So what happens is, Toyota/Ford/Chevy/Suzuki make a "better" competitor. But hardly anyone buys it because it's a terrible daily driver, and it doesn't have the image of a Wrangler for people to overlook it.
All these super high powered electric cars are neat but I think this is going totally the wrong directions. This could be used as an opportunity to rethink cars in general and hopefully switching to smaller and more efficient cars. Instead cars are becoming even bigger and heavier. In terms of environment this is also a bad trend. EVs don’t pollute while driving but the energy still has to come from somewhere.
For true mass adoption and real progress to happen, you have to overcome the notion that electric power is for "sissies".
It's a real problem that is very prevalent, especially in more rural areas.
I agree with you that building a bunch of electric supercars isn't the ideal long-term plan, but you have to admit that Tesla's roadster and their very fast cars have had an enormous impact when it comes to driving adoption and combatting the negative perceptions around electric cars.
Psychology is a huge factor when you are talking about progress and convincing an entire population to switch their way of thinking.
“But if you want to chase lap records or quarter-mile times instead, it'll do that, too—it just requires a few suspension tweaks like changing to shorter control arms that allow for less extreme steering angles.”
Not happening. The most important thing is not mentioned: weight. The production version can be 1000 lbs heavier than a regular Mustang. This model can cut some of it but more will be added in batteries to get more power. And then there is nothing you can do on the track - can’t fight physics.
Not the first time I see such misleading claims about cars made by tech sites. Linking to articles written by car magazines would be better - they wouldn’t believe the PR so easily.
Edit: I should mention I’m talking about the lap times more than the 1/4 mile times.
My Tesla Model 3 weighs over 4000 lbs and still cranks out 3.2 second 0-60 and turns out competitive laps on the track in its class (BMW M3, etc) For reference my giant ford raptor only weighs like 1000 more lbs. it’s not as nimble in turns, but it makes up for it with on demand torque coming out of corners. Also, Mustangs have never been true sports/track cars in their mass consumer versions. They do make more trackable mustang variants, but I can still see a market for a stupidly powerful pony car.
It's been a number of years now since a garden variety Mustang GT became faster than an M3 around a road course. Now we have things like the PP2 and the Camaro SS 1LE that are nipping at the heals of really high end performance cars. Gone are the days when pony cars couldn't turn.
It’s true, but they were a literal decade behind in their suspensions. IRS was a big deal for pony cars. And GT is probably not the most commonly owned trim level. I say this as a person who has bought a new Mustang every ~5 years since I have been able to drive (~24 years). Guess tech catches up eventually, but it was a sore point until around 05 to 08 when they really started taking the suspension and handling seriously.
Yep, Power is important but aerodynamic forces are a much harder problem when you reach a certain point. Too much power and you will fly off like an airplane very quickly [0]! I can't imagine a production road legal car using even close to 1400 HP. You'd need serious, serious tuning!
Battery improvements will drop the battery weight by 50% in 5-10 years I'd guess. Especially a super high performance platform that can be designed to swap out higher density but lower durability solid state or air batteries
I've been saying for a year now that EV will be death for hypercar price tags.
1500 HP for an ICE is a multimillion price tag
1500 HP for an EV in 5-10 years will be 1/10th that.
The design of this underlines that. the 1500HP is from just serially adding motors to the axles. It didn't involve a 10 year development cycle for a W-12 quad-turbo'd megaengine.
They pulled 7 motors off the shelf and attached them.
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[ 5.1 ms ] story [ 388 ms ] threadSeems good enough for most people daily drivers
Semis can have 2000+ mile ranges.
I am also excited to see battery densities increase, but so far the way we're getting comparable range in EVs is by allocating a greater proportion of weight to fuel. And recharging is still relatively slow.
nothing beats the distance over time you can get with a gas vehicle, given also how quickly you can add range.
Many years ago, we used to drive from the midwest to California every year, which was two 800 mile days. We covered that 800 miles in about 13 hours, which is an average of 60 miles per hour.
A few weeks ago, we drove 800 miles in our Tesla, and did it in 16.5 hours, which is a little less than 50 miles per hour.
Which is quite respectable actually.
I know not all EVs are Tesla, but it's interesting to see where charging is going (others will follow suit).
Supercharging v3 gives you 1,000 miles of range per hour of charge (approx. if you're in the 20-80% SOC range I think). If you take a 6 min bathroom (or other) break every 100 miles (roughly every couple of hours), you can replenish those 100 miles during that break.
Personally, I find superchargers "too quick", as I tend to stop for lunch with my family when I supercharge, and I find myself having to rush to finish lunch so I can get the car out of the charger for someone else to be able to use it. I wish there was an option to say "charge slower and give that juice to the other guy" (many/most current supercharger "pods" have to share the current flow with another car).
https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging
Pumping gas, I usually do not have time to even squeegee all the windows; I've never wanted to stop for lunch while getting gas.
600 mi at 10mi/hr is 10 hours, so probably ready for a break.
Also, it isn't a couple of hours at all. 10% to 90% charge in model 3 takes about 50 minutes using a V2 supercharger (the most ubiquitous one) and about 40 mins using a V3 supercharger.
And both take much faster to get to lower percentages, due to the charge rate curve looking more like a log(1/x) graph, with rapid charge rate at the beginning that slows down the more your car is charged.
I had the same kind of anxiety over charging too, but since getting an EV and doing multiple cross-state road trips in it and with just tons of daily usage, I found that worry to be unfounded.
If we did this in a Tesla, we would've had to stop far more times, or each stop would have to have been much longer. That's not great.
[0] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-flow-rate-of-gasoline-stat...
If only gas stations marketed their pumps like that. 10 gallons of gas can come out in 1.5 minutes in a Prius resulting in a fill rate of (500 miles range * 40 fill-ups per hour) = 20k mph! We won't consider the time it takes for the next user to get in and put the hose in because Tesla doesn't either.
I am a fan of EV vehicles as well but the long range fill up story is still not good.
Also it is not true that the supercharger v3 charges at full rate until 80% [1]. The curve drops off quite a bit shortly after 20%. The other points you made, well I never disagreed with that. There are a lot of benefits to an EV, but one clear downside (at the moment) is the long trip charging. This is just a fact and not an indictment about EVs in general
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/03/Tesla-Model-3-Long-R...
A large number of diesel cars can easily go over 600 miles. The Audi A8 and VW Jetta, to pick two random examples, can go 650+ miles on a single tank.
Basically, when not in emissions testing mode, the engine was running at higher temperatures which improves fuel efficiency but generates more NO from atmospheric Nitrogen. Also, the vehicles had insufficently sized or simply missing diesel exhaust fluid (mostly urea and blue coloring) resevoirs, so not enough was injected to react with the NO to hit targets; injecting DEF into the engine also reduces fuel efficiency. There was also something about not properly cycling the special catalytic converter for NO, which would probably show an efficiency difference on long trips.
I sold back my VW diesel and stopped paying attention, it would be interesting to see what the measured real life fuel efficiency is before and after the changes required by regulators.
Long haul trucks can do 2000 miles no problem, and extending the range is just a matter of adding more tanks. For now, there is no real competition over range in ICE cars, but if that becomes a thing, you can't win with batteries.
The only batteries that could compete would be lithium-air, and they are still in research phase, with no large scale commercial use in sight yet.
No matter how much battery you add, it's always possible to get more range with less weight in fuel, and with less diminishing returns.
In the specific case of trucks, in most places you can't demand a driver to do a 2000 mile leg on a single stretch and, with the required pause to rest, it's also easy to recharge. A limit of 700 miles should be considered a reasonable target for truck range on a single charge.
Airplanes are probably the place where internal combustion (or not quite internal, but still combustion, as turboprop and jets are not ICE's) will have a significant share for a long time. Even there, short haul small planes are already electrifying.
Many cars have 16-20 gallon tanks, so a 14 gallon is fairly small (although 600+ miles is plenty)
(Dodge Ram)
Pretty much pickup truck with the base 6cyl engine from the days when an 8ft bed also resulted in the vehicle being equipped with two gas tanks.
Also tons of random sedans beat 600mi.
BMW 730Ld will do 1000 miles. Even the petrol 740Li will manage over 700 miles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvQFDtJUdHw
When it was new (3 - 5 years old) my Dodge 2500 turbo diesel with a 120 liter fuel tank (31.7 US gallons) went 1,000km (620 miles) per tank. That's highway miles of course but 1,000km per tank is not exactly mind blowing it works out to 23.5 Imperial mpg or 18 US mpg.
An old cow-orker of mine said his old VW Rabbit diesel manual trans did 80 Imperial mpg (66 US mpg) on the highway. I have no way to verify that could be 10% BS. I've seen 50 US mpg stated (60 Imperial mpg). But who know synthetic oil, slim tires, highway miles, slow speeds all that may get it to the 70s mpg.
I have no doubt, musk will get the new roadster out there. But I have no reason to believe he isn't overpromising on the mileage.
We made a recent long trip with our Tesla Model S, which has about a 325 mile max range. There were plenty of superchargers, but it takes time.
You also end up stopping a lot more than once every 300 miles, because the rate of charge up to 90% is very fast, but the last 10% is very slow. We usually ran down to between 50 and 100 miles of range, and charged it up to about 290-300 miles, which took between 15 and 20 minutes.
It's not terrible, but compared to a gas engine, it's a good bit slower over time.
On the upside, it forces you to have a more 'easy going' drive.
Stop the damned car and let your family out for fuck's sake.
Just because you can drive >4 hours nonstop doesn't mean you should drive 4 hours nonstop (I did on a solo road trip earlier this year. I forgot a piece of equipment and didn't realize until I was 5 miles out of town, so I had to 'make up time'. It was still a mistake.) Complaining that you can't drive 6 hours nonstop is some form of insanity that I am not qualified to diagnose.
Getting out of the car and getting the blood pumping makes me much more alert for the next hour or two. At first I didn't want to think about that meant about how alert I wasn't for the previous hour. Now it's kind of hard to ignore.
Enduring a bunch of whining to get the trip over with sooner is the superior course of action. Yes there's meals and bathroom breaks to account for but that doesn't mean there won't be 4+hr uninterrupted in the car.
Does letting 5yo you out to run around at a rest area really do much good if you're just gonna raise everyone's stress levels right back up by having a meltdown when it's time to get back in the car? In my experience pissing everyone off as you get back on the road worse for morale than enduring a bunch of "can we stop" type whining.
M&Ms are for in the car, kids.
You see so many people in interesting jobs that have an origin story of something that happened to them, a friend, a sibling or neighbor when they were a kid. I just write software, so my stories are perhaps a bit less compelling than the oncologist down the block.
Also, we are talking 6 hours, not "a few". And depending on your height, seat recline, and problems with lower back pain, you can bet for some people, 6 hours unable to stand up can be quite painful. Not, "bamboo shoots under your fingernails painful" but not something anyone would want to go through.
For me, the claustrophobia of not being able to stand up would be quite terrible.
(not snark: I'm genuinely interested)
But I appreciate that traditional car makers are finally getting it that people want EVs that are not just golf carts. Too bad this is just another demo but let’s hope they make some of it real.
VW seems to be the only major manufacturer that's really going all in on electric and it's only after wringing their hands from the emissions scandal.
The old automakers seem to only want to do this in the face of bankruptcy.
They are not as big as VW, but that sure should "all in" to me..
I did some digging for my next car and this is what I found: The Chinese owner established newer companies for the Chinese market mostly in China which use their engineering. One of them is a pure EV company.
edit: yeah, found this: https://electrek.co/2018/04/25/volvo-electrification-plan-fu... . And their goal is 50% of sales will be electric by 2025.
And that's probably what they expect to sell. Producing 5.9M electric cars is one thing (and that's not easy on its own), but selling them is the problem.
One, get the government off their back. Two, round up all the 'whiners' lay half of them off and demoralize the rest.
It is said, with only a very small sense of irony, that the only vehicle to come from the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles was the Toyota Prius. See, Toyoda thought we were serious, was blocked from joining the partnership (Bush/Gore era protectionism at its finest) and built a brain trust to compete with what turned out to be a bluff. Detroit may be the biggest bunch of learned helplessness foot-draggers there is. It's too haaard. See? We can't do it.
No, it was just a silly physics trick, same as Tesla's Cybertruck pulling the F-150 stunt (which was just because the cybertruck was heavier & therefore had a friction advantage, had nothing to do with being more powerful or anything like that).
As for the train, weighing 1.25 million pounds doesn't mean it took 1.25 million pounds of force to move it, not at all. Just like it doesn't take you ~150 lbs of force to move yourself forward on a bicycle. Wheels are pretty great, and so is a low rolling resistance. A train's steel wheels on a steel track mean super low rolling resistances, and estimates are the Ford only needed around 1875 pounds of force to move that 1.25 million pound train. https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a28506476/ford-electri...
That's well within the capacity of a bunch of vehicles, no trickery required.
I suspect they didn’t actually build a battery powered truck, not even a prototype or demo.
Instead they just bolted a big electric motor into an existing truck, rigged it up to the crankshaft, and wired it up to power. Lame, if true. But it’s just my suspicion and I don’t know if it’s true. It was clearly a PR stunt timed to take some of the limelight away from Tesla.
And the video of the stunt also has a bunch of angles, including an overhead shot, and there's no hint of anything like a power cord and the truck bed is visibly empty?
But I’ll believe they are sincere when they decommission or fully convert the bulk of their ICE car factories.
Like needing to make money? Many of these cars never see production not because of "BS restrictions" but because they can't be feasibly produced for an amount that they think they could sell the car at. This is the equivalent of a hacky prototype. It has a value, and that value is endorsed by management as well.
Anyway, just like with Tesla, I expect that if you mess with the factory software to extract more features or performance you'd normally have to pay for, the manufacturer will void your warranty or lock you out of their charging networks.
The EV future doesn't look good for custom tuning.
Personally if I could retrofit my 240z with an electric drivetrain I would, I just wanna smoke some Tesla’s off the line :)
But then I perfectly know you are right about the general tendency of integrated and locked-in parts in engineering nowadays.
The Fast and furious style tuning is super easy on ICE cars but I expect it will be almost impossible in the EV future.
Given the utter simplicity of electric motors, I imagine that aftermarket creations will be much more common.
As a former EV automotive engineer, the complexity added to the newer designs to maximize efficiency has skyrocketed and so have the points of failure.
One EV project I worked at had the brushes fail after 20k KM needing the motor disassemble and brushes replaced. At another one we had attempted cooling the rotor and from too much vibrations, the coolant could leak inside the sealed motor totalling it.
People expecting EVs to outlast ICEs on reliability are in for a serious wake-up call.
I totally agree on the reliability point. ICE drivetrains have really been refined and typically last quite a long time. Last I checked, it's not usually the drivetrain that takes a car out of service anyway, so I don't expect EVs to really change the overall life expectancy.
My Tesla has been great, so far, but there are a lot of oddities that I don't think will age well. I probably won't keep it past the warranty period.
I think one of the reasons older Jeeps (with manual transmissions) are still really popular for off roading is that they are super mechanical and very easy to work on in the field. You can carry with you parts that are likely to break based on what you're doing and fix them yourself with a bit of know-how.
You can also tune them however you like as changing suspensions, axels, carbs, differentials, or even clutches is pretty straight forward if you have the tools. Hell, you don't even need to rely on the battery to start it as you can just push it to get it going. Super reliable in a sort of way if you're in the field and need to self repair.
They're just different - electric is better in a lot of ways and gasoline is better in a lot of ways. I don't think you'll see electric cars doing endurance racing anytime soon.
Their chief limitation is managing heat, and maintaining the DC motors themselves.
Torque is k*HP/rpm, whether electric or ICE. If you can slip the wheels you can go faster. It's well known in the supercar world that you can often do a great estimate of top speed based on HP alone, given how aero dominates at speeds above 100mph and these cars aren't wildly more drag-efficient than one-another.
Top speed ^3 * cross sectional area * drag coefficient = HP.
Which is why supercars are so low to the ground, having 1/2 the cross section effectively doubles your horsepower. Though that’s assuming the car can handle the forces involved.
That weight is terrible for all sorts of other reasons, but that massive ~4,900lb curb weight combined with all-wheel drive is a major factor in the Model S's 2.3 second 0-60 times.
The axle strength on this thing must be crazy.
7 electric motors must be able to crank out torque.
(people don't generally realize the model 3 performance is almost 500 hp)
I remember them being quite the experience though. The eye burning fumes in the air. The sound so violent that you feel like the thing could turn the entire track into a crater. When the things took off you could feel your organs shaking.
Not sure you can replicate that experience with an electric car. More likely tastes change and maybe drag racing dies out. Those races were the pinnacle of the ICE experience for me though.
It's been a long time since power was the problem in racing. It's all about keeping the wheels on the ground now. If you're burning rubber, you're not getting max acceleration.
I am not enjoying having a computer constantly between me and the road. I also don't like the new lower bound for car weight due to all of the modern safety regulations. Even if you have a modern car with a ton of power, you can never truly compensate for the physics equation imposed by all of that weight.
For example: A 1988 Honda Civic weighs somewhere in the realm of 2000-2200 lbs. A 2020 model year weighs somewhere between 2700-3000 lbs. This makes a huge difference in how a car feels to drive, especially at extremes that are more likely to be explored by enthusiasts.
Something like a BMW M3 E30 would be a dream hobby car for me. There is a reason the 80s-90s model years are starting to go up in value. Car enthusiasts want that sweet spot of purely analog controls, but also with working factory A/C.
Also, LiPo batteries can explode if you're not very careful with charge and discharge discipline. Even the small ones in cell phones can do significant damage that way.
Right now though we have some disappointing (from a power perspective) electric drivetrains from Prius' that can be swapped or a powerful but DRM'd Tesla drivetrain that is more work than it's worth.
People love to say this is due to regulation, but it really isn't. Safety regulations in the USA for automobiles are not terribly strict. It adds weight, for sure, but you can buy a 2100lb Mitsubishi Mirage with a stick shift. So mandatory safety aren't the biggest contributor to inflated curb weights.
Size inflation is predominantly driven by NVH and interior volume requirements from consumers. Dodge doesn't have to make the Challenger Hellcat a 4500lb two-door car. This car isn't fat for safety reasons, in fact, it score pretty damn low on safety tests.
Manufacture make heavy cars it because customers want gigantic, comfortable cruisers, with big engines, all-wheel job, 20" wheels on 265mm-wide tires, heavy duty lifted suspension, and full-length under-body trays.
Honda isn't immune to this, they don't even sell a car today that's as small in volume as your 88 Civic. The closest would be the discontinued CR-Z, which was a hyrbrid, or the no-long-sold-in-the-US Jazz/Fit, which is still quite a bit larger but only 2600lbs with a stickshift.
I love old Hondas, and you're right, they have a driving sensation that's impossible to get with modern cars. But don't blame regulations for Honda changing their ways, blame consumers. If people wanted a Civic with a 90hp engine, stick shift, four-wheel double-wishbone suspension, and 13" wheels, they'd sell one. Mitsu still does (for now).
People have said this exact thing for decades. It's because people old enough to remember being carted around in those cars as kids are finally getting old enough to be settled down and wealthy enough to have project cars. It has nothing to do with the vehicles themselves.
Within any given decade the things the rich kids got carted around in (or their dad commuted in) always command a premium.
A 1988 Honda Civic isn't purely mechanical. It still has an ECU, for example. It still relies on electrical sensors for basic operation.
> Car enthusiasts want that sweet spot of purely analog controls, but also with working factory A/C.
There's no shortage of new cars that still offer that, too, or recently used. You don't have to go back to the late-80s to get that. It seems to be mechanical steering combined with low curb weight that you're actually focusing on, which is still a market segment receiving new models. You've basically described every Porsche up until the 2012 model year, for example (when they first introduced electronic steering). Or the entire Lotus brand. Or specialty cars like the Alfa Romeo 4c, Toyota/Subaru FRS/GT86/BRZ, etc...
And, of course, you can't forget the king of sports cars - the Mazda Miata. 30 years later & it's still just as light as it's always been. And just as good.
> Something like a BMW M3 E30 would be a dream hobby car for me.
There's so much more to a car than spec sheets, and you should absolutely chase your dreams, but realize you can also basically buy a brand new M3 E30 today. The power, weight, size, etc... of the E30 is withing spitting distance of the GT86.
Both are front-engine rear-wheel drive. Both have manual transmissions (although a 6-speed in the GT86 vs. the 5-speed in the E30). Both have a ~2700lb curb weight. Both have a 101 in wheelbase. The 86 is a bit shorter length, bit shorter height, and a bit larger width, but all within a few inches. Both have a 4-cylinder engine at around 200hp, and both rev to about 7000 rpm. Both have responsive, playful suspensions, and direct steering feedback.
Regulations definitely didn't kill anything here as the same core specs still exist.
Lots of dedicated automotive hobbyists end up being specialized mechanical engineers. They might not know the formal math behind systems, but they have a reason to learn. Today's hobbyists might look up tables for calculating fueling requirements for the expected airflow of their setups, as tuning an engine invariably means figuring out airflow volume for an intake setup, then calculating injector duty cycles to deliver a set volume of fuel over a specific timespan.
I doubt there will be many people modifying new EVs due to their complexity. But people are definitely converting old cars to EVs and that requires a pretty deep knowledge of EE principals.
EVs are comparatively easy to get started on as a hobby. The production EVs are only making it easier by populating the secondhand parts market, and electric drivetrains are much simpler and easier to fit than ICE conversions.
[0] http://www.nedra.com/
[1] http://cafeelectric.com/zilla.php
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrathon
Thus, most people tolerate Wranglers because A) they enjoy it, B) they like the image driving one projects. It's really not any different from a Dodge Viper, it's a terrible car that people drive mainly for image, or because melted shoe soles and burned legs are worth it for the fun.
So what happens is, Toyota/Ford/Chevy/Suzuki make a "better" competitor. But hardly anyone buys it because it's a terrible daily driver, and it doesn't have the image of a Wrangler for people to overlook it.
Even Jeep sells mostly comfy SUVs.
It's a real problem that is very prevalent, especially in more rural areas.
I agree with you that building a bunch of electric supercars isn't the ideal long-term plan, but you have to admit that Tesla's roadster and their very fast cars have had an enormous impact when it comes to driving adoption and combatting the negative perceptions around electric cars.
Psychology is a huge factor when you are talking about progress and convincing an entire population to switch their way of thinking.
Not happening. The most important thing is not mentioned: weight. The production version can be 1000 lbs heavier than a regular Mustang. This model can cut some of it but more will be added in batteries to get more power. And then there is nothing you can do on the track - can’t fight physics.
Not the first time I see such misleading claims about cars made by tech sites. Linking to articles written by car magazines would be better - they wouldn’t believe the PR so easily.
Edit: I should mention I’m talking about the lap times more than the 1/4 mile times.
[0] https://youtu.be/Zxe_DqAkeAk
1500 HP for an ICE is a multimillion price tag 1500 HP for an EV in 5-10 years will be 1/10th that.
The design of this underlines that. the 1500HP is from just serially adding motors to the axles. It didn't involve a 10 year development cycle for a W-12 quad-turbo'd megaengine.
They pulled 7 motors off the shelf and attached them.