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I've been a passenger in a couple of electric cars, and you don't realise the subtle signals that you miss from an ICE powered car.
Subconsciously, you'll hear the engine rev as the car begins to pull away, you miss that in an electric and your body doesn't react. You get pulled all over the place as you miss the cues.
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A bit like when Samsung recalled a lot of phones because they were catching fire then. Wasn't that the technology was unsafe. It was that the phone wasn't designed properly. Like most Samsung devices. And the consumer demand for smaller and smaller phones with large screens and a long battery life. Something had to give. It would be marketing suicide to make the phone fatter or a smaller battery as people would go to other brands. So they thought let's risk it. Same battery as every single other phone on the market. If one single model of petrol car had an issue with setting itself on fire, would you say that all petrol cars are dangerous and prone to spontaniously combusting?
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Last Edit: Oct 7, 2020 8:08:51 GMT by Soopahfly
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norm75
Part of things
Posts: 658
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Well no, but my initial question raised was not about looking after the battery, knowing the signs of a problem. My fear is how safe are they in an accident, as I explained the Rimac constantly re igniting for five days!
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norm75
Part of things
Posts: 658
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This has been a topic that is currently under discussion on another forum I am a member of, and your point about the lack of noise is another issue. I mentioned on that forum that I had to grab my wife by the shoulder when crossing the road recently as she just stepped out into it without looking. She said she can hear if a car is coming but I told her not so much nowadays with the increasing amount of electric/hybrid vehicles.
A quick google brought up the problems blind people are faced with electric vehicles. Yes the industry now have made it mandatory for electric vehicles to create a noise since July 2019 but that can mean any noise not necessarily associated with a car engine, and also only mandatory at speeds below 12mph. Hybrid vehicles do not have this in force until next year.
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Well no, but my initial question raised was not about looking after the battery, knowing the signs of a problem. My fear is how safe are they in an accident, as I explained the Rimac constantly re igniting for five days! Was that not a one-off car? Also, Top Gear. Not a factual motoring show. Also, may I present the Mazda Furai? www.carthrottle.com/post/w84jzde/
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Things in my mind that will cause problems in future is tuners with little to no understanding of battery technology who will disable car safety systems to pull more current from the battery and exceed what the battery can do. Causing fire. People modifying their cars in such a way that can cause them to burst in to flames you say?
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Last Edit: Oct 7, 2020 8:34:33 GMT by HoTWire
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norm75
Part of things
Posts: 658
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No it wasn't a one off car and Rimac have in fact joined forces with Hyundai so the next hybrid/electric vehicles coming out of South Korea will have Rimac technology. Rimac are also reportedly buying Bugatti from the VW group, so they aren't just a flash in the pan company operating out of a shed in the back garden.
Also wonder how long it took to put that Mazda out.
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Last Edit: Oct 7, 2020 8:49:49 GMT by norm75
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tdk
Part of things
Posts: 958
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I've been a passenger in a couple of electric cars, and you don't realise the subtle signals that you miss from an ICE powered car. Subconsciously, you'll hear the engine rev as the car begins to pull away, you miss that in an electric and your body doesn't react. You get pulled all over the place as you miss the cues. I always feel travel sick in an EV. That weird, silent, lurch to speed is horrible. But I am old and stupid.
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Porsche
West Midlands
Kev from B'ham.
Posts: 4,725
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From what I gather it will be the commercial sector, lorrys and such that will have to go down the hydrogen route. Battery power just won't work for their mileage. Yes, DHL and Bosch are already developing hydrogen trucks. Once they have and start to install hydrogen pumps across the country, we will start to see the rise in hydrogen car development. Well, that's my view anyhow.
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duncanmartin
Club Retro Rides Member
Out of retro ownership
Posts: 1,320
Club RR Member Number: 70
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Many commercial EVs have a special port that is designed to allow the fire department to flood the battery to stop any fire from getting out of control. I don't know whether the Rimac in your example had that facility, and if it did whether they decided not to use it for some reason (like saving the batteries). That said, the batteries tend to be pretty securely held in giant steel boxes that are far harder to damage than a fuel tank or a fuel line. Let's face it, it's not like vehicle fires are unheard of. Hydrogen is not like petrol. If you leave petrol in a tank, no problem. If you want to keep liquid hydrogen in a tank, you need to pressurize it and cool it (to -250 degrees C at atmospheric pressure!). Even when stored correctly, you get leakage of 1% a day because the molecules are so small they can escape through thick steel. If you want a hydrogen fuel cell car right now, you can buy a Toyota Mirai. They have sold just over 10,000 worldwide since launch in 2014. More details on it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_MiraiUnfortunately, there are under 20 hydrogen fuel stations in the whole UK. And a tank will cost about 50 quid and get you about 300 miles, so it's more expensive than petrol or diesel and massively more expensive than electricity direct. In terms of lightweight, there is a company based in Wales building a FCEV that is all about lightness. You can find out a lot more about them here: www.riversimple.com/They have an interesting discussion with regard to H2 vs batteries, and conclude that their car is more efficient from well to wheels because of the light weight. www.riversimple.com/batteries-hydrogen-wrong-question/ That doesn't necessarily follow if you put a fuel cell into a giant SUV (which is what seems to be selling at the moment), because much of the weight advantage disappears. That page also demonstrates that well -> wheel, hydrogen is massively less efficient than battery technology. None of the above has any retro content at all, apologies. If we discount pure hybrids and start thinking about conversions in terms of creating a range extended vehicle, then the problem for most retro car conversions is going to be packaging. In a typical EV conversion, the motor and controller electronics take up most of the space where the gearbox and engine used to be (with maybe a couple of batteries), and then batteries go where the fuel tank was an eat up some luggage space. If you want to keep a fuel tank and a reasonable sized ICE engine plus the electricity generation gubbins, then you have to find somewhere to put it. The best extended range vehicles to date have been the Ampera and the i3 - both of which were designed from the ground up as extended range cars with batteries under the floor and dedicated space for the engine and the rest. The i3 Rex isn't available in Europe any more as the 600cc scooter engine it was built on is difficult to get through emissions regulations. It also demonstrates the issue if you try to get away with a small battery pack and a small engine - it was unable to generate enough electricity to power the car under high load conditions if you ran the battery down - there was a huge fuss about this in the US and they ended up basically changing at what point the motor would kick in to avoid this scenario (reducing EV only range). Maybe if you were converting something like a pickup then you could put the battery, motor, and control electronics under the bed floor and keep the under bonnet area for the range extender? It might be cheaper than having another 50kWh of batteries, but it would be complicated, and it would probably need the end user to manage the state of charge of the batteries manually. Also, I don't know if there are any commercially available BMS systems that would allow you to have a custom battery pack and have a load and significant generation happening at the same time. With pure EV, you either have load or charge, not both.
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I know that this is the future and I get the tech behind it all and the arguments for and against, (well mostly against!) But having driven an EV its the most souless, pointless and uninspiring thing to drive, no character or charm to speak of. Anyway I'll be pusing up daisys not to worry when this is all mainstream stuff. Ditto what tdk said, being old!
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,712
Club RR Member Number: 34
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I was shocked recently at how non-fuel-efficient modern cars seem to be. The newest thing I have is a 2001 Lupo tdi that does 60mpg no matter how you drive it. That’s real world mpgs, even thrashing it down the motorway at 80. It’s got a cat but that’s about it. No DPF or anything. I recently looked at replacing it and I kinda assumed moderns would be more efficient. NOPE. I couldnt find any comparable vehicle that would offer the same mpg even on paper. Lots of stuff was shockingly bad, only averaging 35-45mpg. Even stuff specifically badged as ‘eco’ was only in the 45-50mpg range. When it came back to it the few cars that were close basically had the same engine (vw 3cyl diesel) but in larger heavier cars, so there was no point at all changing it. It depends on how modern you were looking. My 2018 ignis does high 50 MPGs no matter how I drive it and low 60s when I do 85% motorway miles. Give them a few years to depreciate and you've got a potential replacement for the lupo. Interestingly the replacement released in 2020 is hybrid only and offers lower MPGs than my petrol version. Age wasn’t a concern neither was image (I’m a burly 6’4” and have no issues driving round in a smurf blue lupo). I think I said a budget of £5k to buy something that’ll last and fulfilled the same criteria or did better- £30 or less tax, 60mpg, small, only basic creature comforts, good parts backup, easy to modify. There was literally nothing made for 15 years that could do that. Anything newer was more than I was willing to pay for something that only did the same job as what I already had. I wonder how many other people have done the same? I think anyone with a mediocum of sense who doesn’t buy a car based on other people’s perceived image of it would have Gone through a similar process. It makes no sense to spend a chunk of cash buying a ‘new’ car that’s worse than your old one you already have, but that is literally what the market has to offer. That’s kinda where electric vehicles and also hybrids are at the moment. If they offered any advantages over a good efficient ICE car I’d buy one as a runabout, but they just don’t. Instead I spent a grand or so going through the Lupo replacing things to make it feel new again, and tidying it up bodily.
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Things in my mind that will cause problems in future is tuners with little to no understanding of battery technology who will disable car safety systems to pull more current from the battery and exceed what the battery can do. Causing fire. People modifying their cars in such a way that can cause them to burst in to flames you say? That's the point, happens to both ICE and Electric, but people are only concerned with electric.
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norm75
Part of things
Posts: 658
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Merely raising a concern. I'm not against petrol/diesel, electric, hydrogen or whatever. The world has to move forward, but at the end of the day it probably took the fire brigade half an hour to put out the fire from the Mazda, or the Volvo above.
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On the subject of packaging for EV conversions there is a nice diagram on this page which shows some of how batteries and motors are spread through the vehicle : www.xingmobility.com/ev-conversions
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duncanmartin
Club Retro Rides Member
Out of retro ownership
Posts: 1,320
Club RR Member Number: 70
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That’s kinda where electric vehicles and also hybrids are at the moment. If they offered any advantages over a good efficient ICE car I’d buy one as a runabout, but they just don’t. EVs are cheaper to run than a good efficient ICE if you have somewhere to charge at home electricity prices. A fivers worth of electricity will comfortably do 100-150 miles. However, supply of secondhand ones is limited, demand is reasonably high, and there is a floor set by the value of the battery to do other things (like home storage), so depreciation is slow and there is a cut-off point at a few grand where it's worth more in parts. I don't see how the latter situation changes, so while you can run one on a shoestring, buying one on a shoestring is unlikely in the near future, and in 12 years time I can't see any iMievs or early Leafs sneaking into the Gathering as bona fide >20yo retro cars. That's an interesting spin off question - what will be the first genuine Retro original EV? Maybe a well preserved i3?
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It depends on how modern you were looking. My 2018 ignis does high 50 MPGs no matter how I drive it and low 60s when I do 85% motorway miles. Give them a few years to depreciate and you've got a potential replacement for the lupo. Interestingly the replacement released in 2020 is hybrid only and offers lower MPGs than my petrol version. Age wasn’t a concern neither was image (I’m a burly 6’4” and have no issues driving round in a smurf blue lupo). I think I said a budget of £5k to buy something that’ll last and fulfilled the same criteria or did better- £30 or less tax, 60mpg, small, only basic creature comforts, good parts backup, easy to modify. There was literally nothing made for 15 years that could do that. Anything newer was more than I was willing to pay for something that only did the same job as what I already had. I wonder how many other people have done the same? I think anyone with a mediocum of sense who doesn’t buy a car based on other people’s perceived image of it would have Gone through a similar process. It makes no sense to spend a chunk of cash buying a ‘new’ car that’s worse than your old one you already have, but that is literally what the market has to offer. That’s kinda where electric vehicles and also hybrids are at the moment. If they offered any advantages over a good efficient ICE car I’d buy one as a runabout, but they just don’t. Instead I spent a grand or so going through the Lupo replacing things to make it feel new again, and tidying it up bodily. I definitely know where you're coming from, when I said how modern I meant budget really so yes you're right about beating what you've got for £5k without buying another equivalent of your current lupo. I think sometimes the people who decide on the tax bands shoot themselves in the foot - offer free road tax or £30 road tax for certain bands then all the auto manufacturers release cars in that bracket and they have to rethink their structure and increase the tax rates for those bands but because of that it makes more sense to buy or carry on driving a car that meets the low tax bands that existed at time of manufacture.
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smart
Part of things
Posts: 134
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Some really interesting replies to this thread, obviously not the only one thinking about the current madness of the motor trade and the way its jumped (or been pushed by governments) onto the ICE is evil and electric will solve everything bandwagon (Bit like the EU saying we should all drive diesels for the last decade.....)
The newest car in the family fleet is a 4 year old Peugeot 208 1.2. (My mums shopping car) Its so strange to drive, you don't feel part of the process! The steering is numb, clutch and gearbox jerky and the engine seems to do everything minutes after you ask it to! She gets 40mpg from it doing the exact same journeys that the old Rover 400 diesel we had gave 50mpg
I personally have never owned a car newer than 12 years old so the whole electric car ownership wont be forced on me until sometime in the mid 2040's! However I do believe that the shortcomings of electric cars will be paid for by the rest of us still driving ICE vehicles
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1998 Rover 400 Derv
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Dez
Club Retro Rides Member
And I won't sit down. And I won't shut up. And most of all I will not grow up.
Posts: 11,712
Club RR Member Number: 34
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That’s kinda where electric vehicles and also hybrids are at the moment. If they offered any advantages over a good efficient ICE car I’d buy one as a runabout, but they just don’t. EVs are cheaper to run than a good efficient ICE if you have somewhere to charge at home electricity prices. A fivers worth of electricity will comfortably do 100-150 miles. However, supply of secondhand ones is limited, demand is reasonably high, and there is a floor set by the value of the battery to do other things (like home storage), so depreciation is slow and there is a cut-off point at a few grand where it's worth more in parts. I don't see how the latter situation changes, so while you can run one on a shoestring, buying one on a shoestring is unlikely in the near future, and in 12 years time I can't see any iMievs or early Leafs sneaking into the Gathering as bona fide >20yo retro cars. That's an interesting spin off question - what will be the first genuine Retro original EV? Maybe a well preserved i3? That’s it really, The situation Where an electric car is ‘better’ is still a convoluted set of circumstances that only applies to relatively few people. I know various people who will drive a £500 Older ex-luxury car that does 25mpg, rather than a newer midrange or eco model that does 50mpg But costs 2-3 grand, as for the the amount of miles they do the former is still cheaper overall per year for a good number of years. Electric may have cheaper running costs on paper, if you have the privilege of being able to park and charge at home in a secure environment. But the elephant in the room is the huge initial purchase cost. People either don’t have that amount of cash sat around spare to dump on the purchase, or are unwilling (or unable) to get finance to pay for it. I’d like to see electric cars become cheap enough that they become a sensible Option and are worth having some fun with, but with my experiences of consumer electronics, they’ll all be knackered by then.
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^^following on from your thread.
I did a spreadsheet, to work out the cost per year of running a number of different cars for my 50 mile daily motorway commute.
I included road tax, purchase price, insurance and fuels costs. I didn't factor in depreciation.
I ended up with a 17 year old lupo sdi for £800. A saxo diesel was 2nd.
Elon Musk said buy a £50k Tesla and in time it would work out very cheap to run over a long period.
Whatever the technology its got to be affordable.
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