35kWh on a boxy vehicle? As mentioned in the article, more like 150mi range on the standard the US uses to calculate range, and a smaller battery than some Zero motorcycles.
Not tiny, but it's not exactly a slippery vehicle; low mass could help it do better than a tesla-type car at lower speeds, but worse at higher speeds, I imagine.
Charge to 90% and you're at 135mi range, leave a safety margin and now you're looking at 100mi real world. Not bad for most day-to-day, but when you look at real world usage and the safety margins most drivers like to use, it starts getting dicey.
Been in a Great Wall or two. Fine cars. I wouldn't want to crash in one, but they're engineered to a price point.
This is supposed to be an urban car. Almost all trips in cities are less than 20km (Berlin is about 30km across, Beijing maybe twice that). Even a 160km range is plenty if there are chargers where you park your car. I suppose China is building charging stations to match their accelerated introduction of EVs in their cities.
I'm sorry but I can't afford to own two+ vehicles, one for urban, one for long range.
For the purposes of the article, 'long range' equals one tank of gas (~250 miles in my 90s SUV) for an ICE. I am behind the concept of EVs in general, but IMHO they aren't quite practical for suburban (which is in EV terms in long range territory) usage. (yet!)
it depends what you count as Beijing, i used to ride bicycle sometimes from eastern Beijing to western part and it's easily 40-50 minutes in heavy traffic with numerous traffic lights, i don't think it would be even 30km across
actually using car in Beijing it's pretty stupid, why would you do it? it's flat as pancake, ideal for biking same as Bangkok, you don't even need car for grocery since you can have it delivered for free right to your door, even if you don't have elevator, more convenient and cheaper than shopping with car, subway station it's always pretty much less than 1km walk unless you live in Beijing suburbs
shame there is not done elevated LRT, since buses are useless and there are no trams/trains either so only solution to avoid traffic jams it's subway, elevated LRT could have more frequent stops in places subway can't reach or where it's not possible to upgrade capacity anymore
This is what is keeping my wife and I from getting her a Nissan Leaf. She drove a Nissan Versa (basically the same platform but traditional gas engine) until she was hit by another car. The accident was caused by a person in the oncoming lane not seeing her and turning left, striking her driver's side door. The other person was in a mid sized SUV (first gen Jeep Liberty) and was only going about 15MPH when she struck my wife's car, but the force pushed my wife's driver side door all the way into her seat and against her hip. The Versa was severely frame damaged and not driveable; the only damage the Jeep sustained was losing the bumper cover.
Thankfully my wife was not hurt apart from some bruising and soreness on her hip, but if the other car had been going faster (say, at an intersection) she could have been seriously hurt or killed. She is now driving our Crown Victoria, a full frame vehicle with five star crash ratings all around and reinforced doors due to being a former detective's car. Her fuel economy sucks, and she was just moved to a more remote office at her job which makes the Vic a very expensive commuter car now, but we're leery of getting her a subcompact (gas, hybrid, or electric). It's probably an irrational fear; such an accident is probably a once in a lifetime thing, but traffic is insane where we live and work so we both feel much safer with her in "The Tank".
What are the crash ratings all around on the Versa? I feel you are not being very scientific on this. She wasn’t injured in her wreck, you are extrapolating that she would have been, but you don’t know that. Bigger is not always better with crash safety, I see this idea espoused a lot. The old huge rigid cars from back in the day are actually death traps because they don’t have crumple zones and the frames are too rigid, transferring all the force to the occupant in a crash. That’s why demolition derby contestants always get those old full frame cars from the past, they don’t crumple and they transfer force to the other vehicles, but also to the driver.
If the modern crown vic is 5 star rated this may not be a problem, but the rating probably came before they added the door supports for the police, so the car may actually be more unsafe now.
God. That story rankles me, the new Jeep, a lifestyle product and environmentally terrible choice, being driven very poorly and causing massive damage and potential serious injury at only 15 mph. These large cars need to be taxed, they are not good for our planet or other drivers
In general, a side impact is a very bad scenario for the party being hit. There's not much room for crumple zones at all, and cars are often not rigid enough, leading to an intrusion by the other vehicle. But this is true for larger vehicles as well, e.g. older Ford F150s were famous for basically folding in half from the slightest side hit (say, a telephone pole at low speeds after losing control). In this situation, a rigid battery pack might actually make the car a lot safer. But yes, I wouldn't want to be in a tiny car getting hit from the side by a larger one.
Your feeling of safety is not justified. The Ford Crown Victoria had a "Marginal" rating for side impact crashes. And the type of modifications made to police vehicles don't actually do anything to improve crash safety.
One little-known fact is that (at least for Euro NCAP crash test scores), the scores are only comparable within "vehicle class", and even then by vehicle mass.
> Euro NCAP’s frontal impact test simulates a car crashing into another of similar mass and structure [...] cars which are within 150kg of one another are considered comparable.
This means that at least for Euro NCAP scores, you can only meaningfully compare crash test results within a type class of vehicle, for vehicles of similar weights. Heavier, higher vehicles will usually be better-off, so a compact roadster with a 5* score is not going to come off well from a collision with a 5* SUV.
I would argue that a Nissan Leaf would be overall safer than a Crown Victoria.
First of all, the 2nd generation (2018/2019) Nissan Leaf seems to have a comparable weight as the Crown Victoria. From the data I've been looking at online, it's around 25% less weight than the CV, but definitely more than a Versa. Also, this weight is likely better distributed throughout the car instead of being concentrated in one place.
Another factor to consider is that the CV is an older vehicle (did they stop making them in 2012?), and in general newer cars are safer due to strong materials and safety features/design.
Also, the likelihood of a fire during an accident is greatly reduced (although still non-zero, as demonstrated by Tesla).
Well, actually my round-trip commute is about 300 kilometers/200 miles (Antwerp, Belgium to Lille, France - it's fine because it's only once a week, I would never do that more frequently) and when I was looking for a new car just a few weeks ago, I realised that it made using an electric car just not practical at all, especially if I'm not guaranteed to be able to park in front of my house to charge it, or to have free EV parking spots at work.
Obviously most people have shorter commutes, but here in Belgium it's actually not that uncommon to have long commutes. I see more Teslas in the city of Antwerp than on the highway.
I feel like this is a regulatory issue; my wild-ass guess would be that in the EU, at least, they'll have to be engineered to be a minimum level of crash-safe.
About 50 HP. That's pretty OK for a small city car like that, especially with electric engine which has nice torque from the start. Boxyness doesn't matter much at 30-50 km/h.
It has similar shape and size to Fiat 126p - the car that motorized several communist countries in 70s-80s (and is still used in Cuba). They made millions of them. It had about 600 kg empty mass, and 24 HP. I assume this weighs more because of batteries, but surely not twice as much?
It wasn't comfortable (back seats were designed for people about 160 cm tall :) ), and certainly wasn't safe (famously - the structural integrity during a crash depended on a spare tire being in it's intended place in the front trunk, and even then any serious crash was deadly).
But there were almost no heavy cars on the roads then, and you weren't supposed to drive it over 80km/h anyway - it felt like you're in a formula one when you exceeded 90 km/h, and it took over 40 seconds to achieve 100km/h speed :)
I would be OK with driving this in city traffic, especially if it was allowed on bus lanes and if access to the city center was paid for ICE cars.
200 miles / 33kWh is about 6 miles per kWh. A Tesla Model S does about 3 miles per kWh. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that a much smaller car with a 35kW engine instead of a 580kW engine could be twice as efficient, but maybe my knowledge of engineering is not as good as yours. Care to elaborate why they're lying?
my apologies, lack of sleep and too much exposure to american units. I even read what it said, and thought it was erroneously written as 'motor size' rather than 'battery size'.
24kWh has been pushing Nissan Leafs around for eight years.
and a smaller battery than some Zero motorcycles.
Well, you made me look, at least. Because if they can fit a 35kWh battery on a bike, I’m buying one tomorrow. They don’t, of course. The biggest thing Zero makes is a tenth that size.
They don't, but their bikes top out at 18 kWh, not 3.5 kWh as you're implying. The power tank add-on is 3.6 kWh which could be the source of the confusion.
Something that keeps me from getting an hybrid or electric vehicle is that I can no longer fix them. My '01 Subaru is a simple machine. When something goes wrong there are only a few potential issues and usually it is either something I can do myself or something my mechanic can do for less than $500.
My mechanic won't even look at electric or hybrid cars because he isn't certified. My brother in laws hybrid Nissan had an issue over Christmas. I took a look at it and a mechanic took a look at it (friend of the family doing him a favor). Turned out to be an electronic issue, dealer ended up having to replace a controller that cost north of $1200.
When they diagnosed it I did some research and discovered that I could replace it, but much like the market for HVAC parts, I wasn't allowed to purchase the part...
I will probably ve sticking with my Subaru and get my wife (who is looking for a new car after hers died) an early 00s vehicle that I can still repair for less than ridiculous prices.
My understanding is that the failure rates are so low on electric motors, you won’t need to fix lots of problems like on an ICE-powered vehicle. As someone that has owned a lot of shitty gas cars and had to repair them myself, I’d relish the chance for an electric.
They said the LED light bulbs would last 20 years. Last week I had to replace 5 of them that failed all at the exact same time, 6 month old bulbs. Clearly there was some kind of power surge or disturbance that the power electronics didn't like; but yet here we are.
Tesla drivetrains had a high failure rate possibly due to arcing through their ball bearing causing pitting. The Tesla problem is likely resolved, but I’m not confident these (non-Tesla) electric motors won’t have high failure rates too. Other simple things like battery pack power relays fail more often than you’d expect, costing thousands to replace a ?$50? part.
I’m a few years into my first electric and would feel more comfortable with a solid supply of reasonably priced parts and service manuals.
While this is true with regards to the motor, battery, etc. the rest of the car is the same as standard vehicles and will fail in the same way as today's cars do. So if the AC fails, some computer board fries, suspension gets messed up, etc. you're still back at the shop.
The motors yes, but the power electronics components in motor controllers, MOSFETs and IGBTs, have a notoriously short life, especially if heavy power cycling with short t_on and t_off occurs.
Automobiles nowadays are more like electronics with more sophisticated ECUs and drive-by-wire technologies on throttle, breaks etc. With self-driving on the horizon, they are going to be more compute intensive and be more powerful in computing than your smartphones and your average personal computers. Btw, electric vehicles are more suitable for self-driving due to the electricity requirements of AI computing.
Are you ever going to be able to fix them yourself if they are broken? Probably not (unless you have a electronic shop with all the equipments and are savvy in electronics like iFixIt guys do, but even then you can't fix a IC chip if it's fried.)
Just like an iPhone, as it's more integrated and smarter and more powers, the repairability is going down. So get used to it.
PS: on the flip side, more IC chips in designs generally provide a more solid and reliable product (probably with exception) and cheaper the cost due to economy of scale in manufacturing and reduced in labor, which is why you can have an EV with 200miles of range with less than $10k price tag.
My grandfather was a mechanic. In the 80s ECUs became the normative and he was unable to keep up with the electronic side of mechanical work and had to retire. I was talking to my mechanic last week about this and he said he would probably be out of a job in another decade because the next generation of mechanics are going to be electricians.
> "I will probably ve sticking with my Subaru and get my wife (who is looking for a new car after hers died) an early 00s vehicle that I can still repair for less than ridiculous prices."
A simple counter-argument is that an early 00s vehicle will break a lot more than a newer car. So even if you can fix it yourself or repairs are cheaper (which is questionable), a new car would break down a lot less often.
A counter argument to your counter argument, in point of example would be any Land Rover / Range Rover vehicle. If you've owned one, then you know - at a certain point they start falling apart. It doesn't matter what model year they are. On the whole, it's a certainty (with some rare outliers that run forever). The newer model years have considerably worse repairability. I'm lucky in that my 2012 is still relatively easy to work on.
Repairing older model years _tends_ to be cheaper as there are more surplus parts as more vehicles are retired. I've never lived in a county that didn't have several junkyards.
Reliability, repairability, and durability varies greatly by year, make, and model. Newer model years do not mean that all three factors always improve, and frequently mean that some or all of those factors regress. JD Power, Consumer Reports et al run yearly technical reports on nearly every vehicle out there if you're curious.
I agree with your sentiment, but I think you should look at the bigger picture. Subarus have a reputation for being easy to repair, a testament to thoughtful engineering. But most other brands are not that accessible, whether they're electric or ICE. So you might as well say you'll only buy Subaru rather than you wouldn't buy electric or hybrid.
Next, long range electric cars are a new technology and the tools and parts needed to repair them are still exotic. This is likely to change as electric cars become more common. Ideally, I'd recommend selecting electric cars that use standard components so they can be easily swapped or repaired. I don't know that these standards will ever arise, and that's not really how it worked out for ICE cars. But if the ability to repair and maintain your vehicle is a priority, that's a quality you should be looking for.
Honestly, her car will probably be a Subaru for this reason. Thinking a Forester since they are a bit larger and she needs the space for kids/horse tack/dogs/etc.
I highly value the ability to fix my own problems if I want to. Same reason I prioritize FOSS. I can fix issues myself.
Eventually I will probably be forced to move on, but my cars downfall will be rust and I estimate it has another decade at least before that happens.
"Subarus have a reputation for being easy to repair"
Replacing a single headlight bulb in recent Subarus is an hour long job. You get to remove the wheel and wheel well cover. Nice $250 job to replace both at the dealer. Daytime running lights that burn out extra quick just adds to this insanity.
Isn't this a matter of having mechanics and electricians certified in maintaining electric cars? Presumably as these cars become more popular electricians will flock to this line of work because that's where the demand is going.
>When they diagnosed it I did some research and discovered that I could replace it, but much like the market for HVAC parts, I wasn't allowed to purchase the part...
What are you talking about? You can buy all the automotive HVAC parts you need on Ebay or elsewhere. I did this for my ex-wife's car a couple years ago; with the help of a friend and his hose/gauge set, we replaced the compressor and recharged the system. It wasn't too hard.
Did you try looking on Ebay for the controller you needed?
For my '15 Mazda (non-hybrid), I can easily buy any part I need online from various OEM parts stores.
I meant HVAC for a house. Needed a part for my furnace and I had to get someone to buy the part for me because there were no 3rd party parts and Trane only sells to licensed HVAC. Felt like I was 18 and trying to buy alcohol.
it's a transitional period, a bit like smartphones, you can't put your fingers on the part, you have to have hot air gun, lenses etc etc. Repair shop will transition but so far the status was : electronics are not for repair..
When EV will be a major % people will fix because it will be regular market/customers. Also as other people said, EVs are 10x, if not more, simpler than ICE so we may (depending on QA) need less repairs.
Also I believe that swappable parts will become the norm, quick swap batteries ala Tesla, etc etc
I have a second car just for doing school runs. Never does more than 5km in a day, never goes over 40km/h. Still it requires expensive maintenance. I have long said I should replace it with something more like a golf-cart or electric bike with kids in a trailer or something. This kind of car could be that. I’m happy with a 20km range but it has to be cheap. The current car I use is worth less than the cost of its overdue timing belt change.
I've long had the notion that we shouldn't drive anything heavier than a golf cart in cities. It would be a lot safer for everyone and even teenagers could drive them.
Let me know how well that works out for you here in Phoenix during the middle of July.
For some areas of the US (notably the southwest), the summer months are brutal. Air conditioning is virtually a requirement, not a luxury. Unless we mandate that all businesses install showers for employees (and we change as a society and not mind people being sweaty and smelly otherwise).
The majority of power used in a car during the summer months - beyond moving itself and passengers - comes from the AC system. These systems can sometimes exceed the BTU output of a house AC unit, mainly because they are fighting the heat input from the outside constantly, due to the lack of insulation in an automobile passenger cabin. So they have to be more powerful to offset that. Which means they need a power system to keep up, and historically that has been an IC engine. I'm not sure how an electric vehicle's AC system fares during a hot summer day, or how it effects the battery charge, but I'd expect it to be fairly heavy on that front.
Could we do as you suggest? Certainly we could; we did something similar (more or less) for hundreds of years before automotive AC was a standard item (in fact, the automobile was around a long time before AC became a readily available option). At the same time, though, certain social standards were different, plus there's the argument that cities weren't as built up or as dense (heat island effect), making them (marginally) cooler than today.
Here in Phoenix, though - it starts to become a furnace around the end of May, and continues until about the end of October. There are nights where it never falls below 100F at times; most of the time it never falls below 90F at night. There isn't an easy solution for comfortable personal transportation in such conditions, except for the automobile as we currently know it.
Stayed on Ambergris Caye in Belize a few months ago, where almost all of the vehicles in town are golf carts. The air pollution was terrible in town because most of them were gas powered. It would've been amazing if they were all electric though!
It’s a shame this isn’t possible at the moment, I suppose the safety requirements of cars that need to be able to run on highways means a substantial minimum cost.
I almost wonder whether we shouldn’t have two overlapping road systems, one for residential streets and one for transport routes.
You could have a class of cars that only run on the residential streets which would be half way between a moped and a car, with 1-4 seats, a range of 30-50 miles, and a cost of $5-8k.
> I almost wonder whether we shouldn’t have two overlapping road systems, one for residential streets and one for transport routes.
It's not unrealistic at all, some cities already limit access to city center for some vehicles.
IMHO it shouldn't be an outright ban, just a big financial disincentive, so that people with big cars happen in the city center rarely enough not to matter, but they can still afford to drive there a few times a year when they really need to. Maybe on the order of 1 USD per minute?
It will be once they do it on their own. Right now it takes too much time. My workday is already down to 6-7h even with car drop off. Another 30min for school walk commute doesn’t make sense at the moment.
Not sure I understand. By “worth less than the cost of the cam belt change” I mean I’m expecting it to fail at which point I’ll scrap the car, because it’s not worth doing the cam belt change for 2x what the car is worth. I can just get another car with 3-4 years left until the cam belt change for that kind of money.
One of my friends used an electric tricycle (the kind in China used for light hauling) to take his kids to school during his sabbatical in Beijing. Might not be legal in Europe though.
Ignoring whether this is a great engineering accomplishment or not:
> In addition, the big data cloud that is created as the result of the information collected from the ORA app, the ORA shopping site and the Tmall e-shop opens the way to the development of multiple scenarios for offline sales
I don't see that much discussion about this trend, but I consider it a threat to security as well as just plain bad UX. All these UX gimmicks and "features" I already loathe in web apps, I really don't want them in my car. Pay to unlock, tracking, remote control, AI. Sure, it's comfort, but what is the price? At this point I prefer a 90's car where you just turn the key and it works or don't.
I think one trend we've seen emerging in markets everywhere is that despite competition in the market there isn't significant differentiation. So you'd think great, we've got this tech and I'll go with the company where I pay a little more and don't have to give up all my privacy. But instead what we end up with is 90% of companies bundling in all the privacy invasion stuff (because they like the new revenue stream or the share holders demand they follow the trend or they simply can't make the margin on the product) and then 10% of companies go right to the top end, and whilst you get your privacy you're also paying for massively premium products.
I see this in the smart home devices - you can trust NONE of them, with the exception of a tiny minority like Apple who also then charge a fortune extra because they're trying to sell a premium product for other reasons. So in the end you're not overwhelmed by choice, you're railroaded.
Nah I don’t think this is get off my lawn. “Features” have become the modern version of the next big thing, and humans are drawn to them like moths to a flame. In the rush we’ve given up a lot of personal rights to corporations without second thought. This isn’t like the invention of cars where people irrationally wanted to cling to a simpler way of life. This has been a tremendous paradigm shift for the autonomy and liberty of our citizens.
And as we see China implementing a dystopian social credit system, we really ought to be considering what traps were setting for our future selves.
Oh you didn’t pay off your Facebook credit card on time? Guess we’ll deactivate your car and drive it back to the factory until you sort that out. Hm looks like you like to go to some sketchy businesses that we don’t really think you should be going to? Ok we’re going to block off areas of the city where you’re permitted to drive to - trust us, it’s for your own good.
If we had that mythical “benevolent government” then sure this shouldn’t be an issue. But in this country you can literally be chilling in your apartment playing video games (or just chilling...) and get raided/murdered by police who are following a random SWAT call.
I don’t trust my primary mode of escape to be locked down by the government. And no one should.
Does anyone know the $$ hidden in the phrase "with incentives". If there are 20k of incentives, this press release is much less impressive than if there are $2k of incentives.
Personally, I am very bullish on electric cars, and am hoping this is the start of a lot of other automakers releasing affordable (to little ol me) electric cars.
"The subsidy program was renewed again in 2016 - up to RMB 55,000 ($8,736) for each BEV and up to RMB 30,000 ($4,765) for each PHEV. It will decrease by 20 percent in 2017 and 2018 based on 2016’s standard"
Is "Great Wall Motor" a name that's supposed to appeal to English-speaking audiences? It's not my first language, but even to me "Motor" sounds just wrong, it should be "Motors". No matter how often I read it, it still seems wrong.
Sorry for bikeshedding, but I don't drive a car :P
Keep in mind this is with significant subsidies. A 33kWh battery pack alone costs more than that retail. You can make anything cheap to the consumer when you funnel tax money into it.
Like "cheap" energy from carbon emissions from coal, oil, and gas? If you mention subsidies for EVs, must mention the MUCH larger and historically MASSIVE subsidies all polluters have been given by dumping their garbage into our atmosphere for free.
Another way to look at it is to see the subsidy as an investment by the govt. and then calculate the ROI on that investment. As long as it's above 0, it should be ok.
With subsidized electric vehicles, there are huge savings in terms of cost of imported oil, new jobs created in a new industry segment as a whole, new areas of economy opened up for growth, geo-political implications in terms of more negotiating power for purchasing energy, etc.
Not all subsidies are bad, not all capitalist systems are good.
As an American, I've been thoroughly and continuously shocked to see how roughly 50% of voters seem very devoted to supporting mercantilism and cronyism, as if this somehow makes their lives better.
But then again this is also the same demographic that lines up to pay $50,000 for a truck that delivers marginal value compared to a $6,000 used Nissan or Mitsubishi.
Especially when the majority of truck owners don't haul anything heavy (concrete, tile, metal).
Chinese cars haven’t made it in the anerican market yet. Safety standards are their biggest hurdle (and yes, the bar is higher because cars are on average heavier). GreatWall has had some success in Australia, but with a very mixed record on safety.
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Not tiny, but it's not exactly a slippery vehicle; low mass could help it do better than a tesla-type car at lower speeds, but worse at higher speeds, I imagine.
Charge to 90% and you're at 135mi range, leave a safety margin and now you're looking at 100mi real world. Not bad for most day-to-day, but when you look at real world usage and the safety margins most drivers like to use, it starts getting dicey.
Been in a Great Wall or two. Fine cars. I wouldn't want to crash in one, but they're engineered to a price point.
For the purposes of the article, 'long range' equals one tank of gas (~250 miles in my 90s SUV) for an ICE. I am behind the concept of EVs in general, but IMHO they aren't quite practical for suburban (which is in EV terms in long range territory) usage. (yet!)
actually using car in Beijing it's pretty stupid, why would you do it? it's flat as pancake, ideal for biking same as Bangkok, you don't even need car for grocery since you can have it delivered for free right to your door, even if you don't have elevator, more convenient and cheaper than shopping with car, subway station it's always pretty much less than 1km walk unless you live in Beijing suburbs
shame there is not done elevated LRT, since buses are useless and there are no trams/trains either so only solution to avoid traffic jams it's subway, elevated LRT could have more frequent stops in places subway can't reach or where it's not possible to upgrade capacity anymore
This Great Wall Motors ORA R1 would be ideal for me as a daily river. I'd only need to charge it once a week!
> I wouldn't want to crash in one, but they're engineered to a price point.
Great Wall Motors sell vehicles in Australia, so presumably they've passed all the relevant crash tests? Not sure about the ORA R1 though, obviously.
Edit to add: ObsoleteNerd's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18775462 supports your claim that you probably don't want to be in a Great Wall accident.
This is what is keeping my wife and I from getting her a Nissan Leaf. She drove a Nissan Versa (basically the same platform but traditional gas engine) until she was hit by another car. The accident was caused by a person in the oncoming lane not seeing her and turning left, striking her driver's side door. The other person was in a mid sized SUV (first gen Jeep Liberty) and was only going about 15MPH when she struck my wife's car, but the force pushed my wife's driver side door all the way into her seat and against her hip. The Versa was severely frame damaged and not driveable; the only damage the Jeep sustained was losing the bumper cover.
Thankfully my wife was not hurt apart from some bruising and soreness on her hip, but if the other car had been going faster (say, at an intersection) she could have been seriously hurt or killed. She is now driving our Crown Victoria, a full frame vehicle with five star crash ratings all around and reinforced doors due to being a former detective's car. Her fuel economy sucks, and she was just moved to a more remote office at her job which makes the Vic a very expensive commuter car now, but we're leery of getting her a subcompact (gas, hybrid, or electric). It's probably an irrational fear; such an accident is probably a once in a lifetime thing, but traffic is insane where we live and work so we both feel much safer with her in "The Tank".
If the modern crown vic is 5 star rated this may not be a problem, but the rating probably came before they added the door supports for the police, so the car may actually be more unsafe now.
https://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicle/v/ford/crown-victo...
Check out the side impact crash test pictures. The body actually buckled and rode up over the frame! This is not a safe design.
> Euro NCAP’s frontal impact test simulates a car crashing into another of similar mass and structure [...] cars which are within 150kg of one another are considered comparable.
This means that at least for Euro NCAP scores, you can only meaningfully compare crash test results within a type class of vehicle, for vehicles of similar weights. Heavier, higher vehicles will usually be better-off, so a compact roadster with a 5* score is not going to come off well from a collision with a 5* SUV.
Ref: https://web.archive.org/web/20090222214930/http://www.euronc...
First of all, the 2nd generation (2018/2019) Nissan Leaf seems to have a comparable weight as the Crown Victoria. From the data I've been looking at online, it's around 25% less weight than the CV, but definitely more than a Versa. Also, this weight is likely better distributed throughout the car instead of being concentrated in one place.
Another factor to consider is that the CV is an older vehicle (did they stop making them in 2012?), and in general newer cars are safer due to strong materials and safety features/design.
Also, the likelihood of a fire during an accident is greatly reduced (although still non-zero, as demonstrated by Tesla).
Obviously most people have shorter commutes, but here in Belgium it's actually not that uncommon to have long commutes. I see more Teslas in the city of Antwerp than on the highway.
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I feel like this is a regulatory issue; my wild-ass guess would be that in the EU, at least, they'll have to be engineered to be a minimum level of crash-safe.
It has similar shape and size to Fiat 126p - the car that motorized several communist countries in 70s-80s (and is still used in Cuba). They made millions of them. It had about 600 kg empty mass, and 24 HP. I assume this weighs more because of batteries, but surely not twice as much?
It wasn't comfortable (back seats were designed for people about 160 cm tall :) ), and certainly wasn't safe (famously - the structural integrity during a crash depended on a spare tire being in it's intended place in the front trunk, and even then any serious crash was deadly).
But there were almost no heavy cars on the roads then, and you weren't supposed to drive it over 80km/h anyway - it felt like you're in a formula one when you exceeded 90 km/h, and it took over 40 seconds to achieve 100km/h speed :)
I would be OK with driving this in city traffic, especially if it was allowed on bus lanes and if access to the city center was paid for ICE cars.
My knowledge of engineering suggests me that Great Wall guys are lying.
24kWh has been pushing Nissan Leafs around for eight years.
and a smaller battery than some Zero motorcycles.
Well, you made me look, at least. Because if they can fit a 35kWh battery on a bike, I’m buying one tomorrow. They don’t, of course. The biggest thing Zero makes is a tenth that size.
The main problem is charging, but that could also be fixed by installing chargers in the financial districts where only electric cars can park...
My mechanic won't even look at electric or hybrid cars because he isn't certified. My brother in laws hybrid Nissan had an issue over Christmas. I took a look at it and a mechanic took a look at it (friend of the family doing him a favor). Turned out to be an electronic issue, dealer ended up having to replace a controller that cost north of $1200.
When they diagnosed it I did some research and discovered that I could replace it, but much like the market for HVAC parts, I wasn't allowed to purchase the part...
I will probably ve sticking with my Subaru and get my wife (who is looking for a new car after hers died) an early 00s vehicle that I can still repair for less than ridiculous prices.
I’m a few years into my first electric and would feel more comfortable with a solid supply of reasonably priced parts and service manuals.
Are you ever going to be able to fix them yourself if they are broken? Probably not (unless you have a electronic shop with all the equipments and are savvy in electronics like iFixIt guys do, but even then you can't fix a IC chip if it's fried.)
Just like an iPhone, as it's more integrated and smarter and more powers, the repairability is going down. So get used to it.
PS: on the flip side, more IC chips in designs generally provide a more solid and reliable product (probably with exception) and cheaper the cost due to economy of scale in manufacturing and reduced in labor, which is why you can have an EV with 200miles of range with less than $10k price tag.
A simple counter-argument is that an early 00s vehicle will break a lot more than a newer car. So even if you can fix it yourself or repairs are cheaper (which is questionable), a new car would break down a lot less often.
Repairing older model years _tends_ to be cheaper as there are more surplus parts as more vehicles are retired. I've never lived in a county that didn't have several junkyards.
Reliability, repairability, and durability varies greatly by year, make, and model. Newer model years do not mean that all three factors always improve, and frequently mean that some or all of those factors regress. JD Power, Consumer Reports et al run yearly technical reports on nearly every vehicle out there if you're curious.
Next, long range electric cars are a new technology and the tools and parts needed to repair them are still exotic. This is likely to change as electric cars become more common. Ideally, I'd recommend selecting electric cars that use standard components so they can be easily swapped or repaired. I don't know that these standards will ever arise, and that's not really how it worked out for ICE cars. But if the ability to repair and maintain your vehicle is a priority, that's a quality you should be looking for.
I highly value the ability to fix my own problems if I want to. Same reason I prioritize FOSS. I can fix issues myself.
Eventually I will probably be forced to move on, but my cars downfall will be rust and I estimate it has another decade at least before that happens.
Replacing a single headlight bulb in recent Subarus is an hour long job. You get to remove the wheel and wheel well cover. Nice $250 job to replace both at the dealer. Daytime running lights that burn out extra quick just adds to this insanity.
What are you talking about? You can buy all the automotive HVAC parts you need on Ebay or elsewhere. I did this for my ex-wife's car a couple years ago; with the help of a friend and his hose/gauge set, we replaced the compressor and recharged the system. It wasn't too hard.
Did you try looking on Ebay for the controller you needed?
For my '15 Mazda (non-hybrid), I can easily buy any part I need online from various OEM parts stores.
When EV will be a major % people will fix because it will be regular market/customers. Also as other people said, EVs are 10x, if not more, simpler than ICE so we may (depending on QA) need less repairs.
Also I believe that swappable parts will become the norm, quick swap batteries ala Tesla, etc etc
Electric cars are not fundamentally less fixable. Mechanics just don't know them yet.
https://www.autotrader.com/cars-for-sale/vehicledetails.xhtm...
For some areas of the US (notably the southwest), the summer months are brutal. Air conditioning is virtually a requirement, not a luxury. Unless we mandate that all businesses install showers for employees (and we change as a society and not mind people being sweaty and smelly otherwise).
The majority of power used in a car during the summer months - beyond moving itself and passengers - comes from the AC system. These systems can sometimes exceed the BTU output of a house AC unit, mainly because they are fighting the heat input from the outside constantly, due to the lack of insulation in an automobile passenger cabin. So they have to be more powerful to offset that. Which means they need a power system to keep up, and historically that has been an IC engine. I'm not sure how an electric vehicle's AC system fares during a hot summer day, or how it effects the battery charge, but I'd expect it to be fairly heavy on that front.
Could we do as you suggest? Certainly we could; we did something similar (more or less) for hundreds of years before automotive AC was a standard item (in fact, the automobile was around a long time before AC became a readily available option). At the same time, though, certain social standards were different, plus there's the argument that cities weren't as built up or as dense (heat island effect), making them (marginally) cooler than today.
Here in Phoenix, though - it starts to become a furnace around the end of May, and continues until about the end of October. There are nights where it never falls below 100F at times; most of the time it never falls below 90F at night. There isn't an easy solution for comfortable personal transportation in such conditions, except for the automobile as we currently know it.
I almost wonder whether we shouldn’t have two overlapping road systems, one for residential streets and one for transport routes.
You could have a class of cars that only run on the residential streets which would be half way between a moped and a car, with 1-4 seats, a range of 30-50 miles, and a cost of $5-8k.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighborhood_Electric_Vehicle
It's not unrealistic at all, some cities already limit access to city center for some vehicles.
IMHO it shouldn't be an outright ban, just a big financial disincentive, so that people with big cars happen in the city center rarely enough not to matter, but they can still afford to drive there a few times a year when they really need to. Maybe on the order of 1 USD per minute?
If your car has an interference engine, that timing belt change could get even more expensive really quick, should it fail...
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> In addition, the big data cloud that is created as the result of the information collected from the ORA app, the ORA shopping site and the Tmall e-shop opens the way to the development of multiple scenarios for offline sales
I don't see that much discussion about this trend, but I consider it a threat to security as well as just plain bad UX. All these UX gimmicks and "features" I already loathe in web apps, I really don't want them in my car. Pay to unlock, tracking, remote control, AI. Sure, it's comfort, but what is the price? At this point I prefer a 90's car where you just turn the key and it works or don't.
Is this just "get-off-my-lawn" thinking?
I see this in the smart home devices - you can trust NONE of them, with the exception of a tiny minority like Apple who also then charge a fortune extra because they're trying to sell a premium product for other reasons. So in the end you're not overwhelmed by choice, you're railroaded.
And as we see China implementing a dystopian social credit system, we really ought to be considering what traps were setting for our future selves.
Oh you didn’t pay off your Facebook credit card on time? Guess we’ll deactivate your car and drive it back to the factory until you sort that out. Hm looks like you like to go to some sketchy businesses that we don’t really think you should be going to? Ok we’re going to block off areas of the city where you’re permitted to drive to - trust us, it’s for your own good.
If we had that mythical “benevolent government” then sure this shouldn’t be an issue. But in this country you can literally be chilling in your apartment playing video games (or just chilling...) and get raided/murdered by police who are following a random SWAT call.
I don’t trust my primary mode of escape to be locked down by the government. And no one should.
Personally, I am very bullish on electric cars, and am hoping this is the start of a lot of other automakers releasing affordable (to little ol me) electric cars.
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/comparing-u.s.-and-chines...
"The subsidy program was renewed again in 2016 - up to RMB 55,000 ($8,736) for each BEV and up to RMB 30,000 ($4,765) for each PHEV. It will decrease by 20 percent in 2017 and 2018 based on 2016’s standard"
Sorry for bikeshedding, but I don't drive a car :P
With subsidized electric vehicles, there are huge savings in terms of cost of imported oil, new jobs created in a new industry segment as a whole, new areas of economy opened up for growth, geo-political implications in terms of more negotiating power for purchasing energy, etc.
Not all subsidies are bad, not all capitalist systems are good.
... we can be sure the US will do lots to ban importing these.
But then again this is also the same demographic that lines up to pay $50,000 for a truck that delivers marginal value compared to a $6,000 used Nissan or Mitsubishi.
Especially when the majority of truck owners don't haul anything heavy (concrete, tile, metal).
Our current account deficit is half an order a magnitude larger than the #2.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_current...