The Car thread - The Bear and Badger

poprock

Because while the cars may be ‘essentially’ the same, the details are not. And it’s the details people care about. The finish. The interior materials. The dashboard. The instruments. The controls. The bits you actually touch and look at over and over again.

isanbard

They also kind of initially said the model 3 was a $35,000 motor.. so expected to be a £27,000 car.

That's if you believe ol' Elon when he says his big things. Salty pinches required to interpret his pronouncements.

MattyJ

Yeah I was hoping it was sub £30k tbh.

Dinostar77

Also how many Tesla superchargers are there to charge the model 3? Home charge from empty to full takes a day and a half. I believe a Tesla supercharger can do it a few hours to 80%. Info from Carwow model 3 review video on youtube.

All electric cars need to be heavily subsidised by UK government in order to get the masses to convert. Even then can we generate enough power to charge all those cars?

jdanielp

Dinostar77 wrote:

Also how many Tesla superchargers are there to charge the model 3? Home charge from empty to full takes a day and a half. I believe a Tesla supercharger can do it a few hours to 80%. Info from Carwow model 3 review video on youtube. All electric cars need to be heavily subsidised by UK government in order to get the masses to convert. Even then can we generate enough power to charge all those cars?

There's a reasonable network of the original superchargers, which should charge a Model 3 to 80% in around half an hour, while the new generation V3 superchargers, when installed, should do the same in 10-15 mins. As the Model 3 becomes popular in the UK, I imagine that there could start to be queues to charge unless Tesla expands the network and the number of bays per supercharger quite quickly. Someone spoke on Fully Charged about how the National Grid is already more than capable of handling a million plus electric vehicles, and that having a decent number plugged in at any time would actually help balance the electric supply, although that was perhaps focussed on home charging. Fast chargers will increasingly be fitted with local battery storage and solar generation which will help allevaite that aspect.

yourfavouriteuncle

I’ve wondered the same about producing enough capacity for us all to charge our electric future cars. I mean will we be able to manage it? Won’t we need more power stations? I mean when there’s a big footie match on the grid has a massive surge at half time when we all put the kettle on so what happens when everyone gets home at half five and plugs their Tesla Mark 6’s in?
Isn’t that increase in electric production and consumption also going to be really shitty for the environment too? I get that extracting oil isn’t exactly wonderful for the planet plus emissions after that but surely all that extra electric we’ll need ain’t gonna be perfect either?

Am I being a moran and coming at this wrong as it seems like we’re swapping one load of nasty pollutants for another.

poprock

No, you’re being sensible. Lots of other people are being morans about it.

All electric cars do is improve the air quality in built-up environments. The other environmental costs of traditional cars/bikes are just pushed further up the supply chain to the electricity suppliers. And the environmental costs of battery production (and, eventually, repurposing/recycling/disposal) get added to them.

jdanielp

Most people won't need to charge every day due to not actually using their car all that much and charging at home will mostly take place at night (mostly) to take advantage of economy tarrifs - people may plug their cars in when they get home, but charging can be scheduled to take place at an arbitrary time. More homes will have local battery storage and cars will be able to commuicate with the batteries and the grid so that energy is moved around as efficiently as possible (the balancing aspect I mentioned) which will put less strain on generation. Hopefully there will be way more wind farms, solar farms, tidal turbines etc. which can provide green energy with more balance from industrial battery arrays. It is all achievable so long as we start investing in a sensible way and don't rely on fracking and unproven nuclear power stations.

poprock

I count at least 15 assumptions in there and no facts.

And as for the last point … since when has the UK been run by a sensible government? There is slim to no chance of a responsible smart power grid being in place within the next 50 years.*

*Source: Conversation with my downstairs neighbour yesterday. He’s in charge of proposals for ‘energy as a service’ at SSE as part of their work towards the magical unicorn Smart National Grid.

jdanielp

Lots of assumptions, true, but nothing that isn't already possible or at least being planned, although that time scale does sound worryingly slow. Nissan is already running trials of the smart home (car/battery/solar) aspect. Uptake of electric vehicles will likely be slow enough (unfortunately) to have no particularly significant effect in the short term in any case.

Lord_Griff

They should pump liquid battery juice. Some university is working on it. Recharge battery in 30 secs. Infrastructure already in place.

Dinostar77

Cars in Brasil run on alcohol/ ethanol. Zero emissions from those cars and they run on traditional engines (well modified for that fuel type). Wonder why we've never considered it in Europe.

poprock

Ethanol fuelled cars are not zero emissions. Just slightly lower in harmful particulates than petrol/diesel cars.

Being lower is a good thing, of course. Brazil have done well with it because they’re a subtropical country and can grow all the necessary sugar cane domestically.

We do have a percentage of ethanol in our fuels here in the UK. 95 RON unleaded is 5% ethanol, for example.

GooberTheHat

I imagine the growing of the plants to produce the ethanol reduces the overall co2 cost? But then there will be a co2 cost of converting the raw materials into ethanol. It would be interesting to see what the comparison with traditional fuels is.

afgavinstan

So you're all saying I should buy a bike then? A Japanese one? Right on.

GooberTheHat

A Japanese bike powered by saké

Webbins

A Kawasake?

GooberTheHat

OMG!

g.man

*clap clap clap*

Eric

Ha ha, take a bow!

Bob

We should all
Buy second hand cars

Apparently it’s worse for the environment actually making the fuckers in the first place

Eric

My gearbox has just gone on our Audi so gone for an Volvo XC40 on lease

poprock

Bob wrote:

We should all
Buy second hand cars

Apparently it’s worse for the environment actually making the fuckers in the first place

Yes.

Dinostar77

Eric wrote:

My gearbox has just gone on our Audi so gone for an Volvo XC40 on lease

Ouch. But nice replacement. Did you have a look on here

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=255&t=1801047&i=1480

They really do find some good deals

Bob

If only we knew some one with a great reputation in second hand motors

Dinostar77

Bob do you work for a specific dealership or a general car franchise?

Eric

Dinostar77 wrote:

Eric wrote:

My gearbox has just gone on our Audi so gone for an Volvo XC40 on lease

Ouch. But nice replacement. Did you have a look on here

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=255&t=1801047&i=1480

They really do find some good deals

I didn't but probably should have! I used the cars2buy lease comparison site in the end which was pretty good and filters the results really well. Got a 3+36 deal in the end but there are a lot of 1+24/36/48 deals there for people with no deposits.

Bob

Dinostar77 wrote:

Bob do you work for a specific dealership or a general car franchise?

I work here.

http://www.swiftmotors.net/

Small used car dealership. Basically began as an offshoot of a garage fixing cars and I've built it up over the years.

Dinostar77

You work there or you own it?

MattyJ

Bob wrote:

If only we knew some one with a great reputation in second hand motors

If only.

Spoiler:

Howdy, Stranger!

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