The Car thread - The Bear and Badger

MattyJ

Luigi?

MattyJ

Of course

HawBawJaws

Daily: porsche panamera
Weekend car: jag f type
Dream car: a modern m2, but with an e30 m3 evo body on it.

Dinostar77

Really dont like the panamera, it just looks wrong

Dinostar77

How to build a maserati (ch4) was an interesting watch. Before i watched, I knew nothing about the brand apart from they use Ferrari engines. Couldnt even name a maserati model.

Bob

My boss had a 3200 GT with the boomerang lights (so pre-ferrari) and it had a sticky butterfly in the throttle pedal (A feature so common mike brewer had it on his one when he did it on wheeler dealer) which meant it went from 0 to all 400 bhp with virtually nothing in between. Build quality and switch gear was fucking abysmal.

jdanielp

I have just added a car to my 'garage' (which until now only consisted of bicycles except when I owned my grandmother's old Vauxhall Nova for a few years in the early noughties), using the pandemic as a reason to help me justify the purchase. I'll become a bit of a taxi service to my family (none of whom drive) for the foreseeable future as a result. I had cancelled my Tesla Model 3 reservation earlier in the year after failing to buy one since they became available last summer, but stuck with the brand and ended up going for a used Tesla Model S 75D! I collected it yesterday and had my first drive. It's a large car, which will take some getting used to, but it really does go despite being relatively 'slow' for a Tesla (0-60 mph in 5.2 seconds). It has their old version of the Autopilot system, but that still works quite solidly for easing the mental fatigue of motorway driving. Amazing!

Let me know if anyone wants to use my referral link which gives both of us some free Supercharging.

Dinostar77

Congratulations on your car buddy. Hope you have fun doing the family runs.

I dont see myself ever going electric for a vehicle. A because i cant ever afford it (most i spent on a car is £3500) and b) i have zero passion for electric cars.

GooberTheHat

I could get on board with a Tesla, but I can't imagine ever being able to afford one.

afgavinstan

I find them all fascinating but will never be able to afford one though I do hope for a decent enough used market in twenty or so years as I myself start slowing down

mk64

Just got a rav4 hybrid. Brilliant car

Dinostar77

Cant go wrong with a toyota. They top the reliability charts every year along with honda, kia and hyundai.

jdanielp

I reckon that prices of electric vehicles will drop fairly quickly this decade as the tech improves and there is more competition. If they don't then it's just another nail in the coffin for us all in terms of climate breakdown.

Dinostar77

My issue with electric cars and even the mqb platform for VW, where they are getting rid of physical buttons and everything is touchscreen. How is this stuff going to hold up in 10-15 years time? A 15 year old tesla would need more than a few battery cells replacing bu then and thats not cheap.

This drive to get away from petrol and diesel for environmental reasons is commendable if alittle misguided (i dont think electricity is the answer for cars). All its going to be doing is taxing the poor when charges go up for using non electric vehicles.

Bob

jdanielp wrote:

I reckon that prices of electric vehicles will drop fairly quickly this decade as the tech improves and there is more competition. If they don't then it's just another nail in the coffin for us all in terms of climate breakdown.

Electric cars drop like stones anyway. I just paid £7,500 for a top of the range leaf that's six years old and was £30k. Once they're eight years old and the battery warranty is expired they'll be even cheaper.

Toyota Hybrid's are good but the MPG are nothing like what they claim and you can walk faster than they'll go in full electric mode. How they can claim on the advert it's electric 50% of the time is beyond me. But clearly very clever marketing and stats people know more than me.

afgavinstan

I know there's that guy who battled Tesla over the Right To Repair but how are the other manufacturers with their EVs? Will be interesting going forward.

jdanielp

Part of the reason why I went for a used Model S, rather than a new Model 3, is my continuing scepticism of the lack of physical controls in their newer cars. The Model S has a lot going on via the touchscreen, but it does still have quite conventional stalks (including wiper controls, which the 3 doesn't have!) and a secondary display for the most important driving information, which can be customised using physical buttons on the steering wheel.

I don't see batteries as a problem. If a car is designed sensibly, then the entire battery pack can be replaced easily (if maybe not all that cheaply out of warrenty, but prices of batteries are dropping rapidly) and the old battery can be reused for energy storage purposes or, if it comes to it, recycled. If anything was genuinely set to challenge battery technology, I think it would have to be rolling out in a well developed form at this point...

Bob

Presumably Hydrogen will start getting rolled out as a fuel network at some point.

jdanielp

Possibly, although whichever manufacturer it was that had been pushing that for cars did recently roll back on their plans. I could certainly see a hydrogen network being developed for larger vehicles, but maybe not cars.

Dinostar77

I think hydrogen is the long term future. Its just an issue at the moment of extracting the hydrogen in a cheap way. The most common element in the universe and we are struggling to get it extracted cheaply. Once thats cracked i think hydrogen will really take off.

Issue with electric is that we need more and more power from the grid to charge the cars. Where does that power come from? Fossil fuels, nuclear and a small percentage from solar. Once we can extract hydrogen from water cheaply and efficiently enough, thats will be the horse to back.

Eventually (20 years?) F1 will find itself at a cross-roads for its powerunit. Will it go Electric and combine with Formula E or by then will car manufacturers be seriously looking at hydrogen and F1 go the way of Hydrogen power? Once F1 get involved you can see the efficiency of these things increasing exponentially. Look what Mercedes have down with a 2litre 4pot engine, 415bhp (AMG A45 S) and 34mpg. Thats utterly insane. 20 years ago 200bhp was proper supercar territory.

poprock

In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter what energy powers our cars. Electricity, fuel, whatever. What matters is how that energy is generated.

Separate from that is the issue of having to build and sell new cars to suit these new energies. Environmentally speaking, you’re a lot better off running your existing petrol/diesel car for another 10 years than you are building/buying a Tesla. But political will is going to make that choice impossible for most.

Dinostar77

The market for petrol/diesel will always exist. Within our lifetimes anyway. There are plenty of folk out there, when looking to buy a car, their maximum budget is 4-5k. Thats firmly in the Petrol/Diesel terrority at the moment. As bob said he got a leaf for 7.5k, who in their right minds with a max budget of 4-5k is gonna buy a 15 year old leaf which is well out of warranty? I cry when i have to pay a few hundred quid (for parts) for my 04 plate to pass its MOT.

jdanielp

Dinostar77 wrote:

Issue with electric is that we need more and more power from the grid to charge the cars. Where does that power come from? Fossil fuels, nuclear and a small percentage from solar. Once we can extract hydrogen from water cheaply and efficiently enough, thats will be the horse to back.

Renewables have ramped up massively in the last decade even with a hostile government. No reason to think that the ramp shouldn't continue whilst the efficiency of the technology improves, especially now that most of us accept that we are experiencing a 'climate emergency'. Having millions of electric vehicles plugged into the grid will actually help by providing balance. It's all completely doable. Chances are we will have so much spare electricity at some point in the not too far distant future that we can use it to extract lots of hydrogen as well...

Funkstain

poprock wrote:

In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter what energy powers our cars. Electricity, fuel, whatever. What matters is how that energy is generated.

This is true, but seems to imply (by omission) that generation of electricity to charge cars, or generation of hydrogen to power fuel cells, is on a par with oil extraction refinement and burning, which simply is not true. Already our grid is mostly powered by renewables (60+% of demand), it's only going in one direction (right now, 0% of demand is being produced by coal), and that can easily also power the creation of hydrogen - so that's super clean, compared to the devastating effects of drilling, extraction, refinement and of course burning oil. Sorry in advance if that's not what you meant.

Separate from that is the issue of having to build and sell new cars to suit these new energies. Environmentally speaking, you’re a lot better off running your existing petrol/diesel car for another 10 years than you are building/buying a Tesla. But political will is going to make that choice impossible for most.

Yes, it is separate, but building any new car uses up lots of energy and resources, creating a new electric car doesn't massively increase that, does it? I would love to see stats to back up the assertion that running a, say, 5 year old diesel for the next decade is less impactful, in sum, than replacing with a new Tesla, if you have some? It would be good to challenge my thinking on this.

Disclosure: I don't want a Tesla. Just find some of the resistance to electric and hydrogen cars, based on total emissions and environment damage, to be suspect, and want to find out more.

Funkstain

Dinostar77 wrote:

The market for petrol/diesel will always exist. Within our lifetimes anyway. There are plenty of folk out there, when looking to buy a car, their maximum budget is 4-5k. Thats firmly in the Petrol/Diesel terrority at the moment. As bob said he got a leaf for 7.5k, who in their right minds with a max budget of 4-5k is gonna buy a 15 year old leaf which is well out of warranty? I cry when i have to pay a few hundred quid (for parts) for my 04 plate to pass its MOT.

I really really hope this isn't the case. A progressive policy on this would be to offer significant scrappage bonuses on dirty old cars to pay against both new and used cleaner cars. By cleaner I mean electric or hydrogen and NOT hybrid which I think is a bit of a half way house (at best) and a bit of a scam (at worst)

GooberTheHat

Individually owned cars for the vast majority of people won't be a thing anymore by the end of our lifetimes, imo.

Some sort of uber/amazon subscription model to a auto-drive hire service will be the most common way people will get around, at least in urban areas, in the next 20 to 30 years I reckon.

jdanielp

Funkstain wrote:

Yes, it is separate, but building any new car uses up lots of energy and resources, creating a new electric car doesn't massively increase that, does it? I would love to see stats to back up the assertion that running a, say, 5 year old diesel for the next decade is less impactful, in sum, than replacing with a new Tesla, if you have some? It would be good to challenge my thinking on this.

As I understand it, there is still rather more energy and resource required to build an electric car initially, primarily due to the current battery technology (given that there are far fewer components in the overall build), but the crossover point at which an electric car becomes lower carbon overall than non-electric is reducing all the time especially as the grid becomes greener. Next-gen battery technology may well mean that electric becomes lower carbon to begin with, although that is probably a little way off yet. There are various factors at play - some electric cars will reach that crossover quicker than others due to efficiency.

jdanielp

GooberTheHat wrote:

Individually owned cars for the vast majority of people won't be a thing anymore by the end of our lifetimes, imo.

Good point!

ZMM

Dinostar77 wrote:

Dream 3 car garage: 1. Have to be road legal cars 2. One has to be the the family day out/school run/dump run car. 1. Audi RS4 2020 2. BMW M2 Competition 2019 3. Mercedes G63 AMG wagon.

1. Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio
2. Any kind of R34 Skyline
3. 60s Mustang Fastback

ZMM

We should have wind farms all over our coast tbh, most landlocked countries don't have the advantage of being able to stick 'em out at sea, and they do cause problems when in land (vibrations).

Don't we have 30 years to be net neutral with greenhouse gas emissions?

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