Electric Cars - the discussion continues.

[spenaroo]

the small manufacturers were always going to be pushed out once true production kicked in.

 

lets not forget the original Tesla business model was to use the cars to prove a business case.

then sell the batteries and motor technology to existing manufacturers.... let them build the actual vehicles

only the existing manufacturers wanted to develop the technology themselves and not pay for the tesla.

so they had adapt and try to build an actual mass production car

Elon has stated that the car industry has been the most difficult. As everyone already made a good car - and they are still figuring that part out.

[Old Koreelah]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

…We'd still be driving overweight gas-guzzlers with no safety features, if the manufacturers were left to their own self-interest aims. 

Spot on, OT.

It’s said that when asked about the ever-increasing size of his company’s cars, Henry Ford replied: Small cars make small profits!

[facthunter]

"HEAPS" of gleaming chrome, like the USA cars.  Not sure they  took on that much here but they were comparatively long lasting if you gave them half a chance. Brakes and Handling?? Nowhere to be seen.   Nev

[spenaroo]

hang on, the overweight argument isn't so simple.

my colleague bas a cupra born as a courtesy car today.

we were looking at specs, comparing it to my MG midget for a laugh with the power figures.

but the surprising thing was the weight, while he describes this small hatchback as feeling like a dodgem car to drive.
its actually heavier then my dual cab ute, at over 1900kg.
around 500kg heavier then the conventional offerings

imagine what a large electric car would weigh.
cant help but wonder how the roads will hold up to the higher weight and torque of these when they are widespread

Edited September 21, 2023 by spenaroo

[Old Koreelah]

1 hour ago, spenaroo said:

…its actually heavier then my dual cab ute, at over 1900kg.
around 500kg heavier then the conventional offerings

imagine what a large electric car would weigh.
cant help but wonder how the roads will hold up to the higher weight and torque of these when they are widespread

Interesting. On very hot days when tar is near molden, I bet the massive acceleration of a superbike could do more damage than a heavy truck.

[facthunter]

Do more damage under heavy braking. Mass counts for a lot of road damage. The electric is usually on four wheels doing the  driving and it's easy to control the torque. Tyres have to be adequate for the job and wouldn't be cheap on an EV. 

[onetrack]

Cars - even heavy cars - do little damage to roads with their weight. It's trucks that do the damage - and it's tandem and triaxle setups that do the most damage.

You can legally put 16.5 tonnes on a tandem axle arrangement (driven or trailed), so that's 8 tyres, in duals, closely spaced, each carrying over 2 tonnes per tyre.

 

But the load on the road pavement (as with all pavements, including runways) is designated to be shown as a triangle in cross-section under each axle. The load is intense at the road surface, at the apex of the triangle, and spreads out at depth, at the bottom of the triangle.

However, with closely spaced axles, as in tandems and tri's, the intersection of the triangle load areas at depth, where they overlap, is a load concentration area at depth in the pavement, and this is what destroys roads, overloading of the lower part of the road structure, the bottom of the road base material.

 

Potholes appear when the bond between the bitumen or asphalt breaks and the bitumen lifts, exposing the road base underneath. This road base is not designed to be exposed to the weather for extended periods, so it starts to break up when exposed by bitumen lifting.

The bitumen can lift when it has been improperly applied, when it has been subject to excessive axle loads when very hot, or when it has been under water for a prolonged period.

[spacesailor]

That is what I tripped up over ! .

The intersection has those holes were the ' bitumen ' has lifted .

Not deep , just enough to " trip " you up .

So hard to keep the ' fitness walk ' going while in pain .

spacesailor

 

[kgwilson]

Well, I finally made the decision and bought my first Electric Car. I have been looking at the particular car since it was released in the UK a year ago so I put my name down for a test drive when they arrived in Australia in August. So far the car has won 15 major awards including Car of the Year 2023 in the UK where it beat every other entrant including ICE & hybrids.

 

I was a bit dubious about the brand but after looking at the multitude of Youtube reviews and the test drive I was convinced. It is a MG 4 Essence 64. One motoring reviewer found the dramatic change from all of the revived MG brand cars difficult to work out. His experience found that while they were generally cheap the dynamic driving experience ranged from below average to positively woeful. The MG4 was so dramatically different it was as if it was a totally different brand.

 

Designed by the Royal Academy of Arts in London and engineered by SAIC (ex MG) Engineering at Longbridge UK it is a ground up EV design with rear wheel drive and 50-50 weight distribution with what they have called a "modular scalable platform" meaning the battery is scalable for different size vehicles and can be changed quickly.

 

I planned to buy the sub 40k bottom of the range version but ended up with the top of the range mid size battery version. Build quality and features better than many luxury brands including Mercedes Benz according to some motoring journalists.

 

My experience so far is I can't get over how good it is. So many features that I am still learning about, fantastic handling and great range. I installed a 7.4 kW charger in my garage and it charges from near empty to full at the off peak rate overnight easily. Running cost is the equivalent of paying about 14 cents a litre for petrol. It also has power to load so I have an adaptor and it will deliver up to 32 Amps of power for any 230 volt appliance or mutitude of appliances. I'll use this during power cuts and also camping or picnics etc. I'll never go back to ICE.

[red750]

[Old Koreelah]

11 hours ago, onetrack said:

However, with closely spaced axles, as in tandems and tri's, the intersection of the triangle load areas at depth, where they overlap, is a load concentration area at depth in the pavement, and this is what destroys roads, overloading of the lower part of the road structure, the bottom of the road base material...

Roman roads seem to have been engineered to last- perhaps because they used solid rocks closely packed together. Inca roads did as well.

Modern roads, even though subjected to massively more loads, are based on compacted fill. Short-term cost cutting often means that fill is unsuitable, not packed down properly, or the tar seal is too thin.

 

Tomorrow I hope to buy an old tractor and grader to fix our driveway; that could be an interesting learning experience.

[onetrack]

Tesla is on the cusp of another revolution in EV manufacturing - reducing the number of cast components in the Tesla chassis to just one large aluminium die casting. If successful, this will further reduce the cost of manufacturing Teslas, and give them another technological leading edge.

Musk is driving this development, but he's not doing it personally, just bringing together all the expert companies in their respective fields to gain the upper hand in manufacturing.

I fear however, this new process, if successful, will make Teslas unrepairable, and on a par with a consumer toaster.

 

https://www.reuters.com/technology/gigacasting-20-tesla-reinvents-carmaking-with-quiet-breakthrough-2023-09-14/

[facthunter]

The ALUMINIUM Frame is NOT repairable as are also many ALUMINIUM framed motorbikes and high tensile steel vehicles.  Nev

[willedoo]

I wonder how hard it would be to build a home made small electric farm run-about. I knew a bloke who bought an old electric golf cart and used the components to make a solar powered electric river boat. It was an old clinker hull life boat. He had a full length canopy on top covered in solar panels. The boat performed well and was only limited in speed by the non planing hull. A small buggy could probably use the same components and charge from the house or shed solar. A mate of mine has an electric golf cart to get around his property, but his place is all smooth grass, but maybe it would be viable to convert a golf cart to a more off road version.

[spenaroo]

there is a reason that industry went away from large single castings.

we have a large rejection rate for our hydraulic valves, at one point it was 50%

and its hard to find the faults. can be quite porous, and prone to cracking. as Tesla is finding our in their existing castings.

tend to crack when subject to stresses of vibration.

most of the motorcycle manufacturers have gone away from cast components.

and are now manufacturing them from Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer
Allows for a lighter and stronger peice by engineering in the rigidity and strength as needed

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by spenaroo

[onetrack]

Caterpillar went away from many steel castings years ago, due to their massive costs. They prefer to fabricate items out of rolled, flat or formed plate today, and then weld them together to produce the finished component. They do use a small number of diecast components, but mostly in automotive/on-road applications where weight-saving is a priority.

 

But high pressure die-castings are pretty common in automotive castings today, and magnesium is making a comeback. Ford use a number of magnesium castings in their F series trucks.

The advances in metallurgy are seeing a whole lot of new alloys and metal treatments come to the fore, that can provide very satisfactory large castings.

The problems, as the Reuters article points out, is the cost of the machines to do those huge castings, and the hassles associated with making changes to the castings when needed, for vehicle improvements, or for new designs.

 

I saw a Tesla driving around yesterday that had been shunted in the rear. The damage was surprisingly small, just limited to the hatchback door, and it still fitted well - and obviously was still quite useable.

[facthunter]

VACU die castings are pretty no porous but are expensive for larger components. There's a difference between DIE castings and the Horrible DIEMETAL which contains a lot of ZINC.  Y Alloy contains some copper and was developed for cast alloy aero engine cases in the later 20's.  Nev

[onetrack]

In another interesting energy development, drillers in Eastern France have stumbled across what could be a massive deposit of natural ("white") hydrogen.

 

The hydrogen deposit is mixed in with methane, but they found as they go deeper, the hydrogen increases in concentration, until at 1,250 metres, in an old borehole, the hydrogen concentration is 20%.

 

The drilling operators think the concentration of hydrogen could reach 90% at 3000 metres, so a drillhole of that depth is planned, so they can evaluate the deposit.

 

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/french-drillers-may-have-stumbled-upon-a-mammoth-hydrogen-deposit/#:~:text=Based on the estimates of,—or naturally produced—hydrogen.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Here is an interesting take on teh Luton car park fire; of which I have to admit I largely agree.

 

 

(Sorry Onetrack - I know you don't like him)

[nomadpete]

Taking the devils advocate positioned on this hysteria.....

No denying, motor vehicles  are a fire hazard.

Just look at the statistics.

Note that all recent media coverage about car fires ignores the existing very significant risk of non-electric vehicles being involved in vehicle fires.

 

The following table provide a limited snapshot of vehicle fire-related incidents in NSW (sourced on https://www.fire.nsw.gov.au/😞

	2018/19	2019/20	2020/21
NSW Vehicle Fires	3,214	3,010	2,942
NSW Total Fires	22,321	22,013	17,703
% of vehicle fires	14.4%	13.7%	16.6%

As you can see motor vehicle fires represent a large percentage (around 15%) of all fires attended by the NSW Fire Department.

So we have an average of 3,000 vehicle fires (vastly liquid fuelled) yet MSM gets hysterical about  a few rare EV fires.

 

Bias?

[onetrack]

I'm sorry Jerry, I can't be bothered watching that mouthy idiot prattle on endlessly, loving the sound of his own voice. He's full of **it. It doesn't really matter whether the vehicle was an EV, a hybrid, a diesel, or a petrol powered vehicle. They all burn, and once a fire takes hold, they're very hard to put out, unless you've got a big fire truck on the scene with substantial firefighting resources. The problem here was a slow firefighting response.

[Jerry_Atrick]

No need to apologise, OT...  There are plenty that I won't watch for much the same reason..

[old man emu]

2 hours ago, nomadpete said:

As you can see motor vehicle fires represent a large percentage (around 15%) of all fires attended by the NSW Fire Department.

A lot of those fires involve stolen vehicles being set alight, including get-away cars from gang-related shootings.

[onetrack]

You can check all the factory recalls, and also check for specific recall reasons. Below is a list of vehicles recalled due to the risk of fire causing by manufacturing faults.

Perhaps surprisingly to some luxury brand lovers, Mercedes tops the list. Hyundai and Kia have also featured large in recalls that involved potential fires.

 

https://www.vehiclerecalls.gov.au/recalls/browse-all-recalls?search=fire

[nomadpete]

7 hours ago, old man emu said:

A lot of those fires involve stolen vehicles being set alight, including get-away cars from gang-related shootings.

Valid point OME. However  it is also true that many of those stolen vehicle fires are not reported due to the vehicles burning out in bushland.

 

My point is that of the many, many vehicle fires, it seems that the EV fires are the ones that get hysterical media reporting. I call that bias.

 

Whether ICE or EV,   vehicle fires cannot be extinguished  until all the fuel has burned. In ICE the fuel is usually held in a plastic fuel tank. At vehicle fires I have attended, (so far only liquid fuelled) we only poured water on to prevent collateral fires spreading from the car.