Enthusiast Car Culture is Being Killed - Change My Mind

YoursTruly said:

Keith Tanner said:

This could have been written in the 70s about how smog regulations were going to kill all performance cars.

Unfortunately, your mind will not be changed. It's clear in the second sentence where you claim that the only reason people drive EVs is to signal virtue. You'll have to get past that before you can have an intelligent conversation with anyone.

This is a very good point, and for a time, the smog regulations absolutely did kill performance cars. I am very pleased to see that we got past it and improved emissions along with performance. I genuinely hope that we are in the growing-pain era of EV's. Current high performance hybrids are awesome machines and I would prefer we go that way.

 I am sorry that you feel I cannot be reasoned with based on something I learned from actual friends of mine who really bought Teslas to replace their SUV. The conversation basically boiled down to the following points: No I don't recycle. No I won't be getting rid of the grass I waste water on and cut with an uncatalyzed riding mower. Yes I realize that producing a new car is very bad for the environment when compared to driving the one I have. No I am not saving money in fuel costs by purchasing an EV to replace my late model SUV for my 6 mile commute. Yes it does make me feel good that my car produces zero emissions at the point of driving it. 

I am happy that they bought something they wanted (since so few in this world have that luxury), and perhaps I was being too general with my statement about virtue signaling, but I can't help but think that at some point is it just for creating the appearance of environmentalism?

Do not extrapolate the entire market from how you've interpreted your actual friends' responses to your interrogation. There are a bunch of reasons why people might buy EVs beyond "the appearance of environmentalism", just like there are people who buy Corvettes for reasons other than picking up 20 year old trophy wives.

I replaced an old SUV with a Tesla. I don't grow a lawn. I do recycle. I do save on fuel costs. I understand that there is some pollution involved in building a new car, as well as what's involved in keeping an old vehicle on the road. I don't care what image it projects. And none of those were reasons behind why I made the choice to buy an EV.

That EV shares garage space with other cars. There are small, light cars in the garage. There are engine-swapped beasts. There are cars from the 60s and cars from the 80s and cars from the 00s and I have plans to pick up a 20s lightweight sports car in the future. The automotive car culture I saw at the SEMA show this year - I've been going for a couple of decades - was stronger than ever, even if it had a different flavor from what it's had in the past.

If you have a narrow personal definition of what that culture is, and you've decided to project things you don't like on other aspects of that culture - maybe it is dying. But it's not, it's a very vibrant thing that is constantly evolving. Open your mind and let yourself evolve with it.

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

The media doesn't care about the guys building 20 year old Miatas in their driveways for autocross. The media doesn't care about the guys taking their 40 year old MGs out on a Sunday drive. The media doesn't care about the guys restoring old Mustangs and Camaros in their garage. They are all about who is spending the most money and who they can sell to. What's flashy and who's grabbing attention.

There is an entire world out there that is not being covered by the media.

Want to feel old? There are no 40 year old MGs in the US. And the Mazdaspeed Miata will be a 20 year old car in a couple of years :)

captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

I do have a serious, admittedly unrelated e-fuel question, that I'll ask here, because it's not too crazy with regards to signal to noise.

But why isn't the plan to utilize E-fuel with E85? Or at least E60? I know that ethanol really isn't stellar unless you're running high compression or forced induction, but the reality is is that everything that isn't EV is going to be forced induction or higher compression for emissions sooner rather than later. And I'm well aware that corn is absolutely terrible for ethanol production and that it absorbs water and isn't stable long term. But sugar cane grows quickly and is replenishable. 

 

I feel that it is much easier to set up and establish a charging infrastructure than it is and E-fuel and E85 infrastructure and production platforms, but I wouldn't be opposed to 15-20% of the market operating on fuel derived from renewable resources, even though the land utilized to grow those resources could also be utilized to grow food or a cash crop that is smokeable. 

I think the idea is that it 1) It *should* be more efficient overall to make all-synthetic eFuels than to blend them with biofuels and 2) Most people would prefer the increased range/energy density of gasoline-like fuels over the lower combustion temps and higher octane of ethanol-like fuels.

The enthusiasts are not the ones leasing brand new EVs every three years and the media doesn't care about a bunch of old guys working on cars in their garage. It's not their demographic. In about 15 years charging stations will be easier to find and old EVs will find their way into the old guys garages for hot rodding. EVs won't kill car culture. Car culture will  embrace EVs. Twenty year old Tesla 3s with be the new 55 Chevys.

captdownshift (Forum Supporter) said:

I do have a serious, admittedly unrelated e-fuel question, that I'll ask here, because it's not too crazy with regards to signal to noise. 

But why isn't the plan to utilize E-fuel with E85? Or at least E60?

Synthetic fuels may be carbon neutral (good for the environment), but they're still going to have tailpipe emissions that negatively impact air quality like NOx, Hydrocarbons, particulates, etc (bad for humans).

They also take a ton of energy to make. Energy that might otherwise be used for other things:

Step 1 is generate/capture electricity, then you electrolyze hydrogen from that electricity, then mix the hydrogen with CO2 to get a form of fuel that may or may not need to be further refined. You could stop at Step 1 and charge an EV with less waste. You could stop at step 2 and fuel a hydrogen fuel cell with less waste. By the time you get to Step 3, you're dealing with a fraction of the energy that you started with, it costs a whole lot, and you've still got pesky tailpipe emissions to deal with.

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

The enthusiasts are not the ones leasing brand new EVs every three years and the media doesn't care about a bunch of old guys working on cars in their garage. It's not their demographic. In about 15 years charging stations will be easier to find and old EVs will find their way into the old guys garages for hot rodding. EVs won't kill car culture. Car culture will  embrace EVs. Twenty year old Tesla 3s with be the new 55 Chevys.

Why can't someone leasing a brand new EV every three years be an enthusiast? They may not be you, but that doesn't mean they're not enthusiasts. You don't have to be an old guy working on cars in your garage to be an enthusiast.

^
Posted by an old guy who works on cars in his garage

Keith Tanner said:

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

The media doesn't care about the guys building 20 year old Miatas in their driveways for autocross. The media doesn't care about the guys taking their 40 year old MGs out on a Sunday drive. The media doesn't care about the guys restoring old Mustangs and Camaros in their garage. They are all about who is spending the most money and who they can sell to. What's flashy and who's grabbing attention.

There is an entire world out there that is not being covered by the media.

Want to feel old? There are no 40 year old MGs in the US. And the Mazdaspeed Miata will be a 20 year old car in a couple of years :)

I'm sure a few of them got in the back door by now. I know somebody in California who has a Maestro. Not sure if or where he registered it.

The other thing to also contrast the end of the world view- how the enthusiast world has evolved.

Granted, I've barely been an active participant for a while now.  But since I started in the late 80s, early 90s there are so many other choices than a handful of autocrosser and SCCA for turning left and right, a local drag strip (if you had one) or a local circle track (we had a dirt one in Idaho, but it was rarely used).

Now there are many, many choices in track days, the autocross scene continues to expand, we have multiple cheap car endurance racing, the drag racing scene seems to be evolving, and going in circles continues to expand.  Let alone all of the karting tracks that didn't exist 30 years ago.

Which is to to say, the enthusiast choice has to constrain a LOT just to match where we were 30 years ago.  And to attribute the EV to any hint of a reduction of that, well... yea- I don't see it.

The concept of taking the general auto market place and thinking that it has any real bearing on the enthusiast market does not work.  Just like the idea of "save the manuals" was never going to survive (and yet, we still race cars with that) from the enthusiast world.

Keith Tanner said:

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

The enthusiasts are not the ones leasing brand new EVs every three years and the media doesn't care about a bunch of old guys working on cars in their garage. It's not their demographic. In about 15 years charging stations will be easier to find and old EVs will find their way into the old guys garages for hot rodding. EVs won't kill car culture. Car culture will  embrace EVs. Twenty year old Tesla 3s with be the new 55 Chevys.

 

Why can't someone leasing a brand new EV every three years be an enthusiast? They may not be you, but that doesn't mean they're not enthusiasts. You don't have to be an old guy working on cars in your garage to be an enthusiast.

^
Posted by an old guy who works on cars in his garage

You may be one in a thousand. Most of the guys I know who lease EVs have them as their only cars. There are a lot of them in the parking garage at my office. In fact, the parking garage in my office has five charging stations. Most of the guys I know who have more than 5 cars drive some kind of truck to work that doubles as a tow vehicle. No F-150 Lightnings yet but I'm sure they will be showing up soon.

Here's a question:

Why aren't rotary engines the default swap these days? Seems like 20-30 years ago people were putting them into everything. What happened?

Is it that something cheaper/better/easier came along?

Is it really a problem if our world moves from swapping wrecked truck motors to swapping, uh, wrecked truck motors into their race cars?

Seems like standard hot rodding to me. I haven't seen a flathead Ford V8 at the track in YEARS.

YoursTruly said:

While EVs can accelerate quickly, once you squirt up to speed a couple times and giggle, the charm wears off

Which pretty much describes every muscle car ever made.

I am not comfortable with driverless cars. While some would conflate that with being against all automation, I think I can summarize my view politely and quickly. 

Automation is good and has shown to create more jobs and economic growth. Autonomous trains exist in a far more controlled environment, so they don't really face the same hurdles as cars. Autonomous cars will exist in an open world where crazy things often happen that cannot be predicted. We can see the technology improve to the point of being seamless, but it can never see a game of soccer in someone's yard and make the decision to slow down and move into the other lane just in case the ball rolls into the road and a child chases it. The AI cannot legally be programed to break the law in the name of safety. There is too much legal liability for the manufacturer, and this might be passed on to the person operating the driverless vehicle via a waiver. 

Volvo thinks their autonomous cars are safe enough they they accept all liability for anything that happens while the cars are self-driving:

https://fortune.com/2015/10/07/volvo-liability-self-driving-cars/

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

Keith Tanner said:

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

The enthusiasts are not the ones leasing brand new EVs every three years and the media doesn't care about a bunch of old guys working on cars in their garage. It's not their demographic. In about 15 years charging stations will be easier to find and old EVs will find their way into the old guys garages for hot rodding. EVs won't kill car culture. Car culture will  embrace EVs. Twenty year old Tesla 3s with be the new 55 Chevys.

 

Why can't someone leasing a brand new EV every three years be an enthusiast? They may not be you, but that doesn't mean they're not enthusiasts. You don't have to be an old guy working on cars in your garage to be an enthusiast.

^
Posted by an old guy who works on cars in his garage

You may be one in a thousand. Most of the guys I know who lease EVs have them as their only cars. There are a lot of them in the parking garage at my office. In fact, the parking garage in my office has five charging stations. Most of the guys I know who have more than 5 cars drive some kind of truck to work that doubles as a tow vehicle. No F-150 Lightnings yet but I'm sure they will be showing up soon.

I don't expect to be leasing any vehicles or going on the three-year renewal plan anytime soon - but my grandfather bought a new car every three years, and he was an enthusiast of a type. Not a racer (one of his sons was), but someone who was interested in cars and had an enthusiasm for them.

Meanwhile, several of my coworkers fully expect to buy an EV before long and nobody's going to argue against their enthusiasm or participation in car culture of some sort.

So yeah, the majority of EV owners may not be enthusiasts, but that can be said of just about any vehicle. Even new Miatas are mostly  purchased by non-enthusiasts, people who just want a cute little car for running around.

I've been modifying and racing electric vehicles for 31 years. Made them faster, more reliable. more durable. I've tailored them to my driving style and abilities.

Why anyone would think electric will kill any enthusiasm is beyond me. We figured out automatic transmissions, EFI, turbos, this will be no different .

In reply to Keith Tanner :

There is a Tesla 3 that is showing up at autocrosses around here regularly. It's weird to hear it go around the course with tires squealing and no engine noise.

I also see a BMW parked at the charging station at my office every day. I have no idea what it is but it has gullwing doors and plugs in. It looks like the electric version of whatever Tony Stark drives. I have no idea what it is, but it is cool.

I just don't see how the fuel the car runs on defines whether or not is an enthusiast vehicle. I personally think a modern diesel VW is the mark of someone that's bad at math and doesn't actually enjoy driving, but I wouldn't say that means they're not an enthusiast any more than I would say an electric motor makes something not an enthusiast vehicle. The facts are that electric cars are faster, more efficient, and the newest thing around so it's easy for people to both get excited about them and scorn them. Anti-EV people can never actually contain their rants to any one thing, they always have to bring in politics, vehicle dynamics, general displaced anger about others, and somehow end up ranting about self driving cars too. Self driving is a completely separate technology from electrification, and the two are only connected due to coming "of age" in the same era. There's nothing about a gas car that keeps it from being automated, and nothing about an electric car that makes it inherently easier to automate.

I feel like this whole thread is an elaborate trolling.

Anyway we say we don't want / Won't accept self driving cars, it's a slippery slope, a lot of us are already sliding down the hill. First it was throttle by wire (you are letting the computer interpret your foot position, then it is ABS with full override authority. My CRV stops for me if it thinks a crash is imminent. Sometimes I like it sometimes I don't but it does it and there isn't a thing I can do about it (short of selling the car). So the next time you push a button and your car runs you can ask yourself where you are on that slope. 

And as mentioned all cars keep changing, when my father was a kid they wanted Model A's and Coupes, then when I was a kid it was 60's muscle, now people want 80's cars, change is inevitable, embrace it...

Electric cars are filled with kids who want to stand on my lawn.


Prove me wrong.

Not sure how old you are, OP, but I'm 31. I'm seeing a lot of people my age and younger who are getting into cars for the first time... Because of EVs. Tesla has made cars sexy again. So I think it is just changing what the enthusiast car culture is... The same way that tuners changed it, and muscle cars changed it before that, and hot rodders changed it before that....

C'est la vie

When if ever has any "enthusiast" vehicle been in the top 25 on an annualized sales basis?  

Enthusiast and Modification culture are alive and well and will be for ever.  What the majority of people are doing is changing but that doesn't mean they aren't enthusiast.  The particular brand of "enthusiast" you are is probably becoming less popular and no longer dominates the landscaping so companies don't cater to you and that is scary.  You either have to grown and learn new ways to do things or just get angry at clouds because"they" are against you.    I would argue that thanks to 3D printers, Open source software, DIY PLCs, cheap import tools and equipment, CAD software, FEA analysis, materials technology, hobbiest focused low run manufacturing, a huge aftermarket parts industry, the free and open exchange of ideas and knowledge via the internet, and the ability to find like minded people on social media, the ability to modify and create things has never been higher in human history.  And it will assuredly be higher tomorrow.

There are hundreds of people who's literal living is made "Creating" items and persuing a hobby on social media.  YouTube is FULL of people who modify cars and earn a steady income by millions of people watching them.  Like them or not people like Hoonigan, Tavarish, B is for Build, Hoovies garage, Mighty Car Mods, and on and on, use car culture as a way to earn money.  If the "Public" wasn't enthusiastic and watching the money wouldn't be there for them do so.  The Racing and Simulation and Gaming world is HUGE with people creating and modifying and making things for personal and public consumption.  One famous Twitch streamer drives an F1 car and another went from a shed to being on the cusp of a professional racer.  You think these people aren't "enthusiast"?  

EVs will change the market for sure but the impacts to the ecology of the use of fossils fuels by 9B people can't be ignored forever.  The sooner enthusiast can (and they will) carve out a nitch in this market the better.  

johndej said:

Ok boomer

Calling someone names, does nothing to move the conversation forward.  It has the opposite effect.

In the 40 plus years that I've been paying attention to car culture it's only expanded as more and more types of cars, technologies and styles have come along.  In the 80's where I lived the car culture revolved around muscle cars, FWD was for the cars that your grandmother drove and even she was skeptical of anything with a four cylinder engine. Turbos were for diesel trucks and pathetic imports and car culture was dying because you couldn't get a big block in a passenger car.

In another 40 years when I'm in a nursing home complaining about the jello, kids these days and the lack of internal combustion engines there are still going to be people polishing their muscle cars, dodging cones in a parking lot with K swapped turbocharged Civics and probably still some folks puttering around in Model Ts.  Of course the K swapped Civics will be in the vintage class, driven by old men and women and will be seconds off the pace of the new stuff but there's still going to be a culture surrounding them and they'll be just as legit as the kids with the Teslas with wire wheels and hydraulics at the nearby low rider show.

Everytime this comes up all the discussion is about driving on public streets, but what do public streets have to do with motorsports?  I could care less about public streets, I like motorsports, and the risk to motorsports is the lack of consistency and outright hostility with which motorsports venues are treated in the public sphere.  For example, a race track is in a place that was rural, then gets developed.  What protections does the venue have when the inevitable happens and the pressure starts being applied to shut down?  And when does that pressure ease?  Even if it survives the first wave, there is always another attack hovering there in the background.

Discussion about horses and equestrian activities no longer have any relevance to discussion about actual transportation, but the issues that horse race tracks and equestrian venues have are as relevant if not more so to motorsports as compared to discsssions about the specific types of vehicles that are allowed/used for transportation on public roads.  Equestrian zoning, site requirements, event permits, etc are exactly the types of things that are relevant to racing venues, and horse related stuff is in exactly the same boat when it comes to the kind of mentality that is hostile to it's ability to continue into the future.

I would be happy to go to work in a transport pod, or car-train, or whatever other thing companies think they can make money from in an easier way than the cars of today (or do you believe combustion engine cars are made because companies have a 'passion' for them, hahaha).  But I would be very unhapppy if my own racing stuff, that I built myself, becomes obsolete not because they don't run, but because I have no place to run them.

nocones said:

When if ever has any "enthusiast" vehicle been in the top 25 on an annualized sales basis?  

Enthusiast and Modification culture are alive and well and will be for ever.  What the majority of people are doing is changing but that doesn't mean they aren't enthusiast.  The particular brand of "enthusiast" you are is probably becoming less popular and no longer dominates the landscaping so companies don't cater to you and that is scary.  You either have to grown and learn new ways to do things or just get angry at clouds because"they" are against you.    I would argue that thanks to 3D printers, Open source software, DIY PLCs, cheap import tools and equipment, CAD software, FEA analysis, materials technology, hobbiest focused low run manufacturing, a huge aftermarket parts industry, the free and open exchange of ideas and knowledge via the internet, and the ability to find like minded people on social media, the ability to modify and create things has never been higher in human history.  And it will assuredly be higher tomorrow.

There are hundreds of people who's literal living is made "Creating" items and persuing a hobby on social media.  YouTube is FULL of people who modify cars and earn a steady income by millions of people watching them.  Like them or not people like Hoonigan, Tavarish, B is for Build, Hoovies garage, Mighty Car Mods, and on and on, use car culture as a way to earn money.  If the "Public" wasn't enthusiastic and watching the money wouldn't be there for them do so.  The Racing and Simulation and Gaming world is HUGE with people creating and modifying and making things for personal and public consumption.  One famous Twitch streamer drives an F1 car and another went from a shed to being on the cusp of a professional racer.  You think these people aren't "enthusiast"?  

EVs will change the market for sure but the impacts to the ecology of the use of fossils fuels by 9B people can't be ignored forever.  The sooner enthusiast can (and they will) carve out a nitch in this market the better.  

This is 100% true. I've got a friend who is currently designing and implementing his own secondary dashboard for his Tesla. He decided he wanted a column-mounted display, so he's tapped into the CAN system and deciphered what he needed from community-sourced spreadsheets. He's printed up a mount for an Android phone and has designed his own graphics showing the car from the top, integrating state of charge, speed, rear proximity sensors and requests from the car for autosteer interaction. This isn't product development, it's pure "I want this thing and it doesn't exist so I'm going to make it exist" hotrodding. I'm tempted to take what he's done and see if I can build my own heads-up display.

Even in the autonomous world, I have a group of friends who are eagerly dissecting what the systems are capable of doing and discussing why 3 lanes into 1 is a hard problem for cars to figure out - just as it is with people. These friends are also Lemons racers who drive things like a turbodiesel swapped 911 or an AMC Spirit or a Bitter in the races, and who have monstrous street cars that are built to the letter of the California emissions law.

The mistake we all make is assuming that all car culture is OUR car culture. Like the local drifters here in town, the track has decided not to allow them to run anymore due to the condition of the track when they're done. For them, it's the end of the world. They won't consider anything else, such as the Colorado hillclimb series that is basically drifting but with a stopwatch and consequences, or grip which is like drifting but fast :) Or the old guys who still don't believe in this newfangled fuel injection stuff. But it turns out that there are a bunch of different car cultures, and some of them are cool in ways you never imagined - and are thriving under current conditions.