If I see another thread about electric/hybrid cars, I'm going to scream!

yamaha wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH: You missed the point of what I was saying completely. To truly make the electric car completely practical for the masses, it will need to never be charged. Hence the "Nuclear Fusion" comment. As in, a tiny fusion reactor powering them. You're thinking too much.

I don't thinnk you understand the paradigm shift of plugging in your car at home every night. it's no more onerous than plugging in your phone and even easier to remember. It's like waking up to a full gas tank every time you go out to your car in the morning.

1988RedT2 wrote: really people, this mess has got to stop. You people instill in me the desire to fire up my Haltech ECU'd single-digit mpg turbo rotary and scent the air with the sweet smell of a sub-11.0 AFR. Yaaaaaaaaaarrrrgghhhhhhhh!

I love to hear the wail of dying hydrocarbons at the race track. Hearing my neighbor's flowmasters burble in the morning gives me the strangest. Nothing feels better than watching the tach race up to redline.

But you know what? I'd rock an electric Miata today if one was available (Or S2000, or Spitfire). I think it would be freaking awesome to autocross an Exocet EV. Why not?

Electric bikes are already able to run race distances at speeds that rival or even exceed their gas-powered counterparts. The top Le Mans prototypes and the entire F1 grid are hybrids. The performance envelopes of the new Mclaren P1, Porsche 918 and La Ferrari hybrids are mind-bending.

As much as I love the floor the 'gas' pedal, I'm just not seeing a whole lot here to hate.

Diesel exhaust makes me horny.

I guess I should have posted this earlier.

Go here: http://www.imgracing.com/ then scoll down the page a bit. Look for EVSR. I can't get to the page myself because my interwebz is weird. But... it looks like the age of electric vehicle racing is upon us!

I will admit that Electric vehicles do have a long and glorious history!

The thing I don't understand about some of the opposition to electric cars is that opponent routinely construct this straw man who says that, for electric cars to be a worthy of existing, it must be practical for EVERY car to be electric.

But, this isn't the way it needs to be. Most families have two cars, make one electric, make the other gas or a hybrid, and pony up $25/day to rent a car on the rare occasion that both you and your SO have to go out of town on the same day. No supercharger stations, no cold fusion, no hot-swap batteries needed.

Chris_V wrote:

yamaha wrote: In reply to GameboyRMH: You missed the point of what I was saying completely. To truly make the electric car completely practical for the masses, it will need to never be charged. Hence the "Nuclear Fusion" comment. As in, a tiny fusion reactor powering them. You're thinking too much.

I don't thinnk you understand the paradigm shift of plugging in your car at home every night. it's no more onerous than plugging in your phone and even easier to remember. It's like waking up to a full gas tank every time you go out to your car in the morning.

If your gas tank only holds three gallons, then yeah.

I belong to the SCCA and I consider myself a gearhead, but really people, this mess has got to stop. Does anybody really enjoy driving these foul-smelling engines of combustion on a daily basis? Don't you realize that an internal combustion engine is not a motor? I believe this place should be, literally, Grassroots MOTORsports! Can we not revel in the wonderful quiet bliss of electric motorsports? You people instill in me the desire to boot up my Mitsubishi i-MIEV and scent the air with the absence of any fumes whatsoever. Yaaaaaaaaaarrrrgghhhhhhhh!

5 reasons the ICE is not ready for prime time.

Just bustin your balls RedT2.

yamaha wrote: In reply to Beer Baron: Perhaps we should invest in the "Synthetic fuels" idea that the Nazi's had during WW2......

Given cheap enough electricity (thorium fueled nukes would do nicely), you can straight up scrub CO2 from the atmosphere, break water down into hydrogen, and have carbon neutral gasoline. Which is why I'm betting my money on that being the future. Electric cars still have the same exact problems that made them obsolete 100 years ago(range, charge time, power grid), everything we need to go fully to synth fuel has already been invented (CO2 scrubbers, Fischer–Tropsch, nuclear energy).

I don't buy the grid argument. With enough batteries plugged in at any given time, the grid should become more, not less stable. Charge time is not a big deal at all. Range looks to be doubled or tripled for the next generation.

PHeller wrote: Things I love in order of priority: 1) Female Body 2) Food 3) Being Outdoors 4) Bikes 5) Cars Looks like nature beats car by two places. But no, electrics aint perfect. Bicycles are perfect.

Just came in here to quote that ^ and say, if I didn't stand a 100% chance of being flattened on my way to work, I would be commuting with Yeti power instead of internal combustion.

Electric bikes make more sense than cars IMO at current battery technology. They weigh a lot less so performance and range is easier to get at a reasonable battery size.

These are real now and for local commute style riding where you always take the long way home the range is reasonable. Even if it would only do 120 realistic miles it's enough for most people's weekday riding. If these have the same incentives as cars to make the purchase price less painful then I can't see why I wouldn't ride one around as a grocery getter for the novelty of it. They have a dual sport option with Showa dampers too. The quiet of an electric would certainly make the angry Sierra types and fly fishermen looking for quiet time hate off-roaders less.

If they could offer that fast charger option in a size you could carry on the bike - that would be sweet. Essentially a limitless range if you can take a break for half an hour every 150-175 miles.

Wow, a year later and you guys naturally jump into an argument.

Must be the natural state of things.

alfadriver wrote: Wow, a year later and you guys naturally jump into an argument. Must be the natural state of things.

I noticed that as well, a small bump and the same argument beings anew as if no time had passed.

Aaaand now all the top supercars are some kind of hybrid, the very fastest new one being a partial-series hybrid with a single-speed hydraulic transmission. Let's bump this again another year later and see how much more silly the original post sounds!

I have noticed that even here in the redneck bastion of pennsylvania that people have been riding bicycles around town to actually go places in fairer weather. Not just the silly spandex and tour jersey crowd or DUI suspensions either. There is a new charging station in the parking lot of a large national healthcare provider's HQ here and when I was out running yesterday there were not one, but two Leaf's hooked up to it.

Everyone hold your nose and sing along!

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

So I am scouting out sub 2K cars for eventual Leaf replacement in August when the lease runs out and I find myself wishing that I could figure out a way to afford to keep it. It's SO NICE for A-B as compared to anything else. No noise, no maintenance, no stress. Every time the minivan shifts gears I am subconsciously listening and gauging the transmissions health. Same with every startup and everything else. Did an oil change in nit over the weekend, and it's a super easy one, but still makes me wish I could keep that Leaf.

The number of registered vehicles has been hovering at or above 250 million since 2006. The number of households in the country is around 120 million. So we have just over two vehicles per household. Yes many of those vehicles are non-personal, but also many people live in cities and don’t use a car daily, and or are single person households. We already know that the average daily drive for people is under 50 miles, so I would say, conservatively half the cars on the road could be replaced by pure electrics, and with plug in hybrids I’d say basically all cars could (could not should or will) be replaced by plug in hybrids.

With things like the 2018 Californian mandate, which is being adopted by more and more states, coming we will see a tipping point in about 10 years where the majority of new car sales are electric or plug in hybrids.

On the synthetic fuel thing, I hope that is coming in the next 20 years too. The South African method of making it from coal is just as unsustainable as from oil, we need something that is renewable and unlike current ethanol is sustainable and uses less energy to produce than you get from it.

alfadriver wrote: Wow, a year later and you guys naturally jump into an argument. Must be the natural state of things.

Nah, I read the whole thing first and decided I had bashed electrics enough.

tuna55 wrote: So I am scouting out sub 2K cars for eventual Leaf replacement in August when the lease runs out and I find myself wishing that I could figure out a way to afford to keep it.

I wasn't quick enough this weekend to check out a 2013 Leaf SV before it sold for $11,000. Yes that's a lot more than $2K, but it's still a pretty small payment if you were to finance.

nderwater wrote:

What's your point? Looks like a back marker about to be lapped.

Didn't expect to see this old thread ressurrected. I will consider it an honor!

A bunch of off-lease '13 Leafs are starting to hit the Atlanta market, priced in the low teens, so these cars are back on my radar for commuting appliance duty. I still think that they are ugly, but tuned cars (like the one tackling the corkscrew at Laguna Seca) intrigue me. There's still a lot of potential in these cars that has yet to be tapped--DIY battery pack and ECU modding being obvious targets. And who doesn't like a hot hatch?

Apologies if I'm beating a dead horse. It was asking for it!

My chebby volt is a very pleasant way to hoon. I'm always flooring it, hitting 0-40 in like 4 seconds. And no one notices, cause it's silent... Great city car.

On the highway i turn on the gas engine and drive 300 miles without worries.

For summer weekends, the answer is Miata.