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Random Thoughts... [Automotive Edition]

Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining GM.
 
jack_christie said:
But it would be easier. Sometimes see in Bjorn's video's he uses a portable heater to heat up car interior before a trip
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What's the point of that? He's from the land of Defa, the biggest player in electric automotive pre-heating, they have products exactly for this and they're probably in every Norwegian car. And EV:s do it without help from Defa.
 
eizbaer said:
it'd be easier to have a fuel station in your driveway also - weirdly enough, that's never mentioned anywhere...
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Just like having a fuel station in my company parking lot or parking garage.
 
93Flareside said:
Just like having a fuel station in my company parking lot or parking garage.
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This. It's what I tell people who say it's weird having a charger at home : if you had a fuelpump at home that only can deliver 5l/hour, it would be the same. Yes, it will take 10 or so hours to fuel up, but that's okay because your car is parked for far more than that.

Even people who use their cars for work ALL day EVERYDAY, still only use them for +- 8/24 hrs, which is only 33% of the time.
Despite what people may think, charging a car nowadays, simply is not an issue at all.
You do need to change the way you think about recharging/refueling though, as said I pretty consistently charge every day just because I can, not because I'm empty. If I do get an emergency call where there's something I need to go to immediately that's far away, I know I'll have the range.
In a petrol car I can always quickly refuel, in my EV this sometimes isn't possible (fast charger in use or a long way away), but because I take 10 seconds everytime to plug in, I don't have to worry about that.

Also also : I have not yet had the "you need to drive 400 kms NOW, immediately" call in 6 years of driving an EV so YMMV. :dunno:
 
With all that said, I just cannot find the act of charging, finding the good charging stations or what have you interesting.

The way @loose_unit, @Adrian, and @leviathan go on about it make my head spin. Imagine being like this with phone charging, or anything else that has a battery. I just can’t.
 
93Flareside said:
With all that said, I just cannot find the act of charging, finding the good charging stations or what have you interesting.
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Why do you need to be interesting? Is finding a petrol Station interesting to you?

Yes, there can be a certain aspect to choosing the „right“ charger for any particular situation, but at least to me that novelty wore off very quickly. It’s not something I dwell on… all places I regularly visit I have a sort of standard spot I’ll park (and charge). If I visit somewhere new, I’ll happily invest all of 3 minutes researching whether it makes sense to go park at a charger there and whether that is likely to be free when I arrive - if not, so be it. This is basically the same amount of research I’d put into finding somewhere to park anyway…
 
eizbaer said:
Why do you need to be interesting? Is finding a petrol Station interesting to you?
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No, I hardly think about it other than „the gauge says I‘m low“ and I go find a fuel station. That’s about as far as I go.
 
Perc said:
What's the point of that? He's from the land of Defa, the biggest player in electric automotive pre-heating, they have products exactly for this and they're probably in every Norwegian car. And EV:s do it without help from Defa.
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I guess the Leaf did not have a Defa-system installed and he likely didn't bother to pay for it to be installed in a cheap ecobox.

He bought and was using a tired, old first generation Leaf as a road test shuttle, to transport him between the various places that lent him cars he needed to pick up for him to make his tests. The Leaf had a heavily degraded battery, so he used one of his EcoFlow portable batteries to power a fan heater in order not to have to use the Leaf's own battery for that. He recently sold the Leaf again as the range was now too short for it to work since he moved to his new house is in Jessheim, about 50 km north of Oslo (close to Oslo Airport). The range was good enough to get him wherever he needed to go, but he couldn't always charge there as the Leaf would be left there for days, so he felt that he wasted time doing charging before picking up or after returning cars very often.

I remember with our old fossil cars we used to have an engine heater that we had to plug in when it was really cold. It was literally just a 500w (PTC?)-heater running through the mains from a normal schuko mounted outside the house. The heating element was fitted in the engine block to heat it up and make it easier to start in very cold conditions. Failing to plug that in the night before would mean you'd struggle to start the car in the morning, and it would take forever to actually get some heat in the cabin.
 
marcos_eirik said:
I remember with our old fossil cars we used to have an engine heater that we had to plug in when it was really cold. It was literally just a 500w (PTC?)-heater running through the mains from a normal schuko mounted outside the house. The heating element was fitted in the engine block to heat it up and make it easier to start in very cold conditions. Failing to plug that in the night before would mean you'd struggle to start the car in the morning, and it would take forever to actually get some heat in the cabin.
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The way you describe it sounds like this was in 1943, but electric engine heaters are fitted to most piston cars and other machinery here in the north. It’s a perfectly normal thing.

I far prefer a webasto that burns a bit of diesel and doesn’t need to be plugged in. Just turn it on from the app, you know, the thing that most EV owners think is something only EVs can do. 😛
 
93Flareside said:
No, I hardly think about it other than „the gauge says I‘m low“ and I go find a fuel station. That’s about as far as I go.
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With EVs and home charging, you don't even need to do that. Just plug it in everytime you park up for the night, and leave the next morning with a full battery, every single day.

And yes, block heaters for ICE cars are uncommong/extremely rare in countries where -5° is considered the coldest temperature it ever gets for the whole year. ie most of Europe (except .no, .fi and .se)

I heard PHEVs also have this through the app, dunno if it will fire the engine if the battery is too low though
 
A bank has said that Polestar's value to Geeley is worthless and should take it private.

mobilsiden.dk

Elbilproducenten Aiways kan være tæt på konkurs

Den kinesiske elbilproducent Aiways der kom til Danmark i 2021, kan være tæt på en konkurs, skriver flere udenlandske medier.
mobilsiden.dk

www.bloomberg.com

Polestar Owners May Need to Take Company Private, Bernstein Says

Volvo Car AB and its parent Geely may need to take Polestar Automotive Holding private, according to Bernstein, which sees shares in the struggling electric-car maker declining further amid intense competition.
www.bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com
 

BMW faces initial proceedings over defeat device in X3 model​

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consent.yahoo.com

BMW faces initial proceedings over defeat device in X3 model: Bild

Germany's motor transport authority KBA has initiated proceedings against BMW over suspicion of manipulating emissions values in its X3 2-litre diesel model, newspaper Bild reported on Tuesday. The KBA said the case concerns suspicion of use of a defeat device in the engine control of the X3...
consent.yahoo.com consent.yahoo.com
 
93Flareside said:
The way @loose_unit, @Adrian, and @leviathan go on about it make my head spin. Imagine being like this with phone charging, or anything else that has a battery. I just can’t.
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That's because it's interesting to us. You don't have to share that interest, most people don't care - They just plug in and charge and then go when the car tells them to go...
 
loose_unit said:
That's because it's interesting to us. You don't have to share that interest, most people don't care - They just plug in and charge and then go when the car tells them to go...
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I don’t know anyone else in my life with electric cars. 😞
 
The charging bit is not that interesting, the consumption OTOH...

Like the many data points I've gotten from this forum on A/C vs heater consumption and the things being done to eke the most of the relatively limited energy density of a battery. Fascinating stuff. It was also a nice moment to unify the planet on the very sensible kWh/100(distance unit), but alas.

I'm also for the first time in decades looking at battery development like the miracle battery that will solve all of our problems is actually 3-5 years away
 
gaasc said:
The charging bit is not that interesting, the consumption OTOH...

Like the many data points I've gotten from this forum on A/C vs heater consumption and the things being done to eke the most of the relatively limited energy density of a battery. Fascinating stuff. It was also a nice moment to unify the planet on the very sensible kWh/100(distance unit), but alas.

I'm also for the first time in decades looking at battery development like the miracle battery that will solve all of our problems is actually 3-5 years away
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Well, there's people who still think miles or kms per kwh is a thing when it's WRONG!
I have the same issue with mpg (or the way some dutchies count : kms/l). This is entirely the wrong way to calculate something, because a larger number means better consumption, which confuses me. l/100 kms or kwh/100 kms (or wh/km if you will) is king.

Also, that miracle battery was 3-5 years away, 5 years ago. And also 10 years ago. So I guess it'll still be 3-5 years away in 5 years time?
 
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