Electric Vehicles

Lucid Air wins.

If you’re a US resident thinking of buying an EV, you probably want to do so before the end of the year.

https://www.axios.com/2024/11/14/trump-ev-tax-credit-electric-vehicles-tesla-elon-musk

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Guessing Tesla will get more rebate.

It kind of highlights the irony of the champion of green cars sidling up to the most anti-green POTUS is recent memory.

If anyone is playing 7D chess here, it’s not Trump; it’s Musk.

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Well, it is Trump, so 1D chess is all that is required.

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Articles on the subject suggest that Tesla has reached a point where it will do just fine without the rebate, giving it a competitive advantage over its EV competitors that still need the rebate to have any traction in the US.

In other words, abolishing the rebate hurts Elmo’s competitors more than it hurts Elmo.

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Tesla also profits from regulatory credits (average fuel economy requirements), more so than from rebates. No word on if those will be eliminated.

In spite of having a slightly smaller fuel tank now, early impression is that I do buy gas a little less often than before with my hybrid. I drive more highway than city so I don’t see quite as much of the gas savings, but it’s still there.

I do like how over very short distances, I can experience a technically-mpg of over 70 for the “trip.” :upside_down_face:

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Prior to my moving to a different org chart at the first of the year, for the past several years my office has been a 5-hour drive away.

When coming home from a trip into the office, my regular fuel stop was at the Blandford service area on the Mass Pike. The fun thing about that service area is that it’s located just before the eastbound Pike starts a long, steep-for-an-East-Coast-expressway descent into the Connecticut River valley.

I’m also in the habit of resetting my trip odometer every time I fuel up. (A prior car’s fuel gauge was broken. I relied on the trip odometer to know when it was time to refuel.)

So, I get a weird sense of glee when, after leaving the service area, the non-hybrid dino-fueled car’s display errors out after the apparent trip fuel economy exceeds 76mpg.

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One time I took a (ICE) rental car from Cincinnati to Columbus and had more “miles to empty” when I arrived in Columbus than I did when I left Cincinnati. It’s about a 100 mile drive.

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I’m guessing that it’s the instant-torque aspect of an EV motor that possibly makes my car zippier than a regular Tucson would have been. It’s fun to drive.

A friend of mine in CA has a Tesla, and they go skiing. She sent me the screen shots once of the return trip, she gained something like 10% charge going down the mountain. I haven’t had a chance to take my Tesla over the continental divide yet but that would be interesting.

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I like driving from parking on the street into the garage and I see the upper display limit of 99mpgs :crazy_face:

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I can see how that would be possible on a downhill trip in an EV. But in an ICE it’s obvious that I arrived in Columbus with less gasoline than I had when I left Cincinnati.

I assume I was just driving with SO much higher MPGs than the previous renter(s) that I bumped up the average faster than the fuel was depleting.

Columbus has a slightly higher elevation than the Cinci suburb I was leaving from (which in turn is higher than downtown, which is on the Ohio River).

So no advantage of going downhill.

OK, so the car’s computer was not correct.
Anything else possible?

Yes…

That would require the computer to assume the same recent mpg for the rest of the tank. I don’t think that is what the computer does. I guess I could look up how they work.
Sensors say there are X gallons left in the tank. My belief is that the Computer uses an engineer-determined assumed MPG calculate miles left.
Now, I am assuming good engineers at a good company. If it was a GM or Ford, then you might be right. It also leads to its being built poorly.
My wife’s Lexus NEVER, EVER adds miles to the “miles left” stat. I start with 400+ miles, and after 5 miles it has dropped 8 miles. By the end of 7.5 gallons, the total miles, used plus what’s left, is about 350.
As a hypothetical, if the computer uses the recent info on the tank, what if someone drives crazily around, punching it at every green light, stopping hard, going around curves at high speeds, etc., for the first gallon or so, getting 13MPG. Should the computer use “13” as the assumption for the rest of the tank or should it use a reasonable 25mpg or whatever and keep dropping the miles left as the craziness continues?

Here is something I found:
https://www.cars.com/articles/coasting-on-fumes-how-much-gas-is-really-left-in-your-tank-438833/#:~:text=Results%3A%20Fuel%20Estimates%20Aren’t%20Perfect&text=However%2C%20there%20was%20also%20a,mpg)%20for%20the%20cumulative%20mpg.

Relevant:

Fuel Estimates Adjust to Driving Behavior

The most accurate vehicle tested had an error of 0.1 mpg under estimate for the complete series of cycles and individual cycles varying by 0.5 mpg, while the least accurate vehicle had an error of 2.2 mpg over estimate and individual cycles varying by 3.8 mpg. The tests show that a vehicle’s fuel estimates are adjusted over time as the vehicle’s algorithm picks up on driving patterns like speed and acceleration. AAA also found that the estimates may become less accurate when switching between city and highway driving, and the fuel estimate error varied significantly over short distances even when it was accurate for longer distances.

So, it possible that the person before you drove in the city, perhaps more aggressively than normal for that one particular fillup. You get the car, the car assumes you will drive the same, which is a stupid assumption even if it were the same driver.

From what I can tell, the people who create the miles-to-empty stat are extremely focused on giving accurate info when the tank is low. Because that is where there will be the most complaints if it is wrong then. Any amount above 50 miles is not accurate nor relevant, IMO.

So, my Chevy Volt. It literally just runs a number saying ‘based on how much fuel I’m using right now, here’s your mpg and range.’ Or if I was using the battery to propel the car, it would estimate my ICE range based on the last number it computed.

Which was garbage, most of my driving was short trips, and the car runs rich until it warms up. So it was always telling me that nine gallons of gas would get me less than 200 miles (real world mileage was about 35-40mpg). Thanks, engineers.

My wife’s Mazda is much more realistic with estimated range.

My wife’s Lexus has a “continuous MPG” (all over the place so not relevant) as well as a “so far on this tank MPG.”
Though it is a hybrid, the “Electric Only” setting can only be used up to 20mph. The car will put itself in its own temporary computer-decided EV mode when going downhill or coasting.
What bugs me is that it will not use the battery until the gas engine is warm enough. So, every short trip is a low MPG one, as the engine takes a good 3 miles to get warm enough. The battery is too tiny to be of use. It fills up quickly on longer downhills to the point that the regenerating braking makes a disturbing whining noise as if it were going to break. Next car will likely be Plug-in Hybrid, though a three-year-old used EV with tons of depreciation depreciated might be worth it.

I’ve seen my “miles to empty” go up when I’m driving on the highway before, or I drive 10 miles and the “miles to empty” goes down 40 miles in stop & go traffic.

It’s definitely based on some sort of recent average MPG. But I don’t usually drive 100 miles with more miles to empty than before I left.