Americans make everything so complicated.
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I’m assuming this quote is correct…
“Winston Churchill once famously observed that Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.”
More or less.
I think the precise quote is: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.”
But yes, it was Winston Churchill.
Not Abe Lincoln??
Trivia: Actually, in this case it was the Brits making everything complicated.
Prior to 1824, the Imperial system had many different kinds of gallons. In that year, Parliament created the Imperial Gallon, defined as the volume occupied by 10 pounds of water at 62°F, to replace all the other gallons.
Meanwhile, in the herd of cats that eventually became known as the United States, there wasn’t an official standard until Congress finally acted in 1832 to adopt the “wine gallon” / aka the “Queen Anne gallon” as the official liquid gallon for the US…choosing that gallon because it had been the most-standard for several years.
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It seems that Obi Wan Kenobi didn’t have spill chick.
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intangle (third-person singular simple present intangles, present participle intangling, simple past and past participle intangled)
That’s how they spelled it, a long time ago,…
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I just parked next to a Hummer EV, holy cow are they big. Google says the battery is close to 3,000lb, and the whole thing is between 8,500 and 9,000lb depending on options.
Heavier than my daily.
More battery means longer range, or more powerful take off and higher top speed.
There is only so much battery that can be included in a car of a fixed size. (Until solid state, of course.) And where can it go, except under the passenger area or the back or the front. Gonna suggest all three: three separate batteries. No need for all of them to be together in a pack, is there?
It appears to just be one huge battery under the floor. It’s a thick one.
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide,
65 tons of American Pride!
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Probably a larger physical component in current (yep) battery designs than the wires for the electricity is the cooling materials/conduits in the battery(ies). Getting the coolant to/from multiple locations seems like more of a constraint than space. Add in physical protection from impact and that’s why the battery isn’t the entire frame of the car, for instance.
This is a problem that I had with the Toyota SUVs/Trucks I had been considering.
Toyota is using a worldwide engineering framework for its trucks and SUVS called “Toyota Next Generation Architecture” or TNGA - pronounced “tinga” - in order be able to make many different vehicles for different countries off of a limited number of body structure, engines and drivelines.
Many of the larger hybridized SUVs and trucks use wide and flat batteries that reside under the floor below the passengers. Effectively the floor is a couple of inches higher because of this.
Also, many high end SUVs and trucks have cool looking and quite oversized sunroofs. The framing for these large sunroofs is thick, and also easily robs an inch or two of headroom.
So these big trucks end up not suitable for anyone over 6’2" because the passenger compartment is squished from below and from above. The seats are wide and comfortable. The legroom is nice. But if you’re tall, you either need to learn to slouch uncomfortably, or recline your seat into the passenger space behind you.
So Toyota is lying when they published specs showing the hybrid version had more shoulder/head room than non-hybrid?
I was test driving Sequois and Grand Highlanders. Shoulder room was fine to great, especially the Seq.
headroom, not so much.
I did huge amount of research on published numbers on head room and leg room by seat, across a wide number of vehicle options. Really, I killed it to death with my typical actuarial over analysis. Ever inch was important to me. (obligatory TWSS) What I found was that self published dimensions are not standardized across brands.
In my life I have bought a total of 7 brand new Hondas and Toyotas, and I personally consider them my top brands. Every single time, I comparison shopped the model I bought against the other’s competing model. 6 out of 7 times, I bought the larger/more comfortable of the two (the odd one out was for my son, who is a couple inches shorter than me and doesn’t have sore back issues). But the new TNGA designs just make my back hurt, so Honda it is.
So you are saying Toyota’s measurements from one year/model to the next aren’t standardized? Because upthread I posted Toyota’s numbers that showed the hybrid version didn’t suffer from the compression you perceive. I certainly don’t expect one brand to another to be as accurate, and I can’t say you don’t feel the way you feel when sitting in a car, or that you should prefer Honda over Toyota or vice versa, but your feelings aren’t objective.
The Sequoia felt less tall - less headroom- than the Grand Highlander, even though it’s taller on the outside. So it felt short, long and wide.
The Grand Highlander felt more comfortable with height, but narrower, and it seemed to me that the center console felt too wide, both at the hips of the front seat passengers and at the front seat footspace. Great storage space but compromised lower body space In fact, it seemed to me that the footwell was like putting both of your feet into a 5 gallon bucket. It might work, but on long trips that will feel restrictive. So overall, the GH felt tall, long and narrow.
So choose your poison.
Seems to depend “how” you are tall: legs or torso.
Agreed, and for my height, my legs are short and my torso is long. And I may put more decision making weight on seating comfort than most buyers.
Also, it occurred to me when shopping that the seat design might be a factor.
I was specifically looking for SUVs with a listed amount of 40 inches of head room or more. There are few choices. But also, the “stretchiness” of the seat bottom might also be a factor. If the seat is firm, then you might only get the stated amount of headroom. If the seat bottom flexes with springs, then the effective headroom might be more than the stated measurement from seat to ceiling with no weight on the seat.