Prius drivers maybe. There is definitely a fun side to EVs. Have you seen the new Lucid Air Sapphire?
Well, maybe you learned something today.
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Oh hell yes. I still miss the responsiveness of my plug-in hybrid.
My next car will likely be electric. Two features I’m looking for will be zippy acceleration and physical knobs and buttons for commonly used controls.
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I wish you luck in your search.
I have three choices, all based on the fact that i do not drive very much, and my wife would actually be driving it more, 2 miles to work and back:
- EV, like a Bolt.
- Plugin hybrid. Prius has a “performance” model.
- Not buy anything (wife already drives a hybrid).
All three are the cheapest choices.
All fine options. My previous comment about Prius drivers goes back to my hatred for both the first generation car and the idiots that seemed to always be behind the wheel of them.
The new Prius has 200hp (I know, not a ton by modern standards, but enough to be fun) and looks like this, for anyone who hasn’t kept up.
Not even a hatchback if I recall correctly.
I did see another article discussing this study. It said the average Tesla miles driven is 10k/year compared to an overall US average of 12k/yr.
I thought prior versions of the Prius were ugly, where the current version is attractive
That makes sense. Like my brother & SIL have a Tesla and a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Brother drives the Tesla to work every day and it’s fine for that. But when they go on a road trip they take SIL’s Jeep. If they have the same amount of non-road-trip driving then her car will end up with more total miles due to the road trips. I bet that’s not too unusual among Tesla owners.
It’s based on data drivers entered into a lending tree database when asking for insurance quotes. It’s interesting, but I’d trust the HLDI numbers more. Although i guess they used to publish #fatalities and $all accidents, not #all accidents.
Does anyone know if they still publish that list?
I found the fatalities
Tesla does better than average for its class for driver fatalities, but worse than average for its class for killing other drivers. Which does suggest more accidents.
Also, the Elektrek article linked by @ArthurItas
https://community-new.goactuary.com/t/electric-vehicles/1731/1389?u=lucy
says Tesla used to publish a report showing how its autopilot did compared to “industry” figures, and has stopped. I have a theory about that. Part of its autopilot is auto-braking, a feature that was uncommon when they started releasing that, but has since gotten pretty common. Auto-braking is (per the HLDI presentations) hugely effective at preventing accidents. Tesla’s version is pretty good, but not the industry leader. (I forget which one they said was best.)
Anyway, my guess is that 100% of the benefit was from auto-braking, and when it was uncommon, that was a big enough benefit to make them look good overall. But now that it’s become common, they lost that competitive advantage. (And of course, nearly every car that you might consider if you are considering a new Tesla comes with auto-braking. And if safety is one of your priorities, every car your consider will have auto-braking.)
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Worse than average for killing other drivers may also be related to a possible weight differential.
The other obvious adjustment is age/sex distribution. Are teslas disproportionately young male?
Are teslas’ miles disproportionately surface streets vs highway?
Tons of variables to examine.
If people are less likely to take them on road trips then probably. But if there are fewer miles overall a better question might be if they have more miles on surface streets than other cars despite being driven fewer total miles.
I suspect generally skewing younger. Historically I’d say male but the Model Y seems to be popular with the ladies, anecdotally. But I bet overall Tesla skews male, if I had to guess.
And sales skew to CA in particular, where even if you’re on the interstate you’re likely doing 11mph.
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Depends on the time of day. I’d imagine you’d see a bunch of data at 10mph and a bunch at 90mph.
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If we could bully the manufacturers USB-style into certain standardizations, that would be amazing. I feel it would dramatically limit design choices, but personally my car could be a beat-to-shit hot pink crapbox as long as it moves me from A to B.
OK, this vehicle was not on my short list, but, holy crappy car, Batman!
As of this writing, our Blazer EV has 23 different issues that need fixing, more than a few of which we consider serious. The car has been at the dealer for two weeks so far, and we still don’t know when or how the fixes, repairs or updates will be implemented. The dealership has told us that an engineer from GM and a technician from a different dealership have been working on the Blazer, but we haven’t heard specifics on what it is they’re working on and still don’t have an estimate of how long it will take until everything is resolved. Credit where it’s due though, we appreciate that Chevrolet has worked to bring in support from two people who don’t normally work at that dealership to try and help solve our Blazer’s problems. We’ll update this story as soon as we know more. In the meantime, let’s take a look at verbatim list of everything that’s wrong.
All of our Blazer EV’s faults
- Short Range Radar Rear Sensor – Middle
- Body Control Module (Lost Communication with Rear Side Door Window Switch – Left)
- Body Control Module (Lost Communication with Rear Side Door Window Switch – Right)
- Drive Motor Control Module
- Drive Motor Control Module (Lost Communication with Serial Data Gateway Module on CAN Bus 2)
- Drive Motor Control Module 2 (Lost Communication with Serial Data Gateway Module on CAN Bus 2)
- Radio (Head-up Display, General Electrical Malfunction)
- Battery Energy Control Module (Lost Communication with Serial Data Gateway Module on CAN Bus 2)
- Side Obstacle Detection Control Module – Right
- Radio (Invalid Data Received from Serial Data Gateway Module)
- Body Control Module (Invalid Data Received from Serial Data Gateway Module)
- Driver Seat Adjuster Memory Module
- Side Obstacle Detection Control Module – Left
- Radio
- Body Control Module
- Brake System Control Module (Lost Communication with Radio on CAN Bus 5)
- Battery Energy Control Module (Invalid Data Received from Serial Data Gateway Module)
- Battery Energy Control Module (Air Conditioning – Refrigerant Charge Low)
- Drive Motor Control Module (Hybrid/Electric Powertrain Control Module 2 Requested Malfunction Indicator Lamp Illumination
- Radio (Ethernet Bus 2)
- Body Control Module (Inside Air Temperature Sensor Signal)
- Body Control Module (Windshield Rain Sensor)
- Battery Energy Control Module (Lost Communication with Lighting Control Module)
This has been mentioned before, but it looks to be happening quicker than expected. The good news is that existing car owners will be able to take advantage of it as they will be able to use adapters -
https://electrek.co/2023/12/18/gm-ford-ev-owners-tesla-supercharger-access-february/
Some interesting articles on Electrek - I’ll have to read it more regularly.
China is competing with Japan to produce solid-state battery EVs. They’ve claimed to drive 650 miles on a single charge and will productionize it next year. Some commented that is not quite a solid state because it uses a gel -
The company says that when the new 150kwH batteries come out they can be swapped out for batteries in existing NIO models (although it will cost $42,000 to do so)
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It is interesting for sure. I don’t think I’d say fix it, though, I’d say, how about another one that works. And cars are complicated enough that I can’t say that all of these items are independent. Perils of a first year model?
Without being a professional electrician or “newfangled car guy,” sounds like a short somewhere (or lots of places) fucking up the relays. Bad wiring possible. Rats or Squirrels eating insulation.
They didn’t mention if it was raining or not (window outside right now indicates a ton – I do have an office with a window, something I’d never have at a not-home office, but I tangent…), but that would exasperate shorts or shitty insulated wires.
my take: if a car relies completely on electricity, better have good insulation on wires that are the right sizes, tight connections, and…
Also, cars have had electricity working the non-motor stuff for quite some time (111 years for first headlights?). To the point that these electrified gadgets don’t often fail, because they are a bad mark on the company and causes people not to buy their next car from that company.
I think you are right about these systems not being independent enough from each other, and that it’s possible that one “box” controls everything. To lower costs of manufacturing. I don’t mind the Type I errors (“something’s wrong with the car!” warning signals, but there isn’t) as they are better than Type II ("nothing’s wrong with the car! but there is). (I might have these switched.)
Lowering both types of errors is important.