GDI engine failures potentially driving up EV sales?

braxton357 said:
I think--as was said-- It's not the lack of electricity It's the fact that your car can be remotely disabled at any time. Though lack of electricity is more and more becoming an issue
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Understood. And admittedly I haven’t researched it. But I’d suspect that it’d be pretty easy to remove the receiver
 
braxton357 said:
I think--as was said-- It's not the lack of electricity It's the fact that your car can be remotely disabled at any time.
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Not on my buddy's EV converted '68 El Camino.

There's no special link between "electric power source" and "tied to da clouds". Gas cars are also becoming increasingly central-connected, and there is zero requirement for any external communication for batteries to work. Its just an easy fad because so much of the performance and control of electric vehicles can be software driven.
 
Darkbloodmon said:
The UPS truck that delivers to our yard is "All Electric", its has a small diesel generator on board that recharges the battery.
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In my very simple mind I like this type of set up. A 100% electrical drivetrain that can function on its own plus a fuel powered generator. Genset always run at constant speed for better fuel consumption/longevity. I mean it seems to work for locomotives and they get pretty good fuel mileage per ton.
I'm sure I am glossing over some very big engineering hurdles but that's what the uneducated do.
 
BigBody79 said:
In my very simple mind I like this type of set up. A 100% electrical drivetrain that can function on its own plus a fuel powered generator. Genset always run at constant speed for better fuel consumption/longevity. I mean it seems to work for locomotives and they get pretty good fuel mileage per ton.
I'm sure I am glossing over some very big engineering hurdles but that's what the uneducated do.
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Hybrids have been a thing for like 2 decades now, seems like a good compromise. What gets me though is that civics, metros and fiestas were getting the same fuel mileage back in the early 90s.
 
braxton357 said:
Hybrids have been a thing for like 2 decades now, seems like a good compromise. What gets me though is that civics, metros and fiestas were getting the same fuel mileage back in the early 90s.
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But safety and emissions. We have to keep enough people alive to buy stuff from Amazon so that Jeff Bezos can afford to launch himself repeatedly into the sky with a rocket.
 
braxton357 said:
Hybrids have been a thing for like 2 decades now, seems like a good compromise. What gets me though is that civics, metros and fiestas were getting the same fuel mileage back in the early 90s.
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true - but they were tiny death traps that don't meet modern safety standards for crashes, restraint, etc and not full size vehicles.
Most of the new design stuff that saves lives also decreases efficiency by adding weight or bulk, and we're now getting those kidns of numbers out of vehicles you can actually fit a family of 4+ in.

EDIT: @benXJ beat me to it
 
I agree that the gas-backup for primary electric is the way to go. Juice-source aside DC motors are just more efficient and practical than a big ICE.
Plus with this design it leaves more room / ease to swap out the "Plan B" power source for something else, whether it is gasoline, NG, hydrogen, farts and banana peals, or whatever the engineers come up with next.
 
BigBody79 said:
In my very simple mind I like this type of set up. A 100% electrical drivetrain that can function on its own plus a fuel powered generator. Genset always run at constant speed for better yfuel consumption/longevity. I mean it seems to work for locomotives and they get pretty good fuel mileage per ton.
I'm sure I am glossing over some very big engineering hurdles but that's what the uneducated do.
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The problem is Newton's law and efficiency.

Any time energy changes form factors there are losses. it will always take more fuel to turn a generator to convert mechanical to electirc energy, to then onvert that electric energy to mechanical energy - than the equivalent direct drive engine.

IOW during the time you are running off the gen you are actually less efficient than if it was a straight ICE propulsion.

to Braxton's point - Plug in Hybrids are the sweet spot efficiency wise..
 
Ron said:
The problem is Newton's law and efficiency.

Any time energy changes form factors there are losses. it will always take more fuel to turn a generator to convert mechanical to electirc energy, to then onvert that electric energy to mechanical energy - than the equivalent direct drive engine.

IOW during the time you are running off the gen you are actually less efficient than if it was a straight ICE propulsion.

to Braxton's point - Plug in Hybrids are the sweet spot efficiency wise..
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Technically the most efficient motor would be no motor at all and go only from mechanical to mechanical... like a pendulum that turns the crank or a big wind up key. But something still has to set those up (potential energy) and that has to come from somewhere too.

In the end its all a matter of where you start measuring energy usage and what kind it is that is considered. I've often wondered what the total cost is for the Feed Flintstone car or horse-pulled - it's basically food powered. Go all the way back to the total cost of the food + building your biological "motor" compared to the total cost of building a metal engine and producing the fuel for it, whether it is electric or gas.
 
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