Electric vehicles-Conversions

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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Gathering pace along with electric vehicle development is autonomous driving.

Not just for navigation around city streets in driverless cabs, but driverless trucks and buses, as well as your own private vehicle. Have to admit, seems a bridge too far for me at the moment, but could well be a complete revolution in personal, public, and business transport.

Seems like everyone is working towards making this a reality, few car makers ignoring it and any who do, likely to be left behind.

Not exactly sure where the motivation for the development springs from. I would think if you asked the general motorist what features they would like to see in new cars, an autonomous driving capability would be pretty low on the priority list.. Eventually, could it be cost cutting /efficiency/better service or even incongruously safety which will be the effect.

The human lorry bus or taxi driver with their human limitations of endurance, needing their breaks, and permitted hours of driving, and overhead of actually paying them for their hours would not apply to businesses using autonomous vehicles.

GM are progressing the autonomous route with this cooperation with Lyft......and another outlet of possible global proportions for their Chevy Bolt platform.

https://electrek.co/2017/02/19/gm-auton ... lyft-2018/

Daimler have entered a partnership with UBER for self-driving cars on their ride sharing network.
https://electrek.co/2017/01/31/daimler- ... g-network/

and what of TESLA couple of quotes from the above article
In 2015, famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist and early Tesla investor Steve Juvertson recalled a conversation he had with Uber CEO Travis Kalanick:
“Travis recently told me that in 2020, if Teslas are autonomous, he’d want to buy all of them. He said all 500,000 of estimated 2020 production, I’d want them all, but he couldn’t get a return call from Elon.”
There’s also Tesla. The automaker made it quite clear that it plans to operate its own network of self-driving cars, but the vehicles on the ‘Tesla Network’ will be a mix of cars owned by its customers and the company’s own fleet. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the majority of ‘Tesla Network’ revenue will go to owners: ‘it’s not Tesla versus Uber, it’s the people versus Uber’ he added.
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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by CitroJim »

No way I'll ever go anywhere near an autonomous car... That is, in my opinion, a step too far. Much too far...

I'd honestly rather walk...
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Post by NewcastleFalcon »

There will be devotees of Formula One amongst the ranks of the FCF, of that I have no doubt, and perhaps some who appreciate the developing Formula E. Racing drivers become heros, and many a youngster may dream of becoming a Racing Driver when they grow up.

But what about Software Engineers as heros? Maybe their time is coming....

Try this for size...RoboRace..had its first tentative development outing at the Buenos Aires Formula E Grand Prix.
from https://electrek.co/2017/02/18/self-dri ... a-e-eprix/

Roborace is still in development as a series, but the goal is to have several teams racing against each other, each with the same car design .... but writing their own software. Details are still a little light, but presumably the teams will have no more input into the car’s decisions during the race as they would for a real driver (being able to tell the cars to push harder, slow down, and make pit stops, perhaps). Otherwise, the software will do all the driving on its own.
Interesting reaction by one commenter on the story

"Driverless racing cars. I'm sure my vacuum and toaster would love to go and watch. Me, not so much. What is the point? And when the machines become aware they'll be asking the same. When they're ready to race each other, they'll present their best virtual track race line calculations and select a winner in 0.09 ms."

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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by mickeymoon »

I have not missed an F1 race since 1986. I love MotoGP too. I like WRC but the coverage is so poor on TV it's hard to follow. Touring cars are also something I like to watch, as is Indycar racing.

I've tried and tried and tried to get into Formula E with no joy at all. It's impossible to be even remotely excited by something that sounds like my son's Scalextric cars...

I'm of the same view as Jim when it comes to autonomous cars. NFW.

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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by CitroJim »

I gave up watching F1 ages ago... I have an odd issue were I just cannot bear suspense. I can't read fiction or watch TV drama because of it... F1 is just far too dramatic and full of suspense it makes me ill.

I could maybe only watch F1 if I knew the full result beforehand... It's how I manage to tolerate watching the TdF in July...

Are F1 highlights ever available? I've only been aware of it live.

Formula E is potentially interesting and one hope some developments may spin off into the mainstream.
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Post by CitroJim »

myglaren wrote:Speak of the devil :twisted: :twisted:

How bloody pointless... All sport, motor racing included, is all about HUMAN endeavour... Not robots... The thin end of a very thick wedge I fear :evil:

What next? Robotic runners?

As Mickey says, NFW...
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Post by Hell Razor5543 »

CitroJim wrote:
myglaren wrote:Speak of the devil :twisted: :twisted:

How bloody pointless... All sport, motor racing included, is all about HUMAN endeavour... Not robots... The thin end of a very thick wedge I fear :evil:

What next? Robotic runners?

As Mickey says, NFW...
Reminds me of a story (possibly by Isaac Asimov) about a marathon style of race run on the Moon. The narrator was one of the runners. Numerous teams had been entered, including one from the Lunar University (the runner was named Robert Jones, or something like). Anyway, the race was run, a few runners dropped out, but the narrator was in the lead, with Robert Jones closely following. In the last mile it became a sprint finish (which, in a space suit, was heavy going), but the narrator was narrowly beaten into second place by Robert Jones. The narrator collapsed from exhaustion, and missed what happened next. When he came round in hospital he found the rest of his team quietly celebrating. He asked what was going on, to be told "You won!". He thought they were mad, and told them so clearly. The team leader then explained that the runner from the Lunar University was actually a Robot (so really was Robot Jones), and (although they had been congratulated on their achievement) was consequently disqualified.
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Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Big week for TESLA, financial results for the 4th Quarter 2016 and Full Year 2016 to be released. The key item though is the progress on the production of the model 3, whether production can reach the targets anticipated in the second half of 2017, and whether the production can be ramped up further from 2017 towards around 500,000 vehicles annually in 2018.
from Electrek https://electrek.co/2017/02/20/tesla-mo ... n-chassis/
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been referring to the Model 3 production line as an ‘alien dreadnought’. He said that his goal is for the factory to look more “alien” than a factory. He emphasized that the first version of the Model 3 production line will only be a “version 0.5” of the “alien dreadnought”, but the line will get updated with more automation and he envisions a “version 3” in a few more years:

“By version 3, it won’t look like anything else. You can’t have people in the production line itself, otherwise you drop to people speed. So there will be no people in production process itself. People will maintain the machines, upgrade them, and deal with anomalies.”

The CEO has been focused on the speed of production over the past year. He says that Model S and X production move at about five centimeters per second on the line, but he sees an opportunity for a 20-fold increase in production speed for the Model 3 in Fremont – or “at least one meter per second.”
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I have read recently that you can expect about 60 miles from a charge in the Nissan and Renault offerings. Irrespective of how clean they are, which I fully accept, there is absolutely no way you could call this "practical". It would take me two days to get from home to Llandudno which I happen to like. Where as the the Tesla has a 280 mile range and the Super Charger can put 200 miles charge into it in 30 minutes. Now that is practical. There's just the small matter of the price....
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demag wrote:.... It would take me two days to get from home to Llandudno which I happen to like......
You need one of these for your Llandudno trips Dave, with a couple of jerry cans of motor spirit strapped to the running boards as a range extender :!: :-D

http://www.victorian-extravaganza.com/A ... eader8.jpg

Have to agree at the moment though. the electric offerings in the affordable category are for commuting, or trips to the shops and back and well cope with the surprisingly low mileage average journey length of most motorists. A few pages back, though the chap from Orkney delivering his electric vehicles, did manage his 600 mile trips with a bit of planning ahead.

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Post by demag »

We were there a couple of years ago for the Victorian Extravaganza Neil. There were some lovely old vehicles a lot of which were steam powered. It's on May Day I think but it takes over the whole town and you can't breath! I prefer it to be a little quieter thankyou. :-D

I do like to watch the Fully Charged show on YouTube as they review all the latest electric vehicles. Before I bought the Synergie I was very seriously considering a Prius and to be honest I can still see me ending up with one. They do seem to be an extraordinary car and there are loads of examples with well over 200k on the clock. I'd love to have a go in one just to see what they are like. I did have a short drive in a new Lexus is300 hybrid last year and it was spookily quiet.
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Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Tesla currently dominate the electric car market in Hong Kong with 80% share.



Governments can make decisions which do change the goalposts overnight, and for a number of years electric private cars have been favoured with waiving of a massive first registration tax for new vehicles. From 1st April 2017 the waiving will now be capped at $12,500. The effect is to increase the price of a Model S by $40,000, and a top of the range S/X by around $150,000.

Significantly electric commercial vehicles, electric motor cycles and electric motor tricycles will continue to have the first registration tax fully waived.
fulll story here:-
https://electrek.co/2017/02/22/hong-kon ... ves-tesla/

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Post by NewcastleFalcon »

I get e-mail updates from Riversimple persevering with their Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle, and aiming towards a trial of 20 vehicles in the immediate vicinity of LLandridnod Wells later this year.

Undoubtedly on a global scale the Battery Electric Vehicle is currently miles ahead on development and infrastructure. There is an interesting battle to watch though between the new players (TESLA et al) and the old auto makers, and between charging infrastructures, with Tesla Superchargers (SC) and other developments using the Combined Charging System (CCS) standard that is compatible with current and future electric vehicles from all the joint venture companies (BMW, VW, Ford, Daimler) as well as Fiat-Chrysler and Hyundai.

So BEV's have won, and the big oil companies will just roll over and accept consequential damage, and inevitable defeat for their business........not just yet, and part of the fightback strategy may well be in investing in Hydrogen with some evidence of that outlined here...
from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... rogen-leap

"Musk may be inadvertently helping Toyota’s cause. Early on, Big Oil wasn’t convinced cars could make the zero-emission switch in droves. Then Tesla took about 373,000 pre-orders for its Model 3 sedan last year. The oil industry was “a bit scared” by the feverish reception, said Katsuhiko Hirose, a Toyota project general manager.

Now some of those companies are coming around to side with Toyota. Total SA, Air Liquide SA, Linde AG and Shell are among 13 companies that last month formed a global hydrogen council. They’ll invest $10.7 billion in hydrogen-related products within five years.
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Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Plenty of articles on Elektrek following TESLA's release of their latest results and letter to shareholders yesterday.

https://electrek.co/

I lap this sort of thing up and it is the key unfolding drama in changing times for the motor industry. Whether you buy into TESLA or not, without them the pace of change from traditional auto-makers would have been dead slow or stop. Its not a great deal faster even now which is why if TESLA deliver on their ambitions, they will be 5 years or so ahead of the competition and selling plenty of cars to keep their investors happy.

Interesting also that TESLA are very much now not just an Auto-maker, and the much discussed "Gigafactory 2" is not now going to be sited in Asia or Europe, but in Buffalo New York State. Interesting too that it will be making "Solar Roof Tiles" and not batteries and cars.

So the Europeans and the rest of the world will have to squabble over Gigafactory 3 4 or 5, unless of course they/(we) get off their/(our) own backsides and build similar facilities without waiting to be spoon-fed by TESLA. :!: :-D

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