O.T. The New Vette

[tomato coupe]

It is kind of ironic. The Yuppies are driving around in their electric vehicles …

Yuppies? Are we back in the 1980s?

[J Tiers]

Yuppies? Are we back in the 1980s?

In a way..... There are still plenty of folks like that, only worse. The "Have BMW, am entitled" crowd have been added to them.

[A.K. Boomer]

Funny..

Some folks go all goober over the chevy. They are crap on the pedestrian streets.

Sure, you can fine tue it for the track. Its still an ill handling car on the street.

I drove a C5 or C6, and it had loads of HP. That doesnt equate to handling. Hell, throw an easy 600hp into any cars these days. Doesnt mean they can turn with the HP. A vette cant on the street.

Azz light and nose heavy.. This new rig might be why?

I owned a 911 Carrerra, Best handling car out the gate from all the otheres I have test drove.

Azz heavy? Big time. But the diff is I knew that. The C6 was wild. And I can drive a "wild" suspention and or car. The chevy was too unpredictable.

Talk about unpredictable, the 911 Porche. Then put a much too large turbo (read slow to spool) and it gets real exciting. Key is, you know that going in..

The 911 turbo likes more thottle going into or out of a turn. The vette does not.

The vette you have to keep it pretty constant throughout the turn and know the turn, come in too hot snd you lost the turn.

Not off trake but slower. Ill take a 911 over the chevy.. JR

Im not good enough to drive a porsche the way it's supposed to be driven and do it on dry pavement with gummy meats, thing's happen too quickly, you have to be very talented ------ if someone handed me cars all day long im sure I could perfect the ass end drift around turns and use that as a tool to create the ultimate "point and squirt" angle especially for the last half of the turn - there's nothing quite like it, but it would have to be a tight track because I could never get the ball's up to do it at high speeds,

I know I could rally drive one on dirt, big difference -------- way more predictable and forgiving, I remember tuning my Bro's 911-S and then getting to take it out for a drive and as I was leaving he'd say "you stuff it make sure you die in the flames" I knew what that meant --- id tromp on it some but never pushed it in the turns... also never did that with any customers ones, the only way I would feel safe about it would be on the dirt and your not going to take a car like that out and do that to it if you don't own it yourself due to paint chips and stuff...

So iv never pushed a porsche in the turns due to never owning one...

but I do know what it's all about, you have to commit yourself to the turn - you have to hunker down with power through-out the turn, you come in too hot god help you, you better have a wide birth for some wiggle room in the shut down process or for really hanging it out there... perhaps the area where the C-8 might have some advantage, it can save it's bacon coming into the turn - maybe make up for some of the lost time from the porsche slingshotting out of it...

I know all this because of car you would think would have nothing to do with what im talking about --- no not a volkwagon, a BMW 1600-2,,,

this car had oversteer, and more stories about my reckless youth that im really not proud of, the engine was kinda set up like an S-2000 in that it started at or behind the shock towers, called "front/mid engine rear wheel drive" on the bmw the front wheels were at the very front of the cars body and the rear wheels had massive amounts of overhang behind them, plus I moved the cars battery from the front to the back ------------------- talking about that "polar moment of momentum" thing, if it had close to an ideal ratio it was still not a good one...
My weight distribution had to be approaching lower 50's / higher 40's but that overhang really had it's way with the car once it "engaged"





I rally drove that car about every day of my life for maybe about a decade,,, lived in a rural area with tons of twisty windies on the way home for miles of private road,,,,,,, all on dirt,
tossing that ass end around like a rag doll, so much fun --- icing on the cake was a cattle guard about 1/4 mile before I was home ------ would catch major air --- all four wheels off the ground yet an immediate bank right after, you knew you had a form of "ground effects" working for you as the car would weigh much more on touch down then it actually was, so you had to cut the wheel and dig in while you could and then lighten the steering load immediately after due to the car getting light on the rebound...

I pushed the boundaries as far as I could push them - I few too close to the sun twice and put it sticky side up, one time on that dirt road, ill never forget going upside down and then into the dirt backwards, then as the rear glass broke out and the top acted as a scoop seeing my front windshield get broken from the inside of the car whilst getting hit in the back of the head with rocks and debris... the seats were low backs...

the other time was coming down a mountain road, I had a buddy with me, I got into pushing the car on dry pavement too and usually with good success, id take it just to the verge of drifting the ass, anything more and it really did not have enough power to "save itself"
as allot of catastrophe's go - it was the perfect storm, I came into the turn a little hot, no big whoop its happened many times before,,, so I got into the power to make the car "anchor" and it did - for awhile, you see I forgot where I was at -and this was no typical turn - it was not a 90, it was actually closer to a 180, it went on and on, it was a sickening feeling when I finally did realize where I was, do I lift ? hell no, do I try to hold on? I knew the ass was about to break loose and I did not have the recovery room to bring anything around because this was after all an outside turn,,, yet after I realized where I was I knew it could not go on, the power and speed would catch up with me - another factor is it was a descent --- it's the opposite of ground effects - the car weighs the same but actually LESS for trying to change its direction, I tried to feather and it immediately swapped ends........ we both watched in astonishment as tire smoke was rolling off the front end, I flat spotted all 4 continentals down to the steel belts... it must have be a pretty ideal spin angle because we did stay on the road for what seemed like an eternity...

then the inevitable --- the car left the roadway, and again went sticky side up, this time I realize my friends not in the car with me - he did not click his belt, I undid mine, a latch type that worked under load, and almost broke my neck cuz i was hanging upside down, get out and here's my buddy with nothing but a torn shirt and a scrape on his shoulder...
so lucky we scrubbed all that speed, it was a scary time hanging upside down because I called out his name and there was no answer - I could not have lived with myself --- he did however pay me back with a life threatening "incident" in his Trans-am about a year later...

We both tipped the bimmer back over and drove home...

Iv been very lucky --- way before this my other friends were very reckless in cars - two times I could have bought it with a few of them driving... apologies for the book.

[Willy]

Been watching the popularity of EV cars including some of the mandates to force us in that direction. I don't have a issue with EV's, the problem I see is with the energy sources to charge them. Yes, a few of them get charged by solar but not the majority, the majority get charged off the electric grid. The electric grid is more over stressed every day and now there is a push to get away from fossil fuel generation on the grid with no real replacement for that generation at hand. It seems the handwriting is on the wall, large load increases on the grid due to EV;s and decreased grid generation, grid collapse anyone? Also interesting is that the areas pushing EV's the hardest have the biggest grid problems already.

Fossil fuels comprise almost 60% of the US electric generation capacity, 40% natural gas, 19% coal. Nuclear is 20% and renewables are 20%. Better get moving faster expanding those renewables before the lights go out and the EV is dead in the driveway.

You aren't the only one to have noticed the lunacy about adopting EV's on this continent without any supporting infrastructure in place to fulfill the demands that the rollout of EV's will require..
GM in it's infinite wisdom says they plan to cut gas and diesel car and suv production by 2035.

General Motors has pledged to stop making gasoline-powered passenger cars, vans and sport utility vehicles by 2035, marking a historic turning point for the iconic American carmaker and promising a future of new electric vehicles for American motorists.

What are they thinking? Where is all of this electricity coming from? That is one hell of a lot of energy to replace from from one very well established platform to one that is already over tasked. Every time that we have an unusually warm or cold spell of weather much of the current antiquated electrical grid has brown-outs or transmission failures. Just think of the system overload when millions of cars all come home to replenish their thirst for electrons.

Even Toyota, one of the largest automakers in the world has reservations about the US's plan for the introduction of EV's too early for this very reason and has lobbied the US government to slow it's approach.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/toyotas-chief-says-electric-vehicles-are-overhyped-11608196665

TOKYO— Toyota Motor Corp.’s leader criticized what he described as excessive hype over electric vehicles, saying advocates failed to consider the carbon emitted by generating electricity and the costs of an EV transition.
Toyota President Akio Toyoda said Japan would run out of electricity in the summer if all cars were running on electric power. The infrastructure needed to support a fleet consisting entirely of EVs would cost Japan between ¥14 trillion and ¥37 trillion, the equivalent of $135 billion to $358 billion, he said.
“When politicians are out there saying, ‘Let’s get rid of all cars using gasoline,’ do they understand this?” Mr. Toyoda said Thursday at a year-end news conference in his capacity as chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

[A.K. Boomer]

Not to mention GM's Bolts catching on fire left and right --- Gm's recommendation? "Don't park to close to your house" lol

If your going to replace most all your vehicles with electric you better figure out a way to keep them from self igniting,,,

most times the fire departments just stand back and watch cuz Li I's are about impossible to extinguish, best they can do is try to get something to anchor to it and drag it to a safe place to let burn...

[PStechPaul]

I think much of the fear-mongering is based on the premise of huge numbers of daily commuters driving perhaps 100 miles a day. Even with that, at a conservative 300 W-h/mile energy consumption for a modest commuter EV. That works out to 30 kW-h of energy per day, and at a typical 10 cents/kW-h, that's just $3/day. Many households with all electric HVAC probably already use that much. However, the pandemic has shown that perhaps half of all jobs can be performed just as well, or better, by telecommuting, or limiting commutes to two or three per week.

Even if Detroit stops making ICE powered vehicles by 2035, that is still 14 years from now, and it will take another six years before nearly universal adoption of EVs. People will still be able to drive their gas guzzlers for 10-15 years. That's plenty of time to build the infrastructure to support transportation based almost entirely on EVs, and by then there will likely be a major paradigm shift away from the heavy reliance on long daily single driver commutes. And even if the total miles driven remains about the same, the high efficiency of EVs compared to ICE vehicles will leave a surplus of fossil fuel energy to power the electric grid, if renewables have not become the majority of energy sources by then.

[CarlByrns]

Not to mention GM's Bolts catching on fire left and right --- Gm's recommendation? "Don't park to close to your house" lol

If your going to replace most all your vehicles with electric you better figure out a way to keep them from self igniting,,,

most times the fire departments just stand back and watch cuz Li I's are about impossible to extinguish, best they can do is try to get something to anchor to it and drag it to a safe place to let burn...

Also, the EV manufacturers tip toe around the fact that all of the cobalt (which Li Ion batteries absolutely need) comes from countries with truly wretched human-rights policies (child labor, near-slavery, toxic/high mortality working conditions).

It ain't easy being Green.

[Doc Nickel]

The problem with that, Paul, is that renewables almost can't scale up much further. We've already dammed virtually every river big enough to be dammed, we basically can't jam in enough wind turbines, and there's wide swaths of the US and Canada where photovoltaic doesn't work well for large portions of the year. The environmentalists won't let us put in tidal turbines, or build more Oroville-style artificial hydro reservoirs, and there's a limit to where and how many thermal solar installations we can place.

And since expanding those icky fossil fuels is right out, that leaves just one solution, and that's even less palatable to the greenies; nuclear.

And these days, it is basically impossible from a legal and regulatory standpoint to build a new nuclear power plant. The "newest" plant in the US, which finally opened a few years ago, was actually a restarted project that had been mothballed back in 1976. Apart from that, the newest nuclear plant in the US was built in the 70s, using 60s technology.

So it's a genuine issue. There's a huge push for electric vehicles, because they're seen as (and not always correctly) as "greener". But, there's no concurrent push for an upgraded grid to power them. The push for renewables like wind turbines and solar is so that existing "dirty" fossil plants can be taken OFF the grid. There's little or no push to increase the total capacity.

Nuclear is out, fossil is out, we have no more rivers to dam, we can't build any more reservoirs, photovoltaic is limited in application and thermal solar even more so. Where's all this new electricity going to come from?

Doc.

[J Tiers]

....................... Where's all this new electricity going to come from?

Doc.

There is no intent to have electric cars or more electricity. Everyone knows they are not practical as a general purpose car.

You are just not supposed to have a car, or leave the area you live in. That's the actual plan.

Besides. electric cars are recharged at night, which means they "burn coal". Ain't any solar and not much wind at night. So it's coal, or maybe gas, possibly water in certain areas where the dams have not been removed, and, for a few more years, maybe nuclear, again in certain areas. But mostly coal or gas.

[CarlByrns]

There is no intent to have electric cars or more electricity. Everyone knows they are not practical as a general purpose car.

Just got back from visiting my son in Vegas- there are a lot of EV's out there. They make sense in an urban setting.

[J Tiers]

................................................. They make sense in an urban setting.

Yes. There, and pretty much ONLY there as things are now. Not real good for driving a hundred plus miles to the lake. Definitely not good for driving from here to Chicago, let alone Ohio or Minnesota. Or the Grand Canyon, etc.

Also, need non-lithium batteries, or a different type of lithium battery.... Lithium being fairly scarce, and mining it destructive, not to mention the safety issues inherent in present day lithium batteries.

[RB211]

Battery technology is the single biggest thing holding us back from an amazing future. Much like how dialup internet held us all back.

[Sparky_NY]

Battery technology is the single biggest thing holding us back from an amazing future. Much like how dialup internet held us all back.

Battery technology will no doubt play a important part in our future but I wouldn't go so far as to say its the single biggest thing holding us back. I think what is going to hold us back, and more accurately hurt our future, is moving to get rid of (or severly reducing) fossil fuels without a decent substitute in sight. Batteries only store electric energy, not produce it, they will still have to be charged somehow and 60% of our electric generation is fossil fuel based and the move to eliminate it greatly outpaces the move to replace it.

IF fossil fuels were eliminated today, how many years do you think it will take before we see a Boeing 777 fly transoceanic on battery power? They would be grounded in the meantime. Imagine what THAT would do to our future ! (ditto for the trucking industry)

The move to EV's is here now but the urgency to increase non fossil fueled electric generation is taking a back seat. THAT is what I think will have a big effect on our future. Super batteries are useless if you can't charge them.

PS I have been running my house on off grid solar for a couple months now and it has made be keenly aware of the pro's and con's of alternate energies. I had to go on-grid a few times to replenish batteries when we had several days of poor skies. It works great for MOST things but the power hungry items like my welders, machine tools and such still rely on grid power. It is nice having the AC running without the electric meter spinning. We had a power outage a week ago and I didn't even notice it for nearly 3 hours.

[A.K. Boomer]

Batteries only store electric energy, not produce it, they will still have to be charged somehow and 60% of our electric generation is fossil fuel based and the move to eliminate it greatly outpaces the move to replace it.

Sparky you would not believe how many people don't make that connection, they carry on like it's free power or something, when in reality the improvements could somewhat be compared to finally coming up with petro fuel tanks that don't leak as much as they used too... but still empty and needing to be fed...


Things to consider --- the fossil fuel it takes to mine the coal and transport it, NG has it's own production losses, the burning of said coal and NG to get the final "60% product" all the inefficiencies from turbine to generators to transmission/transformers to waste in charge of batteries... the "60%" becomes a way bigger beast.... perhaps even giving direct fossil fuel for I.C. a run for it's money...


There is one serious advantage though --- and that's if someone owns their own power producing capabilities in the form of solar/wind,,,

debates now take a different form --- panels do pollute in the production of them but 30 years of electricity production is most likely well worth the initial "non-green" investment,,, wind has it's own "glitches" no perfect solution but about as close as you can get for now...

[Noitoen]

For me, the best transition solution for smaller vehicles would be a power tool like battery system where you would go to a service station and change in a few minutes the discharged one with a fully charged by renewable means like solar or wind. In this you would take care of the energy storage problem.

The other solution for longer trips, would be hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles, again with hydrogen produced the same way enabling longer travel distances. Just a few weeks ago, Toyota drove its fuel cell car in production, the Mirai >1000 km on one tank of hydrogen (5,6 Kg) and 15 minutes after the trip it was refueled and ready for another 1000 km