Electric Vehicles: General topics

DT said:
Pickup trucks are a tricky BEV execution
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Does anyone make a pickup truck? I have seen no pickups on the road, except for a few that are a couple decades old. I see a lot of bloated ugly cars with a tiny open bit at the back, but pickups do not seem to exist at all any more.
 
Yoused said:
Does anyone make a pickup truck? I have seen no pickups on the road, except for a few that are a couple decades old. I see a lot of bloated ugly cars with a tiny open bit at the back, but pickups do not seem to exist at all any more.
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Any rural area will be overrun with them.
 
Yoused said:
Does anyone make a pickup truck? I have seen no pickups on the road, except for a few that are a couple decades old. I see a lot of bloated ugly cars with a tiny open bit at the back, but pickups do not seem to exist at all any more.
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Is this pickupy enough for you?

1766118354293.png


Not MY truck, but mine is exactly like it.
 
DT said:
EREV allows for pure BEV operation for a reasonable distance, if you use it like a BEV you'll never fire up the ICE gen for 100+ miles, it's a totally different model, a PHEV would wind up being a vehicle that lugs 500+ lbs around with little benefit after 30-40 miles (at best case).

It gives you all the perks of a BEV, no transmission, huge off idle torque, with the perks of ease of fueling of an ICE.

EREV is perfect for trucks, offroad, towing.
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As long as the gas generator can acutally supply the motors (via-sa-vi the battery) enough power to actually be useful. Otherwise you end up in an i3 situation where the motor can't provide enough juice to the battery to do the required work. And if the motor is large enough to keep the battery charged while towing uphill, then you are likely not getting great fuel economy just powering the batteries and you may as well power the driven axles.

Of course I am basing my opinion on the OG Volt. Which (as far as I am aware) never actually powered the wheels with the motor, like the i3. So we had interesting modes like Mountain Mode that would top the battery up because the motor couldn't provide enough power when you were in "hybrid" mode (I think it was called either charge depleted or charge depletion mode) to go up and down mountains. Of course that isn't an everyday occurrence for folk, but then again such a mode would probably be needed for towing.
 
Cmaier said:
It also has room for a gun rack
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See, there is the thing right there: where would you put it? Many years ago, we had a F-100, and it did have a gun rack (bought it used, came with). We never actually put guns on it, but the point of it was you had the gun right there at hand. The thing Herdfan showed, if you put the gun rack in the traditional back window location, how do you easily grab a gun when you suddenly spot a buck in dire need of becoming a trophy? It is a hell of a long reach from behind the wheel, and if you have to get out to get it, the buck will have run away. The only upside is that it puts the guns in easy reach of the young'uns who can take them down and play with them while you are going down the highway and then … oops …
 
My car has basic lane-keeping. I turned on cruise and found the steering wheel disgreeing with me. It works pretty well a lot of the time but is less than perfect on curves and left-turn lane gaps. I can turn it off with a console button, but I leave it on most of the time because it helps a bit and lets me know when it shuts off due to being perplexed (usually from lack of fogline).
 
diamond.g said:
Mercedes has FSD now...

arstechnica.com

Hands off! An on-the-road demo of Mercedes’ advanced new driver assist

It's like Tesla Autopilot, but made by a company with a culture of safety.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

No indication on how fast all their cars will get this tech. At the rate at which OEMs usually move prolly 2030...
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Admittedly I haven't read through this yet but until they make it so your hands don't have to be on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times it will never be "FSD". I understand the safety aspects but why even bother if it's useless.

These systems do far more to monitor the driver than they do the road. It seems like we're still a long ways off from this both from a technology and regulation standpoint.
 
Eric said:
Admittedly I haven't read through this yet but until they make it so your hands don't have to be on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times it will never be "FSD". I understand the safety aspects but why even bother if it's useless.

These systems do far more to monitor the driver than they do the road. It seems like we're still a long ways off from this both from a technology and regulation standpoint.
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i gotta say, highway driving in my iX with the system on is quite nice. Yeah, I gotta mostly watch the general direction of the road, but if I poke at my phone on its cradle a little bit, car seems not to mind. Weirdly, it hates when I scratch my nose, though.
 
Cmaier said:
i gotta say, highway driving in my iX with the system on is quite nice. Yeah, I gotta mostly watch the general direction of the road, but if I poke at my phone on its cradle a little bit, car seems not to mind. Weirdly, it hates when I scratch my nose, though.
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Agreed 100% the system in our 2026 X5 is likely the same and it's by far the best I've ever used. Very smooth and friendly. Fun tip though, if you fold a business card and cover the little sensor that reads your eyes it'll automatically bypass the part that gives you full hands free (on known roads) but still give you all the other features, even letting you take your hands off the wheel for short periods of time. No more nagging for drinking coffee or scratching your nose.
 
Eric said:
Admittedly I haven't read through this yet but until they make it so your hands don't have to be on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times it will never be "FSD".
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My lane-keeping cruise is pretty good. If I have a striped road, she just has to feel my hand on the wheel and she will be happy. She gives me a few seconds to grab a sip, but I could almost nap on the highway, because my car is not looking at me.
 
Eric said:
Admittedly I haven't read through this yet but until they make it so your hands don't have to be on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times it will never be "FSD". I understand the safety aspects but why even bother if it's useless.

These systems do far more to monitor the driver than they do the road. It seems like we're still a long ways off from this both from a technology and regulation standpoint.
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Nvidia had a whole presentation about AI and talked about their partnership with Mercedes with this tech.



Looks like they have some YT folk a ride and talked about it. Allegedly this city stack will launch in the CLA this quarter.
 
Yoused said:
My car has basic lane-keeping. I turned on cruise and found the steering wheel disgreeing with me. It works pretty well a lot of the time but is less than perfect on curves and left-turn lane gaps. I can turn it off with a console button, but I leave it on most of the time because it helps a bit and lets me know when it shuts off due to being perplexed (usually from lack of fogline).
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We have to keep lane-keeping off in the wife's car due to the tar snakes. It reads them as the edge lines.
 
Herdfan said:
We have to keep lane-keeping off in the wife's car due to the tar snakes. It reads them as the edge lines.
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Recently they repaved portions of a highway here that i take to work and back every day, and there were no painted lines - just sparsely-spaced reflector dots that stood in until they got around to painting. Before my first eye surgery, in most light I couldn’t really see the damned things, especially when it was dark and rainy. So I put the BMW in hands-free assist mode, and it kept the lanes perfectly. I was mighty impressed. I was watching cars with human drivers swerve around trying to figure out where the lanes were, and my car knew where to go (it was easy to tell that it was correct by turning on a dash mode that shows (behind the steering wheel) the view of the front camera, with the proposed driving lane superimposed.)

When I had only tried Teslas, I had no faith generalized full self-driving could ever work. Now that I see what other manufacturers are doing and have in the pipeline, it seems inevitable.
 

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