ICE Vehicles: General topics

[Joe]

Is it a status symbol, sure. Is that a bad thing? Funny thing is my trucks cost more than her luxury vehicles.

It's funny how true that is.

 

[Herdfan]

It is amazing how far people go to justify or use their own situation, brand loyalty, or what they view as being a car enthusiast as a way to talk down to EV vehicles.

Go into a redneck bar and get into a Ford-Chevy-Ram debate. A fight might break out.

Right now, I like Ford's. But I have had Chevy's and GM's so no really loyalty either way. I WILL NOT OWN A RAM. EVER!

Got a ride in a dealer's Jag EV SUV. That thing was FAST! At some point we will own one. Before the wife bought this one, we had briefly talked about a Model X, but I would have wanted the Plaid, and that is just too much money.

 

[Herdfan]

It's funny how true that is.

We had a neighbor who thought she was better than everyone else. Stuck up snob was what she was. But everyone liked her husband so they got invited to street dinners/bbq's etc. I had just gotten a 2008 F-350 diesel. One of my other neighbors asked what it stickered for, so I told him just over $60K. She got pissed because it was more than her E-Class. After they left, myself and another neighbor figured she was going to make her husband buy her a new car. It took less than a week before she had a new Vanden Plas.

 

[DT]

Yes. This is __awesome__!

Not active yet, looks like a few more car OS updates away, but this will be nice. You'll be able to both view live and recordings, not sure if you'll be able to save locally to the phone yet.

A Model 3 had 8 exterior cameras: 3 front facing, 2 side, front-corner, 2 side direct side, 1 rear.

 

[Herdfan]

Read about this motor the other day. It is a beast for sure. Only $16K And the meme is kind of funny.

 

[DT]

@Huntn

This is a follow up to your vacation thread (didn't want to derail it ), but I did a drive planning with ABRP, using a TM3 (like we own) as the vehicle. I find it interesting to see how real travel works out, I saw your trip, and I was like, wow, there's a long drive, through an area I have no idea about (in terms of charger availability).

I realize this isn't exactly your trip, and I'm using all major cities as the 3 waypoints, but from using Houston to Minneapolis, with a one night stay over in Wichita (again, just a guess at a midpoint stop).

The stayover, since you're stopped anyway, is "free time" for charging, so it's not factored into the charge time.

So check this out:

1240 miles, drive time 18:47, charge time 02:09, cost $42 (assuming no free charging, especially at a hotel)

Neat.

 

[Huntn]

@Huntn

This is a follow up to your vacation thread (didn't want to derail it ), but I did a drive planning with ABRP, using a TM3 (like we own) as the vehicle. I find it interesting to see how real travel works out, I saw your trip, and I was like, wow, there's a long drive, through an area I have no idea about (in terms of charger availability).

I realize this isn't exactly your trip, and I'm using all major cities as the 3 waypoints, but from using Houston to Minneapolis, with a one night stay over in Wichita (again, just a guess at a midpoint stop).

The stayover, since you're stopped anyway, is "free time" for charging, so it's not factored into the charge time.

So check this out:

1240 miles, drive time 18:47, charge time 02:09, cost $42 (assuming no free charging, especially at a hotel)

Neat.

We drove approx 600 miles today, started with a nearly full tank, refilled 3 times, average stop time 25min, at Bucky’s a well known gas station brand in Texas, 50+ gas pumps, large variety of eats, drinks, and souvenirs.
I see issues such as is there a charge station in Wichita?
Close to the hotel?
How many stops to cover 600 miles? How long to charge per stop? Now, I started nearly full, refilled at half tank and was paying about $25-30 a fill up at around $3 per gallon. So let’s call it $80 today.

 

[ericwn]

If there’s one car I really enjoyed owning it was our RX-8. So much fun in the short time we had it.

 

[DT]

We drove approx 600 miles today, started with a nearly full tank, refilled 3 times, average stop time 25min, at Bucky’s a well known gas station brand in Texas, 50+ gas pumps, large variety of eats, drinks, and souvenirs.
I see issues such as is there a charge station in Wichita?
Close to the hotel?
How many stops to cover 600 miles? How long to charge per stop? Now, I started nearly full, refilled at half tank and was paying about $25-30 a fill up at around $3 per gallon. So let’s call it $80 today.

OMG, Buc-ees is a religious movement We have one here, they're planning dozens in Florida, hahaha, there were people waiting at 5a for the grand opening ... some in Buc-ees onesies

Yeah, so that was 3-4 stops to the 634 mile mark/overnight stop, depending on length of charge - EV routes tend to be shorter, more frequent stops, but the total stop time was the about the same in either case, and about the same as your indicated gas stops. It's about an hour of charging to the 1/2 mark, and about an hour to the destination. For me, when you're talking 6+ hour drives, there's not much difference in a 10 minute vs. a 20 minute stop, so I might opt for a 3 stop plan (where you're there for like 24-25 minutes vs. two 10 minute stops).

The overnight used my default setting of "Within 500 feet ...", so yeah, it's close. Also, some of the hotels may have free destination charging, so the trip could be another $10 cheaper.

Keep in mind, this is using my Model 3 Performance as the car (with 20" wheels, wider/sticker tires), so it's getting ~100 MPG equivalent like a small economy car, while being an extremely high performance AWD sport sedan (like much faster than my tuned GT ...) that's pretty roomy and has tons of nice features like crazy good audio, all sorts of driver assistance, etc.

Make it a AWD LR model, 18" Aero wheels and it's a solid 3 stop each segment, and $35 (again, assuming no "freebies" at the hotel).

Oh, BTW ...

Tesla Superchargers Coming To Buc-ees, The World's Largest Gas Station - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! Tesla is bringing its Superchargers to Buc-ees in both New Braunfels, TX and Bastrop, TX. The New Braunfels location also happens to be the world’s largest gas station and convenience store. FUN 🦫NEWS! Looks...

cleantechnica.com

 

[DT]

If there’s one car I really enjoyed owning it was our RX-8. So much fun in the short time we had it.

Great photo!

Yeah, I had 2 RX7s, a 2nd Gen Turbo II and a 3rd Gen (which as I'm sure you know, were all Twin-Turbo). I always dug on the rotary experience, just something really cool about a 1.3L engine without pistons The 3rd Gens were just choked by emission controls, poor cooling, a bafflingly over-complex TT setup. That's the first thing we did with mine, cleaned up all the vacuum lines, went with an higher flow exhaust, including HFCs, some improved cooling, a minor tune, it wasn't a huge power increase, about 300-320 up from 255 stock, but it was super quick because they were so light (mine was ~2800 lbs).

The tuner I hung around at the time, had a customer from Miami that had done a full 3-rotor conversion, huge single, that was pretty insane, ~650HP.

I loved the RX8, I thought maybe there'd be a big move by Mazda towards rotary tech again, but it just never caught on, and they never got the economy of scale needed to really adapt it / perfect it, across more products.

 

[Huntn]

OMG, Buc-ees is a religious movement We have one here, they're planning dozens of Florida, hahaha, there were people waiting at 5a for the grand opening ... some in Buc-ees onesies

Yeah, so that was 3-4 stops to the 634 mile mark/overnight stop, depending on length of charge - EV routes tend to be shorter, more frequent stops, but the total stop time was the about the same in either case, and about the same as your indicated gas stops. It's about an hour of charging to the 1/2 mark, and about an hour to the destination. For me, when you're talking 6+ hour drives, for me, there's not much difference in a 10 minute vs. a 20 minute stop, so I might opt for a 3 stop plan (where you're there for like 24-25 minutes vs. two 10 minute stops).

The overnight used my default setting of "Within 500 feet ...", so yeah, it's close. Also, some of the hotels may have free destination charging, so the trip could be another $10 cheaper.

Keep in mind, this is using my Model 3 Performance as the car (with 20" wheels, wider/sticker tires), so it's getting ~100 MPG equivalent like a small economy car, while being an extremely high performance AWD sport sedan (like much faster than my tuned GT ...) that's pretty roomy and has tons of nice features like crazy good audio, all sorts of driver assistance, etc.

Make it a AWD LR model, 18" Aero wheels and it's a solid 3 stop each segment, and $35 (again, assuming no "freebies" at the hotel).

Oh, BTW ...

Tesla Superchargers Coming To Buc-ees, The World's Largest Gas Station - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! Tesla is bringing its Superchargers to Buc-ees in both New Braunfels, TX and Bastrop, TX. The New Braunfels location also happens to be the world’s largest gas station and convenience store. FUN 🦫NEWS! Looks...

cleantechnica.com

The other considerstion we are in a Toyota Highlander hauling a large stash of stuff including 2 computers, 2 monitors, if they don’t exist they’d better get going on SUVs. Hitting the road for Minn.

 

[DT]

The other considerstion we are in a Toyota Highlander hauling a large stash of stuff including 2 computers, 2 monitors, if they don’t exist they’d better get going on SUVs. Hitting the road for Minn.

The thing with EVs (this isn't just Tesla) is they recover a good deal of space. There's no gas tank(s), there's no transmission - basically it's like a skateboard, a long, wide thin "deck" of batteries, then motor(s) on one/both ends.

So that means that my mid-sized Model 3 sedan has 19.8 ft³ of storage with the seats up, and a Highlander has 16 ft³ (but of course, that's with 6-7-8 seating). Our recent trip we had a 21Q Camp Zero cooler (which is a beast), a roller dolly (for the cooler, hahaha ...), 3 roller suitcases, 3 loaded backpacks, all in the trunk, with the 3 of us with tons of passenger space.

Seats down, no question, the Highlander get way more storage, that's where you have to look - at in Tesla's products - at a Model Y, which is basically a CUV Model 3, it does an huge ~30 ft³ seats up, and ~76 seats down (vs. the Highlander at 84 ft³ seats down).

Anyway, it's pretty neat, the entire performance, cost, space consideration is totally changed up by EV tech.

We're headed down for a little one night stayover, grill-o-rama (he's been Green Egg-ing for days ...) to the BIL's place in NSB, I'm going to test my N14-30 adapter with my portable charger

Have a super safe trip the rest of the way and back home

 

[Alli]

I don’t know diddly about cars, so I never visit this thread. But I somehow manage to hang out with a group of guys who do brilliant vintage car restorations. One showed his car today so we all had to go see. Take a look.

 

[Huntn]

I don’t know diddly about cars, so I never visit this thread. But I somehow manage to hang out with a group of guys who do brilliant vintage car restorations. One showed his car today so we all had to go see. Take a look.

View attachment 9346View attachment 9347View attachment 9348

I wonder if some of those are kit cars? (Not expecting you to know.)

 

[Alli]

I wonder if some of those are kit cars? (Not expecting you to know.)

Very few. I remember my friend’s car when he first started working on it 4 years ago. You could barely tell it was a car.

 

[Huntn]

We are helping our Grandson buy a older vehicle, he reads a lot about cars and has focused on a 1997 Lexus lS400 95k miles, but the seller is asking $9700 for it which I think is high. His reasoning is it has a good track record, and I say it’s 20+ years old! He thinks that this era car has less stuff in it that can break versus newer highly computerized cars. All wheel drive is great but just something else to break. He is focusing on reliability.

I’ve been looking at the local Twin Cities car market and there are vehicles in the 2003-2010 age group at dealers that sell between $7-10k and some include drive train warranties (extra $$$, don’t know how much yet, because everything is closed today). Those cars are in the range of 110-160k miles. Anyway in this price range, any suggestions regarding this model car and others? Thanks!

 

[Herdfan]

I just looked on autotrader.com with a max price of $10K. (within 500 miles of 25301)

Found several 2011-2013 Japanese or Korean cars with 90-115K miles. Best deal looked to be a 2012 Rouge with 112K for $9700. Daughter's babysitter got one when she was 16 and finally sold it when she was 30ish. Never had problems, in fact she bought another one.

But expect prices to be higher than normal.

 

[Herdfan]

Looks like Tesla is upping their prices again.

Tesla hikes prices again by up to $5,000

Tesla has increased prices on all of its models. The Model 3 and Model Y are up $2,000 and the Model S and Model X up $5,000.

www.foxnews.com

 

[DT]

This also just happened too, which is pretty goddamn amazing:

Hertz Order for 100,000 EVs Sends Tesla Value to $1 Trillion

Hertz Global Holdings Inc., barely four months out of bankruptcy, placed an order for 100,000 Teslas in the first step of an ambitious plan to electrify its rental-car fleet. Tesla Inc.’s shares soared, pushing the automaker’s value past $1 trillion for the first time.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[SuperMatt]

This also just happened too, which is pretty goddamn amazing:

Hertz Order for 100,000 EVs Sends Tesla Value to $1 Trillion

Hertz Global Holdings Inc., barely four months out of bankruptcy, placed an order for 100,000 Teslas in the first step of an ambitious plan to electrify its rental-car fleet. Tesla Inc.’s shares soared, pushing the automaker’s value past $1 trillion for the first time.

www.bloomberg.com

Might be related to the price increase. When people are ordering something faster than you can make it, a price increase is generally considered to be the best business decision.