this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
80 points (95.5% liked)
Cars - For Car Enthusiasts
3930 readers
2 users here now
About Community
c/Cars is the largest automotive enthusiast community on Lemmy and the fediverse. We're your central hub for vehicle-related discussion, industry news, reviews, projects, DIY guides, advice, stories, and more.
Rules
- Stay respectful to the community, hold civil discussions, even when others hold opinions that may differ from yours.
- This is not an NSFW community, and any such content will not be tolerated.
- Policy, not politics! Policy discussions revolve around the concept; political discussions revolve around the individual, party, association, etc. We only allow POLICY discussions and political discussions should go to c/politics.
- Must be related to cars, anything that does not have connection to cars will be considered spam/irrelevant and is subject to removal.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wait until you learn about the GM EV1
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
Can be found to stream free pretty easily.
Yeah it was ahead of it's time, I think it just needed better battery technology and software.
Vehicle doesn't need software, unless you consider yourself too incompetent to drive.
All an EV really needs is a decent voltage regulator and a battery that ain't gonna pop while you sleep.
Well and hardware to go with the software. Every type of vehicle has gotten both more powerful and more efficient since the 80s/90s and a large part of that is because of better computers, sensors, and software.
My 1987 Honda Accord was already getting like 33MPG, back when it was running at its best and parts were still available to keep it maintained.
That's the real catch though, keeping parts available so you ain't gotta replace the entire vehicle...
The crown Vic was the most environmentally friendly car, don't @ me
Seats 6, easy to repair, 25MPG highway, parts still available (I assume), I think you have a good argument.
That and rust. I have a 1995 F-150, parts are no problem but the rear fender wells are a blight on my still otherwise shiny truck.
I am personally not a fan of EVs, as the lack of the sound, rumble, and smell of an engine is missing from the driving experience for me. But I think GM had some good ideas with the EV1.
While I think more advanced technology may have had some improvement on the EV1, I am more inclined to think it would have performed better as a hydrogen powered vehicle. Hydrogen power is cleaner than gasoline, but still has the refuelling speed benefit that gasoline has. Charging a car battery for any amount of time longer than 5 minutes is a major inconvenience.
I really think that ideas conceived by the Tucker motor company could still be utilized. Seat belts and disk brakes have already become standard, why not take this further? Designing a vehicle for the engine to be swapped out in ~30 minutes presents a design precedent that needs major consideration: ease and speed of maintenance. You want to do major repairs on your EV? Have fun getting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of insulated safety equipment, insulated tools, and heavy lifting equipment. Designing vehicles to have fast, easy, and relatively safe maintenance for even major repairs would be well worth the tradeoff of making a vehicle bigger or less fuel efficient, in my opinion.
Hydrogen cars aren't as green in practice, at least for consumer vehicles.