Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle? | Page 89 | GTAMotorcycle.com

Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?

mxs said:
To each of his own ... :) ... Not my vision or dream, and definitely not in my lifetime. You must be very young ... :)
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Five years ago I predicted any of us would be able to call up a self-driving car on an app within the next 20 years, and that's still about on course I think. Sure, that's only the initial phase of the complete scenario I described, but everything will just snowball from there.
 
fastar1 said:
Five years ago I predicted any of us would be able to call up a self-driving car on an app within the next 20 years, and that's still about on course I think. Sure, that's only the initial phase of the complete scenario I described, but everything will just snowball from there.
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move over Jobs and Musk, we have our next visionary here....
 
fastar1 said:
Car reservations during peak periods will have to be made early to ensure you get a car.
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You lost 98.5% of the non urban population right there.

The overwhelming majority of the population has become accustomed to the instant convenience of personal vehicles. You walk out your front door and the car is there, you leave the grocery store after picking up that $2 bag of hotdog buns you needed, your car is right where you left it. You go to a friends and the moment you are ready to leave it’s still in their driveway. You want to go to the cottage or camping & your car stays with you. One could go on and on.

Short of being able to drastically undercut the cost of personal vehicle ownership without sacrificing *any* of the instant convenience (which is where the sharing thing falls apart) automatically means most wont even consider the car share theory whatsoever.

Add in a few media frenzies about people getting into someone’s vomit filled mess from their drunken escapade at the bar the night before, and that’s not going to help things either.

Self driving cars, sure. But personally owned self driving cars.
 
PrivatePilot said:
You lost 98.5% of the non urban population right there.

The overwhelming majority of the population has become accustomed to the instant convenience of personal vehicles. You walk out your front door and the car is there, you leave the grocery store after picking up that $2 bag of hotdog buns you needed, your car is right where you left it. You go to a friends and the moment you are ready to leave it’s still in their driveway. You want to go to the cottage or camping & your car stays with you. One could go on and on.

Short of being able to drastically undercut the cost of personal vehicle ownership without sacrificing *any* of the instant convenience (which is where the sharing thing falls apart) automatically means most wont even consider the car share theory whatsoever.

Add in a few media frenzies about people getting into someone’s vomit filled mess from their drunken escapade at the bar the night before, and that’s not going to help things either.

Self driving cars, sure. But personally owned self driving cars.
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98.5% of peak hour drivers leave at the same time every day. Since we're throwing around made up numbers now.

And yeah, waiting a minute for a car isn't going to stop anybody. You think they prefer having to deal with the service department, charging networks, driving around looking for parking, and paying more for it? And they obviously won't be vomit filled if they're charged a cleanup fee. Sorry, you're just ignoring what you don't want to hear.
 
I don't think you are wrong in what happens in the "end" ... but you are just expecting all to happen rather fast ... surely you will be able to call a car without driver in 20 years ... in California, not everywhere in the world. There will be cars waiting to take your call ... not millions of cars, but rather hundreds ..... surely thousands will happen at some point in distant future.

So it's not like you are envisioning something new, it's just how fast you think it will happen, and at doing so, you think that all other modes will die. That's the only difference between what you are saying and what maybe rest of us saying.

It doesn't matter to me. If I like it what comes next and makes sense to me, I surely will adapt. Never had a problem with adopting to any new trends, I just don't love them necessarily all ....
 
I also suggest you open a new thread called "Autonomous transportation, ride sharing etc." ... so we can all hold you accountable for your predictions 20 years from now ... LOL
 
I think that's really the only issue that's up for debate; 'when', not 'if'.

My timeline is nothing more than a guess, but I'm watching and things are actually moving faster than I expected so I'm sticking with 15 years from now, I think it's a pretty safe guess. Set a reminder for 2032 an I'll see you back here :)

BTW this service already exists in Phoenix through Waymo, except it's an invitation-only program for now. It will take much, much less than 15 years for the same service to open to the general public in California. http://mashable.com/2017/11/07/waymo-fully-self-driving-cars/
 
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Maybe in some test bed community operating under some sort of exemption from current laws. Have yet to see any progress in legislation, especially up here in Canada .... remember, Phoenix .. lots of sun no snow or ice on the road, as well as aging population. Let me know when they announce the same for New York or Vermont.

Highly accurate maps still nowhere near to be commercially complete. Most system don't even read all traffic signs properly .... guess what happens when there is first fatality ... your optimistic timeline takes a huge setback, as anything which ends up in courts.

BTW, have you heard lately about the highly advertised Tesla autonomous drive across US which should have happened by the end of this year? Postponed ... but it's not a problem since regulatory and legislative portion nowhere to be ready ... for a test, forget thousands of autonomous vehicles from different brands on the road at the same time .... just saying.

I get the enthusiasm, but a lot of caution and testing will need to be exercised first .... But on the other hand I doubt they will have trouble finding enough guinea pigs. I know, I will not be one of them. Have you booked your ticket to Mars yet?
 
Hopefully, SpaceX give you guys access to some old fashioned emails ... so we can let you know, how is your guesstimate doing ... LOL
 
I don't buy into the self-driving taxi model as a replacement for people buying their own vehicles, either. Sure, there's some market for it but it's probably somewhere in between today's market for taxis and buses/subways. Plenty of people want their own set of wheels and I don't see that changing.
 
PrivatePilot said:
You lost 98.5% of the non urban population right there.

The overwhelming majority of the population has become accustomed to the instant convenience of personal vehicles. You walk out your front door and the car is there, you leave the grocery store after picking up that $2 bag of hotdog buns you needed, your car is right where you left it. You go to a friends and the moment you are ready to leave it’s still in their driveway. You want to go to the cottage or camping & your car stays with you. One could go on and on.

Short of being able to drastically undercut the cost of personal vehicle ownership without sacrificing *any* of the instant convenience (which is where the sharing thing falls apart) automatically means most wont even consider the car share theory whatsoever.

Add in a few media frenzies about people getting into someone’s vomit filled mess from their drunken escapade at the bar the night before, and that’s not going to help things either.

Self driving cars, sure. But personally owned self driving cars.
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The biggest problem is attitude. All people have to do is surrender their individualities.

Individuality includes pride in what one owns and freedom to come and go on a whim. Tough sell.

Is the goal to replace the ICE or eliminate vehicles in general? The latter is better for the environment.

If you work from home and order in all manner of things one hardly needs to own a car.

Long trips would be via transit, bus, train, plane etc and rent at the destination.

Hydrogen fueling needs a quantum leap in technology. Forty years ago gall bladder surgery resulted in a six month recovery. Now it's day surgery. The hydrogen guys have to get their heads outside of the electrolysis box. In forty years who knows.
 
In forty years who knows .... exactly, in the meantime EV it is ..... But even in those forty years hydrogen will have it tough I think, because by then solar ,wind and hydro will be generating so much for so little that the electricity coming out of our outlet will still be the cleanest and most affordable type of energy out there, period (unless someone does something stupid with the business model, of course possible in Ontario or anywhere else). You must not forget that mainly solar is not going to sleep on their current numbers .... it will keep coming as well as the battery tech.
 
Back to the EV things .... so I do not have the car just yet (later today) .... but the delivery truck just dropped off EVSE for the car. Gosh, I must be 15 mins from the Bosch Mississauga whse, because I ordered it yesterday afternoon and it is here next day morning. Cool ... must go get a proper 6-50R for it later today.
 
mxs said:
In forty years who knows .... exactly, in the meantime EV it is ..... But even in those forty years hydrogen will have it tough I think, because by then solar ,wind and hydro will be generating so much for so little that the electricity coming out of our outlet will still be the cleanest and most affordable type of energy out there, period (unless someone does something stupid with the business model, of course possible in Ontario or anywhere else). You must not forget that mainly solar is not going to sleep on their current numbers .... it will keep coming as well as the battery tech.
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They're working on wireless energy transmission. We could end up driving giant slot cars without the slot.

In the Rube Goldberg theatre decades ago there was a pipe dream of vehicles being propelled by massive flywheels spun up to high RPM's.
 
That could be the case, but it's just changing the very last piece how the same electric energy is delivered to the source/load. For now, the losses are just too high and it's too expensive for anything else than a dedicated track with slow and stable traffic. There was a test track built recently somewhere in France. It worked, but the charging speed of vehicles was limited and cost per km was crazy .... Thinking cities everywhere have trouble keeping up with ordinary potholes, hard to see this would work anytime soon.
 
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It was nice this morning to come to 23C car cabin, especially with the cold snap we are having (my garage was down to 5C this morning) ... :)

Had time during lunch so I decided to check the DCFC lot nearby. Normally, when I used to pass by often, I'd see like one Tesla guy and that's it. Today, Murphy's law at work, 2 Tesla cars and 2 Ford Focus cars ... so the lot of 5 chargers was humming full tilt ... LOL ... Send about 20kWh under the floor and was out in 30' incl. chat. How can you not like that??

I started to talk with one of the Ford drivers. The car looks like a regular Focus of course, until you open the hatch ... literally, a third of the floor space gone to the battery underneath. Nothing like that in the Kia (and it is a bigger battery pack). Goes to show, how different battery type density affects design. Only after I started to google, to find out that Kia's Li-ion polymer pouch cells were only second to Wh density to Tesla still 2 years ago. Didn't know that.

My car will be a good test mule to see how regular DCFC charging affects battery in span of 3 years.

Btw, Bosch charger arrived yesterday and I have all the right bits to mount it on the weekend. Looks like I will have to relocate the outlet 's position since the plug-in short cable is really short and stiff. Plug needs to go straight, underneath the charger.
 
Defiantly let us know how things are going with the Kia.

So, uh....we bought a second Volt today. :)

I didn't want to post anything online (here, or elsewhere) about it, especially after our experience with the first one where someone tried to buy it out from underneath us after I posted about the great deal we were getting, and what dealer it was located at...so I was mum this time.

It's black vs her white (so we'll have an interesting look going on in our driveway), but it should be all mine on (hopefully) Saturday.

volt2.jpg


And once it's in my driveway...I have a story to tell about the purchase that will seem strikingly similar to some who have been following this thread since the time we purchased our first Volt.
 
Ha ... Congrats! ... I believe that puts you in the lead ... two cars in driveway with meaningful EV only range ... :) ... I have a feeling it will take me a while to match you, since the towing requirement and comfy seating of 5 for the second car .... but one never knows.

The EV drive is absolutely addictive as you pointed out number of times. I have a feeling there might be a negative side to it all .... speeding tickets ... it feels like other cars are literally stand-still ... the 0 to 50 km/h is just so smooth, no drama or noise affair. Also the 80-110 is very brisk and smooth. Hard to describe ... I don't know how people drive Tesla's without a bag of speeding tickets. I guess it wears off, like everything ... but still.
 
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