Zero-emission vehicles, their batteries & subsidies/rebates for them.- No politics regarding the subsidies!

[Somafunk]

Are there any British Car EVs?

“Moggy” of Electric Classic Cars converts pretty much anything into an EV, from Ferraris to Land Rovers to VW Campers and everything in between.

https://youtube.com/@ElectricClassicCars

 

[Blumlein 88]

I would mince no words if I ever encountered the person who invented our clumsy windshield wipers farters!
Add that gizmo to your list of old skool crapola!

With all of the aero appendages - in the name of reducing drag and increasing milege - I am still perplexed that no big manufacturer has axed the the humungous warts (aka side-mirrors) that have become counter-intuitive in the day/age of thumb-size DigCams and whole dashboard displays.

Oh they have replaced mirrors. But that is not legal in the USA. It is and is available in some other places.

 

[blueone]

* One new thing in the making is electric brakes (by Brembo). Their way of losing weight by ditching the hydropneumatic fluid system and replacing it with something electric. And making braking better too.

Mercedes used electric brakes about 20 years ago, and abandoned them because they had reliability issues:

Mercedes cancels by-wire brake system; decision a blow to technology's future

Mercedes cancels by-wire brake system; decision a blow to technology's future

www.autoweek.com

 

[EJ3]

LoL...
Rain-X was not "extra-security" for Triumph TR6 owners, it was essential equipment.
Mine was inhabited by a gremlin-colony called "Lucas" - which drove everything in that car, including:
The driver crazy, and
The wipers, which would crap out but only when it rained.

No wonder I am EV-averse; LucasElectricity gave many an owner recurring nightmares!

When I was a (based in the USA) "foreign" car mechanic in the early 70's (I started when I was 15) we used to call out the LUCUS electrical systems: electrical by Joseph Lucas, the Prince of Darkness or LUCAS refrigerators must be why the British drink warm beer and many more worse things. Many times we replaced relays and other electrical parts with ones from Bosch or other sources (and whatever it was, would then work and, most importantly, stay working correctly.

 

[Doodski]

When I was a (cased in the USA) "foreign" car mechanic in the early 70's (I started when I was 15) we used to call out the LUCUS electrical systems: electrical by Joseph Lucas, the Prince of Darkness or LUCAS refrigerators must be why the British drink warm beer and many more worse things. Many times we replaced relays and other electrical parts with ones from Bosch or other sources (and whatever it was, would then work and, most importantly, stay working correctly.

I've owned 2 Cortinas including a 2000GT, a Austin Mini and a MG Midget. The mini and midget where very reliable. The Cortinas from British Leyland where prone to corrosion on the connections. I did drive the Cortina GT through the mountain valleys of British Columbia for a entire year of 4 seasons of weather and the GT held up very well. The non GT had a different electrical system and was unreliable.

 

[pseudoid]

“Moggy” of Electric Classic Cars converts pretty much anything into an EV, from Ferraris to Land Rovers to VW Campers and everything in between.

https://youtube.com/@ElectricClassicCars

It is becoming a cottage industry here, in SoCal.
JayLeno's Garage drove in a 1968 Porsche 912, that was transplanted with the rear transaxle motor from a Tesla S.
Zelectric is the conversion company.
If I am not mistaken, Leno calls the conversion "best Porsche I've driven!"
40 minutes of informative EV discussions in the video that can be found at youtube.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Does anyone remember the original Rain-X product that was applied directly to the outside of the windshield?
Once the car reached ~25MPH, the raindrops would just bead off the windshield w/o turning on the wipers.
It had to be re-applied every month or so.
It worked pretty good in the East-Coast but it never rains in SoCal... [gulp!]

I've been using Meguir's Hybrid Ceramic Wax. You wash your car normally with any good car wash soap, then wet it down good, and mist this stuff on very lightly. I actually dilute it 9:1 it is so concentrated. Then rinse the car off again, and dry. The 2nd rinsing spreads it out over the surface. Works on paint, rubber, plastic, chrome, and glass. It works like or better than RainX on the glass, and lasts longer. Also gives the paint a very nice shine as well as helping it shed some dirt. Your car doesn't get as dirty in rain at least. Seems to last a few months. So as long as you wash your car every few months you have it made. Much easier than the old carnauba paste wax song and dance.

They've promised the same idea for years, but finally some of this stuff really works. There are other brands that work in a similar manner. One other I tried worked fine too, but the paint was a bit smeary if you weren't careful. Fingerprints and such were picked up too easy, and drying left slight patterns if you weren't quick about drying it off.

 

[pseudoid]

Gawd!
@Blumlein 88 :: Don't get me going on chemicals.we.put.on.our.cars:
Remember the promise of ArmorAll?
There were more cars' vinyl dashboards/bench-seats and tires smeared with that @#$% stuff than I care to remember.
Best protection I have found is a garage... duh!

 

[Newman]

LoL...
Rain-X was not "extra-security" for Triumph TR6 owners, it was essential equipment.

I thought you meant TR6 like my 650 ride in the 70's.

I guarantee you RainX is also very useful for the motorcyclist!

 

[Blumlein 88]

Gawd!
@Blumlein 88 :: Don't get me going on chemicals.we.put.on.our.cars:
Remember the promise of ArmorAll?
There were more cars' vinyl dashboards/bench-seats and tires smeared with that @#$% stuff than I care to remember.
Best protection I have found is a garage... duh!

Yes, on the garage I agree. Even a carport or shed over the car helps quite a bit. Old style wax definitely helps the appearance and life of your paint even in a garage. I keep most of my cars 20 years or more. I've one that has been mine 48 years. But waxing the daily ride isn't as easy as it once was while some of this new stuff does a good job so far it seems. I have used Zymol for quite some time which is not an exotic chemical contrivance as such things go. Couple of natural waxes, couple of natural oils and some ground up almond. Not like autos don't use a lot of chemicals already so I'm not bothered by the newer wax products.

 

[EJ3]

I thought you meant TR6 like my 650 ride in the 70's.
View attachment 256341

I guarantee you RainX is also very useful for the motorcyclist!

Sweet! The only one I rode (a friends) was a chopper!

 

[pseudoid]

waxing the daily ride isn't as easy as

LOOK, @Blumlein 88: what you do in your own privacy is none of our business << Okay?

 

[EJ3]

Yes, on the garage I agree. Even a carport or shed over the car helps quite a bit. Old style wax definitely helps the appearance and life of your paint even in a garage. I keep most of my cars 20 years or more. I've one that has been mine 48 years. But waxing the daily ride isn't as easy as it once was while some of this new stuff does a good job so far it seems. I have used Zymol for quite some time which is not an exotic chemical contrivance as such things go. Couple of natural waxes, couple of natural oils and some ground up almond. Not like autos don't use a lot of chemicals already so I'm not bothered by the newer wax products.

My newest car is a 2012 bought new Lexus ES350 that I have 45K miles on. 2 years ago it only had 18K on it. Next was a bought new (and recently sold due to moving from Guam) 2007 Honda Fit with 50K, then (currently owned, bought 2 or three years old) 2000 Nissan Frontier 187K miles now, I missed the 90's & 80's cars totally & pick up at 79 Pontiac TRANS/AM, 60 K then 76 TRANS/AM, then 72 Mustang Grande 351C. I have had many others. My preferred is my 79 TRANS/AM (highly modified by me, gets as good MPG as the Lexus, out handles the Lexus in every respect) and is at least as good of a HWY cruiser (stick shift [now a 5 spd], T-Tops & no A/C {the way it was ordered in Michigan}) sometimes limits when it is driven in the south. Garage, carport, a good was & wax quarterly. These all have the original paint (the Honda's was the worst).

 

[pseudoid]

"We" have to return this conversation back to batteries, before the natives call it hijacking...
[ahem] I bought a yellow-top Optima in 2017/06 and keep thinking when it will be time to replace it.
[Nope> - above is not enough EV related - how about this one?]

...Ambarella claims that its CV3-AD chip is based on algorithm-first architecture, making its camera-based perception solutions highly suitable for next-generation ADAS applications. It supports high-resolution cameras, radars, ultrasonic sensors and lidars as well as deep fusion of these sensors...

[Maybe? - How about this one?]

One method is to look at how fast ADAS vehicles are growing and make speculations on what portion of ADAS users may see declining driving skills between 2020 and 2040…
The second method is to look at historical driver’s license statistics by driver ages and project these driver age mix between 2020 and 2040….I make an estimate of what portion will have declining driving skills…

 

[EJ3]

Gawd!
@Blumlein 88 :: Don't get me going on chemicals.we.put.on.our.cars:
Remember the promise of ArmorAll?
There were more cars' vinyl dashboards/bench-seats and tires smeared with that @#$% stuff than I care to remember.
Best protection I have found is a garage... duh!

Remember when it was starting to kick in that they were not all they were cracked up to be, they decided that a non-glossy formulation was the thing to attack their own gloosy formulation with? Strange Dichotomy there. Although I used it once or twice (borrowed from friend) I was not a promotor of it (or of even washing your car unless you where going out on a date).
On the other hand, I mostly owned and rode motorcycles before I was in my mid-20's, so I was frequently borrowing cars, cleaning them and putting gas into them. It was a labor of lust.

 

[Marc v E]

Mercedes used electric brakes about 20 years ago, and abandoned them because they had reliability issues:

Mercedes cancels by-wire brake system; decision a blow to technology's future

Mercedes cancels by-wire brake system; decision a blow to technology's future

www.autoweek.com

It reads as though Bosch had developed the system and charged Mercedes a great deal per unit compared to the old system, because it had to recoup R&D costs. Ie it was not yet implemented at scale. When customers complained about software failures, Mercedes got fed up with Bosch and cancelled the deal altogether.

I suspect that above reported issues are very much caused by the way it was implemented, not the technology in itself. What I mean by that is that I heard a few times that electrical systems are inherently more reliable over time than hydraulic systems. Furthermore you can fix those problems with OTA updates, no recall necessary. I'm not so sure the system would be more expensive if applied to scale. And I would expect a few electrical wires to need less maintenance than hydraulic fueled pipes, because it contains no moving parts. We will see if it works out this time. My guess is it will based on the fact that cars will become all electrical and that inherently the solution is less costly when applied at scale.

 

[thewas]

After brake by wire the next step was

Steer by wire
Not to be confused with Electric Power Steering.

A car equipped with a steer-by-wire system is able to steer without a steering column.[4] The control of the wheels' direction will be established through electric motors which are actuated by ECUs monitoring the steering wheel inputs from the driver.

The first production vehicle to implement this was the Infiniti Q50,[5] but after negative comments they retrofitted the traditional hydraulic steering.[6] Its implementation in road vehicles is limited by concerns over reliability although it has been demonstrated in several concept vehicles such as ThyssenKrupp Presta Steering's Mercedes-Benz Unimog, General Motors' Hy-wire and Sequel, Saabs Prometheus and the Mazda Ryuga. A rear wheel SbW system by Delphi called Quadrasteer is used on some pickup trucks but has had limited commercial success.

On the 2020 24 Hours of Nürburgring, a Porsche Cayman GT4 equipped with a steer-by-wire system from Schaeffler Paravan Technologie finished the race in 2nd place on its class (29th overall). On the 2021 race, a Mercedes-AMG GT3 using the same system finished 16th overall.[7][8]

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_by_wire#:~:text=The first production vehicle to,retrofitted the traditional hydraulic steering.

Interestingly it seems it also didn't succeed in the market.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Are there any British Car EVs?

There are hardly any British car companies any more, just Morgan, I think, though they may have been sold to foreigners, like the others in Thatcher’s “Britain is open for business” delusional catastrophe.

Jaguar and Land Rover are Indian, Bentley belongs to VW and uses VW platforms and Rolls-Royce and Mini belong to BMW.
The electric mini uses the BMW i3 power train I believe but they are moving production from Oxford to the EU.

 

[MediumRare]

I've been using Meguir's Hybrid Ceramic Wax. You wash your car normally with any good car wash soap, then wet it down good, and mist this stuff on very lightly. I actually dilute it 9:1 it is so concentrated. Then rinse the car off again, and dry. The 2nd rinsing spreads it out over the surface. Works on paint, rubber, plastic, chrome, and glass. It works like or better than RainX on the glass, and lasts longer. Also gives the paint a very nice shine as well as helping it shed some dirt. Your car doesn't get as dirty in rain at least. Seems to last a few months. So as long as you wash your car every few months you have it made. Much easier than the old carnauba paste wax song and dance.

They've promised the same idea for years, but finally some of this stuff really works. There are other brands that work in a similar manner. One other I tried worked fine too, but the paint was a bit smeary if you weren't careful. Fingerprints and such were picked up too easy, and drying left slight patterns if you weren't quick about drying it off.

How does it do with those faint hard water spots? I’m trying to avoid having mine clay-barred.

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

LoL...
Rain-X was not "extra-security" for Triumph TR6 owners, it was essential equipment.
Mine was inhabited by a gremlin-colony called "Lucas" - which drove everything in that car, including:
The driver crazy, and
The wipers, which would crap out but only when it rained.

No wonder I am EV-averse; LucasElectricity gave many an owner recurring nightmares!

Lucas became known as the Prince of Darkness. Their fuel injection system was even worse had a Triumph with Lucas Fuel Injection. Going down a hill towing a large trailer the engine seized, the fuel injection system was prone to running well over rich and washed the lubricant off the the cylinder walls.