Electric Vehicles, Hybrids...Battery tech... Land Air and Sea. Let's See 'em.

Is the internal combustion engine doomed to history

  • Yes

    Votes: 13 24.5%

  • No

    Votes: 32 60.4%

  • Not sure

    Votes: 5 9.4%

  • Don't care

    Votes: 2 3.8%

  • ...er... what was the question again?

    Votes: 1 1.9%
  • Total voters
    53
Jim said:
America... world class innovators.
Or are we?
Right now we're sucking on the hind tit.

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Is this the deathnell for tesla.

Now the charging station roll out has been canned, (years behind now), low cost with good distance seems BYD is the go to.

Didn't know Tesla was using Chinese chips and batteries for their European cars.

Tarrifs seem to b killing US innovation not building it up
 
Waymo Pays $220M for Apple’s Abandoned Self-Driving Car Test Ground.
( This is the former Chrysler proving grounds, it is also still being used by Rivian )

Waymo already has testing and development hubs elsewhere, including a proving ground in California and a research center in Ohio, but Wittmann, about 60 miles north-west of Phoenix, is significantly bigger than both. It incorporates a 115-acre city course, a 35-acre dynamics area and a four-mile oval track. There’s also a freeway-style area designed specifically to assess autonomous driving.

Wittmann is a 90-minute drive from Mesa, the vast Phoenix manufacturing center that Waymo opened in October. The 239,000-square-foot factory, run in tandem with global automotive parts supplier Magna, will eventually churn out tens of thousands of robotaxis every year, including the recently launched Ojai. That robotaxi integrates the company’s sixth-gen AI-powered Waymo Driver tech with a vehicle platform based on a minivan from Chinese automaker Zeekr.

Wittmann’s proximity will enable easy assessment and validation of the Mesa assembled robotaxis, including the Ojai, plus the planned Hyundai Ioniq 5 unveiled in 2024. And the result, Waymo hopes, will be even speedier deployments.


Here is a super short video that shows some details of the new Ojai robo taxi.
 
The biggest energy crisis in history just delivered a much-needed opportunity for Tesla.


Last week, the electric vehicle maker said it had delivered 480,126 cars in the second quarter, a massive increase from just 384,122 deliveries a year ago and blowing out consensus analyst expectations of around just 406,000. On Wall Street, however, Tesla is stuck in reverse: Shares fell more than 7% on the same day as the big beat, marking its worst single-day slide in about a year.


Spinning Its Tires​


Even with the big sales resurgence, Tesla likely won’t touch its annual deliveries peak in 2023, when it sold 1.8 million cars. Last year, its deliveries slumped to about 1.6 million; this year, it looks on pace to return to about 1.7 million. The causes of its sales slump are numerous and obvious: the death of the $7,500 EV tax credit in the US, rising competition abroad and the cancellation of its much anticipated low-cost model. Oh, and a lingering Musk-y smell of politically charged bad PR.


External estimates indicated that Tesla’s US sales remained in a slump this quarter, while surging in Europe and China, where the energy crisis has been even more acute. Still, it wasn’t enough to catch a key competitor:


  • Cox Automotive said its data showed a 20% year-over-year decline in US deliveries in the second quarter. Meanwhile, new vehicle registration data in Europe showed Tesla sales rose around 57% in the region through the first five months of the year, according to ACEA, and sales in China have been on an eight-month growth streak, according to the China Passenger Car Association.
  • Rival Chinese EV-maker BYD also reported its second-quarter deliveries last week, trouncing Tesla with 557,090 vehicles delivered over the same three-month period. Its overseas sales were up more than 94% in June as it speeds into Europe and Latin America.
Driverless Robo-Taxi was spotted in Miami..

https://www.wired.com/story/slate-ev-truck-price-specs-release-date/
 
Electric cars are interesting, but isn’t it kinda hard to call them “green” even if they’re being charged by renewables? Reason being; to my understanding fossil fuels are still running as a backup even while renewables power the grid. We just don’t have decent storage tech even for stationary, and gas, coal, nuclear take too much time to get running to just shut them down while renewables are producing high, it would risk grid failure if it suddenly became cloudy or calm winds or drought.

Sure, I hear its always improving, but then I also understand that our consumption levels are also increasing rapidly.

Of course future “recycling” tech is gonna make a circular economy possible, right?


One thing’s forsure, the electric stuff isn’t anything an average guy can do repair work on
 
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Max Midnight said:
...but modern IC vehicles aren't any better with the amount of electronics on them.
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That’s a fact,

I kinda wonder though which would be easier:

Programming a microcontroller capable of running a modern ICE without it’s factory ECU

Or

Programming a few microcontrollers to run an modern electric vehicle’s battery charging/management systems and motor controllers. Just getting the electric motors to work off of any kind of power source would require some pretty sophisticated output circuitry from my understanding.

I would wager it’d be easier to do the ICE, maybe not GONZO box kinda easy but easier than an electric vehicle.

Of course, making the factory drive by wire controls work on either would be nearly impossible. But I think it could be possible to get a modern engine to run and output power in a much shorter period of time without the (factory)brains than to get an electric vehicle’s hardware to do anything without it’s (factory)brains.
 
MikeyDeepXS said:
That’s a fact,

I kinda wonder though which would be easier:

Programming a microcontroller capable of running a modern ICE without it’s factory ECU

Or

Programming a few microcontrollers to run an modern electric vehicle’s battery charging/management systems and motor controllers. Just getting the electric motors to work off of any kind of power source would require some pretty sophisticated output circuitry from my understanding.

I would wager it’d be easier to do the ICE, maybe not GONZO box kinda easy but easier than an electric vehicle.

Of course, making the factory drive by wire controls work on either would be nearly impossible. But I think it could be possible to get a modern engine to run and output power in a much shorter period of time without the (factory)brains than to get an electric vehicle’s hardware to do anything without it’s (factory)brains.
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Well, in the hot hatch motoring world, there are lots of owners fit alternative (usually larger) ICE power plants and run them off a Megasquirt box or similar, ripping out a lot of the un-needed factory wiring in the process.
All that's needed is the modified car to pass the emissions standards related to its build date, as far as I know, and a properly set up Megasquirt box will do that.
 
MegaSquirt was developed by Bruce Bowling and Al Grippo in the 90s. I discovered Bruce was in the same SAE chapter as myself (Wash DC area), and tapped him to come speak to my students a few times. He was, at that time, a professor at the Naval Academy, after transferring from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Just some neat background info...

DIY Autotune currently markets multiple different ECUs/PCMs based on the MegaSquirt architecture.

As for running electric motors; the complexity varies, based on the type of motor and efficiency expected of the system.
DC brushed motors are cheap (relatively), and fairly easy to manage. A simple PWM driver can effectively vary it's speed without loosing torque, but the driver requires very large transistors and capacitors (for noise suppression). That type of controller can be a little on the expensive side, but not ridiculous.

AC brushless motors require a much more complicated, but more efficient control system. They're three-phase motors, and typically have anywhere from 9 to 24 stator windings. The stator windings are excited in sequence, driving the permanent magnet rotor. In order to control the rotor with precision for efficiency, it's speed, direction, and position in rotation must be known. This requires a resolver/rotary encoder on the rotor. Think ignition timing...
That information can be used to optimize the current flow and timing to the stator windings, to minimize heat generation and unnecessary battery usage. Also, during braking, the vehicle energy can be recovered somewhat by using the motor as a generator, sending current back to the battery. This is called regenerative braking, a common feature in HEV/BEV vehicles now.

I've been looking at controllers for that type of system, as I've got a small economy car I'd like to convert (for fun), but these controllers tend to run several thousands of dollars. Couple that with the cost of Li-ion batteries, and you're well over $10k for a conversion, just in hardware.
 
( I think ) It’s been over a year since anyone has talked about this here. Now that the pricing has been set and Slate Pickup is taking orders with deliveries beginning in a few months. Does anyone here have more than a passing interest in one of these? The idea is kind of intriguing and it’s lots of fun to go on their website and use their build a truck program, just to see what it would price out at. The base model truck with its flat grey exterior , bare bones interior and black steel wheels is pretty ugly. Starting at just under 26,000 , you don’t have to add much before you’re soon over $30,000. That price puts you into some decent small ICE trucks, that come with real paint and nice interiors.
If you want something that you can customize to your hearts content it could be fun. Anyways….anybody here thinking about one?

IMG_9553.jpeg
 
Jim said:
Now I'm wondering if highways are fair game?

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Says it inhibited by the seperation of companies making the solar panel cost to produce power more expensive.

If the water canal operaters save so much money and have that much extra water to sell, a double whammy, couldn't a deal b made they help offset the cost of the panels and infrastructure with a proportion of the savings and extra profit.
 
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