When electric cars were for women
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
These were cars for very wealthy elite women. But just as big of a deal as it was for women to drive - these cars in particular did not require a servant to start, operate, or service.
Long rides with regular turns took significant strength and endurance without powered steering.
Electric vehicles in comparison are a more relaxed less physically fatiguing drive all round.
But they are the smoothest commuters I have ever driven. Linear acceleration, super snappy for when you want to overtake, you never need a gas-station if have a garage.
I would take an electric over the camrys and crv’s any day.
For me, all cars are a tool. I don’t really enjoy driving. Driving is a chore I have to do in order to do things I do like.
I don’t yet own an electric car, but I find them very appealing because they would eliminate a chore from my life: going to the gas station.
I do wonder what it would be like to enjoy driving for its own sake.
I’m not even a wild driver. Whenever it’s safe to do so I’m in the right lane doing exactly the speed limit. I just don’t like having to deal with other drivers.
Manuals on a bridge during traffic though are... unpleasant.
It's more interesting on an open road but horrible to drive in traffic. Overall both of us hate the experience.
I get my new electric car (a Geely) on Wednesday.
There's a reason why people take their Ferrari out for a spin in the mountains. Highways are just too safe.
Interestingly, it will roll forwards if you’re on a steep hill and trying to reverse up it. I guess it doesn’t know which way you want to go ( the computers don’t know what gear you’re in)
https://www.panews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2020/09/W...
I just remembered, I also have this minigame where I make the car consume as little as possible. The UI gives the avg consumption after each drive, so there's immediate feedback on how I did. I currently count 4.1-4.5 l/100 as a success (52-57 us mpg). Nicest I ever got over a meaningful distance is 3.5 l/100 (67 mpg).
Except, it all somehow changes when I pop into the driver's seat of a manual transmission car.
I've owned some really powerful cars in the past, and I swear I have never had as much fun as I did when I took our little Volkswagen e-Up to the Lake District for a week, yes it only has 80bhp but only a tonne of weight and instant torque - it was sooooo much fun on these narrow tight roads, you could really push it and just enjoy every second of it. I even drove the Hardknott Pass several times back to back because it was so much fun - I'd take it over my Mercedes AMG any day, yes it was cool to do 160mph past Berlin at 4am in that, but the little 80bhp Volkswagen gives me about 20x more enjoyment in day to day driving.
Huh? I never got any excitement from driving any car except the powerful ones.
And I gotta say, EV6 GT 0-60 in 3 seconds for $60k with a real suspension (not that Tesla garbage) and active electronic rear differential... get it while you can. Nothing remotely close for even twice the price. Its the NSX of the 2020s.
On the track: The Tesla finishes a massive 6.5 seconds faster than the Kia. Despite the EV6 GT's horsepower advantage on straightaways, the Model 3 Performance utilizes its lighter weight (~4,035 lbs vs. the Kia's ~4,800 lbs) and lower center of gravity to carry vastly superior speed through VIR’s demanding technical sections, such as the famous Climbing Esses.
And they had to remove features found on lower trims like electric seats from the GT6 model because weight I guess?
I rented both for a day before buying one. The M3P is more comfortable on the street and more predictable in anger.
But if we can put aside our team spirit, yes, I agree, EVs are the performance car of choice. EVs are the fastest car under 100mph and $100k. An RS3 will beat us over 100mph and a $140k Z06 will beat us all the time. For ~60k, performance EVs can’t be beat.
I see tons of $35k listings, but maybe they are confusing GT with GT-Line? Or it depreciated by 2x over the past couple years?
The EV6 GT is the fast one, 577hp.
The EV6 GT-Line is barely half that, 325hp.
Whoever invented this naming is a complete moron. But their company makes an amazing car.
I think this completely misunderstands why people are buying a Camry or CRV.
I thought the old (new) Top Gear episodes with celebrities in a reasonably priced car vs F1 drivers in the same car was very fascinating. The F1 drivers managing to wring that much more out of the little cheap car.
Quieter cars that don't smell bad are definitely an improvement especially for noise pollution, but car companies didn't care at the time as they tried to make them a necessity in American life.
Also I never got the appeal of ridiculously loud cars especially ones that just end up sounding like a bad time on the toilet.
A 4 cylinder is very annoying.
A Detroit V8 sounds very good loud, with the large displacement and the right cam.
The most heavenly sound in the world is a Merlin V12 aircraft engine. (The yootoob videos with engine starts just cannot capture it.) There's even a book about it - "Sigh of a Merlin".
My dad was an Air Force P-51 pilot (with Merlin engine). When he passed, the local aviation museum said they'd do a memorial P-51 flight at the funeral for free, as long as I paid for the gas. Best money I ever spent.
Sometimes I'll hear the distinctive sound of the 4 engine B-17, and they'll be flying low and slow over Lake Washington. A marvelous sight and sound.
Hmm, maybe a metaphor would help. Imagine if there was a pretty substantial subculture of people who loved wearing colorful, flashing, unbelievably bright lights on their clothes at all hours of day and night. When you're at an art museum, people will walk between you and the paintings, blinding you for several minutes as even having them in your peripheral vision made it impossible to see much of anything else. When you're walking down the street, you often need to pause what you're doing as they walk past. At home, in bed, trying to sleep? Despite your best efforts with blackout curtains, almost every night in a city, someone manages to light up your room to daylight levels for a few minutes just walking past.
Most of them, you assume, mean no harm and are just having fun and expressing themselves. But having them near you is always disruptive, and you're disinterested in discussions of how what you actually mind is the strobing from low frequencies and the lack of art in poor arrangements and not how FUCKING BRIGHT THEY ARE, TURN THAT SHIT DOWN, WE'RE TRYING TO LIVE IN A SOCIETY WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH YOU?
And maybe you feel bad for freaking out afterward, but it just feels constant, and you understand that living in high-population places involves a certain level of tolerance of people's idiosyncracies, but at a point, it's hard not to feel like the sheer level of disruption and disregard demonstrated by a fairly small level of the population is actually deliberate and malicious.
And also they reek.
I am well aware of that. I don't drive my loud car after dark so I don't annoy the neighbors. The ones that complain I offer a ride in, they have fun, and we're both happy.
There's also a limit to enjoying the sound, and I wouldn't want to take more than a brief jaunt with it. I only drive it once a week or so.
I used to live in a neighborhood where everyone had a small lawn. When the weather warmed up, and it was the weekend, I'd open the windows. Inevitably, one of my neighbors started their lawnmower, rrrrrrr, and it would take them some ungodly amount of time to mow their lawn. They'd finish, and I'd sigh with relief. A couple minutes later, another neighbor would start up their lawn mower. Etc. Etc. From 8-8, Sat-Sun, you could not open the windows. It was intensely irritating. I was glad to leave that neighborhood.
In another neighborhood where I lived for a time, I shared a fence with my neighbor separating our backyards. He had a little yappy dog that yapped all day. All day. No respite.
I think what's unappealing to women about EVs is the unreliability with respect to range and charging availability. I struggled with my mom to charge an EV she rented for an inter-city trip and she swore off EVs for a while.
Slate truck is a good example, I saw that ad where it is like decal'd for a flower shop for example. It's pretty small and cute (I suppose electric cars are easier to customize aestheticially in terms of shape as long as you stick to the skateboard format), and the fact that it is quite different-looking than most trucks left some wondering who it's for. Mostly women I think.
Whereas men buy more trucks, and usually there is sort of a power aspect to it where they want something that feels and sounds powerful (and being a gas car is part of that), so they can race it or can pull a toy hauler or something. Women want more of a commuter, but not like a sedan, usually something more bulky like an SUV that makes them feel safe. And then like bachelors and gay guys want like a 2D coupe or a roadster or something.
But it is interesting how these niches influence the market.
It's like most of the money in every market these days is made by cornering the market a certain lifestyle and increasing markup rather than trying to produce some ultra-efficient everyman vehicle. The innovation is all in advertising and consumer control, that's how I feel about every market these days.
If GE cemented the electric car as a must-have for women of the time, then we would have seen advances battery tech and EVs decades earlier. It would eventually have become mainstream with men as well (think of how the wristwatch was originially seen as a women's accessory, back when men had pocketwatches). The real innovation is in controlling consumer sentiment.
And now that it's out of production, the parts are gonna be scarce. Speaking as someone with a chevy volt that has a screwed up battery. Unless you go with a prius or a tesla something you're not gonna get a reasonably-priced battery replacement. There really ought to be a standard battery form factor for EVs...
I think if you look at something at aptera, it's really the lightest vehicles that can take advantage of electrification. I mean, they are proposing 1000-mile range, with solar panels on the back that can recover as much as 40 miles of charge a day. It would be incredible if they can pull it off.
Seems unlikely to happen since the battery is part of a space optimization problem.
Maybe as battery technology matures, the benefits of a set of standarized sizes will win over per-model (sometimes per-trim) sizes.
But we used to have standardized headlights and those went away, so I don't have much hope.
I agree, in general, but the Lightning is a counter example. It uses modules, which do not maximize usage of available space, but do make it way easier to replace just one part and not the whole pack. And it is way more plausible that replacements could economically be made in the future that fit the same footprint. Maybe using entirely different battery chemistry.
Here is a picture: https://www.rdforum.org/attachments/222074/
> chevy volt
Yes, GM screwed you over on that. Best case is it failing under warranty and them buying back the car. The nice thing about the battery in the Lightning is that it isn't really a bespoke pack. It's a big sealed case with 9 battery modules wired together inside. So they don't have to spin up a custom production line to make more, they just need to build boxes of the same dimensions and compatible voltages, or update the BMS calibration. This is a way easier lift than making a custom one-off battery pack for a Volt.
> if you look at something at aptera
I see a tricycle, not a car, with a small number of die-hard enthusiasts who are slowly recognizing that it is DOA. Best I can tell, it's just a grift at this point. They've been making big promises since 2006, been liquidated once already, and still haven't delivered anything. They've narrowed their definition of success to "up to 40 cars for the most enthusiastic customers", maybe in early 2027 ... if they get the funding. Riiiiight.
Charging your own electric car from the wall is also a challenge here in the country unless you own your own house or are willing to pay higher-than-gas prices.