If you asked me what's the iconic car of modern EU suburbs, I would say Golf. Or Astra. Or some other bestseller - and definitely not a marginal niche product. The number of personalization options in city cars increased because the market is constantly evolving. Evolution, not revolution.
Note, the turn of the century mini one and mini Cooper's from BMW also had said personalisation before the rebooted 500
Except that these were more premium cars, unchallenging to mass manufacturers due to their pricing. The 500 gave them a call to action, offering vast personalisation at an only slightly higher price and making the Twingo, 108, Ka, etc. get more options to stay in the game.
Great but the 500 was no cheaper. The 500 carried on an already proven formula, far from revolutionary
Quite pissed off with my blackbox insurance, I don't drive agressively really but i get marked down quite heavily for things like 30s of speeding which is probably accumulated from each time roads go from national to 30mph and etc.. also annoying is often there is a complete lack of speed limit signage, do i just drop to 30 and probably cause the person behind me to dangerously overtake or do i just sort of go appropriate speed for the road... *sigh* ALSO braking hard i have got like 5 flags for that so far, mainly on country lanes, if you are going say 40mph and a double decker bus is oncoming near the middle of the road, do i brake gentle or hard things like tree branches.. Also exiting a 70mph dual carriageway (me going 60) with a lorry right behind me, i didn't slow down incase he didn't, but when i came off i had to slow down pretty quick to go to an appropriate speed not close to the cars limits at all and definetly within normal driving limits, but nope it marks me down on it.. Anyway that was an 83% journey.. My insurance co goes off red amber green, green is 75-100 and amber is 74-55% any lower you get a red journey and fines etc.. So i guess im not that bad, but it did break my 100% streak! I drive really quite cautiously compared to literally everyone i know, they don't drive dangerously, i don't drive dangerously, but it's almost dangerous to be safe, sometimes you just can't gently brake, and gently accelerate Anyway fck the blackbox, i averaged 50mpg in my 2007 Jazz over 250miles, not too shabby (last 100miles was me driving today.. quite far i guess considering i have only been 17 since 24th July).
If you got 83%, and they class that as being good, then surely they consider all the above to be acceptable?
Most of the examples you gave are covered by the hazard perception and the speed limits when not signposted are in the highway code that you've definitely read cover to cover you're being flagged so you can improve
yeah I suppose, maybe i should keep quiet about my blackbox to my parents/grandparents They moaned at my mums 99% score
The 500 was a lot cheaper. While Minis and Beetles were priced at compact car or higher levels, the 500 was just at a slight premium over ordinary A-segment cars. The Beetle and Mini are the Corvette and Thunderbird of this comparison - they brought prestige to the mass market, but it was the Stang/500 that brought it to the ordinary buyer.
Also of note is that my right foot aches from driving, throttle control is annoying, and on my car the spring is quite easy to push down, driving the 7.5t merc that is a nice heavy throttle, you rest your foot on it and it opens around 1/3rd nice amount and you can just put your foot on it so it is just your toes.. with my car if you rest your foot on it, it'll go all the way down! i would like to have to press the foot down with force really, might even help with mpg! (with the lorry i sometimes find myself using the clutch pedal as a dead pedal almost, its nowhere near the bite so hopefully no mechanical damage, but it requires force to push down, so i can just rest my foot on it... the brakes on that thing, you need to push it down quite hard to get the pedal to move, its really nice) Especially 5th gear 30mph you hardly need any throtte, but i have learnt how my car responds mainly and it is ok just want a heavy pedal really.. Also i've read about pulse and glide, basically you keep the engine at the optimum throttle setting and load but just cycle it on and off... I wonder how much fuel this can save.. I will have to experiment, but probably once i have passed my test, no one else in the car and no one behind me! another throttle i really liked was the one on my dads ford crow oh wait lincoln towncar 90s one with 5L windsor V8 that thing the throttle travel on it was about 1/2 a mile down there, lovely! Cable throttle i'm quite sure, even with cruisecontrol..
Modern ECUs, pulse and glide really harms economy rather than improving. You'll also often find 30mph, the amount of undergearing you'll have in 5th gear means you may be more efficient in 4th, on the ST, makes a 7mpg difference Using clutch as a dead pedal will generally apply a fair bit of wear to the thrust bearing, and also the same while idling, shifting to neutral if you're going to spend more than a few seconds at idle will make your clutch thank you
ahh ok.. not sure why but on the lorry it had a habit of just the clutch going to the floor losing all pressure so i did keep putting it into neutral.. and yeah it does recall a video from engineering explained about not resting foot on clutch and also other habits like resting hand on the gear lever etc
An electric muscle car is not a muscle car. They might have the speed (over a very short distance), but they will not have the sound or the feel and you can't have a muscle car without that. Tesla seems to me to be a fairly bad example with the insane amount of central control those cars are under. Electric doesn't have to mean electronic but with Tesla it sure does! What EVs are definitely the end of is meaningful variety and difference between cars. Normally you have the V8s for trucks and muscle cars, the buzzing little I4s for family and sports cars, Porsche had/has their flat sixes, etc. and within each type of engine there is a massive number of variables that make each engine what it is. With electric cars you have the same near-silent motors and batteries, just in different grades and arrangements. Simply put, there's a lot less to an electric car, which makes it a lot less interesting. And people wonder why I hate this concept, good grief...
And that is exactly what used cars are for. You will never not be able to buy and run a gas-powered car, they just might not make them anymore. Which is fine - they don't exactly make my personal favorite, the 1967 Pontiac full-sizes, anymore. You've been listening to "Red Barchetta" by Rush, haven't you? Good song. Plus, with electric cars, there's a whole new world of tuning and tinkering that becomes possible once more major manufacturers start making them. Chipping, motor swaps, all sorts of hacks.
Over long distances too, Tesla's can win half mile drags, Tesla's are already being used as track cars, formula E is a thing. The model 3 is out now, capable of near 300 miles on a charge and if you can find a Tesla supercharger, capable of restoring 250 miles worth of charge in 30 minutes. Now yes. That's 30 minutes. But after a 250 mile drive I'd personally quite like a half hour break, I think most people would, recharge your own batteries before hitting the road. But ultimately I rarely travel more than 100 miles in a day, quite practical to just get home, plug it in, let it trickle charge overnight, don't have to ever visit a gas station/electric equivalent. You're right, can't match the sound and feel, I like ice for that reason. But end of the day. Electric outperforms gas for everything but range and charging, but for most people won't even need the range/charge times capable of. It is simply the more practical option moving forward.
People don't "need" (hate that word) multi-hundred-mile range every day, sure, but I'd be willing to guess that most people still have a few times here and there where they do. I mean, I had no idea I'd be going to Homer (~260 miles one way) last fall until my boss called me and asked if I wanted an extra store to work. Some findings from that trip: my ancient Mazda-pretending-to-be-a-Ford has, worst case, slightly better range than a Tesla, but it can achieve that range under almost any circumstance, and "recharge" in 5 minutes or less. And I was revved up and flying the whole way, except for the time I spent stuck in construction. Tunes blasting the whole time too. A Tesla, meanwhile, would have either not made it or barely made it. I'd have had to drive like a grandma, and never go near the radio or heat - especially with the construction figured in. Even if I (barely) made it, I'd have had no space juice to go scouting for fun roads after that. All that, for about $10,000 more than an ICE equivalent - or more, to get one that could actually do any of this in the first place. Furthermore, charging infrastructure is not well developed even in the lower 48, so you have to plan your trip around fast-chargers - no taking spontaneous detours on your vacation if there's no supercharger on the way! Much of this is due to the consequences of running out. With an ICE car, fuel is fairly portable. If you run out, you can walk to a gas station, buy a couple gallons, take it back to your car, and then drive the rest of the way back to the station. With an EV, if you run out, you're either pushing or waiting for a tow truck. Running out is also much more likely as factors which can affect a vehicle's range, such as speed, acceleration, terrain (i.e. hills), accessory usage, etc., affect EVs much more than than they do ICE vehicles. The end result is, you end up having to plan your entire life around your car and its onerous range limitations. Electric cars are pretty much the opposite of practical right now and will likely remain so for the forseeable future; decent range still costs heavily (relevant: Tesla just hiked the price of the cheapest Model 3 by about 4 grand and if I'm not mistaken that one has a smaller battery than the "good" ones). The only way you could consider them practical is if your perspective is 100% urban-centric and also assumes that people never want to go anywhere (spontaneously or otherwise) outside their normal routine. As far as Teslas being used as track cars, I haven't heard many good things on that topic.
Ev's are most efficient in slow moving stop start traffic, since they regenerate a lot of the lost power from stopping, and don't have to work against air resistance. So your range would have likely gone up because of the traffic.
EVs also have more efficient cabin climate control than ICE cars do --- Post updated --- Even the radio is negligibly more efficient due to no alternator frictional losses
Turns out that if you own a Dodge Charger HEMI in the US, it is 5.4x more likely to get stolen than the national average. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/dodge-cars-with-big-engines-top-hldis-list-of-most-stolen-vehicles The least stolen car was the BMW 3-series 4-door. Relative claim frequencies National Average: 100BMW 3 series 4 door: 4Dodge Charger HEMI: 544
I don't believe it was stop-and-go enough to have that effect. For these you would spend a long period of time stopped (so accessories on, but not covering any distance) waiting for a pilot car to show up and the line of oncoming traffic it was leading to go by, then another long-ish period of time at a constant low speed. Eventually you get free of the pilot car and can speed up a little, until you get to the next one-lane constricted area and sit for several more minutes. So it's more like slow driving interspersed with lots of waiting than normal stop-and-go traffic. For my car, the starter battery had enough energy to keep the radio/CD player on during the waiting periods and still start the car back up when it was time to go, whereas with an electric car, keeping the stereo on while waiting for the pilot car would have likely cost some range.
