Indeed, only thing is that the dilemma i face is before i had all the time in the world but no money, but now i have have heaps of coin but zero time to do anything. Its rather annoying...
Hey, does anybody know what kind of car this is? It looks like a '60s British coupe, but I have no idea what make it is.
Well white wasn't my go to color. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a new Bronco in white...
Your arguments appear to be based mostly on emotions instead of facts and physics: ICEs have really lousy efficiency A problem further amplified by partial load which just happens to be 99 % of all driving conditions. Non turbo non hybrid ICEs are way oversized for the expected power demand in most of their lifetime. You rarely use the capability of more displacement/cylinders but you have the higher internal losses all the time. Historically larger displacement has been used to achieve better acceleration potential. Which you can also have with downiszed turbocharged engines or hybrids. Except without the partial load losses and admittedly at the cost of increased technical complexity. An ICE car creates most of its pollution and climate effect in operation, not production. Thus hybrids make sense both economically and ecologically. Power when you want but efficiency when you dont. The saved fuel ressources and cost are much higher than the increased ressource and monetary costs of the hybrid system. 5.5 L instead of 7.5L over 200000 km is a difference of 4000L of fuel. You can replace the entire hybrid system and you would still be better off overall, as would the environment. EV indeed require more ressources = pollution and CO2 - in production than a comparable ICE car. But they compensate this at arround 60000 km due to just happening not to burn 10000 L of fuel over their lifetime rather inefficiently. You can also recycle the battery at least partially.... the fuel is burned and gone forever. The cleaner the production of electricity, the sooner the ecological break even for EVs. But even running on dirty coal.... is overall still better for the environment than burning petrol or diesel directly in a piston engine. Synthetic fuel does not solve the local air pollution problem and is incredible wasteful = expensive - in terms of energy efficiency. It is not going to sail because of "vroom vroom" when it costs 5 times as much as simple electricity for the same distance. The 2.5 to 3 times the cost is already killing hydrogen cars..... good luck making something mainstream that besides "vroom" has nothing but drawbacks. Less comfort, less acceleration, more noise and vibrations, higher maintanance... and changes are...you wont be allowed into any major population center in 15 years. Biofuel still has the local pollution problem but what really kills it outside of niches is the amount of acreage required. Even photovoltaic cells with their 20 % efficiency daytime only generation bring more energy per hectare than any feasible biofuel production. The losses of transforming the energy are just to high. ICE may survive in niche applications for a few more decades (just as steam engines did survive surprisingly long in ship engines) but in cars..... they are doomed and this is going to be the last decade where there will be more ICE vehicles on the road than electric ones. The average buyer cares much more things than just "vroom" and this is where the market will move.
While i appreciate your rather accurate description of different propulsion types for personal cars, you failed to mention that the only solution is to massively cut down in individual transportation. Public transport is orders of magnitude more efficient than individual transport. The only viable future i see is no more cars. That may be sad for a car guy like me, but luckily we have beamng
I have significant doubts that public transport is capable of fully meeting the transport requirements of the modern world. I have several years of experience in both railway and local tram and bus transport and I have to say that I cannot imagine such a system to be competive to individual mobility. While it has significant more potential (I estimate arround 30 % more if you fully digitalize it and trim it for efficiency (for example on demand bus stops (the vehicle only goes to a stop if somebody is there/want to go there and an route that otherwise is more time efficient) there are some principal drawbacks that make its inner city speed quite low. Regular stops Delays can make you miss your connection, causing even more delays. For example if my tram is late by 2.5 minutes, I miss the bus, turning a 2.5 minutes delay into a 15 minute one. You need time and effort to go to the next stop. Usually you need time and effort to go from the final stop to your actual destination. Rather expensive in comparsion to the transport mean speed. (Going to work by car is 25 minutes for me, average speed is 28 km/h (even though it is an extremely car friendly route) public transit is 45 minutes (even though it is a excellent public transit route) yet the ticket costs only slightly less than fuel for my car. And yes, the car in reality is several times more expensive, but switching to car due to corona at least immediatly does hardly affect my bank account. And since you have a car anyway, the only real cost raise is the increased wear and tear and more insurance due to higher yearly driving distance. Public transit deserves support but it cannot fix traffic alone. Making public transport better also takes decades which is time we franky dont have. The way we build our cities, towns and villages makes them of limited use for efficient public transit. We cant rebuild the majority of our homes in time, nor is this desireable. (Not everyone wants to live in a 40 story concrete block) So we have a way of living that makes crossing significant = to far away to walk - distances a strict necessitie. We cant - properly - fix that with public transport alone. Not in general and certainly not in time. What we can do is fixing the issue that one car - weight approaching an average of 1500 kg is transporting a measly 80 kg of human arround at - at least inner city mean speeds that are laughable low: The car uses only a fraction of its transport capacity and engine power for commuting. It is rather costly for this task as it is build for highway speeds and safety. A light electric vehicle/electric supported vehicle is almost as fast as a car in inner city driving while using a fraction of the energy and a 1/100 of the cost. Something like this: No, it is not as comfortable as a full sized car. You cant win the comfort battle against a proper car so lets stop even trying. It however is (4 wheel configuration and closed cockpit assumed) reasonable winter and weather proof. It only requires a modest battery due to much lower weight (a few hundred kg at most) In inner city conditions, it is almost as fast as a car. But why should people choose this over their faster and more comfortable car? Very simple.... cost: Light electric vehicles are (if mass produced) much cheaper to buy and even more importantly to run than any car could ever hope to achieve. Being limited to maybe 30 km/h also allows to spend far less money and weight on crash security without compromising it. Public transit fails to replace cars on a large scale because it is not much cheaper but far less comfortable. Since you cant win the comfort battle against a full size modern car, you have to beat it in speed and costs. Again, I have a dream car route for my way to work, yet I only manage a lousy 28 km/h average speed. A bit more congestion and you are faster going by bike... but a classical bike isnt very weather proof or comfortable and also a tad to slow. Light electric mobility is not as fast as a car but it is many many times cheaper to run. I am driving a modest Ford Focus... yet it costs arround 300 Euros a month (fuel = 70 €). Give me a transport vehicle with a fraction of that cost and competive speeds and acceptable comfort and I may very well ditch my car.... because in reality and like most people I use the long range high speed capability of my car rather seldomly. Since you "need" a car, right now it makes little financial sense to ditch it. But if I can do may daily commuting and shopping needs with something a fraction of the cost (while having competive travel times and comfort) then things look vastly different. For the relative rare cases, it is much cheaper to rent a car for long range/or go by rail) as you save arround 280 euros a month if you dont have a car standing arround. IMHO... this is the solution..... far less space consumption, far less fatal accidents, far less energy consumption while being fast and flexible. You can still have fun with them, too.
I would make a snipe about replacing meals with sci-fi synthetic food cubes, but the problem is, there are a lot of people who would actually look forward to a future like that. Wanting your life to be boring is one thing, but wanting to force everyone else's life to be boring is quite another. Also, there are still people who live outside of "major population centers". I know it's currently fashionable to speak as if there aren't and saying there are will probably get me reported for being PoLiTiCaL, but it's true. I love BeamNG, but no computer simulation - not even BeamNG - could ever replace real driving, just like no synthetic protein cube could ever replace the delicious bowl of chili I'm eating right now.
EV isn't the be all and end all of "muh green energy" it's not a magic godsend here to solve all the world's issues
So here's the thing. This type of vehicle is the best balance of efficiency and comfort for one segment of the population. Unfortunately, if you do not fall within these specific qualifications, it is not the best solution for you: You must live in a city. You must live in a location with either no snow or very quick snow clearing. You must never travel more than 15 mph. (24 kph) You must not care about being comfortable. You must not care about cargo capacity. Some people may meet these qualifications, but the rest of us live in the majority of the world that does not. The combination of very short range, skinny tires/instability/low safety, lack of quality suspension/air conditioning/heating, and load make it highly unsuitable for most of the world.
I would rather drive an EV1 instead of being overwhelmed by modern cars' so-called driver assistance(read: interference) Agreed, driver assistance is for the weak, real cars always obey the driver's command.
Got a new battery today. A nice Century, with 630~ amps of starting power (is that even possible?). Compared to the el cheapo weird knock off sounding battery that only had 500 amps its a powerful one. The difference is huge, before with the old one if i had left the car for 5 minutes it needed the precise amount of fuel and the correct pedal placement so it would actually start and not flood. Now just twist the key and VROOOOM. Also looking to sell the carburettor and buy a Holley 400~50, god know how old the 600 is as when my uncle he put it, probably it bought second hand. Everything top end wise on the engine is new but still the same old shitty carb (even though its been rebuilt), every time i drive the bloody thing it goes out of tune so ive had enough and decided to get the correct one (and one that doesn't have a filled in crack in the base). Hopefully i can get choke with it too, which isnt necessary but nice to have now that its the middle of winter. So any one want to buy a *mint* condition rebuilt Holley 600 ? New versus old, the old is only a week away from it sixth birthday Finally a break with this car, today was the first day in months that i could actually drive the thing down the road without it catching on fire or exploding
