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The Electric Car Has Come of Age - Page 2 — Parallax Forums

The Electric Car Has Come of Age

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  • Sadly this E-Type Zero is not at all sold by Jaguar.

    The video seems to imply that, but it is not so.

    Converting a existing car to a electric driveline is less complicated as many people think, but you have to come up with ~$35,000 to get decent horsepower and range.

    So taking a E-Type makes sense if you try to earn money on it. Who would put 35 grand into a Ford F150 or in my case a $3,000 Mercedes SL roadster?

    Mike
  • msrobots wrote: »
    Converting a existing car to a electric driveline is less complicated as many people think

    I hear Erco's latest plan is to convert his Corvair to all-electric, using this previously top-secret method.



  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    If anyone is yanking out the original straight 6 or V12 to electrify their E-Type, can I have the old motor?

    They are works of art by themselves.

  • Farm equipment, semi tractors, and certain types of fleet vehicles will still need diesel, or at least large horsepower LPG.

    Oh, good. I'll still be able to drive my 1983 Mercedes 240D until it hits 1,000,000 miles! Mothers, get respirators for your kids when I'm in town!

    -Phil
  • > One SoCal dealer flips them for next to nothing. They just sold two 2015s, like new,16K miles for $9K each!

    Dang! I had heard that SoCal is the place to buy cars. Especially if you're from say NorCal and are what they call an "out of market" customer.
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    The farm tractors I worked with in my time (not the monsters some use now) didn't have much horse power at all. They were just geared low. The oldest one I used was perhaps the Massey Ferguson 35, which had - yep, 35 hp. My brother in law just bought a new tractor: 45 hp.
  • Heater. wrote: »
    What do you need that noise feedback for?

    What fun is it when you can't do wheelies and burnouts and have the roar that goes with that, how do you impress the ladies these days. The sex appeal is in the body design and not the motor. You have lost the feeling of power and prestige behind the wheel. You are just reduced to like any other electric conveyance, restrictive, just not practical in the long run.
    When we are forced into owning an electric vehicle, or have nothing. I would be happy to embrace a green machine, as long as I didn't give my IC engine for a vehicle that gets it's energy from coal burning power plants.



  • GordonMcCombGordonMcComb Posts: 3,366
    edited 2017-09-12 16:34
    Tor wrote: »
    The farm tractors I worked with in my time (not the monsters some use now) didn't have much horse power at all. They were just geared low. The oldest one I used was perhaps the Massey Ferguson 35, which had - yep, 35 hp. My brother in law just bought a new tractor: 45 hp.

    Talking modern commercial farming here... John Deere 9560R -- about 550 HP. Farms need the big equipment these days to make any money.

    This is the type of tractor that, before long, will be automated self-driving. Yet one more job lost to the robots.

  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    MikeDYur wrote: »
    What fun is it when you can't do wheelies and burnouts and have the roar that goes with that, how do you impress the ladies these days.
    It's difficult to imagine any ladies getting impressed by burnouts and wheelies these days.. it'll have the opposite effect I think. Supposing there still are some left, I wouldn't be impressed by a lady who would get impressed by burnouts and wheelies :)

  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    edited 2017-09-12 16:45
    This is the type of tractor that, before long, will be automated self-driving. Yet one more job lost to the robots.
    Haven't those been self-driving for a couple of decades already? I've seen those big machines plowing fields.. the driver doesn't do a thing, the tractor uses a very accurate satnav system to go forth and back, forth and back, row by row.. all perfect. As far as I can tell the robots have taken over farming years ago. Dairies too, and both we and the cows are better off, from what I've seen. The cows are milked more often (whenever they like), in a better and more hygienic way, with automatic samples of the milk every time, for testing.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Yes, I was just talking to someone who had bought a nearly 1 million dollar harvester. Huge, gigantic machine that drives itself.
  • Tor wrote: »
    It's difficult to imagine any ladies getting impressed by burnouts and wheelies these days.. it'll have the opposite effect I think. Supposing there still are some left, I wouldn't be impressed by a lady who would get impressed by burnouts and wheelies :)

    [/quote]

    A sport more popular than ever, not sure if anybody would show up if these were electric.
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-09-12 17:30
    @Gordon, if civilian GPS resolution is around 10 feet, how will these giant machines not make a mess of a field? Or do they have the higher ~3ft resolution.
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    MikeDYur wrote: »
    Tor wrote: »
    It's difficult to imagine any ladies getting impressed by burnouts and wheelies these days.. it'll have the opposite effect I think. Supposing there still are some left, I wouldn't be impressed by a lady who would get impressed by burnouts and wheelies :)

    A sport more popular than ever, not sure if anybody would show up if these were electric.

    Have to agree with Tor. The race car audience is a very small (and shrinking) percentage of the population, and most of the women are in their teens and early twenties. An age group that is easily impressed by flashy loud toys.
  • kwinn wrote: »
    Have to agree with Tor. The race car audience is a very small (and shrinking) percentage of the population, and most of the women are in their teens and early twenties. An age group that is easily impressed by flashy loud toys.

    We quit going to the local drag strip because of large crowds, age thirty and under comprise at least half them.
  • GordonMcCombGordonMcComb Posts: 3,366
    edited 2017-09-12 18:09
    Tor wrote: »
    Haven't those been self-driving for a couple of decades already? I've seen those big machines plowing fields..

    If you go back far enough the concept dates from many decades ago for commercial use, using such things as a simple maypole setup (which is actually centuries old). You had to live with round fields, though. Since then, there have been a number of techniques, but not -- until fairly recently -- a major push to true fully autonomous farming. John Deere has probably been at it for the longest, but there have been many new entries within the last 5-7 years. It's still considered nascent technology. The world's first real all-robot farm opened earlier this year (in Japan), and it's not even a traditional farm.

    Yes there are already robotic tractors, though use is not what I'd call widespread. Part of this is that farming is still traditionally a family business, often spanning multiple generations. So you see solutions like a human driver leading at least one automated tractor, or the training of specialized hands who serve as "safety operators," etc. There are also limits to the types of fields these types of systems can be used on.

    I live in the rural fringes of my town, and up the road there are numerous farms, none of which are yet automated. Around here, the typical field is not flat or well prescribed (strawberries, squash, etc), or is random, such as avocado groves. All this is slowly changing, as the idea of the robotic farm becomes more accepted, with customized machinery to handle mores type of work.

    For improved accuracy, they use lasers, differential GPS, and other technology. Unless it's a giant wheat field or something, I'm not sure it's a good idea to rely on commercial GPS alone.
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-09-12 19:15
    This place has consistently grown for the 30 years we've lived around here. They had a fireworks display last year that lasted around an hour. Being around 15 miles from the track we had a show here. They're Night Under Fire features jet dragsters, funny cars and a jet semi truck that manages to set a billboard on fire. I'll say the sport doesn't do much to help global warming.

    http://www.summitmotorsportspark.com

    I have taking a couple different videos of this, I'll have to post the better one some time. But here's one off the tube:


    2016 Race Results.

    Jet Semi Truck
    E.T. Bob Motz 7/2/05 6.902
    M.P.H. Bob Motz 7/2/05 225.520

    Jet Pick Up
    E.T. Neal Darnell 5/3/03 6.777
    M.P.H. Neal Darnell 5/3/03 246.170

    Jet Dragster
    E.T. Bill Mattio 4/24/99 4.833
    M.P.H. Bill Mattio 4/24/99 327.390

    Jet Funny Car
    E.T. Rich Hanna 5/12/01 5.446
    M.P.H. Rich Hanna 5/12/01 291.570

    Rocket
    E.T. Larry Flickenger 6/30/84 4.526
    M.P.H. Goeske/ Hedgbeck 8/23/80 304.050
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    MikeDYur wrote: »

    I did post that "The race car audience is a very small (and shrinking) percentage of the population", not that it is necessarily smaller than it used to be. Your example is a small town in northern Ontario, where a a weekend of racing would be a big draw. In southern Ontario there are many other attractions, and the number of tracks in the area as well as the number of spectators they draw have not increased much if at all from the time I raced gocarts and hobby stocks. The only exception to that is the Molson Indy in Toronto, which draws a big crowd, and a lot of that crowd comes as much for the other attractions as for the racing.
  • Can we keep this to Electric Cars only please.
  • Publison wrote: »
    Can we keep this to Electric Cars only please.

    I thought it was talking about what electric cars can't do.
  • Race cars and drag strips have no business in this thread. It is about electric cars. It has gone so off topic it may be sunk.
  • MikeDYur wrote: »
    @Gordon, if civilian GPS resolution is around 10 feet, how will these giant machines not make a mess of a field? Or do they have the higher ~3ft resolution.

    Take a look here for starters:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS
  • The technology is just not there yet for battery cars. Maybe one day. It's like cel phones used to have NiCad's now the battery last all day
  • DaveJenson wrote: »

    Dave, thanks for that link, didn't know Big Daddy Don Garlits was involved in such a thing, Love that sound, I'm really impressed at the performance.

    Mike
  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-09-12 23:57
    KeithE wrote: »
    MikeDYur wrote: »
    @Gordon, if civilian GPS resolution is around 10 feet, how will these giant machines not make a mess of a field? Or do they have the higher ~3ft resolution.

    Take a look here for starters:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS

    Thanks Keith, a great lesson I have to look into, behind the times. So this tech is available to a hobbyist? GPS for me was just a general location, not useful for obstacle avoidance.

    My easy chair is uneasy knowing one of these autonomous things could level my house anytime.

    Mike
  • DigitalBob wrote: »
    The technology is just not there yet for battery cars. Maybe one day. It's like cel phones used to have NiCad's now the battery last all day

    So honestly if there was a happy medium by sitting someplace for a while and letting the battery charge through solar panels, and then maybe getting 25 miles farther it would be great.
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Formula E racing is fast and downright exciting, just sounds different. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formula_E :

    The race itself lasts for approximately 50 minutes with drivers making one mandatory pit stop to change cars with the two pit crew helping the driver change seat belts, and for safety reasons, there is a minimum required time for pit stops (which differs from track to track).

  • MikeDYurMikeDYur Posts: 2,176
    edited 2017-09-13 12:13
    @erco, you and Dave have convinced me that electricly powered motor sports is very entertaining.
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