You're complaining about having to find a parking space that will cost you "upward of US$200/mth"???!!!?!?!?!!?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHA
You're complaining about having to find a parking space that will cost you "upward of US$200/mth"???!!!?!?!?!!?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHA
Sweet jeebus, no.Originally Posted by neanderthal
Range anxiety and recharge time are still a very real fear. The only way to get people to switch to PHEV's right now is to include onboard ICE -- but the only way to maximize your mileage is to have an initial small pool of miles that are electric-only. Plug in every night, drive the bulk of your commute on electrons. Considering the prices of cars today, odds are most people are going to have their old beater car and then the new series hybrid hotness.
The Chevy Volt, Ford C-Max Hybrid Energi, Toyota Prius Plug-In, all of these series hybrids exist, these are not concept cars. Over time, they (and newer cars) will become incrementally better at what they already do now.
I don't know Chicago at all, but it *seems* that in places like that - my experience being SF - you don't need a car on the daily. Your highway cruiser to visit relatives in far off places is your only car, and some combination of human-powered vehicles, mass transit, and loaner progams (CityCar, ZipCar, etc.) fill the rest of the gap - including solving parking. If I lived in SF, I'd probably do exactly what my friend did - store my cars in a coop warehouse and not use them but a few days a month. The idea of not having to own a commuter-mobile is incredibly appealing to me!
LA is weird because it's so spread out and there is shit for area-wide mass transit. You really do need a car there. Still, my cousin and her SO both bought Fiat 500es right after I did (I think they saw a post on FB) and they aren't having issues having only two 90 mile cars in their family. They're doing fine a few months in, but still have some range anxiety. They would be much better served by a 100mpg gas or diesel machine, if one existed.
I think there are applications for a wide variety of vehicles with varying motive powers and features. I guess the issue is that the automotive industry can't support companies selling hundreds or even thousands of vehicles. If you can't move five figures, there's no point in even starting. Maybe there is where something like GM's old Hy-Wire concept fits in - body modules that can plug into flexible power modules - and then you make a diesel twin module, a series module, and a full-battery module and sell a group of bodies ranging from super-aerodynamic 2-seaters to boxy cargo carriers to go on top. I'm sure there are significant engineering hurdles there, but I think until power source technology makes a quantum leap - especially with batteries - this is the only way we'd get a large variety of more right-sized transportation built.
aka, it'll never happen.
*I* personally don't own a car at all. We do use zipcars for roadtrips and the like, however.
YW, see above, I have no idea what the acutal costs are. I was just guessing. From what I've heard, actually *finding* a spot is the most difficult part.
That's fair to say of course, but "over time" is a pretty big variable... Nissan pumped mad money into the Leaf to add 2 miles to its range. The modern plug-in Prius isn't much better than the garage plug-in conversions people were doing almost a decade ago.
It might very well not matter... I guess it depends on one's own personal fear of energy shortages and environmental catastrophes. It just seems that we have the technical ability to make some real improvements right this second, and the thing that is holding is back is conventional expectations of vehicles... expectations that I really don't think apply to the vast majority of the driving world. I think if we could shift expectations, we'd find it quite easy to push off our own, inevitable demise.
Edit: On that note, I'd like to see a head-to-head comparison of the XL1 versus, say, a 1965 Cortina or Beetle or other random, 50 year old small car. I'll bet all the OP author's complaining about it's stupid dimensions would apply to them as well. Except for a couple decades, those setups seemed pretty darned reasonable and proved totally viable to a large group of people.
Last edited by thesameguy; April 10th, 2014 at 09:39 AM.
If 40 miles becomes 42 miles becomes 45 miles over the course of the Volt's lifetime, I'm fine with that. The goal should be 1 hour at max highway speeds, that's all I'm saying. Certainly doesn't have to be met in my lifetime.
Shortages? I'm just looking for ways to get around $4-8 USD/gallon at the pumps for daily driving while still having the option to run on dinojuice for longer trips.
The price of a parking spot varies pretty widely in Chicago. In the South and West sides, you just park in a vacant lot if you can't find street parking. Up by Bill where there are non-luxury high rises, it might be $200 a month. Where I live, it's mostly non-highrise multi-unit apartment buildings, and my uncovered, unsecured spot is $60 a month. 14 years ago, I used to park in a Near North/Downtown parking garage for work, and it was $225 a month. I'd be shocked if it was less than $500 a month now, as the daily rate works out to $1400+ a month these days, so it's probably around $800-1000 a month.
In some of the denser neighborhoods, you might not be able to get a parking spot for any price. In Streeterville, you can get monthly parking somewhere without too much difficulty. You may not like the price, but you can get it. In Ukrainian Village, Wicker Park, and Lincoln Park, if your building doesn't offer parking, you scour Craigslist and hope that somebody is renting a garage.
Public transportation here is probably better than any American city that's not on the East Coast, but that doesn't mean that it's good compared to a lot of European and Asian cities.
Well, I imagine that if someone was to try and make a series of different drivetrains all available in a car (say, a VW Up!) with a regular ICE, a hybrid motor, and electric motor, then, I reckon, one could swap between powertrains as the need rises. Especially if they used a scalable battery pack; they could extend the range 40% by simply adding another battery module.
I'd be very interested in that vehicle.
Don't really care about it being hybrid. I'd love it if it can be made affordable to the mass and does close to 100mpg. I don't think that's too much to ask considering we can probably rearrange the 1st generation Honda Insight to have inline seating, using similar tech, it probably could do close to 100mpg because of the reduced aero drag alone!
I was really looking forward to a super high mpg commuter vehicle. I thought it's initial estimated $30k was high, but now it seems plain ridiculous. And with $100k+ worth of technology, it's still not very impressive... with that price tag, perhaps I'd be impressed if it does 2000mpg or something.For now, I guess Elio is probably my best bet. Sub $10k car that does nearly 100mpg. Fingers crossed.
What ever happened to super-capacitor technology? It sounded for a while like that was going to replace, or at least compliment batteries in electric/hybrid cars, due to their quick charging capabilities.
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