Another scam!

Off Topic
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Yes, electric cars have to make sound. I don’t know if it’s a law yet, or if it’s just from the “kindness of their hearts”… but they need to make sounds so that pedestrians hear them. I know the Nissan Leaf has a special device that makes road noise.

I don’t expect an electric car to behave anything like a car with an internal combustion engine because I know it isn’t capable of doing that. I treat them as large golf-carts, and effectively a scam because I don’t see them ever being cost effective until traditional cars are taxed or regulated into a deeper oblivion than they are in now.

Nothing. It’s just a name. Mazda is just trying to use Diesel technology (high compression, piston cavity, and very high pressure direct injection) in a gasoline/petrol engine, and, ironically low compression in their Diesel engine to reduce NOX emissions.

CNG is a candidate… most buses run on it these days, and it is popular for cars in some areas of the world. It’s a bit cheaper than gasoline/petrol or diesel. The main problem with it is that the fuel tank ends up being huge and bulky and it’s an explosive risk.

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Closest I can give is “rediscover” the mythical “ogle carburetor”, I’ll let you know when unicorns are discovered as I’m sure that’s step one

@KA24DE my teachers truck is CNG, it only really gave about a 10 MPG boost, though it is still not bad, 14 to 24

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We have to change to get used to how electric cars work. This is already happening with the majority of new cars being whisper quiet and automatic which makes the transition to electric a no-brainer. The only fly in the ointment are car enthusiasts who enjoy the way ICE cars feel too much to embrace the new tech…

For the record, I love ICE and never want it to end. However, I can see why non-enthusiasts like electric and would be willing to make the transition. So, I will try to enjoy myself as much as possible while I can and I’ll get all my non-enthusiast friends/relatives to convert to electric.

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That is amazing actually; did not expect that much of an improvement, especially since CNG is less expensive than gas/petrol/diesel, and the power loss is… tolerable at around 5%.
There you go… the world’s problems solved… except that cars need to get even bigger to house that tank of CNG.

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25

Well the results are a bit of a cheat, as when he runs pure CNG he is never hauling anything, and most of the time it’s a diesel-CNG hybrid, so realistically it’s more of maybe only a 4 to 6 mpg difference

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Still… point is that you’re getting a noticable improvement in economy from a fuel that is less espensive, with little change to the vehicle or its buy-in and running cost. Electric can’t do that.

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Does cng calculater per gallons too?

Okay. I’m supporting the electric movement for at least the common cars, and let enthusiasts car stay as it is.

For as a guy that loves the notion of riding/driving the vehicle more than tinkering with it (dont get me wrong, it’s always interesting to tinker) i like electric stuff more for everyday use. And leave ice vehicles as occasional use only. And the though of, for every $1 of fuel you burn, only about 30 cents are actually being used to move you is… Sti a bit unsettling to me somehow

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True, and I mean, it is a Ram 2500, so I’m sure the gains are better in small diesel cars. In his case though, he did say the conversion is expensive, it was like $3,000, though he did this back when fuel hit $4+ a gallon, so it didn’t take long to pay itself off

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Yeah what KA24DE said. It’s not that magical, nor a unique move since other manufacturers have now done the same but it did break their old mould a fair bit. I just like calling it voodoo bullshit just because :stuck_out_tongue:

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The thing reminds me of the Top Gear bit about supercar emissions, how the Italians would lie about it.
“Should our emissions be high, or low?” - “low” - “Our emissions is one”

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I’m not sure I understand the logic in converting a fat heavy truck to run on CNG when at most it’ll haul a few people. Why not just do that to a smaller and generally more efficient sedan or hatch? It doesn’t even have to be new because there will have been cars even in the 90’s with better mileage than a Ram 2500

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CNG doesn’t solve any problems, it is just less worse. It still is a non renewable, pollutant fuel. A true short term alternative would be bio fuels like ethanol, but that has the issue of space to grow crops associated with it.

Long term going electric and after hydrogen electric are the solutions. On the “power plants use oil to make power” argument, yes, that’s true, but they are way more efficient than an ice, also the pollution is removed from where it’s concentrated right now, aka the big cities, where most people live and most cars run.

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33

One word. Dieselgate. Ruined any chance that diesel cars had of recovering post Oldsmobile diesel. As a result, diesel trucks are still what’s popular here. As for what he uses it for, he does have to haul some stuff every now and then, though the most it carried was a bed full of wood

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34

I’ll add my more in-depth (than my first comment) 2 cents to this…

For me the two things that ruin the whole idea of an electric car are it’s range and charging time. Yes, there are Teslas with quite a decent range, but that’s only decent. It still severely limits everyday or long distance usability coming with the charging time. That’s why I think hydrogen fuel cell cars are much better, despite being less efficient - they are way more convenient, closer to current ICE cars. And being convenient is one of the most important things in a car from my point of view - the car has to make life easier, right? And for ICE enthusiasts - I think hybrids are the solution, but not hybrids like Lexuses, where both ICE and electric motor deliver their power to the wheels - as this cannot be much more efficient than a normal efficient ICE - but rather like Fisker, where ICE works as a generator, so at its maximum efficiency, with an option to deliver its power to the wheels for added power and fun. And it could be powered by LPG (which is AFAIK not only cheaper, but also more ecological than petrol) or some other more ecological fuel usable in a combustion engine.

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(my rant also incoming)

Also, Teslas are very much capable of 90 something mpg and that’s great and all, but the emissions from producing that energy makes the car as clean as the electricity is. There was a guy in some south-eastern Asian country who got a warning (forgot how or why) because the electricity he was charging his Tesla with meant that his emissions were like >300g/km - that is racecar territory.

Fine, let’s assume that the electricity is 100% renewable and is very clean. What about manufacturing? Strop mentioned this earlier, but it is worth mentioning again. Conventional mass-produced cars are mainly commonplace metals like steel and use some rubber, plastic, etc. Electric cars, on the other hand have huge amounts of lithium, copper and sometimes more “exotic” metals like aluminium. And the biggest killer for EVs in IMO is the inconsiderate and crazed use of REMs. That shit is bad.

(feel free to bash me for my measly, fact-unsupported opinion :stuck_out_tongue:)

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False, my argument exactly

Biodiesel is the fuel of the future kids. Contradict me if you wish for some fun fact time

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Wasn’t this thread supposed to be about Audi doing the emission trickery, too?
Though, it’s also very interesting where this talk has gone :wink:

You may notice that things vary greatly depending on where we live.
Inside the US, diesel had only few redeeming qualities over gasoline, with pollutant emission regulations eventually cornering diesels with their inherent issues in that regard.
All the while there was a CO2-emission reduction induced diesel-boom in Europe, where the higher fuel efficiency was already a valuable trait which only got amplified by incentives, making a diesel much more economical in running costs considering the generally high fuel costs here.
Diesels: Europe looked at the pros, US looked at the cons.

For electric cars there also are vast regional differences. The argument that the generated electricity one charges into a car may still come from a fossil fuel power plant is very valid, but not generally applicable. I know from a bit of research that the region I live in gets half to 3/4 of their electricity from renewable energy! Surprised me, but I reckon that’s what we get from all those silicon fields, turbine forests, pump-storage lakes and biogas hills around :stuck_out_tongue:

To compare between three examples, with numbers roughly estimated from my somewhat economical long distance commuting experiences, and data on the Ioniq:
My Ford Focus Mk1 1.6 gets around 7l/100km (~33.6 USmpg)
My father’s Peugeot 407 HDi around 5.5l/100km (~47 USmpg)
Reserved expectation for Hyundai Ioniq Electric about 14kWh/100km (22.5kWh for 100 miles?)

Now, to travel 100km (or converted to 100 miles and dollar) with my local fuel/electricity prices:
Focus: 7 x 1.35€ gas/petrol = 9.45€ (~$16.79 for 100 miles)
Peugeot: 5.5 x 1.12€ diesel = 6.16€ (~$10.95 for 100 miles)
Ioniq EV: 14 x 0.28€ electricity = 3.92€ (~$6.96 for 100 miles)

Not quite sure if the calculations check out all correctly, but I hope it gets the point across about how expensive gas/petrol actually is for me, and I actually expect the prices to rise again. Though diesels are heavier on tax, I would save quite a bit when my father passed me his car. No tax on electric, yet.
There’s a lot of potential in hybrid and electric cars, but there needs to be much more infrastructure for EVs, like chargers on most parking lots, fast chargers at roadhouses etc. in order to make them practical for anyone and compensating the range issue. Oh, and most importantly, good electric cars that aren’t either overdesigned premium boxes or high-tech speedyachts! Yes, I’m looking at you, BMW i3 and Tesla Model S! Just something more affordable, as there isn’t much of an used car market in that segment yet. Not like there is some concern about battery wear or anything.

Alright, should refuel, found a station that is pretty cheap tonight! $5.35 per Gallon! :sweat_smile:
Can’t wait until my father passes his diesel Peugeot to me :sweat_smile:

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38

where is this?

in these part of the world we can barely able to care about going green with our power production.
some parts of this world still don’t get electricity DAILY, or even at all.

in indonesia, our government just made a contract and a commitment to building power plants making a total of a maximum 14Gigawatts or 14000 Megawatts total combined (yay for cleaning up the corruption rate by a whole lot). what is it powered by? mostly still coal. since our coal reserve is huge, and coal powered is still cheap, compared to other stuff. i don’t know if we even have any wind mill actually? but in return, we have a masive amount volcanic activities, so you know what that means. pump water down the earth, and steam comes up. but the plant itself is still relatively small and expensive to build

so i really am not surprised to see that amount of pollution here really

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This isn’t surprising; to get on par with other countries who are well post-industrial, the earth must be scorched, like for the countries that came before it. Indonesia simply is in the same boat as India and China has been recently.

From my very simplistic understanding, the US in particular being very wary of committing to targets ratified in Paris (at least during the Bush administration) is largely due to them being terrified that it would negatively impact them versus particularly China. It turned into a bit of a Mexican standoff, especially when you had Australia trying to be the US’s little buddy and effectively going HURRR WE THINK CLIMATE CHANGE IS A CONSPIRACY jeez :sweat:

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:joy: :joy: :joy: there was this absolute dumbass in my class last year that asked a guest presenter at our school whether global warming affected countries other than the US.

Yes, he was Texan.

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