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Tag.} First of a fleet of automotive Mcblogment s.
There is a 99% chance your car will be fine.
But we rockamend you get this new oil that will reduce mileage & void the manufacturer warranty.
A sign of the future is here.
It has only been 6 months since the prototype was released. Imagine what further improvements will be announced in the coming years.
Yesterday from Top Gear Magazine;
In response to:
New Tesla Model S: 1,100bhp, and half a steering
wheel
Elon’s electric saloon now has a 520-mile range, crazy performance and a radical new interior
Rowan Horncastle
Jan 28, 2021
It was just late last year that Tesla unveiled the long-awaited range-topping Tesla Model S ‘Plaid’. As a reminder, that’s the electric saloon with a tri-motor, 1,100bhp setup good for a 0-60mph time in under two seconds and a £130k price tag. Less than six months later, Telsa has used the Plaid’s upgrades to unveil a complete refresh of the range and the first significant design shakeup since the viral sensation of a saloon was introduced back in 2012. ......
For complete article go to;
I'm seeing a lot of talk about them.
I'm about 3,000 miles in.
I'm curious who else here has actual seat time?
From The Guardian;
In response to:
Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced
Exclusive: first factory production means recharging could soon be as fast as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles
Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been produced in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.
Electric vehicles are a vital part of action to tackle the climate crisis but running out of charge during a journey is a worry for drivers. The new lithium-ion batteries were developed by the Israeli company StoreDot and manufactured by Eve Energy in China on standard production lines.
StoreDot has already demonstrated its “extreme fast-charging” battery in phones, drones and scooters and the 1,000 batteries it has now produced are to showcase its technology to carmakers and other companies. Daimler, BP, Samsung and TDK have all invested in StoreDot, which has raised $130m to date and was named a Bloomberg New Energy Finance Pioneer in 2020.
The batteries can be fully charged in five minutes but this would require much higher-powered chargers than used today. Using available charging infrastructure, StoreDot is aiming to deliver 100 miles of charge to a car battery in five minutes in 2025.
“The number one barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles is no longer cost, it is range anxiety,” said Doron Myersdorf, CEO of StoreDot. “You’re either afraid that you’re going to get stuck on the highway or you’re going to need to sit in a charging station for two hours. But if the experience of the driver is exactly like fuelling [a petrol car], this whole anxiety goes away.”
“A five-minute charging lithium-ion battery was considered to be impossible,” he said. “But we are not releasing a lab prototype, we are releasing engineering samples from a mass production line. This demonstrates it is feasible and it’s commercially ready.”
Existing Li-ion batteries use graphite as one electrode, into which the lithium ions are pushed to store charge. But when these are rapidly charged, the ions get congested and can turn into metal and short circuit the battery.
The StoreDot battery replaces graphite with semiconductor nanoparticles into which ions can pass more quickly and easily. These nanoparticles are currently based on germanium, which is water soluble and easier to handle in manufacturing. But StoreDot’s plan is to use silicon, which is much cheaper, and it expects these prototypes later this year. Myersdorf said the cost would be the same as existing Li-ion batteries.
“The bottleneck to extra-fast charging is no longer the battery,” he said. Now the charging stations and grids that supply them need to be upgraded, he said, which is why they are working with BP. “BP has 18,200 forecourts and they understand that, 10 years from now, all these stations will be obsolete, if they don’t repurpose them for charging – batteries are the new oil.”
Dozens of companies around the world are developing fast-charging batteries, with Tesla, Enevate and Sila Nanotechnologies all working on silicon electrodes. Others are looking at different compounds, such as Echion which uses niobium oxide nanoparticles.
“I think such fast-charging batteries will be available to the mass market in three years,” said Prof Chao-Yang Wang, at the Battery and Energy Storage Technology Center at Pennsylvania State University in the US. “They will not be more expensive; in fact, they allow automakers to downsize the onboard battery while still eliminating range anxiety, thereby dramatically cutting down the vehicle battery cost.”.
this is not a new craze , but it has grown in popularity , and i dont mean the people who actually fake that they live in a van as there are many out there that do fake it,
but could you see yourself giving up your home comforts for life in a van ,,i can see the plus side to short term van life ,,like escaping the winter months for a warmer climate , or for taking a extended long holiday ,
so it has a few pluses but also a few negatives, and as i live in the balkans then the pluses out weigh the negatives for me ,,
taking a shower and the like are so easy as most service areas provide clean and cheap showers ...
and also the fact if you find a place that you like you can stay as long as you wish ,
so what would be the draw backs for you folks out there ,, and could you see yourself doing this ????
as a professional driver for many years , and having seen the good and bad drivers , with or more likely with out licences ,
i have not encountered road rage in person , yes i have had people honk their horns because they are impatient , especially if it is a dual carriage way and i need to over take a slower truck , and i am holding them up for what ever it is that they did not leave in good time to get to where they need to be ,
driving any vehicle should be a relaxed and enjoyable experience shared by all ,,
road rage takes away that experience and i should imagine adds to stress and anger and in some cases people actually try to cause harm or injury to anyone that gets in their way,,prime examples of this are brake checking other vehicles which is extremely dangerous not only to the car that is being brake checked ,but also to other road users , then you have the people who totally lose the plot and try to ram the other driver off the road grrrrr these are the pyschos who should not be in any sort of vehicle ,
then you have the people who vent their anger by throwing objects at other vehicles as they are driving ,,
and all this goes on in every day life ,24 ,,7 .. the roads are becoming like a fair ground ride , like the bumper cars or dodgems as some people know them,
i have personally been slowed down by cars as the road comes to a incline ,and they obviously know that a truck can not just pick up speed like a car , so it is like they get a kick out of making your journey a tad harder ,,
but i have never been brake checked and being totally honest if it had happened then i would not have braked hard and put others in danger ,so the vehicle that brake checked me would have truly known about it ,,
ah you may say that this would amount to road rage ,,nope not at all this would amount to self preservation ,
in the balkan countries and also russia cars that brake check trucks get rammed of the road ,,,the reason being truck hijacking was a serious problem in these countries for many years ,and in some cases still is , hence the truckers take no chances what so ever ,,
eastern european truckers all carry cb radios and are constantly looking after each other and will help out any one stuck beside the road with in reason of course ,,,
happy driving folks and if a hot head honks his or her horn then just smile to yourself and think it is better to have that nutter in front of me rather than behind me ,,,,
we often see on the news , police chasing either stolen cars or criminals , which amounts to the same thing , a felony has occurred ,
so why do these chases turn into a nascar race ,,
they start off with a couple of cruisers sitting a safe distance behind the offender ,
and if by magic every cop and his dog joins in on the action , is it because the longer the chase lasts then it will be shown on the news via helicopter and this will be their 15 minutes of fame,
and you can be sure by the end of the chase there will be anything from 10 to 20 squad cars around the offender plus a police helicopter hovering above ,,
that is a lot of tax payers hard earned bucks being wasted,,
and as we often see a lot of these chases usually end up with the car being wrecked or hitting innocent drivers along the way.
now a simple solution to this problem , would be to have two squad cars pursuing the vehicle along with the eye in the sky.
and if the vehicle will not stop , the the over head chopper should armed with a mini guided missile that will totally take the car out when there is the opportunity to do so .
it will save on the insurance pay outs save on court costs as there will be nobody to go to court ,
and it will save tax payers money as the other 18 squad cars can do some proper work ,,
and will also serve as a deterrent for car thieves and criminals running from the police ,,
the uk has announced that it is to ban ,the sale of petrol and diesel cars ,,
now as a regular driver i can see many misgivings with this,
electric cars are ok to pop to the local shops or drop the kids at school ,
but could you imagine the dread of a long trip in one ????
imagine your batteries are low ,,and hey presto there is a powercut ,,,
or you pull at a charging station and there is a queue waiting ,,
and these cars dont recharge that quickly ,yes a quick 30 minute charge will get you on the move but not very far,
so is it a good or bad thing ????
Take (literally) for example, the Ford F-Series truck. While it's one of the top selling vehicles in America, it's also the most stolen vehicle in America. Ford must have made a really good 2006 model as reports were 38,938 of them were stolen in 2019.
13 year old trucks made the top of the list and second on the list were the 2000 Honda Civic at 33,220 last year. Stealing a 19 year old car?
I'm thinking they are disappearing to be stripped for parts.
Link here:
I was a kid when the movie Ben-Hur came to theaters. 1959 to be exact. One scene was the Chariot Race and if you were like me... you were hanging on the EDGE OF YOUR SEAT!!
The scary part was Messala, the bad guy who had a chariot equipped with a sharp pointy wheel axle that would break the spokes of the chariot driven by Judah Ben-Hur (actor Charlton Heston) and her was nearly victorious, but Ben-Hur out maneuvered Messala and won the race.
Note: I knew Messala was the bad guy because he had a team of black horses!
Anyway a few thousand years later, we've got our own chariot drivers with sharp pointy wheel hubcaps. I refer to them as Spartacus hubcaps. Judge for yourself...
Flashback to the Ben-Hur chariot Race