The autumn years of the ICE should be the golden years for the ICE.

[bobbywalter]

Since we’re talking “zombie apocalypse, the worlds going to end” type situation here, this may help some people:

View attachment 71871

Rabbits are clearly food....all the way over.

 

[stmitch]

If it’s a long term grid down situation, the natural gas is going to a no go as well. Something has to pump and pressurize the gas lines. More than likely, it’s electric.

Solar will hold up the longest until the cells start failing. Supposedly, that is around the 10 year mark.

In the end, everyone will be back to traveling on an animal or by foot.

If we're talking more than a week without power in the modern US, then stuff has probably gone very wrong and keeping your vehicle mobile is probably not very high on the list of priorities. I like a hybrid in this situation to maximize range and flexibility so that perhaps you can make it to someplace more stable.

 

[DeathRanger]

In the apocalypse, I can rig up and generate my own power in many ways. It's fairly easy to generate electricity from just about any source

Do you know how much of our personal time is spent charging the vehicle? 2 seconds per day. 1 to plug it in, and 1 to unplug it, you wake up every morning with a full charge.

120,000 maintenance free miles on our Model 3
How much would be spent on oil changes in ICE? 120,000 / 5000 miles = 24 oil changes. how much is 24 oil changes and oil filters?

at 100,000 miles my total charging cost was $3000
Gas car with 40mpg and $3 a gallon would have cost $7500 in gas costs

 

[RobbieD]

I do agree, that this is the "autumn years" for ICE, and that most transportation will go electric.

I only drive about 8.000 miles a year, and it'll be a fraction of that in a year, when I retire. I thought about a Maverick, but I just don't care for, or need, all of tech crap that you have to take with any new vehicle these days.

To me, it's mainly about transportation; getting my ass from point A to point B. And I don't like being a slave to a dealership or garage, to keep my stuff running. I maintain and repair all of my own vehicles. Plus, I simply enjoy driving my old trucks. That's what works for me.

EVs have a ways to go, especially the infrastructure. I like the idea of a hybrid, but don't like the added complexity

The biggest positive in all of this, is that we're in a period where we're able to go whichever way we want- ICE, EV or hybrid. Looking at it that way, we're in good times.

 

[19Walt93]

Electric is coming, like it or not. First for urban dwellers who only short commute, then as battery technology and standardization improve we'll travel long range just stopping to exchange batteries at 'power stations' . Rural folks like me will have solar recharging so we can stay working around the farm.

The battery is covered by the hybrid/EV extended warranty and swapping it would be giving up coverage. Plus, it ain't like plugging a new battery into your drill, the battery in a hybrid Escape occupied the entire rear cargo floor and we had to use the engine crane to lift them out- while wearing heavy rubber gloves under leather gloves. At 2016 warranty rates, the battery was $14,000+ and a Tesla battery was quoted at $22,600. So you pull into the rest area, unload all your cargo, lift it out with a crane you had to rent(most likely), avoid getting electrocuted when reinstalling and initializing it, and then reload everything- before hitting your credit card for 5 figures. Nope, It would compare to swapping a transmission at the rest area- if a transmission could electrocute you.

 

[19Walt93]

Be great till you have to tear half the motor apart to put a starter on it lol.

And the starter will die an early death due to the government mandated start/stop feature.

 

[19Walt93]

Agree that charging infrastructure isn't where it needs to be, especially for widespread adoption. That said, EV charging speeds get better all the time. The new Hyundai Ioniq 5 can charge from 10% to 80% in 18 minutes. That's adding about 60 miles of range every 5 minutes.

Imagine if every vehicle in line ahead of you at a highway rest area/ charging station took 18 minutes. Buy a comfortable car to sleep in and don't worry about people jumping you in line if you doze off.

 

[stmitch]

Plus, it ain't like plugging a new battery into your drill, the battery in a hybrid Escape occupied the entire rear cargo floor and we had to use the engine crane to lift them out- while wearing heavy rubber gloves under leather gloves. So you pull into the rest area, unload all your cargo, lift it out with a crane you had to rent(most likely), avoid getting electrocuted when reinstalling and initializing it, and then reload everything- before hitting your credit card for 5 figures. Nope, It would compare to swapping a transmission at the rest area- if a transmission could electrocute you.

Escape battery packs were hard to swap because they were hybrids that used an ICE platform that wasn't designed with swapping in mind. There are valid reasons that battery swapping isn't likely to take off, but time and effort aren't one of them. Tesla was swapping batteries in 90 seconds back in 2013 with zero humans touching the car and the owner sitting in the driver's seat the whole time:

Nio's doing 5 minute battery swaps in China too:

 

[sgtsandman]

Imagine if every vehicle in line ahead of you at a highway rest area/ charging station took 18 minutes. Buy a comfortable car to sleep in and don't worry about people jumping you in line if you doze off.

They are going to have to upgrade the already archaic electrical grid to handle the extra load as well. The existing system wouldn’t be able to handle it. It can be overcome but with the transportation system being completely reliant on the grid would necessitate the power companies addressing the well publicized issues and weakness of the existing system. A well planned, strategic hit will cause a cascade effect that would overload the entire system. As it stands now, that would be crippling. Add the majority of the transportation system being on it would be absolutely devastating.

 

[stmitch]

Imagine if every vehicle in line ahead of you at a highway rest area/ charging station took 18 minutes. Buy a comfortable car to sleep in and don't worry about people jumping you in line if you doze off.

How often would you say this scenario is likely to occur? It seems like the problem could largely be resolved with more chargers, faster chargers, and/or driving at off peak travel times. It just takes investment.
There are also 2 stage battery options that show a lot of promise for extending range a lot:

Tesla Model S Goes 752 Miles with a Prototype Battery from a Michigan Startup

This 'proof of concept' was meant to show that very long-range, environmentally sustainable battery packs can exist—and ONE, Inc., is about to start building one.

www.caranddriver.com

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Escape battery packs were hard to swap because they were hybrids that used an ICE platform that wasn't designed with swapping in mind. There are valid reasons that battery swapping isn't likely to take off, but time and effort aren't one of them. Tesla was swapping batteries in 90 seconds back in 2013 with zero humans touching the car and the owner sitting in the driver's seat the whole time:

Nio's doing 5 minute battery swaps in China too:

15 years ago at work they were doing it in not new looking forklifts all the time.

 

[RonD]

It is all about the money, always has been, even before there was money

Each person decides what they want, or need, and what they are willing to trade for it, even their life and others lives in the case of wars, to get what the want or need

Its not "big business" that has the greed, just need to look in the mirror for that revelation

 

[sgtsandman]

It is all about the money, always has been, even before there was money

Each person decides what they want, or need, and what they are willing to trade for it, even their life and others lives in the case of wars, to get what the want or need

Its not "big business" that has the greed, just need to look in the mirror for that revelation

Everyone has some level of greed and cheap in them. Some more than others.

 

[DeathRanger]

The main advantage of an EV is you have your own "fuel pump" at your house. If you have a heater or AC, your house can support charging and EV and is already wired for it.

How many miles do you drive a day? unless it's more than 250-300, you won't need to use a fast charger.

In almost 3 years, we've only used a public charger maybe 40 times and that was while on road trips across the US.
Home charger has been used every day for 1040 days.

 

[superj]

and batteries 100% need replacing. i see you use the tesla platform alot but if you look at the majority of electric cars on the road, its not tesla.

toyota said the prius are made to be throw away cars that you change every 7ish years. batteries are 1500-2k and you take the interior of the car out and the floor is the battery. its probably not horribly long to do if you have done it once or twice but i figured it would take me a week doing it in the driveway. i have looked at them a lot since my sister has had three of them.

i am not against electric cars. i am just against forcing the crap on people, like the vid shot. what a bunch of shit that was. get a shot or lose your job. just like california, get rid of your gas powered small engines or get fined. tons of people are going to lose their jobs and cali is giving 700 bucks to help replace the gas mowers for companies. thats nice but a zero turn mower is not 700 bucks, and especially in battery powered version. the articles i read said the new mowers are more like 7k and thats not even including replacing the weed eaters and chainsaws. and you ahve to have a pile of spare batteries.

what a crock. what needs to happen is a bunch of politicians need to be hung out front from the tree and government needs to be run for a term at a time unpaid, like in the old days. you get people in who want to help, not who want to get paid on the side by companies who need the laws changed for them.

sorry guys. i hate big gov and forcing crap on people.