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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

I really wish everyone was competing on range rather than acceleration. Range is the number one reason I went with a LR model 3. I don't give a rats ass about how fast it gets to speed.

However it is nice to see an EV with range at least in Tesla territory, granted it still is 2012 territory. I posted before, no premium brand EV should sell anything under 300 miles EPA; I use EPA as it is the one returning the lowest in use numbers which makes it a bit better bet when you try to figure out winter driving numbers too.

the real issue with EV adoption besides choice is if the average buyer has any real interest without incentives.

I do hope the Porsche entry forces Tesla to revamp the S and X interior, the real fix they need is to remove road noise, specifically tires, which is the only issue I have with my 3. (Test drove a S75 so maybe they are better now, no idea)

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I really wish everyone was competing on efficiency. Most journeys require nowhere near the range capabilities of current EVs, instead carrying around excess weight when not required. Similarly on the acceleration side, other than showing off, why do we need cars that can do 0-60 in 2-3 seconds? Those kinds of g-forces are certainly not pleasant for passengers.

I agree that nobody needs fast 0-60s but they’re just fun. Now, for the range thing, that’s no different from why you want a fast CPU even though 99% of the time you’re using 1% of its power, or why bridges are built to withstand many times their rated maximum load etc. You want to be prepared to deal with demanding situations. In this case that’s something like your family vacation that you maybe don’t want to buy an extra car for.

Acceleration is super fun and range is essential for a general purpose car. It sucks to have to plan your trip around super charger proximity.

>>>why do we need cars that can do 0-60 in 2-3 seconds

So you can pass cars that are driving too slow in the fastlane at highway speeds. 0-60 times are a general indication of the car's torque curve and power delivery. Depending on gearing, there's a pretty good chance a car with crazy-good acceleration will have no problems "bobbing and weaving" around some slowpoke in front of you without requiring hundreds of meters of space in the other lane to facilitate the overtake.

>>>Those kinds of g-forces are certainly not pleasant for passengers.

That entirely depends on the character/personality of your passengers. After a friend's wedding a few months ago I drove some of his relatives to the after-party. These guys were visiting from Hong Kong and don't own cars. Along the way I had an impromptu drag race with a random motorist and my passengers were ECSTATIC. "OMG this car is sooo awesome!!". Most of my friends are similar but they are predominantly car guys anyway. But I have another friend who is more of a "boulevard cruiser" type of guy who gets uncomfortable with aggressive driving. shrug

> impromptu drag race with a random motorist

Reckless driving like this consistently kills innocent people and most drivers who do this eventually end up losing their license or ending up in jail.

Not sure it's the sort of target demographic car companies should be looking at.

> and most drivers who do this eventually end up losing their license or ending up in jail

How could you possibly know this? You have no idea how many people do it and never get caught.

> Reckless driving like this consistently kills innocent people

You know what else consistently kills people? Tesla's Autopilot. I bet Tesla isn't discouraging use of that expensive feature though. In fact they defend it ruthlessly in the media and in court, despite more and more evidence pointing towards it being more dangerous than manual driving. To be fair though, I'm unaware of it ever killing anyone outside of the vehicle, so I guess it's just people killing themselves which is very different from killing innocent bystanders.

>>>Reckless driving like this consistently kills innocent people and most drivers who do this eventually end up losing their license or ending up in jail.

Citation needed. I can't even recall the last time street racing in this part of Japan killed anyone, let alone anyone outside the vehicle itself. The combination of more stringent licensing requirements, bi-annual vehicle inspections, and overall cost all combine to keep most sports cars out of the hands of all but the most dedicated drivers. Fatal mistakes are rare here. Accidents are usually drifting-related on secluded mountain roads.

Whatever lets you sleep at night.

It would be great if they standardised battery packs and made them configurable. So you don't need all that weight being carried around when it isn't needed, or you could rent more batteries for long journies if you rarely travel very far, maybe exchange cells instead of charging along the journey. Two-car(+) households can pool their batteries for going on holidays etc.

I don't think it will happen though. It would be tricky to get the right size/ weight that most people can carry without making it tedious (wouldn't be fun swapping 18650s around). Any larger and people would need hoists or jacks, then the is the issue of how to quickly & easily secure these large battery packs...

Do you intentionally drive with less fuel to save weight?

In a way, yes. I don't fill up the whole tank when I buy fuel (as do most people who don't travel large distances day to day). It's easy to add more fuel before I make a long journey. It makes more of a difference for EV as batteries have a considerably lower energy density than petrol, a couple orders of magnitude it appears: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

The beefy motors allow a larger fraction of the required braking to go through recuperation, so it should help range as well (assuming somewhat constant efficiency at partial load).

I do wish for a more reasonable EV marketing than the "guilt-free bigger better faster" that we currently see, but technological properties are not in favor of minimalistic EV. The efficiency penalty for overpowered ICE cars was much bigger than that of overpowered EV, but even they never stopped getting more overpowered each iteration.

PS: at least focusing on acceleration goes counter to "just strap on another ton of batteries" tactics. IMHO two tons of technology for transporting one or two persons on land is too much, even if the powersource was rainbows and butterflies.

I suspect that the motors are not the principal limitation on regen. The maximum regen on my Tesla S 70D is 50 kW whereas the total motor power is about 250 kW. I suspect it has more to do with the control system and the current capacity of components in the inverter.

Have you investigated dynamat for noise attenuation?

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