Future fast cars

[Mega]

https://uk.motor1.com/news/426640/la...ic-conversion/

I see a business that takes the VW ID platform & adds a Carbon fibre body shell......+ a VERY expensive battery tec.

Mike

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

Great!................ 2 ton "Light weight sports cars"

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/n...alpines-future

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

THey need to build an EV version of this:_

[GRG55]

Re: Future fast cars

THey need to build an EV version of this:_

Those things were awful. Sort of a Pinto for the 1980s...without the personality.
The Ford of Europe designed Escort was a far better car in the showroom at that time.

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

Yes GRG, but that's the point!
Back in the 80's/90's if you were a turd (Company car driver) you didn't get a 135 mph BMW Turbo Diesel.........you got this!

But we now live in an era of "Cheap performance" .........we need to go "Back to the Future".

Mike

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

GRG
I beg to differ!

something like this:-

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

Je SUS...........WTF !
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review...2020-uk-review

They want £22,000 for this..............more with extras!

Gee, 108 C02's..
For same ish money you can get a F*cking EV for God's sake!

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

The CCP will be "happy" to help

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

Ah GRG , your like this:-
https://uk.motor1.com/news/427309/20...ept-rendering/

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

Ah, so the rumors are right, it also explains the pit-I-ful ev range!

[GRG55]

Re: Future fast cars

GRG
I beg to differ!

Jeremy Clarkson compares every car against his former Ford GT (the one he sent back to Ford for a full refund, and then promptly went and re-purchased for a second time). They all come up short, except those made in Italy with 12-cylinders.

I was comparing the Escort against the POS Ford Tempo/Mercury Topaz.

My Godmother (who was my mother's best friend) owned a Tempo. Mom had a 1977 V-8 Camaro (ivory with a lipstick red interior) that was getting on in years. She had also acquired a dog (border collie-golden retriever cross; not exactly a lap dog). So after much investigation and comparisons I ended up buying her an Escort station wagon. Nice build quality, respectable interior, excellent quality platinum metallic paint, slowed my mother down enough she stopped getting speeding tickets. Perfect car for what she needed, one could tell it was European which was a big plus for small cars in North America back them (one of my brothers used to have a German made Ford Capri). Never gave her a single bit of trouble (unlike Clarkson's experience with the GT) and she kept it 'till she died.

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

I don't care much about Clarkson, I am far anti ford...........I had 3 & loved them all!

XR2/RS1800/ST line Fiesta .............my latest has done 79,000 miles/ 5 years old ...NO FAULTS!

Here in Blighty every plantpot has an ex fleet BMW/Merc/Audi.......old & smoking, but with enough mid range torque to be "Unhelpful". Back in the day fleet sales were mostly Fords, Escort/Orion's with around 90bhp & limted torque.

What I am hopeful is the END of these Dirty Diesels.......& people being forc------er I mean "Helped" into new small (low out put) EV's.......returning them back to the world of sub 100 mph top speeds.

Mike
Ps Tesla in talks about building a factory here

[GRG55]

Re: Future fast cars

I don't care much about Clarkson, I am far anti ford...........I had 3 & loved them all!

XR2/RS1800/ST line Fiesta .............my latest has done 79,000 miles/ 5 years old ...NO FAULTS!

Here in Blighty every plantpot has an ex fleet BMW/Merc/Audi.......old & smoking, but with enough mid range torque to be "Unhelpful". Back in the day fleet sales were mostly Fords, Escort/Orion's with around 90bhp & limted torque.

What I am hopeful is the END of these Dirty Diesels.......& people being forc------er I mean "Helped" into new small (low out put) EV's.......returning them back to the world of sub 100 mph top speeds.

Mike
Ps Tesla in talks about building a factory here

Tesla already has more car manufacturing capacity than it can fill. And as you correctly observed Mike, it's market share is coming under competitive threat.

However, I got a chance to drive a Tesla for the first time this past Friday. It changed my thinking about the car, and the company.

It was a 6 year old Model S owned by a business acquaintance. That car is packed with technology. And about once a week it gets another software update downloaded automatically at the owner's selected time (in this case usually 3:30 am), so it is functionally very close to a brand-new Model S.

Some of it was gimmicky, such as the electronic fart function. And the "Romance" mode that brings up a video of a blazing fire on the huge main screen along with a selection of Tesla determined mood music. Definitely not the back seat of your father's Oldsmobile.

But a lot of the tech is pretty slick. And the user interface between the driver and the car is superbly easy to use and intuitive. Simpler than a smartphone, and the complete opposite of the giant knob on the console BMW came up with.

As one would expect for an EV, the Model S is fast in a straight line with a top level traction control system to manage the torque. But it's handling is on par with a Cadillac CTS-V, at best. It's just a very heavy car with all those batteries, so you can't really throw it around, although Tesla's engineers have done a great job locating them to minimize the polar-moment-of-inertia.

And the one thing I keep lauding Elon Musk and Tesla is for producing EVs that don't look "weird". Even after all the years since I saw my first Model S it remains a beautifully elegant automobile...arguably still the best looking EV ever made.

The take-away for me is that a Tesla is actually not really a car...in the same sense an iPhone is not really just a mobile phone for receiving and making calls. That has me rethinking where Tesla may really be heading as a company.

[Mega]

Re: Future fast cars

Momenturm in the EV market IS gaining pace:-

Car producers are now having to fit SO much Hybrid stuff that the price difference between an ICE & EV is not much.
For me the model 3 was a watershed, it weights in at 1.8 tons ish.....or the same as a new Honda NSX !!!!!
I love to see a track battle between those two, I suspect Honda would win, but by how much?

The ICE engine is finished in all but a few expensive models (911).

I expect massive Government help with the EV projects, government cars will ALL have to be an EV(that sort of thing).

As for performance cars, well I know a guy who chopped in an Audi RS TT because although it was a "Fast car" the DSG gearbox didn't want to kick down & the 5 cycinder engine didn't want to rev!................right now he driving an MX5, but he driven a model 3 (not the performance one) & was deeply impressed by the "lightening response" (Fast Road bike like).

[GRG55]

Re: Future fast cars

Momenturm in the EV market IS gaining pace:-

Car producers are now having to fit SO much Hybrid stuff that the price difference between an ICE & EV is not much.
For me the model 3 was a watershed, it weights in at 1.8 tons ish.....or the same as a new Honda NSX !!!!!
I love to see a track battle between those two, I suspect Honda would win, but by how much?

The ICE engine is finished in all but a few expensive models (911).

I expect massive Government help with the EV projects, government cars will ALL have to be an EV(that sort of thing).

As for performance cars, well I know a guy who chopped in an Audi RS TT because although it was a "Fast car" the DSG gearbox didn't want to kick down & the 5 cycinder engine didn't want to rev!................right now he driving an MX5, but he driven a model 3 (not the performance one) & was deeply impressed by the "lightening response" (Fast Road bike like).

Starting from such a small current base it's difficult to imagine EV momentum doing anything other than gaining pace.

1. But when governments determine "they know the answer" as to what is "good" for the economy, the environment and the citizens, you can be certain they will ultimately be dead wrong. Let's remember it was YOUR government and the others like it in Europe that years ago decided to force improved fuel efficiency on your economies by making your manufacturers produce small, high-efficiency Diesel engine cars and then forced consumers to buy them. Petrol engines were pronounced to be environmentally unsound and headed for extinction in Europe. Look where that little bit of groupthink left things, LOL.

The idiotic subsidies for luxury EVs that governments hand out transfer wealth from the working poor that pay taxes to the wealthy who don't need or deserve it. Then come the EV charger installations in government parking lots, where virtue signalling politicians give the fuel away free to government workers who drive an EV to work. We already have School Boards here that are spending education dollars installing charging stations and providing the power free to the teachers. How that helps educate children escapes me, but school taxes are going up again, and I'm not expecting any of the increases to improve the knowledge of the next generation.

The other dirty little secrets of EVs are (a) all the fossil fuels and environmental destruction needed to mine and process the specialty metals in the batteries, and the inability (at present) to recycle and recover those economically, and (b) the enormous amount of cheap coal-fired power available to keep the cost of electricity down and make the economics of fueling EVs more attractive than it should be.

2. There's more to consumers deciding what makes a superior vehicle than "lightening (sic) response". Electricity is fast becoming the energy source of preference to power advanced economies worldwide. What people don't realize (or refuse to accept if they are ideologically married to renewables) is the overwhelming majority of new global generating capacity will be fuelled with natural gas; piped if you have the reserves, LNG if you don't. The revamp of the generating and distribution grid to support the conversion to electrification is enormous. Just supporting widespread EV adoption alone is daunting in the scale of the urban distribution systems - think about what happens if 80% of the folks on your street have an EV, arrive home from work and plug in their cars. Think the wires can handle it?

These problems will get solved. Time and money can fix almost anything.
But the cost will be borne by the citizens as we prematurely write off everything from functional refining capacity to coal-fired power plants. Buying an EV will slowly become less expensive. Fuelling it will slowly get more expensive.