Nonsense Thread

[roguetoaster]

Just got word that the garage is finally supposed to break ground on Monday.
I'd be more excited if it wasn't a complete dog to get to this point.

Well, I hope it goes well, and be sure to share pics so those of us with building knowledge can tell you how your builders are cutting corners.

[Northern]

Just got word that the garage is finally supposed to break ground on Monday.
I'd be more excited if it wasn't a complete dog to get to this point.

[rturbo 930]

Personally I think EVs are a fad, and will go away within maybe 20 years. They're only gaining traction because governments are pushing them, but people within governments change, and there's no guarantee that the new crop of people will want EVs to become popular like the current crop does. EVs aren't being adopted because they're better, they're being adopted because they're being pushed, and because people are told we have to adopt them to save the planet (which is debatable). On top of the reasons Varg mentioned, I've also heard, but have not confirmed, that we simply do not have the resources to make enough batteries to power all the cars that would be needed to replace ICE cars. And then there's the question of whether or not EVs are actually all that "green" which I am not at all convinced of. Seems to me that a real "green" movement would seek to reduce the number of cars on the road, particularly in cities where cars are more of a nuisance than a necessity.

[varg]

Yeah, that's kinda what european solution was pretty much, a lot of their cities are mostly public transport and stuff like bikes. Not sure if it's the right way, but it kinda worked for them I guess

Well yeah, many european cities are older than the US itself, tiny roads, tightly packed, super dense, zero way to make cars anything but a source of frustration and pollution. Public transport makes sense there, cars don't. Public transportation does not work for people who aren't urbanites. Punishing people who live suburban or rural lives by making personal transportation more expensive for them merely out of some misguided push to make everyone live the city life for whatever reason is wrong. Not everyone wants to live in a city. Personally I can't stand it, I hate being stacked up and surrounded; no privacy, noise all the time... It's to the point that I don't really even like to visit cities, I've been to big cities Tokyo, NYC, Paris, London, Atlanta, Miami, while (some) were neat to see for a short time I saw what I needed to see and was ready to go.

Short of a complete "paradigm shift" in how our energy infrastructure is laid out, like going full bore at Nuclear starting oh maybe 10 years ago, mass forced EV adoption is not going to work. It just can't. Especially on this crazy timeline of 2035. Your average two commuter household will double their electric consumption by switching to EVs. Our grid is nowhere near being able to handle that, especially in places like CA LOL, they have blackouts in the summer now as it is, crush a few million gassers and replace them with EVs and they'll be having blackouts even when nobody has their AC on

[Jaabo]

Without getting too political, because of how poor they are as a solution to a problem, I think the EV push is coming from the same place as the push for urbanization and reliance on public transportation, making having a car more expensive and less practical is a good way to move many people away from being able to have one.

Yeah, that's kinda what european solution was pretty much, a lot of their cities are mostly public transport and stuff like bikes. Not sure if it's the right way, but it kinda worked for them I guess

[varg]

I firmly believe that synthetic fuels will be the way forward, and will save ICE. It's not vaporware tech, Porsche are investing big money into production.

I agree that they are a better way forward, but the legislators have their eye on EVs, and that is enough to make me think it's unrealistic to expect fuel-based solutions to be anything more than a flash in the pan. It doesn't matter how much sense something makes, if the legislators make EVs the "solution" by force of law, that's what we get. EVs are a problem on so many levels, especially considering the total lack of will to build more nuclear power plants and instead to rely on asinine things like solar farms and wind turbines for large scale power generation, and the fact that EVs are bad for lower income people and totally impractical for those who live in apartments or have street parking. Without getting too political, because of how poor they are as a solution to a problem, I think the EV push is coming from the same place as the push for urbanization and reliance on public transportation, making having a car more expensive and less practical is a good way to move many people away from being able to have one.

[roguetoaster]

I firmly believe that synthetic fuels will be the way forward, and will save ICE. It's not vaporware tech, Porsche are investing big money into production.

It's a good way forward for heavy industry and shipping services since they can possibly exploit the sort of net zero emissions of the system. They can also pass the higher cost on to the end consumer, and they have more than enough demand to cause the production to scale. However, I sort of expect combustion powered personal vehicles to get legislated off of the roadways before those fuels can do us much good.

[econti]

I firmly believe that synthetic fuels will be the way forward, and will save ICE. It's not vaporware tech, Porsche are investing big money into production.

[varg]

And what's the difference between an MHD/BM3 tune on an n55 vs some aftermarket controller flash for an EV? Especially in a future where companies use the same components and either upsell or charge a subscription for unlocking increased performance.

How technical do you want to get? It's very different. AC motor control is nothing like increasing boost pressure and injector pulsewidths, you're actually passing more current, and are limited by the motor, controller hardware and the battery.

For what it's worth, it's not going to make economic sense once the production runs get larger to put significantly overbuilt motors and controllers in cars that don't need them so just you can charge some of your customers for a performance increase. That would be economically like putting detuned B58s in 330is so you could charge some people for the M340i tune. Current models are still early mass production EVs, they're going to have to optimize designs more heavily as massive demand increases drive up the prices of essential battery and motor components such as lithium and neodymium. Bigger magnets, and heavier windings, higher capacity batteries, are unlike just putting rods and pistons that are beefier than absolutely needed in a production engine that turns out to be very tunable (think side by side comparison of M50 internals vs M54 internals) or injectors that happen to have some unneeded overhead flow capacity because the hole and pintle/plunger are bigger. That's much more excess material and manufacturing cost than a little more steel in the rod forgings or a little more AL in the piston crown, when you put a 300kW motor in a car that is to be sold with 200kW and simply power limit it with software.

[McGyver]

I remember a Top Gear episode (or maybe Jay Leno) where they talked about Hydrogen cars / Hybrids changing the way we see cars. Much in the same way cars changed the way we saw horses. I don't think ICE will ever go away, but I do think it will be abandoned by everyone except hobbyists. Overall, I think that's probably a good thing. The vast majority of people don't care about cars or performance. The vast majority of cars today probably have too much power for how easy they are to get.

The age of cheap dependable power ICE is definitely coming to an end. If MOPAR is walking away, then it's really done. But the EV power wars are just starting, look at Tesla Model S Plaid vs Lucid Air Sapphire. I feel like the ICE has been pushed to it's limit and the only way to increase performance is EV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDpQpcPpuc&list=PLHKCmmH-x9mK8UKm8V1hMOO9vwl6FjuMB&index=4&ab_channel=Hagerty

I can see a future where motor/battery/controller swaps become the new modification. And what's the difference between an MHD/BM3 tune on an n55 vs some aftermarket controller flash for an EV? Especially in a future where companies use the same components and either upsell or charge a subscription for unlocking increased performance.

All that being said, I'm still building an m20 car, plan to keep playing with my n55 f30, and probably get a miata track toy.

[varg]

I don't think used car prices will ever return to normal, short of a brief dip for a more severe recession. The supply of cool old cars is only dropping and the demand is not.

Currently, the next round of tightening of emissions and fuel economy standards is taking place, legislation which will make ICE cars more expensive and worse. I can't help but wonder if the era of jaw dropping performance we've been seeing over the past decade will be over in 5-10 years never to return, because when CAFE standards and emissions standards are continuously jacked up, how are you going to sell something like an Audi RS3 which out-performs supercars from 20 years ago while at normal mid-luxury sedan prices? How are you going to sell all of these crazy modern turbo cars that make 50% more power with a tune and bolt-ons? Plus we're seeing aftermarket crackdowns we have never seen in the history of this hobby. I know some people are super optimistic about EVs and the hobby, I'm not. EVs are even more black-box than modern ICE cars are, and short of removing the software-based limit by modding/tuning controllers, it just won't be possible to do power mods to them without swapping motors and controllers, and after that battery current capacity will limit you at some point and that's the most expensive part of the car. The manufacturer is incentivized to limit the amount of performance overhead they build into an EV, because unlike an overbuilt piston engine such as an old M50 which will make 3x stock power with a turbo on it and only cost the manufacturer the extra material that could have been optimized out of the designs, there's significant cost involved in putting the bigger windings, better magnets, higher output batteries, overbuilt controllers, into that EV to make it "tunable", and there's no benefit from the manufacturer's standpoint to doing so. And that's just power, EV's aren't going to magically become light, there aren't going to be those fantastic handling driver's cars we so love in EV world, nobody is going to make a battery breakthrough that approaches gasoline energy density any time soon, you can quote me on that one. There's also the looming threat of emissions restrictions being tightened on old cars, and put in place in states which don't have them. This has already happened in parts of Europe, in some of their cities older cars aren't even allowed. Plus, the push for EVs smells an awful lot like what kicked off the scrappage s̶c̶h̶e̶m̶e̶s̶ scams of the late 2000s, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw EVs for clunkers. Can you imagine seeing that old tragic list of cool cars "clunkered" today?

Hey, admin. Why doesn't [s] [/s] strikethrough work on this forum?

[McGyver]

Are you sure prices are returning to normal? Things still look pretty outrageous to me...

[2mAn]

It’s basically an E30 in the fact that it has the location for the engine in front and drives the rear wheels... at least that’s what I think MrBurg is referring to ... I’ve always got some stuff going on

[roguetoaster]

It’s not even a car! It’s a pile of random parts and a dream

edit: y’all want to donate to the cause

I would argue that it should be an E30 now that prices are returning to somewhat more sane levels. In which case I would happily contribute parts.

[2mAn]

It’s not even a car! It’s a pile of random parts and a dream

edit: y’all want to donate to the cause