Never Enough

saforwardlook

Old Man with a Hat
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When it comes to acceleration contests, it seems no winner lasts for long.................an interesting video by Hagerty (if you can ignore the moderator):
 
Yeah @saforwardlook , guess the host moonlights at the comedy club. Shtick aside, he did explain things fairly well.

Mini rant coming. Sorry.

I came from the ICE car business. Born and raised in the ICE era.

Not an engineer by training but worked closely with them in portfolio planning for a decade. Not least among things we considered is "what could our cars do" in the hands of the public. The ones buying 95% of our cars/trucks.

Too much power, safety technologies as options vs. standard equipment, insurance costs factored into TCO (total cost of ownership, etc.,) AND how to be safe (fewer accidents, survivability/protection in case of accidents, etc) in every vehicle we made. A whole lotta product ideas didn't survive that scrutiny where I worked for at a vehcile OEM.

Germany did the 155 MPH thing for safety and environmental reasons. Agree with them or not, they thought a LOT about it. Many of the OEM's bought in. Why? The most grotesque accidents on the autobahn known to human kind. And yes, drive slower you save gas/reduce CO2 emissions

But also, you see what's left of an SUV, that had/still has four people in it, now the size/shape of your kitchen stove after a high-speed dustup.. that sobers the mind of most people.

My observation and maybe this is already in another thread. These electrics are friggin' fast -- even some of the cheap one. You can still have that performance long enough to do some real damage to yourself and others if you;re reckless.

No matter what one thinks of the EV technology, this video shows what 100% torque availability can do. If you drive one .. man, there is notohing like it. But, in a "production" car .. meaning I guess anybody can buy it, and even Darwin Award "candidates" with enough money to own one?

Electrics are here to stay. People are gonna "hot rod" them, and race them in BOTH appropriate and INappropriate venues.

I wish "production" Ev's were "governed" (maybe they are already?) for both safety and emissions (not from the tailpipe of course, but from the smokestacks of power plants working overtime to power the grid that juices these sleds) reasons.

I prioritize safety over emissions. The cars are here first .. the grid I guess is coming later.

Some knucklehead in his "Plaid", or in her "Sapphire", that they went to a dealership and bought it, that can do 155 mph in nine seconds? I ain't diggin that for public roads. Professionals and race tracks, closed courses ... fine. Hell, I hope they can do 1/4 mile in five seconds .. I'd love to ride/drive that car. On a race track.

On my local interstate, the main drag in my city, on a back road near my farm? F*** no! We can't have that .. any MORE than we have it now. Hopefully LESS than now in 25 years when everything COULD be a nine to twelve second quarter mile capable machine.

Rant over.
 
The sane, rational, low or no cost way to achieve public safety is, of course, to mandate that all new cars that have some form of location awareness (gps and street data) or driver assist (camera's that detect, amongst other things speed-limit signs) that they have engine / motor control systems that limit speed to 1.x times the posted / legal speed where they are. There is more than enough precedent in terms of gov't dictating engineering in cars (crash standards, air bags, ABS, seat belts, emissions) that as much as you or I don't like gov't intrusion into commerce and product design and use, there is quite a lot of that in cars already.

Can such speed limiters be bypassed? Yes, even if it means ripping out the entire motor management system and replacing it with aftermarket. But this is where the insurance industry steps and says your insurance is void if you modify your car that way.

They are talking about having new cars with manditory breathalyzers to prevent drunk driving. The bigger horse that has already left the barn is drug-impaired driving. I listen to police and ems scanner. I know that people are driving on meth and fentanyl (to say nothing about marijuana). Quite a lot of people are being found in their cars, slumped over the wheel in retail parking lots where they've just met their dealer to get a hit of fentanyl. Sometimes they've been found on highway offramps in that condition.

I hear, every night, the OPP engage someone who has driven away from them that they've tried to stop. They take off at high speed. The OPP have to slow down, pull over to the side of the road, and radio the incident in. They report their odo reading, describe the nature of the attempted stop, and after a few minutes are told they can resume their patrol at the posted speed limit. And you can hear it in their voice their defeat and frustration knowning they have to let these people go. That is the policy of the OPP now, they can't chase the cars that flee from them. There was an accident a few years ago where a taxi was T-boned during a pursuit and people died.

If speed limiters (and I don't mean 155 mph limiters, I mean something way less) don't come to new cars now in the EV age, it means our politicians want us to die at each others hands in road accidents. I can fathom no other reason.
 
Everybody .. politicians, regulators, manfacturers, citizens (voters), parents .. has a role to play to get society through this transition to EVs.

Coming? Not coming? I for one think its here -- no doubt in my mind. Will the conversion stick? too early to tell. but BIG bets have been made. I think EVs are here to stay (absent a better technology).

People said the same thing about the demise of the horse in favor of the "horseless" carriage. Read the contemporary talk for first 20 years of the 20th century. It'll pin your ears back. Imagine a world IF those horseless carriage naysayers prevailed?

source: 1900-1930: The years of driving dangerously

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We have seen this movie - a technology shift - with the automobile. First ones were on the road in 1896 or so. For the next decade, there were no such things as traffic signals, speed limits, or traffic enforcement irrespective of NO laws, etc.

Hank Ford I - one guy, one company - made his one millionth car in 1915. By 1927, that same ONE company had sold 27M Model T's

Top photo is downtown Detroit in 1917. A lotta horses and people (drivers, pedestrians,) died that those first two decades of the automobile. Buncha factors but excessive SPEED was high on the list in almost any retrospective study of those times.

We went from animals and 2-5 mph, to 20+ mph "overnight". Flesh and blood and muscle, and "steaming piles" on our streets, replaced by steel, and gas, and speed.

And what did the first adopters/manufactures realize early on? People wanted to go .. and go faster. They raced horses against cars, cars against each other, etc., . The first 100 mph car was in 1905. Again, before we had trafffic lights, slow lanes, or even safety glass windshields.

Fast forward 130 years. Another transitiion. EV's vs ICE's.

Sure, its not the same/radical as moving from animals.. but like back then, these NEW "conveyances" are more capable in some respects .. they are quick.

I am a free marketeer by nature/economic preference. I don't want civil liberties trampled by over-zealous market participants, be they politicians or bloggers or voters. I don't want "big brother" in the car with me -- any more than MAY be required for a bit to safely navigate the transition.

I just worry whether we (society) are thinking through this particular technology transition (ICE to EV) with the automobile -- PLUS throwing "self-driving" on top of all that??

We (society) gotta do smart things. I worry that we wont. And we have other technologies that can can come along with these new kinda cars .. hopefully not years AFTER they are ubiquitous

And AFTER needless deaths.
 
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My default position is that the free market comes up with the best solutions without gov't interference.

In the case of the car, we were told that, for example, Volvo was making seatbelts standard before the gov't mandated it (if it wasn't seatbelts it was something else, better crash protection or maybe abs or air bags). We were told that insurance companies had a rule when it came to cars with weight to HP ratios under 20.

When it comes to cars, the gov't and the free market, I'm not so sure, and in fact I really doubt, that we'd have air bags and ABS and crumple zones in cars today if the gov't stayed out of the picture.

The argument that competitive market forces and consumer demand would have given us ABS and air bags and survivable head-on crashes I take with a grain of salt. The only effective countervailing market force is the insurance industry, and when you think of it, it's only because the gov't has mandated you have insurance to drive a car that the insurance industry can have this role in the first place.

The stories I was told or that I've read was that the insurance industry really did exert a force and raise the financial bar in terms of 70's muscle car affordability, so much so that car companies were under-spec'ing their net HP numbers to blunt this.

If 1000 hp EV's cause carnage on our roads then I would hope that would be reflected in their cost to insure. If it takes years and many deaths for the insurance industry to react then that would be a shame. If the insurance industry reacts by increasing premiums for all car owners instead of high-HP EV's, then again that would be a shame but that would probably be what actually happens. Is gov't mandated speed limiters a better solution?

I've read about somewhere, in some country right now, they are thinking of adding an extra sales tax to EV's that have motors that exceed a certain power spec (and it's not because of safey - it's because of the argument that hi-output motors are energy wasters).

If you don't need a 1000 hp motor to move an EV to 60 MPH in 10 seconds, and if a suitable 250 hp electric motor is cheaper, then why aren't competitive market forces working to give consumers that choice NOW? My biggest complaint about the EV situation is that nobody wants to build an EV without 90% of the electronic junk in the car and cut out thousands of dollars in costs and deliver the car with a huge reduction in the sticker price.

EV's in particular are loaded up with stuff that really does add to the sticker price and there seems to be no competitive pressure to offer a range of models without the extra junk. So in that sense I don't see the auto industry having a connection to market and consumer forces in a way they did in the past.
 
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I largely agree with ya boss.

I saw from inside -- after the fact -- an OEM the things we "discussed" BEFORE I got there .. on emissions, airbags, low compression, under-rating HP and torque, 55 mph speed limits, and about a dozen other "things". I was there for CAFE management, whether to supercharge a production V8, put ABS on very thing we made, etc.

Ayway, I called "speed limiters" by the term "governors". Something to keep the "masses" from trying to .. because they EASILY can .. sprint through a 1/4 mile school zone at 150 mph. On a lark cuz they are not smart, running from the cops, because they're a**holes, or they are homicidal/suicidal or both.

Should we allow manufacturers to build nine second quarter-mile cars? Sure. Should we let people .. by themselves .. make the decision NOT to drive like that? Trust their good judgement? Let anybody buy such a car, OR make sure a car relatively unaffordable?

I have my doubts.

Nine second quarter mile cars exist today. Sub four second quarter mile top fuel cars exist today. You will never see one on a public road though, under its own power, with "Goober" behind the wheel with a beer in his hand.

I don't pretend to know "what" we (society) should do about these electric gazelles in our midst and relatively soon to be in high volume production. I am just one guy with an opinion .. and a vote.

I argue that 'Something" needs to be done. Sooner in this cycle than later. I do NOT vote to let the market sort it out. I do vote for appropriate safeguards.

Maybe we drove this thread off track. @saforwardlook look will weigh in with his intent for starting this thread. I will follow his lead.:)
 
I'm good with the government amount in my 1968 Charger, it is speed limited to my crotch area. Speed limiting is about as useful as 85 mph speedometers. Please tell me when you are going to limit all cars so I can go buy that bullet.
As far as the video goes there is not a vehicle on there that appeals to me to own, ride in, drive, sure thing. Those are all play toys with "look at me" written all over. I don't care about EVs and don't dislike them, but the push and flashiness of manufacturers to grab attention is completely backwards from a successful product line. Look at the 1964 mustang (most successful car launch in history) most of what they sold was 6 cylinder small brake and wheel (a Ford Falcon, which the car was based on in a pretty package). You find that in a woman you marry the girl. Not the high$$$ escort or movie star that you will be husband number 6. When EVs turn practical and all this rich fanboy blows over we'll see which one is a keeper.
 
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I just posted the video because it seems that technology is opening up new doors faster than most of us can comprehend it and wonder just how well things have been thought out in the "big picture".

Will police cruisers need to be Lucid Air Sapphires going forward or would that just lead to more mayhem as just one of many questions..................

NHTSA seems like they are sitting on their hands............................and that good judgment these days is absent so many minds, especially when I look at the news headlines lately and at the limit, mental illness is growing fast and furious.......................
 
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that's where .. in too many "mini-rant" words .. I went.

I am convinced we (society) have a collective "mental illness" with new things.

the ICE vs EV conversion just another in a long line ... I read (paraphrased) once. "the rate at which technologies advance is almost always faster than the rate 'society' adapts to the changes. Careful we don't fall in that trap!".

I can think of ten things in my lifetime, and a few dozen I have read about in historical contexts.

I worry about this transition ....

A "person" is smart. "People" tend not to be.

Heard that in the fifth grade. Didn't get it till I was in my 30's.
 
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I worry about this transition ....
This one is not like the others. Although I think cars/trucks are lost in their own mess. Styling takes a back seat to safety. There are dozens of safety features on today's vehicles to the point we're it is distracting. Info-tainment center in the middle of the dash that would have not fit inside a middle income house 40-50 years ago.
It's not the speed that kills, it is the fact that you drive 75 mph right into a hard object without any evasive maneuver because you were scrolling Facebook or any other of the 100 social sites while listening to isolation radio/steaming whatever, while listening for Trudy the travel ***** to tell you 13 times your turn is coming, while your car puts itself back into the lane by itself, while the forward collision warning is being relied on to stop the car if it gets too close to something. With all that going on we still manage to wad the damn things up. Today's cars are a victim of their own tech. EVs and speed limiters are not going to stop people from killing their cars and other people with them. Neither is the NHTSB unless they put a actual person monitoring your driving in the car with you. Best thing IMO the NTSB could do is make pop up ads about saftey flood your phone when it is moving more than 20 mph. If your not looking at it, it will not bother you.
 
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with ya boss, but I will add. This btw, what I about to say is "abstract" until it becomes "personal".

No matter what we move around in, no matter what we (humans) have and will EVER move around in, will kill some of us.

One wants a vehicle no one can die in? Or kill someone else around it? Doesn't and will never exist. And not, at least, still enjoy the utility our planes/trains/automobiles provide us.

Benefits > risks. So we take the risk.

We rationalize our decision making to a point where our "losses" are acceptable.

round numbers. ~1.5M die WW in vehicle accidents, out of ~7.9B on the planet, per year. thats .02 percent (0.0002), or 2 people per 1,000 people die right now..

Not the same rate everywhere .. too high if one of the two is a loved one, or a friend, even a stranger for that matter.

But we accept this risk as a society.

unless we abolish driving (will NEVER happen and I dont want it to happen either), we are gonna be waddin' up these conveyances and killin' ourselves and each other. Random chance, bad luck, acts of God .. whatever one believes .. makes this 100% true

Will EV's increase this rate? Doubtful it will go up statistically significantly. Might MORE people die that DIDNT have too? Probably, MORE than we thought .. that's my concern.

I just wanna reduce the likelihood of the risk I, my kids, my friends, society agreed to take -- but DONT want to happen, even to the stupid people in the society -- to be a small as it can be.

I worry too about all the gadgets in modern cars irrespective on type of propulsion .. Sh*t's crazy man.

But the laws of physics on this planet says speed kills. Excessive speed kills MORE, absolutely and as a rate per capita, when you stratify the data.

Give the population FASTER cars? SMH here boss. These jackrabbit golf-carts just arent yet the safest they can be ..even after all the gadgets we put on them.

we need a better way... and I don't think we (society) are thinking hard enough about that.
 
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