The DS4 above is a plug in hybrid, and that's exactly how we use it. Unfortunately they don't import them into the US.
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The Tesla and other Electric vehicle thread.....
- Thread starter D M C
- Start date
Plug in hybrids are part of the problem, not the solution - their time has passed.
Some systems are like that, no question, which I first experienced when testing a BMW 3 Series a few years ago. I couldn't believe an "Ultimate Driving Machine" started yanking at the wheel in corners! It seemed dangerous to me, and I would immediately disable such a system if my car came with one.
Our 2016 Subaru has a mild version that just beeps when it thinks you're leaving the lane. It's a little aggressive, but not that bad, and I've gotten used to it. In fact, it may have been good when our younger daughter was learning to drive, because staying in the center of the lane can be a challenge for new drivers.
We had a full electric DS3 when we first moved here. I preferred it to the hybrid.
I've also had a Prius in the US, and a hybrid BMW I3, but found the electric-only long range to be problematic and inconsistent in finding workable charging stations.
I'm looking forward to seeing the next phase in battery technology in the future.
Solid state. Until then We're keeping the hybrid.
Just sayin', I mean, it's getting late. We're already way too far along the CO2 curve, and keep accelerating. It may well be too late already... ...I like to think I'm trying to do my part, but in all honesty, I'm probably just keeping my retirement costs down. Which is enough, for me, at least.
I believe that we're further along than you think.
Renewables currently make up about ⅓ of the world's energy supply, and the percentage is rapidly increasing. If you look at the curve you'll notice that it isn't linear, but is actually increasing exponentially.
That's because of how the cost of fossil fuels continues to increase while the cost of renewable energy continues to decrease, and the rate of conversion is a function of the difference between the two costs per unit energy.
When the cost of renewables becomes less than the cost of fossil fuels, a critical mass will be reached and this will result in an immediate global rush to switch over.
We're very close to that point now, and by 2030, it won't make evonomic sense for most industries to stick with fossil fuels.
By analyzing the data and extrapolating from the predicted future curves, it seems very likely that global CO² output will peak before 2040 and then rapidly decrease in the following decades.
The planet naturally scrubs CO² from the atmosphere and the percentage of CO² will eventually equalize at close to preindustrial levels (they're currently about 50% higher than that).
The rate at which CO² scrubbing takes place isn't well known but it's likely between 25 - 50 years to eliminate about half of the excess.
Assuming all that is true (qualitatively it's true, but the specific timeline is basically an educated guess by climatologists), we should expect global atmospheric temperatures to peak about 1.5 - 2.0 C⁰ above the natural baseline around 2070 - 2080 and then gradually return to normal in the following several decades.
That's certainly cause for concern and it will have an enormous effect on the world's ecosystems, but it's not the absolute catastrophe that so many had been predicting.
Renewable Energy
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I believe that we're further along than you think.
Renewables currently make up about ⅓ of the world's energy supply, and the percentage is rapidly increasing. If you look at the curve you'll notice that it isn't linear, but is actually increasing exponentially.
That's because of how the cost of fossil fuels continues to increase while the cost of renewable energy continues to decrease, and the rate of conversion is a function of the difference between the two costs per unit energy.
When the cost of renewables becomes less than the cost of fossil fuels, a critical mass will be reached and this will result in an immediate global rush to switch over.
We're very close to that point now, and by 2030, it won't make evonomic sense for most industries to stick with fossil fuels.
By analyzing the data and extrapolating from the predicted future curves, it seems very likely that global CO² output will peak before 2040 and then rapidly decrease in the following decades.
The planet naturally scrubs CO² from the atmosphere and the percentage of CO² will eventually equalize at close to preindustrial levels (they're currently about 50% higher than that).
The rate at which CO² scrubbing takes place isn't well known but it's likely between 25 - 50 years to eliminate about half of the excess.
Assuming all that is true (qualitatively it's true, but the specific timeline is basically an educated guess by climatologists), we should expect global atmospheric temperatures to peak about 1.5 - 2.0 C⁰ above the natural baseline around 2070 - 2080 and then gradually return to normal in the following several decades.
That's certainly cause for concern and it will have an enormous effect on the world's ecosystems, but it's not the absolute catastrophe that so many had been predicting.
I hope you're right, but that just seems like optimistic modeling of something we have no prior experience with.
The UN IPCC report is what climatologists recognize as the official source of climate change predictability and its based almost entirely on models that we have no experience with.
For the record, while I'm not a climatologist, I do have a formal college education in physics and I've been seriously following the science behind climatology and man-made global warming for the past 25+ years. The U.N. has issued six comprehensive reports as of 2024 on the science of climate change (plus policy reports and other supplemental materials) and I've thoroughly read every one of them.
What I said in my earlier post is roughly consistent with the contents of the latest updated report (AR4).
The Physical Science Basis:
AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis — IPCC
All of the reports:
Reports — IPCC
Honestly, that's the most promising thing I've read in a while, thanks. Still troubling enough. And hard work and changes required for sure.
In late February 2022, I leased a Kia Niro EV when I was 72 for $359 a month, 48mo., 10,000 miles, $3500 down and included a rebate discount of $11,150 at the time to $33,800. I actually wasn't intending to get a new car, I was driving a Pontiac SWB Montana minivan for over 20 years, and thought I would just go to the Kia dealer and see an EV in person. After being very impressed with the test drive, and learning that despite my non existent credit history, the bank allowed a lease, I went for it. They even gave me $500 trade-in for the van, for which I was about to spend about $1000 for mechanical work.
The Kia was a perfect choice for me living in Los Angeles, it's big enough to fit my bass rig, I only drive about 3,000 miles a year and never more than 30 miles at a time, and charge with L1 via a 110v plug right next to the car in my garage. I decided on a lease because I don't need to keep a car for 20 years (both my previous cars lasted over 20 years each). I also chose a 4 year lease to keep the payments lower, and because in keeping up with EVs, I knew by 2026, there would be a lot more choices with better technology and lower prices.
I love never having to go to a gas station, I've never had to charge away from home, it has most of the warning technology features, boy is it fast, and I don't even use sport mode. I also find that people think electric cars require a charging system installed, they don't know that in most cases, a 110v wall plug is all that's needed, being that most people drive less than 50 miles a day.
The Kia was a perfect choice for me living in Los Angeles, it's big enough to fit my bass rig, I only drive about 3,000 miles a year and never more than 30 miles at a time, and charge with L1 via a 110v plug right next to the car in my garage. I decided on a lease because I don't need to keep a car for 20 years (both my previous cars lasted over 20 years each). I also chose a 4 year lease to keep the payments lower, and because in keeping up with EVs, I knew by 2026, there would be a lot more choices with better technology and lower prices.
I love never having to go to a gas station, I've never had to charge away from home, it has most of the warning technology features, boy is it fast, and I don't even use sport mode. I also find that people think electric cars require a charging system installed, they don't know that in most cases, a 110v wall plug is all that's needed, being that most people drive less than 50 miles a day.
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I don't know about that part - I love my wall charger now that I finally have it installed. It's so much faster, 3-4 hours to full charge instead of the 12-13 before (which was running a 240v cord from the dryer outlet - 110v would've been even slower).
I tell you though, there is nothing quite like plugging the car in to charge on a sunny day now that I have the solar panels up - saying "foo" to both the fossil fuel and power companies at the same time!!! hehe
CORRECTION:
I made a typo error in my previous post but it's too late to edit it.
I said the latest report was AR4, but it's actually AR6.
I made a typo error in my previous post but it's too late to edit it.
I said the latest report was AR4, but it's actually AR6.
I don't know about that part - I love my wall charger now that I finally have it installed. It's so much faster, 3-4 hours to full charge instead of the 12-13 before (which was running a 240v cord from the dryer outlet - 110v would've been even slower).
I tell you though, there is nothing quite like plugging the car in to charge on a sunny day now that I have the solar panels up - saying "foo" to both the fossil fuel and power companies at the same time!!! hehe
That's my goal for sometime in the next 5 years. I want to get an EV and charge it with a small solar panel system that's dedicated to the car.
Most of my driving for the foreseeable future is going to be an 80 mile round trip commute each day. Being able to plug it in at 5pm every afternoon and let a solar panel charged battery do its job overnight will not only run my car basically for free, but won't take any electricity from the public power grid.
That's the future of transportation in cities. Tens of millions of daily commuters powering their cars with small, cheap solar panels without any impact on the power grid and absolutely zero carbon emissions.
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Have you done the math? It might be "not so small". I've got my entire available roof covered with 9.84kW of panel capacity, and a good sunny charging day looks like it'll top out around 60kWh max. Charging my car like I usually do (20% - 80%) takes about 45kWh, an appreciable chunk of the full capacity of the solar. And not all days will be that sunny - I'll probably only make 30kWh today.
Of course, you're not driving enough to need to recharge 60% capacity in one day, just that 80 miles. Anyway, just saying, gotta do the math first or you roll the dice on whether it'll fit. I kind of rolled the dice - I just guessed and told them to give me as much panel capacity as they possibly could given my roof dimensions. Turned out to be a little more than enough, maybe by a nice margin (depending on the weather lol).
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I'll never be independent of the grid, though that'd be nice. Just trying to help. I can see the day, hopefully, when we WILL impact the grid - the day we put them out of the generation business, then they just become a sharing / distribution network backed by end users rather than massive corporate generation sites ...
Well well this should change things up:
All Teslas in the US get a one month trial of FSD starting this week
Elon sent an email saying it was mandatory that all new purchases have FSD enabled and the drivers experience it at least once.
All Teslas in the US get a one month trial of FSD starting this week
Elon sent an email saying it was mandatory that all new purchases have FSD enabled and the drivers experience it at least once.
Yeah, I did the math. But more importantly, I'm actually trying it out on a small scale as an experiment.
I have a 400 watt solar panel kit that's installed on an outbuilding/man cave on my property. It's nowhere near enough to power a car for a daily commute but it tells me how much real world power I can generate with a micro sized solar panel setup here in the Midwest. It can easily run some LED lights, a computer with a large screen monitor, and several appliances.
Once I have a good idea of reliable capacity, I can scale it up.
I'll be amazed the day it happens that I can have it drive me up to my house and then obey me when I say "park in the garage" - including waiting for the garage door to open. 
Yeah, I've been in "run and gun" mode to an extent on my own home renovations, since they were disaster triggered, but I've been trying to slow down and get a plan together. But I've been changing too many variables at once to really be able to do the math properly - I still don't know the net cost impact of my conversion to heat pump HVAC on my average electrical usage, and here it is I'm semi-blindly adding as much generation as I can afford to the mix - well, "the time was now", in a way - doing all this stuff made more sense while the walls were ripped out downstairs... (but I had no insulation down there half the winter, which threw off any attempt at getting proper estimates too). Sigh.
But the future's so bright, I gotta wear
. 
Like I need another reason to never buy anything from Elon.
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