New vehicles from Automakers

[ESmith]

One thing I remember about going to the State Fair auto show year after year in the early-mid-90s was the engine cutaways. I want to say it was the Cadillac North Star that had the grandest, most prominent cutaway where one could not help but notice that the starter was practically buried in the engine.

When I replaced the starter in my 1996 F150 the biggest challenge was removing the wires from the original starter - otherwise easy under-engine access and 2 bolts then some agony installing the new primary battery harness (because corrosion).

[jast]

the starter was practically buried in the engine.

Family with Northstar B I T C H about this!
The first time I noticed one like this (a v engine with the starter motor nestled in the center of the v) was on a Lexus SC400. It needed starter contacts (it also had 240k miles, but still would have been far easier if the starter were “properly mounted”).

[Ferman]

. Spark plug replacement on the Subaru looks to be a “pull the engine” task thanks to the cylinder heads nestling up against the wheel wells - I’m hoping they used d_mned good spark plugs…

Not quite a remove engine, but close enough. Remove bolts at almost all mounts(including transmission’s), lift/tilt engine/tranny assembly enough to gain access. Repeat as necessary(often when you want more ponies than stock).

Every single day, the new vehicle engineers (I am one) work really hard to balance durability, purchase cost, infotainment, and other things consumers care about to come up with what we think is the best balance for a given pricepoint and product.

What would the car you would come up with if you were t/asked?

[Bill]

In terms of technologies, I think it’s best to be agnostic. The USA, Europe, China won’t implement a carbon tax, so its hard to be agnostic. We tend to make policies that “force” toward the “correct” answers. We’ll keep seeing more and more fuel efficient vehicles over time because of this. The simplest solution that would get rid of all the CAFE regulations, electric generation plant strangleholds, and green new deal crap is to implement a price on carbon. Alas, politics makes that less palatable than the ridiculous smattering of regulations I have to put up with now. Thank human nature I suppose.

We already have a price on carbon because fuel is not free.

The long term trend is toward better fuel economy though many continue to still love trucks and SUVs.

Some lament that the price of gasoline and diesel is too low to change behavior. I say

A gallon of gasoline contains over 100,000 BTUs of energy. Heating a home may take on the order of 50,000 to 100,000 BTU per hour. If electricity was charged the same as gasoline in terms of energy content, there will be much complaining.

[Bill]

Probably going to take more than just forced-air to keep things nice and chill within the battery pack, to say nothing of enormous contacts and conductors.

I was thinking more in terms of hoses for a coolant/refrigerant such as liquid air.

The energy density and relative ease of handling liquid hydrocarbons is greatly underappreciated by most.

[Bill]

Ah yes, the dreaded “Step 1: Remove Engine” problem.

I just replaced the alternator on my 2000 Celica last night, an operation which took about 2 hours, not including dinner breaks. Fortunately, my biggest issue was getting a socket on the belt tensioner, which has part of the body right next to it. The rest of the replacement was uneventful. Toyota has helpfully designed both the starter and alternator with enough access that R&R is straightforward. Even removing the A/C compressor looks fairly simple, so that’s good to know for future reference.

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The official procedure for replacing the heater blower motor of an '85 Supra begins with “remove the dashboard.”

Fortunately, experience has shown that with some creative rotating and wiggling of the motor and its attached squirrel-cage fan, Step 1 was not necessary.

[ESmith]

I was thinking more in terms of hoses for a coolant/refrigerant such as liquid air.

Sure. Chilled distilled water, antifreeze, liquid nitrogen, whatever. Purging it before/after a quick charge would be interesting.

It’s a second-order concern relative to the staggering instantaneous power delivery requirements that impose significant design considerations that otherwise have nothing to do with routine operations. The demographic that can’t function without 2 minute fill-ups will continue to purchase ICE vehicles because they have a litany of other complaints about BEVs. Those that opt to travel long distances or otherwise need quick charging ala Tesla’s supercharger / J1772 level 2 / ChaDeMo / CCS ($deity help us from endless standards proliferation) seem accepting of the ~30 minutes / ~80% proposition that the vehicles are engineered for, well aware that frequent fast charging at ~2C is hard on the battery pack. I’m not sure that refrigerating the pack at higher charge rates (10 min/6C, 5 min/12C, 2 min/30C) would mitigate this effect given that current fast-charging already uses the car’s inbuilt pack thermal management systems.

The energy density and relative ease of handling liquid hydrocarbons is greatly underappreciated by most.

~36 kWH of thermal energy per gallon for gasoline if I recall. Even with practical Carnot cycle engine designs peaking at ~65% efficiency and real-world personal vehicle engines seeing perhaps half that it’s still an amazing amount of energy that one can carry around in a typical gas tank.

Gasoline and diesel are pretty easy to handle as a fluid whose vapors are heavier than air. Vehicles may burn down to the bare metal chassis periodically but it’s rare enough that we don’t much worry about it; we’ve learned through decades of experience how to handle the stuff.

BEVs are unlikely to offer the kind of range that’s possible with today’s ICE vehicles using available technologies. They’re immensely more efficient with their stored energy than ICE but the lower energy density can’t be overcome. But for some of the market the ~200, ~300 miles of range that newer EVs offer with the promise of fast-charging for longer trips (with its understood compromises) is more than adequate for a daily commuter.

[kinosh]

Sorry, I should have clarified.

A carbon tax on top of current costs (which does not implement a tax). Current thinking is that carbon costs society ~$40-$50/ton and that translates to $0.25-$0.30/gallon for gasoline.

Nothing wrong with trucks and SUVs. The issue is driving them 10kilomiles/yr (I’m going to just roll with my new unit “kilomiles”) as daily drivers. But that really speaks to how dependent we are on vehicles due to land use patterns.

[Brandon_Green]

What will make EVs common is some kind of a standardized swappable battery pack.

IMO it’s not the speed of charging, but simply the cost of batteries that is preventing even faster adoption. (Tesla doesn’t release exact battery costs, but the price is clearly trending down)

Every scenario is different, but for me (home owner, occasional in state road trip, rare multi state road trip, willing to spend an unreasonable amount of money on a car, own a 75kwh model s) I effectively never wait on charging, increasing the charge rate wouldn’t benefit me at all. I have a level 2 charger in my garage and plug my car in every time I am home, each morning my car is fully charged and I never even think about range. Of course this wouldn’t apply if you lived in an apartment without your own parking space / charger.

For in state road trips such as travelling to houston, I stop at the Corsicana Collin’s Street Bakery, in the time it takes to go in, eat lunch, and feed baby, the car is ready to go and I am again never just sitting around waiting on the car to charge.

For longer range road trips, current supercharging speeds would add about 20% increase in total time, for instance if you drove to florida you would be driving for 20 hours with an additional 4 hours of charging along the way. I take long range trips so rarely that the convenience of never having to stand around at a gas station more than makes up for the time I would spend charging during a 20 hour drive.

[flumph]

Realistically, no one will have any modern cars or older cars in a few decades, because dinosaur squeezings are going to be entirely gone or relegated to the track.

You’ve got a good point, but it’s also worth mentioning that it’s actually fairly easy to retrofit a gasoline engine to also run on corn squeezings. Knock rating of ethanol fuels is often actually a lot higher than pump gas, so you can run all of the timing. In the long term, for enthusiasts, this is a good option, and one that many have already taken.

[Raymond]

because dinosaur squeezings are going to be entirely gone or relegated to the track.

Don’t forget, you don’t need that for diesels. Our old 06 JETTA TDI purred much smoother on B100 than it did on dino.

[careyritchey]

time to turn her into a dedicated track day car… ready for the LS swap?

[carpa]

My experience with Biodiesel is that it eats gaskets not designed for the additives. I’ve had plenty of people say they haven’t experienced it, but I remember a good chunk of bus maintenance at TAMU Transportation Services was dedicated to replacing gaskets that had failed on two year old buses.

[flumph]

You misspelled Hayabusa swap.

[ESmith]

You’ve got a good point, but it’s also worth mentioning that it’s actually fairly easy to retrofit a gasoline engine to also run on corn squeezings.

I expect dinosaur squeezings to be widely available well beyond our lifetimes.

Corn squeezings strike me better used as food than fuel, nevermind the low-to-negative energy ROI involved in ethanol production. Fine for hobbyists but not sustainable on a large scale.

Cellulosic ethanol (or any other biofuel) from biomass without screwing up the soils with minimal additional inputs makes more sense but that nut doesn’t seem to have been cracked to a satisfactory degree.

Our old 06 JETTA TDI purred much smoother on B100 than it did on dino.

Biodiesel strikes me an even more acute scale problem than ethanol. There’s only so much waste fryer oil, rendering plant drippings, and other sources of waste long-chain hydrocarbons. Making it from fresh feedstocks has the same energy ROI problem that plagues ethanol distillation.

[Ferman]

Gasoline still has quite a bit to go.
Manufacturers are still holding out(need to get reliable) a lot of technologies that can improve fuel economy.