Electric cars, hybrids, and related vehicles

Do you pronounce it with the accent, “coo-pay,” or like we do as “coop”?

WTF is an Estate?

For some reason this is throwing me way more than any UK/US difference I’ve come across before. MY WORLD IS CRUMBLING

OK, now picture the Monsieur Brian Weelson, wearing a beret and pencil moustache, singing about 'ees leetle doo-say coo-pay, wiss ze rayst of ze Biche Boys seenging 'armony in ze background.

Estate car = station wagon.

Pretty interesting and exciting read on the Tesla and its latest autopilot 0.9 mode.

Funnily enough i was just watching (over the last few days) youtube video’s of the autopilot doing dangerous stuff! I think i had read a news article about it that led to those video’s, pretty scary really.

Here’s another article about how the Tesla autopilot mode is learning based on the driving experience of all its’ owners. It sounds very cool.

Yes, when you think about it, to really drive well you need more than just knowing the base physical geometry of the road, the lanes and speed limits and such, which they can essentially get from google and tomtom and the rest, you need to know how people actually drive on those roads. Very cool stuff.

Self-driving cars will be a truly transformative technology-- once the tech is mature, most of us will have no particular need to own a car any more. We’ll just request a ride from our home to grandma’s house, 10 minutes later a car will show up, and we’ll all pile in then diddle away on our ipads until we arrive at our destination, at which point the car will drive away to its next passenger.

Yeah, that. One of the things I totally didn’t think about until I read some piece point it out is that we’ll have a dramatically lower need (as a society) to keep automotive inventory - most cars sit parked 90% of their day. Think of all the resources that could go to other things with such massively lower demand for automobiles!

West Michigan has a Tesla plant! Just saw this about it on the local news tonight. Still renovating at the moment. Still can’t sell the cars here, though - dealer sales only in Michigan.

It’s hilarious that it is even remotely acceptable to prevent people from purchasing a legal commodity like a car without going through a dealership.

What exactly is the rationale for such a law? Who is it supposed to be protecting?

People that own car dealerships, obviously.

Well yes. I meant who did the lawmakers say it was protecting?
Presumably they make some nonsense story about how it protects consumers from something bad. Like buying stuff cheaper.

I think they actually make the argument that it will prevent job loss at the dealers. Also, the automakers don’t have a delivery system in place to sell direct or provide service to cars under warranty. The dealers handle all that for them.

They don’t really have a good argument. They just enact this kind of legislation because campaign donations.

I think we discussed this in another thread. Basically, dealer protection goes back to the Great Depression, when car manufacturers had oversaturated dealer networks and just pulled dealer franchise agreements (or whatever they’re called) willy nilly. State legislatures responded with a bunch of protections for dealerships, and, lo and behold, dealerships are major financial contributors. Hell, my Congressman is a former car dealer (and ambassador to Switzerland).

This became an issue more recently during the Great Recession a few years ago when GM, under bankruptcy protection and over-extended on its dealer network, cancelled a bunch of dealer franchises.

And yes, the idea that you can’t buy a product from a manufacturer is fucking bonkers, esp. when the middleman experience is as awful as buying a car from a dealership.

So, any thoughts about the Nissan Leaf? We’re thinking of buying a 2015. After the tax rebate it will be about $13,500. We test drove one a couple of months ago and really liked it. The range is rated at 83 miles, which is fine for us. We are urban dwellers and would have a second car for longer trips. We have a driveway and an outdoor outlet, so we could trickle-charge it overnight, and there’s a tax credit if we want to install a faster charger.

It’s the most popular electric car by quite a long way. However chat with your dealer about the new longer range batteries coming around 2017. Both Nissan and Renault teamed up to produce them, so both the Leaf and Zoe will have them, we are talking about double the range so not something to sniff at.

Oh I know about the longer range. These cars are a bit like the old days of PCs when you’d spend a lot on a gaming PC and within a couple of years it would lose 75% of its resale value. Technology gains makes the older models less desirable.

However, they are getting these 2015s off the lot because the 2016s have arrived or are arriving. They’ve knocked $11,000 off the price. I’ll take the shorter range and save that $11,000 for what is still a new car – it has 10 miles on the odometer.

Right now in the US gas is as cheap as I can remember it being. That’s making the EVs a harder sell. We just really fell in love with the idea of getting an EV. These things ride so smooth and quiet, no engine vibration, and the Leafs have great torque so they accelerate quickly.

Money wise, that’s hard to argue. They are basically paying the depreciation hit instead of you. And of course when the 2017 models come out, resale will be awful, but as long as it fits your daily needs, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem since I’m assuming you plan on keeping it.

Can you link a dealer with that price? Or did you have to negotiate already? I was looking at 2013 used Leafs with low mileage (in the last few days I even went and test drove one, small world) and that price is competitive with the prices I was seeing for 2013 models with 20k miles!

Needless to say, I’m very interested. Plus I saw Nissan offering 0% interest for 5 year deals, are you getting that too?

It’s the last one left at this dealer. Other dealers in the area have them but they are pricing them about $5000 higher. And yes, the zero percent financing is available.

I’d contact your local Nissan dealers. These dealers want to move these out. I’m not sure why this particular dealer is selling so cheap, but he did say they start to get penalized by Nissan Corporate if they don’t clear out the old inventory.