EV owners of today and tomorrow

[5030]

*W16, quad-turbo

Whatever it is, it's a lot. 12, 16, whatever. All I know is a tune up costs as much as my buggy cost new. Way beyond my comfort zone let alone my financial where with all as well.

If his wife says ok and he buys one, I'm sure he will let me motor it.

I remember the first time I drove his Tesla gullwing sedan and he told me to let go of the steering wheel and let it self drive. That was totally an amazing experience, especially out here on country roads. Tracked perfectly right into town and made the sharp right to the blinking light as well.

Like I said, being able to drive them and not own them is fine with me.

 

[Grumpycat]

Far as battery conditioning on the Cyber Truck, it don't have to be plugged in to condition, in fact my cousin 'pre conditioned' the battery while we had coffee and doughnuts at the Hampton Inn, before he took it across the road to charge it.

Yes, all Teslas can do that. But if you treat it like an ICE on The Gas Station Model and let it run to nearly empty it won't use the last bit to precondition the battery. That is what happened last year in Chicago.

If on a road trip the battery is likely already up to optimal charging temperature and doesn't need preconditioning. But if it does, and a route is set, and a Supercharger is selected (if needed it will automatically add the Supercharger to the route), then it will automatically start preconditioning before you arrive.

 

[Grumpycat]

Excellent review 5030. One thing I wonder is, if the vehicle has the ability to increase lift in off-road mode, why it doesn't just automatically squat for easy exit when parking and shut down? Heck, city busses have been doing that for 40 years.

Maybe it's selectable option?

Ride height can be "geofenced". I had the air suspension on my 2013 Model S. There were places with speed bumps and rough driveway entrances I could lift the car once to cross then lower, and it would remember to do it the next time there.

 

[5030]

Excellent review 5030. One thing I wonder is, if the vehicle has the ability to increase lift in off-road mode, why it doesn't just automatically squat for easy exit when parking and shut down? Heck, city busses have been doing that for 40 years.

Maybe it's selectable option?

I don't know and I asked my cousin about just that and he didn't have an answer either. When you leave the pavement, the viewscreen (which is huge and occupies the center of the dash) flashes a warning to put the truck in off road mode and then it raises up. That is how I did it as well and he lowered it when we got back into the property but when we left he raised it again. I believe it's more about protecting the battery from getting scraped than anything else and it has some pretty aggressive tires on it as well. It's not a 'Baja' buggy by any means but it's perfectly capable of negotiating unimproved roads and dealing with unplowed snow.

I think the one thing that really impressed me was the ride quality, even off road. My wife's Suburban rides good and so does the Cyber Truck. Very impressive ride, raised or lowered. Elon really put some thought into that aspect.

We had 3 does in the bed plus 3 of us, one in the back seat and us up front and the ride on and off road was unchanged.

My cousin told me the bed actually has more room than his Dodge Ram 4x4 had. Wider and longer and it don't intrude into the cabin space at all. Very thought out design, too bad it's ugly well ugly in my opinion anyway but it is a joy to drive and I enjoyed driving it off road and on road. Typical Tesla, puts you back in the seat hard when you stomp the pedal (on dry pavement that is). It won't let you do that on wet or snow covered pavement and of course the typical no wheel spin or torque steer either. Power delivery from the motors is seamless, just like the 'normal' Tesla's are.

Was coming back on the interstate (our property is about 10 miles from Big Rapids via Interstate and I wasn't paying a lot of attention to my speed and looked at the screen and discovered I was doing 95 in a 75. Got off the pedal real quick and put it on cruise....lol

95 or 75 or 55, feels all the same and no wind noise what so ever either.

I have no idea what it costs to charge it at the Supercharger station, didn't ask and he has I believe 2 chargers at home and one at his office for the company Tesla. He did tell me he charges them late at night when rates are lower.

I will allude to what he does by saying that this Lenovo fully loaded laptop I'm posting on as well as my wife's Lenovo desktop gaming computer, we don't own or administrate. His company owns them both and they are the administrators. This laptop is so complex, I'm scared to do anything with it anyway, but surf the net and look at my emails and reply if necessary. He has all of his programs on it as well, programs I know nothing about and he has 20 employees that deal with clients and do things I know nothing about and don't want to know either. There are literally pages of software programs on this laptop, literally. Don't even have to do anything far as security software either, it's all on here and it's on a VPN as well. Nord, I believe. I do know it has a huge multi Terrabite solid state hard drive in it, he told me that. Probably needs it with all the stuff on here that again, I know nothing about. It's just here...

Nice having family in that business, considering I'm a total wonk when it comes to computers anyway.

Finally, I get no ads on any website I visit and if the site has an issue, I cannot view it anyway. I'm good with it, not that I have a choice anyway. His staff has virtual control over both of them. Only thing that is mine is my tablet and my cell phone and he has some of his stuff on that (tablet) as well.

 

[5030]

Yes, all Teslas can do that. But if you treat it like an ICE on The Gas Station Model and let it run to nearly empty it won't use the last bit to precondition the battery. That is what happened last year in Chicago.

If on a road trip the battery is likely already up to optimal charging temperature and doesn't need preconditioning. But if it does, and a route is set, and a Supercharger is selected (if needed it will automatically add the Supercharger to the route), then it will automatically start preconditioning before you arrive.

You know but I don't so I'm good with it. I'm sure he knows as well. I do know he prefers using the Supercharger stations and his gullwing Tesla has lifetime free charging on it (I believe) at least.

 

[Grumpycat]

You know but I don't so I'm good with it. I'm sure he knows as well. I do know he prefers using the Supercharger stations and his gullwing Tesla has lifetime free charging on it (I believe) at least.

The gullwing (Tesla calls them "Falcon") is a Model X. Free lifetime Supercharging was commonly available years ago and I think as of the first of the year is offered as an incentive to buy a new Model S or X once again. I had it on my 2013.

My Model Y does not have free Supercharging. The one time I used a Supercharger the cost was $0.39/kWh. I only bought $7 to have a comfortable buffer the last 100 miles home. It was a 230 mile day.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/15/how-nissan-profits-dropped.html

I learned about the dire straits that Nissan was in back in 2019 when I bought our 2016 Nissan Leaf SL with a dying battery at 22,000 miles when it triggered the battery warranty 5 weeks after our purchase.

By starting at the top and working my way down we got a new 2020 40 kWh battery from Nissan to replace the dying 30 kWh battery by February 2020.

To this date the Nissan Leaf never got a battery cooling system but the battery chemistry got stable in model year 2018 and beyond but still no active form of cooling for the battery period. The Nissan Ariya comes with a liquid cool EV battery system that seems to work but Nissan never got the bugs worked out of the software for the vehicle before they ran out of money.

I hope the Japanese government dumping Nissan on Honda does not take out Honda. I hear positive things about the new Honda prologue EV.

On a positive note, our new 2020 40 kWh Nissan battery after 5 years is still at 89% battery health wise. The original 30 kWh Leaf battery state of health was at 67% after 36 months.

It was a sad day when our Leaf got totaled 8 months after getting the new battery installed.

After we got it back on the road I did fast charge for 10 minutes at Walmart just to make sure and to know that we got everything right when we rewired in the donor car charging cables.

I have been driving Nissans since 1973 continuously and I hate to see they did not make the leap to EVS but they did pave the road for the maga success of Tesla by priming the market with the Leaf. Currently we plan to keep the 2016 Nissan Leaf for another 5 or 10 years and then pass it on.

While our 2023 Tesla model y dual motor is light years ahead of the Leaf due to FSD yet the Leaf is still an impressive vehicle because we have the heat pump technology on the Leaf and it is still our first EV.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/car-plants-europe-n-america-face-closures-2025-gartner-says-report-2025-01-16/

It sounds like we baby boomers dying off off is crashing the automotive industry but a lot of things have changed in the last 74 years.

 

[NoTrespassing]

Good review. We were sitting at a traffic light the other day and I told the wife that I wanted to get a new Tesla one of these years with all the new features and about that time a cyber truck crossed through the intersection. She says that would be the next Tesla that we get for her to drive and get the horse food. She sees the covered bed as a good way to stock up on horse feed in bad weather and just leave it in the trunk until needed.

We have not test driven a cyber truck yet.

Don't leave feed in a truck unless you want mice, rat, and squirrel damage. I tried it and it cost me.

 

[NoTrespassing]

MSN

California Ditches ‘Unachievable’ Scheme To Mandate Green Trucks​

California regulators withdrew a proposal on Tuesday evening to mandate the sale of zero-emissions trucks over the next 20 years.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) pulled back its request to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a waiver that would have allowed the state to require massive increases in sales of electric or zero-emissions truck models over the coming decades.

According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, as of 2023, only 0.3% of all registered heavy-duty vehicles in the U.S. were zero-emissions models.

According to the Commercial Carrier Journal, CARB’s Advanced Clean Fleets rule would have mandated California’s truck fleet to move to zero-emission models starting in 2024, ending with the fleet going 100% zero-emissions between 2035 and 2042. If implemented, the proposed regulations would have also required 100% of all new heavy-duty vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emissions models by 2036.

“While we are disappointed that U.S. EPA was unable to act on all the requests in time, the withdrawal is an important step given the uncertainty presented by the incoming administration that previously attacked California’s programs to protect public health and the climate and has said will continue to oppose those programs,” CARB Chair Liane Randolph told Commercial Carrier Journal.

Notably, the EPA granted California its requested Clean Air Act waiver to force 100% of new light-duty auto sales in the state to be zero-emissions vehicles by 2035 in December 2024. Other states have opted-in to adopting those California electric vehicle rules, meaning that state regulators and the EPA are effectively pushing the entire country’s auto market toward electric vehicles in implementing the rule.

“The trucking industry and American consumers can breathe a collective sigh of relief today after CARB finally bowed to reality and shelved its job-killing Advanced Clean Fleets regulation,” American Trucking Associations President and CEO Chris Spear told Commercial Carrier Journal. “This unachievable mandate would have raised costs and caused disruption throughout our supply chain without delivering the promised environmental benefits.”