It accomplishes nothing except replacing the cv joints with something that is more expensive, higher friction and incredibly difficult to keep the dirt out of, even with a corrugated boot.
The motor is still in the same location. It also puts a tremendous amount of stress on the inboard bearings. It’s a shaft sticking out on a pole. That means thicker heavier inboard bearings. More weight, more friction.
It also can’t be used on steer wheels.
An exercise in over-engineering.
Newsflash: new models are full of bugs to work out.
As a ex multiple dealer and independent mechanic, I would never EVER buy a first year car. With an inexperienced maker building EV’s, make that skipping the first 2 years. Let the early adopters deal with the teething issues and be patient. Year 3 is where the problems are solved and the car gets good.
The first year reveals the major faults that took time to appear. The second year has them engineering and verifying newer better systems, especially the less important faults and annoyances that got ignored with the initial round of fire fighting. Year 3 gets everything sorted.
The only thing stopping me from EV swapping my mint van is that in British Colombia I can insure a vehicle that is EV swapped, but the insurer absolutely refuses to insure any private car for more than the book vale. ‘Because someone could commit fraud’. Even if I get a professional appraisal.
Yet my bus RV conversion I can walk in, tell them a number and they blindly insure it for whatever dollar amount I tell them. Of course I over-insure that.
I suspect you can get a professional appraisal done in California then insure for that value. You are still classifying it as whatever vehicle you started with. Based off either the frame or body serial number.
They should have made a chevy volt truck.
552kW of charging.
It’s going to be really interesting over the next 10 years as our auto industry went from laughing at the Chinese cars to trying to catch them. We’ll be stealing their IP and trying to catch them as best as we can.
Even BMW recently backpedaled on the software crippled heater seats.
But if it goes this way to make cars cheaper, people will install the hacks to work around this.
Watch the shitty cable connector on those otherwise good CTEK chargers. You can cut them out and replace them with the ‘2 pin version of the trailer connector’. Make sure the hot pin is the female.
Only the most common and easy to replace batteries. GM’s truck with it’s 20 replaceable modules? Sure. A Tesla? No chance.
Cool Prius -nobody
Still my favourite sticker seen on a prius.
CATL is claiming their Gen 2 sodium ion battery will be $44/kWh and 200wh/kg. That is LFP lithium territory. Moderate to low horsepower economy cars will flood the market. There are a LOT of people who don’t give 2 shits about speed. They just want a reliable daily driver.
And the batteries operate from -20 to +60C. That reduces the thermal management needs drastically (cheaper and lighter) and they are really safe (less fire protection needed).
The 3500 cycle counts should put them into the 20 year durability range.
Cheap cars, even if they aren’t super fast will put serious downwards economic pressures on the rest of the cars sold. It used to be that driving a cheap car was miserable. Buzzy and loud. Now even a cheap EV is nice
Perfect. Bring back what vans figured out years ago. Small front ends are better.
This is a solution looking for a problem.
It’s seldom ‘worth’ paying for AAA unless your car is a AAA hunk of shit. You can pay for the same thing from any tow truck company. Ever track how often that sort of thing actually happens? Is really a once or twice in a decade problem. That ends up being a $500 tow. Just pay a local tow truck $100 for the same thing.
I have used one tow truck in 20 years. I’ll just pay for it when I need it.
Keep a cigarette lighter (not battery operated) air compressor and a jump pack in your car at all times.
And when you need AAA it takes hours. A regular tow truck is fast if you call around. Someone is available quickly.
Try a public charger. If it won’t charge it is the car. Press the seller hard to fix this.
FYI, never trust the used car lot safety inspection. I was a mechanic for 8 years and the number of customers who brought me used cars to inspect that actually matched the condition of the used car lot inspection paperwork was ‘round about fucking zero’. ALWAYS get the dealer to do a pre-purchase inspection on a hoist. If the seller refuses this, they are liars and are hiding something.