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.
Remember when tesla ‘was losing money on every car they sold’? They weren’t. They were amortizing the r&d/tooling costs over 3-5 years.
This is the cost of rebooting to build EV’s. You absorb the cost of the factory and designing a new type of car for half a decade. Anyone saying this also needs to be learning from the historical business cycle.
Ever leave your truck in 4 wheel drive and try to turn a corner? You can get some odd handling characteristics.
That said, I’d take a 2wd mountain bike for trail use in a heartbeat. Although 2 motors is a weight penalty. The off road e-bike market has been shifting from high powered heavy bikes to mid powered lighter weight bikes.
It was a low volume practice run. It was never made to sell in high volumes. Build the first gen of that new aluminum monocoque chassis, motors, inverters, battery, get it out there to see how it handles the real world. Then they can focus on building a 400,000 truck a year production line.
Taking a risk on their golden goose trucks had to wait so that the fools buying the hummer can deal with the teething issues.
And the spec changes show with the new truck. 30% more range is a huge leap.
And some cars blow motors. Range Rover had a 1 in 13 engine failure rate while under warranty 15 years ago.
It’s fine. Teslas have gone 500,000 miles of taxi duty and supercharging hell abuse. Just use the car and stop worrying about it.
Mexico accounts for 25% of auto manufacturing. It is significant.
Seen what is happening with Chinese cars? They are pumping out $20k cars that don’t suck. China is building out massive car factories in Mexico ‘for the Mexican market’. Buying up battery material suppliers in Morocco because that gets around NAFTA. Also all of a sudden the Chinese cars are doing well in crash tests. They know how to copy good crash structures just fine now. Especially since Geele bought Volvo.
They aren’t concerned about the Mexican market. They want a piece of the American market and that price competition will be fierce.
Auto makers are price gouging, pure and simple. What they don’t want to admit is that it almost crossed the point where making an EV is cheaper. Emission certifying a ICE motor is a 9 figure expense. 9 figures! Once the battery and electric motor factories are paid off, a basic electric car is a really simple machine to make. Unfortunately the trend has been to turn them into tech products full of garbage we don’t need. As price competition heats up, stripping down the cars to be simple again will be the solution for the cheap market. The core electric car drivetrain is actually simpler than the same ICE drivetrain when factoring in emissions equipment.
China and Tesla will force the rest to have price cuts. Maintain your old car and be patient. There is a price war looming.
The moores law of batteries seems to be around 15-20% per kWh per year, with Sodium-ion poised to take over the cheap city car market at half the cost of lithium-ion.
I am definitely going to test drive one, but not til year 3 of production. Give the early adopters time to find the faults for me.
That cab to box pass through and a canopy might make a nice trades van replacement. I absolutely need the range and the electric vans so far have been pathetic.
Electric motors are cheap. 2 smaller motors is a similar price to one bigger motor. If you want 400hp, a pair of 200hp motors at each end is cheaper than a complex 4wd system. But most importantly more efficient. All that complexity and friction of a conventional 4wd system is insanely inefficient. Turning power 90 degrees through gears saps 15% of your power.
Plus independent motors leaves the entire belly oft the car empty. The perfect place for batteries.
I am curious if the suspension is rebuildable, or if it’s a crimped shut time bomb.
Let us know how that suspension holds up. I quote like Rivian, they are ‘the correct size’. But no manufacturer in history has made hydraulic suspension that wasn’t a maintenance nightmare in half a decade.
Buy the first year model. Nothing ever goes wrong with the early models. ‘Everything is built so much better now’.
I’d never touch a boring car like a civic until year 2 of production. Something new and exotic like a EV from a novice maker? Year 3 is where I consider a vehicle.
-ex mechanic.
Get the recommended service guide from the manufacturers website. Same as an ICE car. Everything has a maintenance interval.
Time to force ‘right to repair’ on car manufacturers, including reasonable pricing for replacement parts and open diagnostic hardware. Or this will continue to get worse.
Hyundai got unwanted attention for quoting $50,000 CAD for a replacement battery for a 2017 Ioniq last week.
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.