Funny, that was my experience when I upgraded from the GTI to the Golf R. With AWD and 100 more horsepower, it was a much more capable car—but I’m not sure it was more fun than the GTI.
Another case: the Mazda Miata. Those things are way more fun than the numbers imply.
My wife still drives a 2005 Saab 9-2x, which is a WRX in Saab clothes. It only has 113K kilometers on it. I drive a 2014 Ford Escape, and I’ll likely keep that for a long time. It only has 85,000 km on it. Since neither of us has to drive in to work any more, we put hardly any miles on our cars at all. No more than 5k per year. At that rate, it doesn’t even make sense for us or for the planet to sell them and buy electric.
Every time I think of buying a new car, I remind myself that a big car payment really sucks and it’s nice not to be in debt.
That explains a lot. Reminds me of once when I was sitting around waiting for a friend to finish negotiations for his 2007 WRX. The salesman asked me if I’d give 4K in the trade in for my friend’s truck sight unseen.
“4K of your money?”
“Yes”
“Sure”
I hadn’t seen the truck myself. It wasn’t my money, so why should I care?
Hehe, I’m actually going to put money in the WRX soon. It’s had a dent in the fender (someone opened a heavy gate into it) and a screwed up bumper cover for most of a decade. So its going to get some body work. If I feel indulgent, I’ll take it over to Cobb and get a fresh turbo and a tune. Of course, as soon as I get done with that, it’ll probably want some suspension bushings shortly afterward.
Yeah, I think the extra capability is what makes it so boring. You’ve got to get wayyy beyond the speeds you’d normally get to on public roads to get the tires to slip on dry pavement. Two wheel drive vehicles are completely squirrely by comparison.
But it is a complete blast in snow or ice! 
Yep, the BRZ is basically a Miata with enough room to transport a set of track tires and a jack. If it didn’t exist, I probably would have gotten a hard top MX-5.
The Saabaru! It’s nearing the age where you’d be able to get a set of Classic Car plates in Texas. I always get a warm feeling when I see one of those in traffic, and I have no idea why. Any chance hers is one of the weirdo ones equipped with an auto?
Yeah, if for some reason I need to replace either of my cars at this point, I’m happy I could just buy it with cash on the barrelhead now. That’s a much better place to start from for negotiations and I don’t have to discuss stuff like gap insurance.
If our kitchen experience is relevant at all, stainless steel doesn’t stain, but it sure does scratch. And dent.
No, hers is an Aero (turbo) with a 5 speed manual. She won’t drive an automatic sports car. Great car. It’s badically a WRX with an STi steering rack, upgraded suspension and nicer interior and body design.
During the price runup on used cars, Saabarus like hers were selling for $15k - $20K. We only paid $30k for it new in 2005, somit’s held its value better than any vehicle we’ve owned.
Try denting a Cybertruck. A 20lb sledgehammer can’t do it. Sure, the stainless can get marred, but it’s a lot cheaper to buff out fine scratches than to replace or repair a traditional dented quarter panel.
These guys range-tested a Cybertruck and found that it fell a rather significant 20.6% short of Tesla’s claims, or more than 100 km short of the claimed range. Obviously a new vehicle with a new battery, 100% fully charged, and the truck was empty except for the one driver, so conditions were close to optimal. They also tested the Rivian R1T, which also fell short, but only by 7.5%.
Dang, the '07 WRX my friend bought above was an auto one. I wanted to buy it off him because I believe it’d make the perfect bracket racer. He rudely didn’t call me when he decided to get rid of it. They’re amazingly rare, so I keep my eye out for another one.
Yeah, I still get letters from local dealers with offer numbers that I think are insane for a car with 130K+ miles on the odometer. But as I said, I didn’t buy it to sell it.
Yeah, we get the same from the dealer we bought our Subaru from in 2017. But like you, we’ll own it until it falls apart.
Their range test isn’t the same as the EPA range test, and really isn’t comparable. I could come up with a range test where a Tesla/Rivian/whatever would exceed the EPA range and it still wouldn’t tell you much.
Traditionally, Tesla’s cars have been more energy efficient than the competition.
According to the Electric Vehicle Database, the most efficient EV is the Tesla Model 3, which only needs 137 Wh/km. The average for EVs is 195, Most passenger cars come in around 175 or so. Hyundai is right behind Tesla, though.
Tesla’s gain their efficiency from better batteries, heat pumps instead of heaters, lighter weight through giant stamped structures, better software, etc.
I would expect the Cybertruck to be significantly more efficient than the Lightning. It has a heat pump vs a heater, the new battery cells are supposedly 10% more efficient, it uses induction motors in the back which may affect towing performance, and Tesla has a lot more experience with EVs than Ford, which is also handicapped by having to use an existing gas truck platform.
The worst vehicles on the list, btw, are all minivans or cargo vans. The worst passenger cars come in between 210 and 240.
Not really; they were on the big all-terrain tires, and it was fairly cool out (45 F), and it was on the fast side. 20% loss vs. rated is just about what I see on my Model 3 under the same conditions. I get 300 miles on the 19" aero wheels, a warm day, and 65 mph. I get <250 mi on the 20" sport tires, cold conditions, and 70 mph.
The Rivian does seem to do a little better, relatively speaking, though the two tests weren’t super well-controlled. Seemingly small factors can make a big difference. I’ve seen about a 3x difference between best and worst conditions.
Another review, with some mild off-roading and towing:
The towing impact was actually smaller than I expected. They’re towing a 3000 vehicle, not particularly aerodynamic and on some pretty knobby tires, and get 717 Wh/mi, which gives a ~175 mi towing range. That’s less than a 50% range hit. Something like a small Airstream trailer should do even better.
I kinda wonder why there aren’t efficiency-optimized trailers out there. Even with an ICE vehicle, it makes a difference. A ground skirt, more aerodynamic shape, low-rolling-resistance tires, etc. would add up to a significant difference. Maybe Tesla will put something together.
do we have a good understanding on how those individual items impact “efficiency”? …
I’d be interested in understanding which one has the greatest impact …
some could probably be deduced by creative “A-B” driving between models (e.g. CT vs. Lightning):
- impact of heatpump - heating on/heating off driving
- weight - city traffic vs. slo-mo (40mph) highway driving (weight is not much of an issue at constant speed, but is an issue when you constantly have to accelerate from 0)
- recoup: going down a long standardized incline - how many Wh are there recouperated x model
I have the feeling that Tesla’s controller are better at converting Wh into wheels turning than others, but obv. have nothing to proof/support this hypothesis-zero. Could be even things like recouperation
thoughts?
I guess the aerdynamics is where the money is in a trailer (most still seem pretty much brick-shaped) … rolling resistance of tires seem negligable … (on a flat road you can push a trailer by hand) … right airpressure seems more important
of course there is a reason why trailers are brickshaped … so there is this trade off.
Agree.
But the deeper problem, which affects EPA gas mileage ratings for ICE / diesel too, is that these tests are flattering to the manufacturers and misleading to the customers.
Not quite as bad as VW’s “dieselgate” where the car was programmed to recognize when it was being tested and behave differently, but overall having official tests intended to give useful info to consumers that don’t really do that isn’t helpful.
Yes, if one vehicle gets 18mpg in the EPA test and another gets 19, yo know that much. In your driving with the 18 or the 19 give you better range or lower per-mile fuel costs? No way to know.
Induction motors are useful for a different reason, unrelated to towing. Vs. permanent magnet motors, they’re a tad less efficient under load, due to resistive losses in the rotor. The PM motor just gets that part for free. But under no-load conditions, the PM motor is a tad less efficient, because it has to be driven slightly to prevent cogging (variation in the torque due to the fact that the magnets can’t be turned off).
So PM+induction gives you the best of both worlds. Under acceleration, you get the power of two motors (as well as AWD when needed). But at constant speed, one of them has negligible impact. Even when towing, the power requirements are going to be less than a single PM motor, so the induction motor can still turn off completely.
There’s a way to do a little better, which is to have two PM motors, geared for peak efficiency at different speeds, and have a clutch system to disengage one or both. The Lucid does that (and the Tesla Semi). But it’s extra parts and complexity and not necessarily worth it lower on the price spectrum.
I looked around and it seems there are some efforts to make efficient trailers. Here’s one, for instance:
The main thing is that it reduces frontal area by lifting up when in use. Only about half-height (hence half the frontal area) when being towed. But, not cheap, and you can’t buy it yet.
It’s also self-propelled, or at least has that as an option. And has solar panels on top, which isn’t quite as useless as cars with panels on top (they claim up to 3 kW). Not remotely enough to charge while driving, but enough to be interesting if you stay at a campsite for a few days.
So, people are at least looking into this stuff. Going to be a few years before it’s commonplace, though.
This seems to be the most active Cybertruck thread, and I’m trying to not to post it as Pit-bait:
So, yeah, early build quality is apparently still sub-par. But as many noted, same issue on many early Tesla models. Still… not a good look for a vehicle at or near $100,000.
The door seam slightly out of alignment? a panel sticking out slightly more than it should? Those are exactly the kinds of problems you expect on a new vehicle of a completely new design coming off a completely new assembly line.
I watched a video on the Ford F-150 Lightning yesterday where the guy spent the first ten minutes just talking about all the build issues with the truck.
And I suspect that if the first buyer had gotten a hand-inpected vehicle to make sure it had no assembly issues, people would have cried foul and said that Tesla was gaming the review system.
If the battery pack fails early, or the motors fail or some other serious problems come up, then we have a real problem. Uneven panel seams? Tesla has had those for years. It doesn’t seem to matter. The first Model 3 I saw turned me right off because of the visible fit an finish issues.
And as Musk says, the stainless construction is very hard for hiding errors. You can’t roll the edges, for example. Every little misalignment shows. So it’s possible that the Cybertruck could be built to better tolerances than other vehicls and still have some visible alignment issues.
This is the really bad one. I’m not sure if it is the body panel or the top trim piece that is messed up, but something like this should never have made it past the factory quality checks, let alone delivered to a customer.
This article gives a handy location diagram for that bit of panel that’s popped out.