Anyone wanna buy a Tesla?

not only Teslas but almost any EV. The batteries don't work as well in the cold and using the car's heater just depletes the battery faster.

See": "They don’t have these problems in Norway" in https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/business/tesla-charging-c...

While you're at it you could ask: Anyone wanna buy a Boeing?

Buyers can collect them immediately. Just bring a trailer or tow truck. Imo, the only EV that makes any sense today is a hybrid. Those drinking the full EV koolaid, well, they can keep their EV's.

It's a no. Next vehicle 6.2 liter V8. Quite the opposite.

A coworker just described his experience to me on Tuesday, buying and owning a brand new Tesla. His car was unrepairable and Tesla bought it back, it was at the dealer for one month doing nothing before that decision.

We already know today it's darn near impossible to maintain a car without DIY. My buddy rolls in with a Honda CR-V for brakes, and leaves the dealership $1100 poorer.

Now most of us think, darn,I could DIY that job for $250, maybe $300, OE parts.

Now imagine not being able to DIY and simply take out one's Mastercard. For most of us, it's not cost is no object.

Anyway, the way the coworker described the Tesla service experience as not something I would subject myself to. The way he put it was it's the standard rip-off of auto repair, plus an Apple Genius type talking over your head. I'd rather argue with a health care insurance co on a claim, sounds less painful. Or maybe shop for HVAC.

Can't read the story at the link without a subscription.

No Thanks

I’ll pass!!

exerpt:

" They don’t have these problems in Norway.
As people in the industry study what went wrong in Chicago, some suggest that the charging infrastructure may have been simply outmatched by the extreme cold weather.
“We’re just a few years into E.V. deployment at scale,” Mr. Gore said. “This is not a categorical problem for electric vehicles,” he added, “because it has largely been sorted out in other places.”
Some of the countries with the highest usage of electric vehicles are also among the coldest. In Norway, where nearly one in four vehicles is electric, drivers are accustomed to taking steps, such as preheating the car ahead of a drive, to increase efficiency even in cold weather, said Lars Godbolt, an adviser of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, which represents more than 120,000 electric car owners in Norway.
Charging stations in Norway see longer lines in the winter than summer, since vehicles are slower to charge in colder weather, but that has become less of an issue in recent years since Norway has built more charging ports, Mr. Godbolt said, citing a recent survey of members. Also, the majority of people in Norway live in houses, not apartments, and nearly 90 percent of electric vehicle owners have their own charging stations at home, he said.
Around the world, 14 percent of all new cars sold in 2022 were electric, up from 9 percent in 2021 and less than 5 percent in 2020, according to the International Energy Agency, which provides data on energy security. In Europe, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and Denmark had the highest share of electric vehicles in new car registrations in 2022, according to the European Environment Agency.
Cold weather is likely to be less of an issue as companies update electric vehicles models. Even in the last few years, companies have developed capabilities that allow newer models to be more efficient in the cold. “These new challenges rise up, and the industry innovates their way to not completely but at least partly solve many of these issues,” Mr. Godbolt said.
All vehicles, including ones powered by diesel or gas, perform worse in cold weather, noted James Boley, a spokesman for the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, a trade association that represents more than 800 automotive companies in Britain. He said that the problem was less about the capacity of electric vehicles to run well in cold weather, and more about the inability to provide necessary infrastructure, like charging stations.
With a gas or diesel powered car, drivers have complete confidence that they will find gas stations, so are less focused on their decreased efficiency in cold weather, he said. “If electric vehicle charging infrastructure isn’t in place, it can be more of a concern.”
Mr. Spencer, the Uber driver, said the economics of driving an E.V. for a ride-sharing service may not work in Chicago winters. Uber said in a statement that it offers charging discounts for its drivers, but Mr. Spencer still worries.
“The payout is the same, but the cost to drivers, with all these extra charges, is much more,” he said. "

You need proper tools to view sites that pull such shenanigans.

1) Install ublock origin for your browser if not already installed
https://ublockorigin.com/

2) Go into the extension settings, filter lists. At the bottom, select import. It will ask for a url. Enter the url from below. The link content gets updated periodically as needed. Ublock origin will pull the link content once a day (note the expires:.... in the 2nd line of the actual txt file)

https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filter...

3) Click the blue apply changes button on the top left corner.

4) Refresh the page you're trying to view. Sometimes a hard refresh is needed (ctrl-f5).

Enjoy. Note, this also takes care of any youtube ads.

Edit, looks like a change in the most recent definitions no longer works on nytimes. Use this one from yesterday.

https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-clean-filter...

Edit, there's also paywall extensions available from the same author

firefox: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...

chrome and chromium based browsers: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

It seems these are not available from the chrome store for obvious reasons. It is on the firefox store.

This link may get you past the paywall without too much grief.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/business/tesla-charging-c...

The Canadian Federal government has mandated that by 2035 only electric cars will be sold new!
Bunch of idiots!
At my age I’ll never see that! I’d never by one of those PoS!

For the type of driving I have done the past 3 years, an EV would be practical. I have a heated garage with plenty of power available for a charging station, all of my trips have been 200 miles or less round trip. That said, I don't want to be restricted by range if I need or want to take a longer trip. So when the need arose last April where I needed to buy a new car, I opted to go with a hybrid ... a 2023 Toyota Crown. It is my first hybrid, first AWD, first Toyota. Its range on a tank of gas is 500 to 600 miles and it is rated 42 MPG city and 41 MPG highway. It was a good compromise for me and so far I really like it.

One disadvantage of EV's in cold weather that I don't hear talked about is that heating the cabin (heater, seat warmer, defrost, etc.) can drastically reduce the range in addition to the range that is lost because of the battery inefficiency in cold conditions. With an internal combustion engine, there is plenty of waste heat that can be used to heat the cabin at almost no loss of efficiency,

I am under the impression that some EVs use resistance heating while others use heat pumps. The heap pumps are more efficient but I don't know how well they'd do here with 3 recent nights of -8°F.

yes. From the beginning teslas use resistance heating but with the introduction of the model why they were looking for yet more efficiency and found it by switching to a heat pump for heating. It then propagated back to the model three. I don't know yet that they have propagated it to the models S and X.

Here in Albuquerque which does know some winter, the power consumption of my teslas for winter heating is very minor indeed. Yes, if you live in North Dakota and parked outside winter troubles with electric vehicles or a real thing. But the articles here have rather exaggerated what the problem is for normal users.

The CEO of Ford recently drove the F-150 lighting from Silicon Valley to Las Vegas. In the article linked below, he is said “So if you do attempt a road trip with an EV, make sure you have all your charging stops mapped out and bring a good book because you could be in for a long wait.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/charging-pretty-challenging-f...

At the beginning of '23 we didn't have enough charging stations and in '23 we almost doubled '22s EV sales. Not much of a surprise that we've run short.

Musk, bless his musky little heart, seems to be the only one in the business to have figured out the charging station requirement. Any GM or Ford charging stations out there? Rivian (Rivian who?) gets it though! Corporations are good at locking you into their product in this case with non-standard plugs, but there is real hope that that'll slowly correct itself.

Are you suggesting those in North Dakota are not normal users.....? I think those in Alaska might take offense to such remarks.

Realistically, the EV does have certain uses, but it's NOT a one size fits all, something this administration fails to understand.

I do have ublock, and a couple others. I'll try to add what you suggest.

The problem is a lot of places are getting wise to the ad blockers. Youtube is one of them and they detected my blockers and would not allow me to proceed without turning them off.

That worked, I used to be able to get into some site by using an incognito browser but even that doesn't work anymore for some sites.

Thank you.

I've known people from up there who are quite proud of how atypical their weather is. I think most of Alaska most of the time is rather milder than North Dakota in high winter.

You're missing the point. What's atypical for you is quite typical for those of that particular region.

More "good news" for Tesla owners: they crash more often. Not entirely clear why yet, but it may be related to their faster acceleration than gas-powered vehicles. They can get to 60 mph in about 4 seconds.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/18/business/why-do-people-keep-c...
This will make the cost of auto insurance higher, because Teslas are also more expensive to repair.

Cliff Claven fun fact I learned today: see my sarcastic quotation marks around "good news"? There's actually a label for that use of punctuation:
scare quotes, also known as shudder quotes, sneer quotes, and quibble marks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

Anyone wanna buy a Boeing?

How about a regime change? Out with the bean counters and in with the engineers.

I read one article that stated that many Scandinavians prefer an ICE car for the winter due to charging problems and range.

Yet another article on ICE vs EV: https://electrek.co/2024/01/17/electric-vehicles-fail-lower-... not paywalled!

extract: "... It now looks like the extreme cold conditions have affected the chargers themselves rather than the vehicles, according to local sources. ..."

A really interesting comment: "... I’ve been driving Teslas for over 10 years, since they were introduced. The problem with very cold batteries is that they don’t like taking a charge or won’t take a charge. The solution with Teslas is to precondition the battery prior to charging. When I’m heading to a super , I’ll tell my navigation which one I’m going to, and it will, in cold weather, say ‘starting battery conditioning’. Then I arrive at the supercharger with a warm enough battery to charge. New adopters of EV‘s will also realize regenerative breaking doesn’t work in very cold weather for the same reason. ..."

Have enough power for your battery heater and use it before you recharge. A little more complicated than turn the key (push the button? smile at your phone?) and go.

Not much overhead or thought involved for preconditioning in a Tesla. If you have selected a Supercharger as destination (or the navigation has automatically put one in your route as needed to get to your intended destination) the car will start burning some extra power to heat the battery to get a higher Supercharging charging rate some point along the way there. It will cease and desist if your state of charge is skimpy, which just means you'll charge slower when you get there.

So, actually, not more complicated.

Pardon me if somebody already covered this but what about all the salt that is going to attack those electronics as well as the rest of the cars. Just not ready for prime time

Have been driving a Tesla for a couple of years in the Chicago area. Have a charger in my garage and have never gone to a Supercharger installation. We don't drive it more than 150 miles from home as we have two other gas vehicles that we go longer distances in. I have never had range anxiety. It is my favorite car to drive as it is a very fast solid vehicle. At least for me everything on the car has always worked as it should. I would not own an EV unless I had another gas or gas hybrid vehicle for longer range driving.
I did not buy the Tesla to go green. I bought it because, in the winter it will heat up in about 2 minutes, is lightening fast, do not pay gas stations the exorbitant prices, no brake jobs or oil changes etc etc, and it is the perfect in town everyday driver.
I would not tell anyone to drive an EV, that is your option. But it always amazes me the amount of haters that have never driven one or really know anything about them but have very firm opinions based on I don't know what.
If I did not own a home with a garage with a charger installed, I would not own an EV. When I come home, I plug the Tesla into the charger in about 10 seconds. It automatically starts charging after 10 pm. When I go out to drive it. I preheat the cabin and steering wheel (in the winter time) for about 2 minutes using my Iphone, unplug it in about 10 seconds and am on my way. Haters keep hating, but I will keep driving it as a piece of my personal transportation mix. I am lucky and blessed in this life as I can afford multiple vehicles that meet my needs.
As a side note, the GPSs navigation works flawlessly. Press the button, say your destination, and it pops up every time. I am sure others have had other results, but mine has always worked.
I only charge the Tesla about once a week, sometimes twice if I drive alot.

This is useful info.

ev's are not a good choice for most people. Hybrids are the better selection

yes, you need a subscription to read the article.

It all about status?

How does a C63S AMG Mercedes go from a V8 in 2023, to 4 cyl 2.0 turbo in 2024?

Remember the fake dual exhaust craze that started in the 90's? Honda Accord and Lexus are two of the first that I can think of. It was cool to have two mufflers at the rear of the vehicle, even though it was fake and nothing more than a Y pipe splitting into 2.

BMW 7's and Pontiac GTOs had true, not fake, dual exhaust, and yet they both converged into one point in the rear, and looked like single exhaust.

Today, it's not cool to use gasoline and mufflers have disappeared into plastic blanks on the rear, on gas vehicles.

I think just like the Progressive commercial, we do become our parents, and at some age, we no longer respond to the cool factor and we use what we learned and were taught in forming opinions...And really the older we are, the more we are constrained by our budget (most, not all--the wealthy have so much that they can't spend it through their grandchildren's generation so yes, they can be cool even at an advanced age)

I'd like to test drive a new Tesla Cybertruck.

The CBC (Canadian TV network) did a test of driving an EV from Toronto to Ottawa in winter. Distance 250 miles or 400 km. They encountered 7 inoperable chargers and some long lineups at chargers. Not like gasoline where the price is posted, they found prices from $ 0.25 to $ 0.50 per KWh or even hourly charges.

BTW: They never made it to the destination.

Check out the video here. There are actually 2 video clips in the link.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/marketplace

Hey if it works for you great. Just not a fan. For the most part a fender bender totals the car. Probably to old to see and drive the next leap in fuel to power cars/engines.

There was a blog, now gone where someone was doing the same trip from Toronto to Ottawa in the middle of winter. He wore a heavy winter parka, warm winter boots, a touque and winter gloves to stay warm. He only used the seat heater every once in a while for warmth to conserve battery.. He had to stop twice to charge before reaching his destination. Total time on the road over 8 hours and not in comfort.

Same trip in a gas powered car in warm comfort is about 4 1/2 hours without need to refuel on the way.

Fortunately I’m too old to eventually be forced into an all electric PoS.

Perhaps you meant beanie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toque

No EV for me. Not interested in being a beta tester.

Not now, not ever.

NO!

I've been a beta tester for Tesla full self driving for over a year now. I've enjoyed watching it improve and develop. I'm happy that my efforts in using it help them to improve it. I believe that it plus me is a safer driver than either of us separately.

Your mileage may vary.

Never a tesla ... not so much a fan of eLon that I would want to contribute to his wealth.

--

it's the dog's fault

TOQUE !

https://www.google.ca/search?q=toque&client=safari&sca_esv=2...

It doesn’t get that cold in New Mexico! Relatively balmy weather ?

No Thank You!

Well, it got colder in Lima Ohio than it gets here, but it is routine for us (1000 feet above Albuquerque) to get below 10F several times a year--which lots of places in the US don't see. 6000 feet of altitude means quite a bit.

More to the point, it has not come close to getting cold enough for Tesla operation to be materially impaired.

Albuquerque is in USDA climate Zone 7. While the upper midwest is much colder, a majority of the US population lives in warmer places than this.

Way with BMW during Takata, free car to drive. But it kind of skews objectivity imho generally speaking. I mean I really was "wowed" by their white glove treatment. Today I think they build junk but have managed to get rated highly by the unscientific CR.