Tag: Cars

Simple Cure

Drive Time, Eco-Crap, Gummint

Here are two different stories, but with a common link.  First, the news from Volkswagen:

Volkswagen’s managing director has warned the sale of electric vehicles is ‘stagnating’ as a poll revealed just 2 per cent of drivers would buy one in the near future.

Alex Smith warned there are currently few incentives to buy EVs.

He claimed sales are in ‘stagnation’ with EVs still ‘relatively expensive’ compared to petrol and diesel cars, adding: ‘It’s true to say that with the retail price of an electric car, you will find a premium.’

Not so much “find” as “get beaten about the head by” that premium, but let me not interrupt the thread.

It came as a poll of 2,375 UK motorists found that just 2 per cent would buy an EV right now. The survey, carried out for industry body the Society for Motor Manufactures and Traders found more than half are not planning to buy one until 2026 or later.

The figures led to growing calls for more support for private buyers to switch to EVs ahead of the planned ban on new petrol and diesel car sales from 2030.

The “support” is, of course, a bribe I mean government subsidy.  Funded with taxpayer money.

But apart from the price “premium” (exorbitant cost), why would people’s enthusiasm for Duracell cars be weakening?  Of course, there’s that small matter of there being not enough power sockets — even in tiny Britishland — to replenish the battery when the juice runs low:  “Oh, the government should just pay for those” (with taxpayer money).

Then there’s this little wrinkle in EV ownership:

An electrical vehicle fire at Nissan Headquarters Tuesday afternoon required several more hours and 45 times more gallons of water to put out than a conventional vehicle fire.

It’s a challenge the Franklin Fire Department warns “all fire departments are struggling with” because lithium-ion battery fires often cannot be extinguished until the battery cell has released its energy.

Firefighters were dispatched around 4:42 p.m. after the car caught fire in the parking lot of 1 Nissan Way. According to Franklin Fire Marshal Andy King, the vehicle, a Nissan Leaf, had been charging on a Level 3 charger, which is the fastest charging device.

That’s when its lithium-ion battery cell reportedly overheated, went into a thermal runaway condition and caught fire. He said firefighters applied water to cool the battery cell for several hours before the fire was extinguished.

No damage occurred to the charger or other vehicles. According to King, firefighters are accustomed to responding to conventional vehicle fires, which are typically put out with one fire engine and anywhere from 500 to 1,000 gallons of water.

However, Tuesday’s fire required nearly 45,000 gallons of water and multiple units, including an engine, tower, battalion chief, rescue, hazmat, and an air response vehicle. In a news release, the fire department urged EV owners to take precautions against fires.

The very best precaution against these kinds of fires, one would think, would be not to buy these spontaneously-combusting wheeled Roman candles in the first place.

As for dealing with the fires themselves:  I think that every charging station should be required to have a large tank of water — maybe double the size of a normal backyard swimming pool — so that the fire department can just push the burning vehicle into it until it’s completely submerged.

Then, when all the fuss has subsided and the fire has finally died, the car’s owner should be required to drink a pint of water from the tank.

And now I think I need to head off to the range, because when I read how Gummint is trying to force everyone to buy one of these fucking firebombs, I can feel myself going into a “thermal runaway condition”.

How Significant?

Drive Time

I came across this article recently, and it made me think:

Classic Ford Cortina dubbed ‘most significant vehicle EVER’ hits auction for eye-watering price

“Most significant vehicle ever?”  Ah don’ theenk so, Scooter.

Granted, the Cortina Mark 1 was a sensation when it first came out in Britishland, despite being as ugly as sin and underpowered.

But (and I can attest to this, having driven more than one in my life) they were fun to drive, in no small part because of their all-syncromesh gearbox (a real innovation for the time).  Sure, that 1200cc (later 1500, then 1600cc) four-banger was not a muscle-car engine — the peppiest version, the GT, developed a manly 78 bhp.  But of course, because the Cortina wasn’t encumbered with all the safety-Nazi bullshit of the modern era, its curb weight of only 1,700 lbs made it very nimble (at about 100 bhp per ton).

And now to the point of this post.  I will acknowledge up front that the Ford Cortina Mark 1 may very well have been one of the most significant cars of 1960s Britain.

What, O My Readers, do you think was the most significant American car of the 1960s? 

Included would be its technical advances, its effect on car drivers’ psyches, its effect on future car design, or whatever you think would constitute “significant”.

Not having grown up Over Here, my guess would be the 1965 Ford Mustang pony car:

…but I will willingly accept some rebuke from devotees of other cars of that decade.

Off you go to Comments, and show me the error of my ways.

3 Questions That Shouldn’t Need Answering

3 Inexplicable Things, Guy Stuff

Every so often one will come across a question to which the answer is self-evident, but someone’s going to ask it anyway.  Here’s an example:

1. “When you find a rusted-out old kitchen knife, why not just toss it out and buy a shiny new one from Williams-Sonoma?”
— because nothing looks as fine as a well-restored blade, not just in appearance, but in its intrinsic history.  Need proof?  See here, where some guy with mad skillz goes after an old cleaver.

Here’s another one:

2. “Why would someone spend $170,000 on a replica of an old car?”
— because as long as the replica has been manufactured by engineers with all respect for quality as well as heritage, it’s worth it, and not the least because the originals require not just stupid money, but insanely-stupid money available only to Russian oligarchs, software company founders and parvenus like Jeff Bezos (also criminals, some overlap with the aforementioned).


(watch the second video at the link…)

Here’s another question of this ilk (but by no means the final one):

3. “Why is The Repair Shop such a popular TV show?  All they do is restore old junk.”
…it’s not “junk”, it’s heritage, history, treasured artifacts and sentimental objects.  To watch Steve Fletcher fixing an old clock, Will Kirk restoring an old piece of furniture or even those two old pink-haired biddies bringing wrecked toy dolls and teddy bears back to life is to see and feel the joy of a miniature triumph of life over death.  If you are not moved by that, you are a foul, crass and cynical human being.

The overall answer to all the above questions can be summed up in one word:

Craftsmanship.

It’s a rare talent (and becoming rarer still when so many people are seduced by cheap, fragile and nasty knock-offs from China or Eastern Europe), and if we hold on to no other custom, craftsmanship is worth everything. To quote Oscar Wilde’s words from Lady Windermere’s Fan :

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.

I know I’m always teetering dangerously close to the latter, but all I can say is:  guilty as charged.  Especially where beauty and craftsmanship are involved.