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bull3964 posted:I don't touch the volume knob on my Golf R because the center power symbol isn't floating, so the knob can't be touched so the symbol remains right side up. Yep same for me in my polo, power symbol remains upright and I use the steering wheel buttons. But what the gently caress why even change the steering wheel buttons to be capacitive slidey thingies?? I would absolutely not buy a car where you had to do things like adjust volume or AC settings without physical buttons or knobs, it's just dangerous to be forcing people to look away from the road to perform basic tasks while driving and it honestly should be illegal. Edit: A shameful loving snipe
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Jul 3, 2021 10:29
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dissss posted:Forget Camrys - the big Skoda is nicer than any of the lower end Audis anyway. But in NZ we do get millions of cheap second-hand JDM imports... not much help though if you want a new or fairly low mileage car though.
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Jul 8, 2021 01:16
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YOLOsubmarine posted:Crossovers and SUVs are easier for old people to climb into. My dad went from a sedan to an SUV because it was easier to get in and out of (he has arthritis). Growing population of old people = more vehicles designed for old people.
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Jul 12, 2021 01:54
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KakerMix posted:I'm pushing 40 and lordy, what did you guys do to your bodies to be in such pain? Have psoriatic arthritis since their 20's and are now in their 60's? Not me, but that is my dad, and like I said before he literally went from a sedan (holden Calais) to an SUV (rangerover Evoque lmaooo) specifically because it was easier to get in and out of, and I'm sure the more upright seating position and better visibility out of the windows played a large part too. As has been said the majority of people buying new cars are older because they can afford them, so it stands to reason that car manufacturers would attempt to target that market (although they will still make gestures to being sporty and young because that flatters the old people).
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Jul 12, 2021 20:24
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Didn't the development of the new C8 platform cost them multiple-billion dollars? They'll surely never pay that off with Corvette sales, they must be banking on building 20 different models up off the same platform.
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Jul 16, 2021 22:52
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BraveUlysses posted:the gr86 videos so far have only affirmed that I'm making the right decision to get the BRZ What's the difference that you care about? I haven't looked into what's different about the two at all.
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Aug 17, 2021 23:19
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CAT INTERCEPTOR posted:370Z starts at 50K drive-away - ie *ALL* taxes and transfers paid, registration, even a full tank. Yeah but I think he means that in countries like Australia and even more-so New Zealand new cars typically cost more than the exchange rate and any local taxes could explain, because gently caress you.
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Aug 18, 2021 06:47
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kronix posted:European pedestrian impact standards generally affect the front hood bumper area, it’s really side impact that’s driving belt lines as high as possible and making the pillars super thick. It looks like a big fat blob tho? Although that said it could be worse. We don't see a ton of teslas in NZ but every time I see a model x I can't help but be repulsed by it, in person at least it really just looks like a disgustingly swollen sedan.
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Sep 15, 2021 02:31
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kronix posted:What’s gonna be hilarious is when these things get common enough that people start to actively gently caress with them. I think I already saw a story about some thieves with a laptop and antenna managing to unlock and drive off in a tesla while the owner was asleep in their house. We're going to end up living one of those cyberpunk dystopia universes where traditional theft just becomes hacking as everything gets automated and connected to the internet.
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Sep 19, 2021 01:26
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During peak NZ covid lockdown it was practically illegal to drive anywhere unless it was to the supermarket to buy food which meant the roads were nearly empty. I live in a central suburb of the largest city in the country and although the house we're in is one house back from the street, which is itself a fairly quiet street, the lack of car noise was clearly noticeable during lockdown. It's something you'd never pay any attention to normally, like there's no way you'd come here and comment on the traffic noise, but when it wasn't there it was suddenly obvious, birds seemed way louder. The thing is by far the majority of what I hear around here isn't loud exhausts, it's tire and aerodynamic noise, which EV's still produce in pretty much the same levels. So even a fully EV car future would still give you that un-noticeable-until-it's-gone background rumble noise.
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Sep 27, 2021 08:59
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Just watched this review of the BMW iX because I was bored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoWqeaNMJOM Hooooly poo poo is that thing ugly, but IMO even worse are all of the insane gimmicks and gadgets that are going to IMMEDIATELY break out of warranty and otherwise turn a functional vehicle into worthless scrap well before its time. Surely it completely defeats the point of an electric vehicle to load it up with so many unnecessary failure points that it will get written off as soon as it's out of warranty and something expensive breaks.
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Oct 1, 2021 08:24
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Olympic Mathlete posted:Citroen Ami best electric car. Yes, wish we could get it or anything similar in New Zealand. I even emailed some greens politicians but it's basically too hard because it would require new legislation to cover them and politicians are too busy doing..... ???.... to make new legislation. knox_harrington posted:This guy so annoying. I actually don't mind his reviews, yeah he's over-hyping stuff because I guess people would rather watch high-energy stuff (that said I also like Savagegeese). He does seem to be doing it ironically most of the time though and seems to be happy to point out when stuff is poo poo rather than trying to paper over it so that companies keep sending him press cars. I also like that he goes over stuff related to usability and practicality vs. just doing a few drag races and gushing about it.
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Oct 1, 2021 18:50
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Wheeee posted:just attach a numpad to the console and/or steering wheel Rotary phone dial from the 1980's to select a gear.
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Oct 24, 2021 06:07
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Sab669 posted:
That belt and roof line, must be like driving a coffin.
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Oct 25, 2021 22:57
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The economy car automatic gearboxes I've driven are also clearly programmed for fuel economy over power. You have to get reaally deep into the accelerator pedal before they'll kick down and hold higher RPM's, at low to moderate throttle input they'll just really bog down in higher gears and shift up at ~2500 RPM. So it's definitely still 'a thing' even with autos, or at least automatics fitted to economy or appliance cars. My car has a DSG but I literally only ever drive it in manual mode because the 'auto' programing is catastrophically stupid to the point where it WILL damage the car if you let it. - It attempts to creep like a torque converter by slipping the clutches every time you lift off the brake - It will shift to 2nd gear the microsecond you start rolling and will never shift back to 1st until you come to a dead stop - It again will wait for you to really mash the throttle before kicking down The first two things mean it absolutely eats clutch packs if you drive it like a normal auto, and the third thing has blown a hole through a fair few pistons, all for the sake of making the fuel economy number look better.
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Nov 1, 2021 06:26
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knox_harrington posted:IIRC the Prius CVT is pretty interestingly engineered and works well, and fortunately the car was never interesting to drive in the first place. The one in my Polo gti is pretty notorious for it as I mentioned above, it's the 7-speed DQ200 dry clutch box. I've read a lot of people talking about getting sub 50,000 km out of a set of clutches for these boxes even in very low-powered cars. I'm certain it must be people driving them like a torque converter and slipping the hell out of the clutches, and to be fair the gearbox programming is as I said designed to do exactly that. I think the wet-clutch designs are more tolerant to that as they have better heat dissipation.
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Nov 1, 2021 08:34
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Tom Guycot posted:Yeah, I'm trying to remind myself its not filled with unstable nitroglycerine, and it needs to rev up a bit to not drive like a geo metro at 2500rpm or feel like its going to stall, but its been so long since I drove this car regularly, it starts to get loud and I get scared instinctively. I've never been a petrol head, so I appreciate the reassurances of "you're not going to break it by revving it past 4000rpm". I feel like semi-regular trips to the redline (after warming up obvs) is probably good for the engine, idk if it's actually true but I feel like for direct-injection engines it might help prevent too much carbon buildup on the intake valves. I mean if you count up the minutes the engine spends at redline vs around 2000 RPM it's probably only close to redline for way less than 0.1% of the time, so I don't think it's going to be a significant contributor to wear.
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Nov 2, 2021 20:15
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Olympic Mathlete posted:It has some cool features: Have to say that I wasn't sold on it after the first few photos but those ones really knocked it up a notch, very cool.
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Nov 9, 2021 21:25
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dissss posted:Conversions will never be cheap or commonplace. They're for enthusiasts not people looking to save money. Yeah I converted a Toyota Yaris to electric nearly a decade ago using fairly cheap components (series wound DC motor, relatively small lithium phosphate battery) and even back then when electric cars were pretty rare it would still have been way easier and probably cheaper to just buy a used Nissan Leaf or something. I hardly got to use it because I moved country after it was rolling but before it was engineered and registered, but it was very fun to drive a cheap little hatchback with an electric motor. I kept the original 5 speed manual gearbox mostly because it was a convenient way to connect the motor to the wheels. Because it was electric you could come to a stop still in gear and you could easily start moving in 2nd. I drove it a few times when the clutch wasn't properly hooked up and it wasn't too difficult to shift without it because the motor has relatively low inertia, you'd need to rev-match to downshift though. Remember that the ICE does more than just run the wheels though, when doing a conversion you're going to need to find an alternative for: - Power steering (if the car came with hydraulic steering, which is likely if it's an older donor) - Source of cabin heat for demisting the windscreen - Source of vacuum for brake boosting - If it has a conventional torque converter auto that you want to keep you need to idle the electric motor as they don't work when stationary
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Nov 11, 2021 19:07
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bull3964 posted:Defogging the windshield is using more the dehumdifiying aspects of the AC unit than actual heat. Oh yeah you don't get AC without the ICE either lol. My solutions to these things were: - Electrohydraulic pump for power steering (worked great) - Automotive electrical vacuum pump and accumulator for brakes (worked great) - 12V heat-pump for heating/demisting and cooling (never got around to installing it) What you can actually get away with for demisting depends strongly on the regulations where you live and the engineer signing off on it, in Australia it at least was the case that the demister had to be a 'heat source' and it had to have 'equivalent performance' to the factory system. A lot of people would fit a 12V water heater and pump to the existing dash heater core as that is the minimum effort but I couldn't do that as my heater core leaked and I didn't want to rip the entire dash apart to get it.
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Nov 11, 2021 21:25
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Laserface posted:Yeah, I refuse to accept that they 'cant' make cars like this any more. Yeah because as much as everyone here says they'd buy one if they actually DID make one they'd sell like 100, and the profit margins would be nothing compared to a generic SUV or feature-loaded luxury-mobile. Hell they'd probably even lose money selling them, small cheap cars just aren't profitable anymore even in crazy huge sales volumes due to crash and emissions requirements, that's even more-so the case for niche market performance versions of small cheap cars.
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Nov 15, 2021 00:11
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sopKm4bExQ Ahhhh I can't get over how ugly the new M240i is, at least in photos/video. Weird mix of round bits and hard lines/angles, the big triangles on the grille, the weird pointy bits on the wing mirrors aping m-cars but in a much worse looking way etc. Really not loving it.
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Nov 18, 2021 01:31
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Ugh and the big POWER DOME on the hood, looks like trash.
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Nov 18, 2021 02:12
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Wheeee posted:I actually like the overall shape of it, especially in that lovely purple. Get rid of the POWER DOME, grille triangles, that weird hard vertical edge behind the front wheel arches and the weird arch on the rear bumper and I think it would be a lot better. Best looking of the current BMW's isn't saying much, significantly worse than the old M240i visually IMO.
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Nov 18, 2021 04:20
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Olympic Mathlete posted:Toyota/Lexus have just dropped a shitload of EV concepts and some are kinda sick. There's wayyyyy too much of a crossover between some of them though and gently caress I'd buy the micro box if I could. I reallly really just want a tiny slow cheap 2-person EV with bugger-all range that I can use for commuting on wet days or grocery shopping etc. Like max speed 50 kph, max range 50 km, no chance of passing any crash regulations kinda thing. They seem to exist in Europe and the USA but unfortunately NZ's vehicle licensing system makes them illegal and from what I can see there's no desire in the government to do anything about that. I just refuse to buy a full-sized EV here right now. My partner has a van that we can already use for road trips and for carrying our mountain bikes around and especially since covid the vast majority of my car trips have been a few km with max 1 other person in the car. Having a 5 seater EV with 200+ km range seems hugely unnecessary and they're pretty expensive here. I'd much rather have a tiny cheap bubble car to get me around and then something much more fun for when I occasionally have to go further without carrying a lot of stuff.
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Dec 14, 2021 19:06
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at the thing they're calling a 'compact SUV' which just looks like a futuristic hatchback.
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BuckyDoneGun posted:Until 2016 our posties still used bicycles. Reduced mail volume but an increase in parcels meant stopping less often but carrying bulkier items so they switched to these Paxter electric deals. 70-90km range, 45kmh top speed. Yeah I was going to post this. They seem like a pretty good idea, small enough to drive on the footpath, fast enough to drive on the road, electric so more efficient for stop-start use, carry a decent load for a decent range. There are also posties riding e-bikes at least in auckland suburbs. I don't see why you'd need a full-size van to deliver letters and small parcels, seems like a tiny electric vehicle or e-cargo bike could deliver the bulk of letters and small items while normal vans deliver the larger parcels (which don't have to go to literally every house and so are much more time and fuel efficient).
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Feb 5, 2022 20:30
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KillHour posted:The Jimny and Cappuccino would never ever pass federal regulations. You can go out and buy a Hayabusa right now though. I've seen some of the new Jimnys around NZ and IMO they look pretty funky and cool, all of the pretend-off-road styling and chunky bodywork etc. but at a much more sensible size for driving around in a city. I wish there were more interesting cars that were also extremely tiny, seems like the only choices these days are horrible boring small vehicles or way too large way too fast interesting ones. I'd fukkn kill for a Citroen Ami 
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Feb 8, 2022 22:42
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Infinotize posted:In my 20 years of owning cars and bikes in various cities I've never had reliable access to an outlet (let alone an L2 plug) until I got a house a few months ago. Putting chargers all over random streets seems like a pretty dumb strategy, but as range, charging times and charger networks continue to improve going to the ev charger station for 30 min once a week to juice up seems palatable. Is there any indication that range or charging times are going to improve that much in the foreseeable future though? I mean right now range is just a matter of cramming in more cells but that costs a ton, and rapid charging is possible but beyond a certain point reduces the life of the battery. I think if you took a battery using current cell technology and only ever charged it at the maximum possible rate for its entire life it would probably last several years less than one charged overnight every time. It's my understanding that the specific energy of rechargeable lithium ion-type cells is reaching a plateau, so I think to see any significant gains beyond where we are now would require an entirely new chemistry of battery or other type of energy storage medium. I'm all for EV's but I don't think it's realistic to take the rapid progress made over the last 10 years and then extrapolate that out into the future, most of the gains that have been made are due to economies of scale reducing costs to a level that enabled mass adoption and that drove research into cell improvements that would otherwise not have been profitable to do. Blackhawk fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Feb 9, 2022 |
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Feb 9, 2022 00:14
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opengl128 posted:Yeah that's just a modern car thing. Gotta be in top gear by 35mph! Really lugging the engine makes fuel economy number go up! Other potential side effects won't be an issue until much later in the car's life so who cares about those.
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Feb 12, 2022 18:58
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Fuel prices in New Zealand have gone incredibly bonkers recently. It's always been pretty pricey, but I just filled up recently and noticed 98 octane (equivalent to 93 in the USA) $3.20 NZD/litre, or the equivalent of $8.10 US/gallon. I've been considering replacing this car as I've had it for nearly 10 years now and it's due for some more expensive mechanical failures soon, I want something fun and now looking at fuel prices I'm more heavily weighting fuel economy, but drat all of the EV's or hybrids available here are either miserable bland SUV/CUV things or extremely expensive, like close to $200k NZD. We're a two-car household with our second being a van that we drive our bikes around with and sleep in while on holidays, so I don't really need long range for something that would 99% be short trips, but I do want it to be fun or interesting in some way if I can help it. I'd be equally happy to go for something extremely small and cheap if it was fun/interesting/cool in some way but that doesn't even seem to exist on the market here.
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Feb 18, 2022 22:01
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Yeah when you picture that $8.10 USD/gallon, also remember that the median household income here is ~$37,600 USD and new cars are like twice the price they are in the US. So we get the expensive petrol prices of Europe without the high wages, bugger-all public transport and expensive (NZ new) cars.
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Feb 18, 2022 23:23
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MrYenko posted:So it’s like Florida. Fewer chuds? So I guess we have that going for us.
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Feb 18, 2022 23:42
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I actually like the Kia EV6 from what I can see, not in NZ but apparently coming. An IONIQ 5 underneath but more sporty-focused, and there's apparently a 585 HP version coming. The 320 HP AWD version also seems to review pretty well, interior looks good. The CUV body shape kinda sucks but if you squint you could pretend that it's a wagon. I'd rather not get a tesla for a large variety of reasons, but I can see the appeal given they're the most 'car' looking EV with decent performance for a reasonable price at this point, but things are going to change.
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Feb 19, 2022 08:05
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Olympic Mathlete posted:Colin Chapman spinning in his grave. Complicate and add fatness.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:13
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Russian Bear posted:This is what I want We get a bunch of Japanese import luxury people-movers (minivans) here and some of them have some pretty amazing interiors. The Toyota Vellfire/Alphard for example are basically a big metal box full of leather lay-z-boy recliners. When my partner was looking for something to convert into a mountain bike holiday van that we could also sleep in we were looking at minivans because they're a lot cheaper than actual vans and nearly as big. We decided it was going to be way too much effort to rip out all of the luxury interior from the larger ones though (Vellfire, Elgrand etc.) and ended up with a Honda Stepwgn which btw is actually quite a nice vehicle for its intended purpose, despite being a CVT and insanely gutless.
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Mar 9, 2022 19:35
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Oh look a video of new cars coming out between 2022 and 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCyzP0pUuc Whoops all electric SUVs
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Mar 17, 2022 19:26
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Twerk from Home posted:They look super similar, and I was daydreaming about an E-class, not a 3 or 5 series: https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a26907503/2019-mercedes-amg-e53-straight-six-engine-tech/ B58 has a single twin-scroll turbocharger, not two turbos (S58 is twin-turbo, it's confusing because they call their twin-scroll turbos 'twinpower'). Also the B58 uses a belt-driven water pump vs. the electric pumps used in earlier BMW engines (like the N55). Some B58's use a 48V mild hybrid system but not all, it's in the form of a starter/generator though as it doesn't have an electric supercharger. Also I'm fairly certain that the B58 cars use a belt-driven AC compressor despite the mild hybrid 48V system. Edit: Not sure if the mild hybrid thing is EU only? USA cars might not get it, dunno. Blackhawk fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Mar 22, 2022 |
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Mar 22, 2022 00:25
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Franco Caution posted:It was 2 full suitcases, 2 full backpacks.Neither of us are gigantic people. It was a weird combination of things that lead to us saying gently caress no, and instead getting in a tried and true rental Camry. In the Kona, laying down the seats was weird because to do so and make it flat, it seemed the backseats would bump into the front seats. So where both of us would normally sit position wise was going to be weird. Plus just the idea of having to re-adjust any of the above in the event we picked up a coworker for dinner or some other reason... just didn't seem fun at all. Isn't it true that the majority of SUV's built on the same platforms as regular hatchbacks actually have less interior space despite looking larger on the outside? That was my impression anyway.
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Apr 2, 2022 10:09
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Franco Caution posted:It's also fun to imagine how much room certain cars have looking at them on the outside, but when you pop the rear lift, it may or may not be true. It's funny how 2 suitcases slide easily both in and side by side in 1 car, and in another car which seems close to same size, they won't. Or they involve seats moves up or headrests being removed to make it work. Yeah I have a Polo and a friend of mine used to have a mini. Both roughly the same size on the outside but there felt like zero space inside the mini and the boot was tiny, while I can fit two full-suspension mountain bikes into the polo (if I take both wheels off). You obviously sacrificed a lot of interior volume for the aesthetic in that car.
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Apr 2, 2022 19:34
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Mr. Apollo posted:Short answer is yes. I’m always surprised at how many Urus and G Wagens I see in my area. People love to take on stupid amounts of debt or have ridiculous monthly payments to drive one of these. Savagegeese did a video on the XM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAFgpxAxV5o Apparently its BMW internal codename was 'Rockstar' because it's specifically designed for hyper-extroverted people who want to show off how much money they have, that's basically all it's designed for and so being loudly ugly as gently caress, huge and expensive are entirely the point. I think people underestimate how many cashed up whales the last 5 or 10 years have produced, these cars seem insanely expensive to a normal person but where I live there's probably a pretty similar number of people living out of their cars as there are super-SUVs. I've seen multiple Urus-es, aston martin SUVs, rolls royce SUVs, tons of AMG G-wagons etc. The premium consumer exists and is plentiful and the entire market is shifting to focus only on them because when supply is constrained for whatever reason you need to focus on high margin if you want to maintain profits.
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Aug 6, 2023 20:51
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