5 ms·

With the performance of this and other EVs now beating the Raptor pickup, do you think we’ll start to see performance regulated for safety reasons? A massive p

With the performance of this and other EVs now beating the Raptor pickup, do you think we’ll start to see performance regulated for safety reasons? A massive pickup able to 0-60 in a few seconds is cool, but in the hands of the less responsible it sounds like a huge safety risk. We cap the performance of tiny scooters but multiton trucks are able to go as fast as humanly possible?

davidw 4y ago
Massive, heavy trucks with a blind spot, the ability to accelerate very rapidly, and a fiddly screen that you need to use even for the most basic of things like heating and cooling. What could possibly go wrong...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
namecheapTA 4y ago
Atleast when a Dodge Charger is charging up from behind, I can hear the thing. Pedestrians can hear the thing. When the demographic that currently commits most reckless driving eventually adopts electric cars, it's going to be a blood bath.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  That’s an interesting observation that I hadn’t considered. My enthusiasm for EVs has been pretty unmitigated previously. I still think climate is important enough that dealing with the safety stuff is probably tractable and also the lesser evil, but it’s good to have line of sight on it.
  - vanilla_nut 4y ago
    Unmitigated? Are you not worried about the infrastructure impact of doubling the weight of most classes of vehicle?
    - namecheapTA 4y ago
      Heck, even the safety aspect. And the mining of materials. The recycling aspect (or lack there of), or the disposability of the vehicles if the battery/charging system bricks itself. The Chevy Volt forums are full of people losing thousands of dollars because their low miles car worth about $10k, needs a $10k battery module or two.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        Well, we're talking about the safety aspect right now. I'm not particularly worried about the mining of materials or even the disposability because (1) those are tractable problems and (2) ICE cars do many orders of magnitude more damage to the environment even ignoring their associated manufacture and disposal costs.
    - colinmhayes 4y ago
      I'm not really. The vast majority of infrastructure degradation is because of trucks which weigh 100 times as much as cars. Their weight will be decreasing by a much smaller factor.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      A Tesla Model 3 weighs 3,582 lbs. Even if you chose a Smart Fortwo (1,984lb) as your comparison instead of an equivalent-size ICE vehicle, it's still not doubling the weight.
      - vanilla_nut 4y ago
        That is the lightest variant of the Model 3. Every other Tesla, save the Roadster, weighs over 4,000 lbs: https://electrek.co/2021/08/02/how-much-does-a-tesla-weigh-comparing-each-model/ https://electrek.co/2021/08/02/how-much-does-a-tesla-weigh-c... Many are over 5,000, for a sedan/compact SUV. My compact SUV is 3,000 lbs. The sedan I used before that was less than 2,500 lbs. And it's not like Teslas are exceptionally large vehicles. The Cybertruck is probably going to clock in at 7,000 lbs or so.
- colatkinson 4y ago
  Way back when EVs/hybrids were first hitting the market, I remember some chatter about basically adding an external speaker to play fake engine noises. Not perfect, but it might help a bit. I've personally encountered a decent number of Tesla/e-bike drivers who have... nonstandard views on what a stop sign means, and the fact that the vehicles are silent is always a bit disconcerting.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Most EVs do have such a speaker. But it only plays when they're driving at low speeds where they could be a threat to pedestrians, bikes, etc. And also there's no standardization of the noise.
    - ivan1783 4y ago
      All EVs have a speaker and the noise is standardized. The problem is there is a different standard in each country and the solution is to make one noise which covers all of the standards - thats why it ends up sounding so strange. The combination of the various standards varies from OEM to OEM - thats why it ends up sounding different OEM to OEM.
      - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
        I mean... maybe in the US? Here in Canada all the EVs seem to make a different noise. The noise my Volt makes is entirely different from my friend's 2nd gen Leaf, for example. Maybe that's changing with the latest round of vehicles, but I don't recall hearing about any regulation passed.
- rascul 4y ago
  > Atleast when a Dodge Charger is charging up from behind, I can hear the thing. Do you mean while driving? How does that work? Even with my windows open I can't hear vehicles until they're at least next to me. I don't have a loud vehicle and hearing tests show I have good hearing.
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    Either dodge chargers in your area don't have the loud exhausts that they do here in California, or you have a problem of some sort. Loud noises bounce off the road, off buildings. Basically the reason you can hear someone talking yell even if they are facing away from you.
    - rascul 4y ago
      Maybe it's because I rarely drive in cities where there are buildings around for the sound to echo. 95% or more of my driving is in the country at 45 MPH or higher, or on highways at 65 or 70MPH. There are plenty of very loud vehicles in my area. Maybe the sound just can't go as fast as I'm usually driving. Or an idea I just thought of, maybe at the speeds I typically drive, by the time the sound does get to me, it's not enough to hear over my tires?
      - namecheapTA 4y ago
        Yes, obviously the danger of getting passed by a much faster silent vehicle is much less in an area with low traffic density, low intersection density, yada yada. I'm glad we finally got to the bottom of your confusion.
        rascul 4y ago
        We didn't though. Edit: Also I feel like, from your last reply, that you might have taken one or both of my replies in a way that wasn't intended. It's also possible that I didn't word my replies in a good manner. I'm not always good at that. I am genuinely curious about how it is that others can hear loud vehicles behind them when driving while I can't. Your mention of echoes off buildings got me thinking of driving through a big city surrounded by big buildings, and that's an environment I am not familiar with except in pictures and videos. If that's the reason then it answers the question I've had for a couple years now when I first saw someone mention that they hear loud vehicles behind them.
- userbinator 4y ago
  I was recently driven by someone in an EV in a busy parking lot and the amount of pedestrians that were entirely not aware of our presence as we slowly creeped up behind them was disturbing. Some even had to be horned. Ten or twenty years ago, people would notice you approaching just from the engine sound and naturally move aside or at least turn around and look. The fact that the artificial sounds some of them have are not all that different from the sound of the wind doesn't help either.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
My Volt does 0-60 in about 7 seconds or so in sport mode but even better @ 0-30 and it feels so ridiculously torquey and instant to me and I can't even imagine needing anything beyond that ever. All the jockeying about 0-60 in 3 seconds or whatever on various Tesla machines just makes me shake my head. I really fear what that means in a large massive vehicle.
- misiti3780 4y ago
  As someone driving a Tesla, I disagree. Going from 0-60 in 3.1 seconds is useful if you do a lot of highway driving and need to merge quickly. Also, it's fun to accelerate like that.
  - emkoemko 4y ago
    how did cars manage to merge before being able to do 0-60 in 3.1 seconds?
    - elteto 4y ago
      You close your eyes and hope the other guy is not closing his eyes too.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      Nobody's saying it was impossible, obviously. It was just harder and more dangerous before.
- elteto 4y ago
  Not to diss on your ride but 7s is Honda Civic level territory. It’s pretty slow.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    It's more like 6.5 but who is counting. It's a reasonable number for a regular human's vehicle. Esp with low rolling resistance tires. And actually being electric, the 0-30 is where it shines. No ICE vehicle will beat me off the start unless it's a serious performance car.
elihu 4y ago
Maybe we'll see CDL requirements for more vehicle. I mean, it's a new thing that people can just go out and buy nine thousand pound cars that can do 0-60 in about 3 seconds (i.e. the EV Hummer) and I don't think society has adjusted to the ramifications of that yet. Sports cars are largely tolerated because they're (generally) small and light and if you drive dangerously in one you're as big a risk to yourself as to everyone else. The F-150 is actually not a terribly unreasonable vehicle. It's about 6,000 pounds and accelerates a bit slower than the Hummer. It's shaped like a battering ram, but isn't a whole lot heavier than a Model S, which are more in the 4,500 to 5,000 range. (I think Tesla kind of gets a free pass for building scary fast/heavy vehicles simply because they don't look like trucks and so it's easy to not realize how heavy they really are.) Unfortunately it's hard to build EVs that are light, due to battery requirements. Maybe horsepower/weight ratio limits on public roads are actually a good idea though.
sneak 4y ago
Tiny scooters aren’t a multibillion dollar industry with lobbyists.
redox99 4y ago
There's nothing unsafe with having lots of acceleration at your disposal if you use it appropriately and responsibly. In fact in some situations it's safer to have that acceleration. Let's not continue regulating things that are fun and/or useful just because some people might misuse them. It probably wouldn't really make much difference in the real world. How many crashes that resulted in serious injury actually happened only because the car could do 3 seconds 0-60, and if the car was only able to do 0-60 in 7 seconds, the crash wouldn't have occurred? I know there's lots of videos of people driving Lambos for the first time and immediately crashing after spinning or something. But even in those cases, it's almost always low speed crashes with nobody getting hurt.

davidw 4y ago

Massive, heavy trucks with a blind spot, the ability to accelerate very rapidly, and a fiddly screen that you need to use even for the most basic of things like heating and cooling. What could possibly go wrong...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

namecheapTA 4y ago

Atleast when a Dodge Charger is charging up from behind, I can hear the thing. Pedestrians can hear the thing. When the demographic that currently commits most reckless driving eventually adopts electric cars, it's going to be a blood bath.

throwaway894345 4y ago
That’s an interesting observation that I hadn’t considered. My enthusiasm for EVs has been pretty unmitigated previously. I still think climate is important enough that dealing with the safety stuff is probably tractable and also the lesser evil, but it’s good to have line of sight on it.
- vanilla_nut 4y ago
  Unmitigated? Are you not worried about the infrastructure impact of doubling the weight of most classes of vehicle?
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    Heck, even the safety aspect. And the mining of materials. The recycling aspect (or lack there of), or the disposability of the vehicles if the battery/charging system bricks itself. The Chevy Volt forums are full of people losing thousands of dollars because their low miles car worth about $10k, needs a $10k battery module or two.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      Well, we're talking about the safety aspect right now. I'm not particularly worried about the mining of materials or even the disposability because (1) those are tractable problems and (2) ICE cars do many orders of magnitude more damage to the environment even ignoring their associated manufacture and disposal costs.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    I'm not really. The vast majority of infrastructure degradation is because of trucks which weigh 100 times as much as cars. Their weight will be decreasing by a much smaller factor.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    A Tesla Model 3 weighs 3,582 lbs. Even if you chose a Smart Fortwo (1,984lb) as your comparison instead of an equivalent-size ICE vehicle, it's still not doubling the weight.
    - vanilla_nut 4y ago
      That is the lightest variant of the Model 3. Every other Tesla, save the Roadster, weighs over 4,000 lbs: https://electrek.co/2021/08/02/how-much-does-a-tesla-weigh-comparing-each-model/ https://electrek.co/2021/08/02/how-much-does-a-tesla-weigh-c... Many are over 5,000, for a sedan/compact SUV. My compact SUV is 3,000 lbs. The sedan I used before that was less than 2,500 lbs. And it's not like Teslas are exceptionally large vehicles. The Cybertruck is probably going to clock in at 7,000 lbs or so.
colatkinson 4y ago
Way back when EVs/hybrids were first hitting the market, I remember some chatter about basically adding an external speaker to play fake engine noises. Not perfect, but it might help a bit. I've personally encountered a decent number of Tesla/e-bike drivers who have... nonstandard views on what a stop sign means, and the fact that the vehicles are silent is always a bit disconcerting.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Most EVs do have such a speaker. But it only plays when they're driving at low speeds where they could be a threat to pedestrians, bikes, etc. And also there's no standardization of the noise.
  - ivan1783 4y ago
    All EVs have a speaker and the noise is standardized. The problem is there is a different standard in each country and the solution is to make one noise which covers all of the standards - thats why it ends up sounding so strange. The combination of the various standards varies from OEM to OEM - thats why it ends up sounding different OEM to OEM.
    - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
      I mean... maybe in the US? Here in Canada all the EVs seem to make a different noise. The noise my Volt makes is entirely different from my friend's 2nd gen Leaf, for example. Maybe that's changing with the latest round of vehicles, but I don't recall hearing about any regulation passed.
rascul 4y ago
> Atleast when a Dodge Charger is charging up from behind, I can hear the thing. Do you mean while driving? How does that work? Even with my windows open I can't hear vehicles until they're at least next to me. I don't have a loud vehicle and hearing tests show I have good hearing.
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  Either dodge chargers in your area don't have the loud exhausts that they do here in California, or you have a problem of some sort. Loud noises bounce off the road, off buildings. Basically the reason you can hear someone talking yell even if they are facing away from you.
  - rascul 4y ago
    Maybe it's because I rarely drive in cities where there are buildings around for the sound to echo. 95% or more of my driving is in the country at 45 MPH or higher, or on highways at 65 or 70MPH. There are plenty of very loud vehicles in my area. Maybe the sound just can't go as fast as I'm usually driving. Or an idea I just thought of, maybe at the speeds I typically drive, by the time the sound does get to me, it's not enough to hear over my tires?
    - namecheapTA 4y ago
      Yes, obviously the danger of getting passed by a much faster silent vehicle is much less in an area with low traffic density, low intersection density, yada yada. I'm glad we finally got to the bottom of your confusion.
      - rascul 4y ago
        We didn't though. Edit: Also I feel like, from your last reply, that you might have taken one or both of my replies in a way that wasn't intended. It's also possible that I didn't word my replies in a good manner. I'm not always good at that. I am genuinely curious about how it is that others can hear loud vehicles behind them when driving while I can't. Your mention of echoes off buildings got me thinking of driving through a big city surrounded by big buildings, and that's an environment I am not familiar with except in pictures and videos. If that's the reason then it answers the question I've had for a couple years now when I first saw someone mention that they hear loud vehicles behind them.
userbinator 4y ago
I was recently driven by someone in an EV in a busy parking lot and the amount of pedestrians that were entirely not aware of our presence as we slowly creeped up behind them was disturbing. Some even had to be horned. Ten or twenty years ago, people would notice you approaching just from the engine sound and naturally move aside or at least turn around and look. The fact that the artificial sounds some of them have are not all that different from the sound of the wind doesn't help either.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

My Volt does 0-60 in about 7 seconds or so in sport mode but even better @ 0-30 and it feels so ridiculously torquey and instant to me and I can't even imagine needing anything beyond that ever. All the jockeying about 0-60 in 3 seconds or whatever on various Tesla machines just makes me shake my head. I really fear what that means in a large massive vehicle.

misiti3780 4y ago
As someone driving a Tesla, I disagree. Going from 0-60 in 3.1 seconds is useful if you do a lot of highway driving and need to merge quickly. Also, it's fun to accelerate like that.
- emkoemko 4y ago
  how did cars manage to merge before being able to do 0-60 in 3.1 seconds?
  - elteto 4y ago
    You close your eyes and hope the other guy is not closing his eyes too.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Nobody's saying it was impossible, obviously. It was just harder and more dangerous before.
elteto 4y ago
Not to diss on your ride but 7s is Honda Civic level territory. It’s pretty slow.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  It's more like 6.5 but who is counting. It's a reasonable number for a regular human's vehicle. Esp with low rolling resistance tires. And actually being electric, the 0-30 is where it shines. No ICE vehicle will beat me off the start unless it's a serious performance car.

elihu 4y ago

Maybe we'll see CDL requirements for more vehicle. I mean, it's a new thing that people can just go out and buy nine thousand pound cars that can do 0-60 in about 3 seconds (i.e. the EV Hummer) and I don't think society has adjusted to the ramifications of that yet. Sports cars are largely tolerated because they're (generally) small and light and if you drive dangerously in one you're as big a risk to yourself as to everyone else. The F-150 is actually not a terribly unreasonable vehicle. It's about 6,000 pounds and accelerates a bit slower than the Hummer. It's shaped like a battering ram, but isn't a whole lot heavier than a Model S, which are more in the 4,500 to 5,000 range. (I think Tesla kind of gets a free pass for building scary fast/heavy vehicles simply because they don't look like trucks and so it's easy to not realize how heavy they really are.) Unfortunately it's hard to build EVs that are light, due to battery requirements. Maybe horsepower/weight ratio limits on public roads are actually a good idea though.

sneak 4y ago

Tiny scooters aren’t a multibillion dollar industry with lobbyists.

redox99 4y ago

There's nothing unsafe with having lots of acceleration at your disposal if you use it appropriately and responsibly. In fact in some situations it's safer to have that acceleration. Let's not continue regulating things that are fun and/or useful just because some people might misuse them. It probably wouldn't really make much difference in the real world. How many crashes that resulted in serious injury actually happened only because the car could do 3 seconds 0-60, and if the car was only able to do 0-60 in 7 seconds, the crash wouldn't have occurred? I know there's lots of videos of people driving Lambos for the first time and immediately crashing after spinning or something. But even in those cases, it's almost always low speed crashes with nobody getting hurt.