treks

There is nothing advanced about electric cars. The idea and practice is as old as the hills, but until someone figures out a way to turn the practical issues into, well, practicable solutions, electric cars will remain a non-starter on any meaningful level.

The problem with going electric is that the hundreds, if not thousands of power stations the world needs to charge several hundred million electric cars (and to keep them charged up) will likely produce more pollution than all the cars that have ever been on the roads in the history of the world. Then there is the problem of the heavy metals in in the hundreds of millions of batteries in all of these electric vehicles. What will happen to those heavy metals when all of these batteries are replaced? The combined effects of the pollution created by hundreds of power stations and thousands of tons of toxic heavy metals will be far, far, worse than even the worst pollution we see today, so for the moment, electric is NOT the way to go. Don't get me wrong though; I am as concerned about the current levels of pollution as the next guy, but making it worse by building and operating hundreds of power stations, and attempting to keep thousands of tons of heavy metals out of the environment is clearly NOT the solution. As matters stand now, there is no viable alternative to the internal combustion engine, and you should not let yourself be deceived by all the talk by car makers about their efforts to introduce electric vehicles. At the moment, the few cars they do produce can be accommodated by the current generating capacity in some countries, and their batteries won't be due for replacement for at least the next few years. Just wait until the power grids in the USA and Europe can no longer cope with the increased demand, or when the problem of recovering/recycling/storing heavy metals from millions of EV batteries becomes as real as the problem of storing toxic nuclear waste is now. The truth of the matter is that car makers in the western world can all claim various forms of tax credits relative to the costs of developing electric cars, but as we know, talk is cheap, and especially if governments are paying for the talking. It's all about winning the next election...

"Going electric" is nothing but a buzz phrase, and governments claiming that they will be ready to ban the sale of cars with IC engines in 20 years are deluding not only themselves, but their voters as well. Several recent innovations in IC technology will keep these engines going for at least the next several decades until somebody works out how to make the manufacturing of electric cars a viable proposition, from both an economic and environmental perspective.

Even though I have never been a Range Rover fan, and will likely never be, the words "Range" and "electric" don't belong in the same sentence.

The thing is that I never listen to background music, even if it is Pink Floyd. I only listen to music when I need to hear it, and so the music has to do something for me, such as reminding me that the world is not always a bad or dangerous place to live in. Or to lift me out of a murderous rage when a client thinks he needs to teach me my job. Or, sometimes, to remind me that the world is indeed an extremely dangerous place to live in, and Pink Floyd and Jim Steinman (among a few others) are very good at reminding me of this. New music, (whatever it's called) can generally not do that for me- and especially stuff that is made specifically to be forgotten two minutes after its release, because the "composer" has nothing relevant to say about anything. Today's commercial music is all about obsolescence and being the "next big thing", as opposed to being made to still be relevant thirty of forty years down the line. Nonetheless, I agree that some good music still occasionally makes it through the general dross of synthesized crap that passes for musicianship these days, but these are the exceptions that prove the rule, (for me at least), which is why none of my cars have ever had a working sound system over the past thirty five years or so.

New music? How about Pink Floyd, circa 1982? In my opinion, the late 70's -early 80's was when the last good music was made (not only by Pink Floyd), so to me, there is no "new" music worth listening to or spending money on.

I could tell you what the "F" stands for, but I would hate to get kicked off the forum for using obscene language...

Never was a truer word spoken on this forum...

In this case, It really makes no difference what percentage of the engine's power reaches the wheels. Even if just 1000 hp reaches the wheels this car will be as difficult to control as any other car with similar power without the extensive use of electronics. Anything above 1000 hp on the wheels is simply ridiculous.

You and I know that Fiat makes Ferraris (unless the marque now belongs to someone else), which begs this question- how reliable and/or accurate is the infographic Gaurav posted really?

Building a 5000 hp engine is easy. Getting a life involves making that engine work in a driveable car, which is less easy...

And where does Ferrari fit into this scheme?

There is a nice write-up of the engine here- https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a27580/devel-sixteen-5000-hp-quad-turbo-v16-steve-morris-engines/ If they'll ever make it work in an actual, driveable car, well, that is another matter entirely...

Shoes stolen from mosques? Now that is the worst kind of thieving..

Who among these three will be Captain Slow? I'm going with the guy on the left.

I have often thought of doing just that, but never seem to find the time.

I've not had this happen to a car of mine. However, many years ago during my military service I did a stint as a convoy driver, and during one overnight stop, someone stole the transfer case off of my truck. It could only have been someone in the convoy, since we were in the bush and many miles from anywhere. There was a major hullabaloo about it and I ended with a black mark on my record. It was only two years later, when we were all drunk in the mess one night that the thief confessed. It turns out that he had destroyed the transfer case on his truck when he did something stupid, and bribed the convoy mechanics to steal a transfer off another truck- which happened to be mine. It must have been an interesting exercise in bush mechanics- removing two transfer cases that weigh nearly 300 kg each, and doing it so that nobody noticed. I might also mention that the destroyed transfer case was never found.

And then you get used car salesmen who will do anything underhanded to get a car passed, so he makes a bit more profit, and the buyer gets stuck with the problem.

You're talking about disabling updates on Win 10? Can't be done.

A car could be driven through a steam turbine very easily, but the problem with nuclear energy as a heat source is that there is no way to dispose of spent nuclear fuel safely, unless it is removed from the earth's surface. Maybe Elon Musk should top wasting time, money and energy building cars that can catch fire at any moment, and focus on ways to shoot small, spent nuclear reactors into the Sun.

Governments will always find a way to make up for shortfalls in tax revenues- it's what governments do, and they are very good at it. I agree with the experts who say that we are not ready for alternatives to fossil fuels. It's like Gaurav says, we need to replace an entire industrial ecosystem, and if we are to believe that some European cars plan to stop the sale of conventional cars in a couple of decades, they'd better get a move on in establishing the alternative parts suppliers, training technicians, building power stations, and building distribution networks for electricity to charge millions of cars. As far as I can see, none of this will be in place for at least the next several decades anywhere in the world. The internal combustion engine will be with us for a long, long time to come, simply because we have no viable alternatives.

On my expeditions through Africa I have on occasion seen people use 3/4 inch steel chain instead of rope on 15 and 20 ton winches. Although they can't fit the same length of chain on the winch as a rope, some claim that a high quality, properly rated chain has the same breaking strength as I/2 inch steel rope, but with the added advantage that a chain does nor fray. According to one party of Australians I once came across in the DRC, a chain works great for recoveries in mud, since since you don't have to wash the chain to get the mud off, which if you don't, makes the hemp core rot which in turn, causes wire strands to break. Personally, I've always used aluminium ropes before switching to synthetic ropes, but trust the Australians to always find another way of doing stuff. Can't imagine what would happen when a steel chain breaks under a pulling load of 10 or 12 tons, though.

You are right, they are not the same things, but it was not clear from your comment which rating you were referring to.

I don't understand- If according to the seller both the aluminium and synthetic ropes have breaking strengths of 9500 lb, how can the aluminium rope have a "better" breaking strength? You are right though that fraying will occur on a synthetic rope as well, but the difference is that when it does fray, it does not draw blood like frayed steel or aluminium ropes do.