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The Car Thread ... !
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It just doesn't look like a mustang at all. It's pretty sad, honestly.
I think most of these electric cars are hideous, but I guess that’s not the natural attraction given it’s efficiency and ‘Power’ (I use that term loosely being its limited power.)
Anyways, the Mustang logo applied to an electric version of what Ford considers the future is just plain off putting. I don’t have an issue with EV, we all knew this was coming, but Ford implementing the Mustang logo is a bit of stretch, mainly, not sure how how the Pony emblem should be transferred from the V8 to an EV. It’s partially marketing, but Ford is obviously making major shifts from discontinuing sedans and not ‘re-strategizing’ the Mustang for the future. It’s all bit polarizing, but I’m curious to see how this pans out.
Don't recall that movie.
It is. I've got another method of describing it but it's not PC and I'd rather not see a month's suspension because I off handily insulted a group of people. The problem with these EV cars are that most of them don't require traditional cooling so there's a closed off grille with very little in the way of ducts.
.....Which doesn’t give these manufacturers a pass for some of these designs with no grill present just for the sake of ‘It doesn’t need cooling’. It doesn’t mean they can’t use an open style front grill, even if they are EV. EV vehicles are offering more ‘concept’ designs pointing towards the future as a separation from what we are used to seeing, which probably is somewhat cost savings with a ‘solid design’ bumper v.s. a bumper that could at least provide some more intricate detail with cuts/slants. (Yes, I’m looking at you Tesla.)
There are aerodynamic and efficiency reasons for that design. New BMWs have active vents too that close when not needed for efficiency.
Negligible difference.
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I wasn't agreeing with their move, RP. On the contrary, I think that approach is hideous. I'd never buy an electric unless it could perform exactly like ICE. No throttling. Screw the tablets, too. Give me a traditional interior. I don't want or need giant iPads.
If it were so negligible, why would they include it? And what benefit would air vents have for an electric car? Keep your luggage cool?
EVs used liquid cooling through heatpipes or other methods of removing heat from the battery packs in a standalone system (liquid doesn't directly touch the batteries). These pipes are routed back to radiators. Radiators require cooler than ambient air to flow across them for them to work effectively. The Model 3's front end low scoop feeds outside air directly across the radiator fins, cooling down hot circulatory liquid returning from the battery packs and returning cooler liquid to remove heat from the packs.
In a normal ICE car your engine operating temperature doesn't fluctuate much unless you've been lazy on maintenance for several years and your hoses are cracked and there's leaks. A new engine won't wildly swing in temperature and will maintain temperature in cold or hot environments.
Active vents are the result of stringant EPA guidelines manufacturers must meet to be able to market their vehicle. A figure of 5-7% is thrown around for BMW alone. That isn't a whole lot, and that applies to the EPA standardized test. In other words, in a static test they saw as much as 7% in overall improvement.
Just to add. Weather needs to be incredibly cold for a modern engine that's maintained to be unable to startup. A dead battery doesn't count. If it can't crank, it can't crank. If it can crank, it can crank. The active grill may be useful in very hot environments such as the middle east in the middle of summer. If the ambient air temperature outside is 110-120* F, your chances of overheating do go up. However, there's a threshold between standard operating temps around 210* F and overheating ranges. The ambient outside air temperature is cooler than your engine bay in an ICE under those conditions, and significantly cooler than the engine operating temperature. As long as air is moving across the radiator fins, it's removing heat from the engine in the most effective way possible.
Tesla et al. like to call them "heat exchangers" but the concept of what they do is virtually the same. There's other methods of running cool air. You could attach a fan system but that adds complexity and weight to everything, plus another possible broken component in the future. Scoops on the under body, but these may affect handling characteristics of the vehicle at high speed and add noise.
The thing to remember about active grilles in any car is that they're there because manufacturers are forced to deliver better MPG. They may help drag in certain situations which may help with fuel consumption, but the reality is any move by a manufacturer is a lost cause because people load their car up unnecessary weight in their trunk or the main cabin, and never take it out. Or their driving style goes beyond the testing format for MPG ratings. The old adage is true, "You don't buy a sports car to granny it around."
Concepts revolving around drag, fuel efficiency, operating temperature acclimation, etc. are useless when it comes to real world use. And this is before active grilles fail or begin to malfunction, causing performance loss. The use of active grilles goes back decades. I could see them being useful when it's -20 out in the middle of winter and you need heat in the cabin while also retaining heat in the engine so you get proper fuel burn.
TL;DR: Teslas and other EVs still use radiators. Liquid passes through battery packs in a separate system so liquid does not touch battery sells. Tesla uses thin wavy sheets that hug the individual battery cells on each layer. These sheets have micro channels in them that liquid passes through. Hot liquid goes back to radiators, gets cooled down, goes back to remove more heat from battery pack. BMW uses another method. Other EV cars other methods. The principle of cooling batteries is the same.
Modern cars with venting systems will kick cooling fans on with vents closed because there's some air coming in from the wheel joint area and other smaller areas to mix into the bay air which is warmer due to there being an engine there. Heat transfer will still occur, but it won't be as efficient as an open grille. You give up some efficiency in other areas for better efficiency in specific metrics.
Active grilles are used to meet EPA stipulations. In real world use, they're not too useful and can cause issues when they malfunction, and they do malfunction. Overall improvement gets sidelined due to driving style and excess non-human weight in the car.
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Now if I recall, you live in Europe. You may be wondering "So what, the EPA rolled back those rules because the Orange Creamsicle didn't like them. Unfortunately or rather fortunately for mankind, manufacturers won't be rolling back due to sunk costs and the next administration reintroducing said rules. Why gamble with money? They're going to keep chugging along. Much like no manufacturers will roll back CARB compliant engineering when it'll likely be allowed with the next administration.
In Europe, manufacturers have had to detune or introduce efficiency improvements to meet new guidelines by certain years or new policies if they wish to sell cars there. Outside of a goal to better living conditions, it's all politics. EU is phasing in new standards starting in 2020 and by 2021 manufacturers must meet standards or pay a fine per extra gram of emissions. Though this allowed emissions value gets muddy when accounting for vehicle weights. A heavy luxury SUV won't have to meet the same standards as a light Peugeot.
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And so fades the most iconic American car brand.
The Mustang logo looks like it's a sticker.
The Mustang logo looks like it's a sticker.
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I like the Mustang EV for what it is. A (relatively) mid priced electric crossover from a well established car manufacturer and dealer network. If it turns out to be good, this may be my first EV.
Not to quibble too much(or detract from your point-EVs in general, and Teslas specifically, have a cooling system too), but the temperature even of a new car varies more than you might realize.
It is desirable at least to a certain extent to run an IC engine as hot as possible without actually causing damage to the engine. I'll add a side-note onto that in that there can be quite a bit of variation at different point in the engine-the exhaust valves and rod bearing shells are often the hottest parts of the engine, while paradoxically the intake valve runners(which are usually very near the exhaust valves) can be the coolest part of the engine. Also, even with higher thermodynamic efficiency, higher cylinder temperatures can be counter productive for emissions since they tend to promote NOx production(generally a bad thing). Air cooled engines tend to both run hotter and have higher cylinder temperatures than water cooled engines, and if I'm not mistaken emissions regulations were sort of a final nail in the coffin for Porsche on air cooled 911s.
It turns out that a water cooled engine tends to like to run with a water temperature in the 200-220ºF range-this balances efficiency, mechanic integrity, and NOx production. Coolant thermostats are a somewhat standardized part(in that most are of the same general design and shape, and really only vary in their diameter-in an unrelated side-note I can probably walk into any parts store in the US and find a thermostat for my MG in stock because it's the same diameter and thus interchangeable with a small block Chevy), but typically come with a couple of different temperature ratings. In the ancient past, you might see a 160º thermostat, although this is now exceptionally uncommon(I had an old time hot rodder tell me that he used to run 160º tstats in his flatheads Fords in the winter because he'd use alcohol as an antifreeze). From probably the 1950s-1980s, 180º was normal, while 195º is essentially the universal standard now. On the "hotter is better" principle, I usually put 195º even in old cars unless I have a good reason to do otherwise.
When everything is operating properly and absent some external conditions which I'll touch on in a moment, once the engine is at operating temperature, the thermostat governs the lower limit of operating temperature for an IC engine. For those who have never worked with one/changed one, in this context the thermostat is simply a valve that is placed such that when the water temperature is at the rated temperature of the thermostat, it opens and diverts water through the radiator. When the water temperature is below that, the thermostat closes and most of the coolant only circulates through the engine block. IDEALLY, the thermostat will hold the engine temperature close to its value, but again some conditions are outside that.
There are two fringe cases that are still quite common where the temperature generally varies-one above, and one below. The first is in hot weather in slow-moving or stop and go traffic. There are a couple of factors going on in raising engine temperature in these circumstances. The first and probably least significant is that in those circumstances the A/C compressor is often working hard and both dumping extra heat under the hood and putting an extra load on the engine. The second is that high ambient temperatures make the radiator less efficient at lowering the temperature of the coolant. The third is less significant now with electric cooling fans, but at idle or low speeds mechanical fans do not provide much air circulation(electric fans cool much better in these circumstances, but pull a LOT of current so again put somewhat more of a load on the engine). Along with this, at idle speeds, the water pump isn't moving as much water as at higher speeds, and in fact in extreme cases you can get localized boiling in the water jackets that dramatically reduces the heat transfer at those spots. The most significant point, though, is that there's an almost complete absence of "ram air", which is air that gets forced through the grille-at speed the amount of air moved by the fan is insignificant compared to the ram air, and again the temperature goes up. In a properly functioning cooling system, the temperature won't get high enough to cause damage, but it's still there.
The second common circumstance where temperatures can stray outside the ideal range is sustained moderate speed cruising(say 50-70mph) at lower temperatures. On flat ground and steady speed, there's not a lot of load on the engine at these speeds, and there is a LOT of ram air at relatively low temperatures cooling it off. TOO good of a cooling system can cause the engine to struggle to even keep the thermostat open. In some areas, it's common to see vehicles(especially semis) with part of the grill or radiator blocked off in the winter to minimize this effect-there are nice covers made to do this, but the cheap way is with a piece of cardboard. In the MG, which has a directly driven mechanical fan(no clutch), overcooling is a real problem in the winter, and I actually block the oil radiator(not the main water radiator) completely with a purpose made blanking plate. The louvers in the grille mentioned above do this automatically, although this isn't exactly a new concept. I've seen 1920s and 1930s vehicles that had the same, although manually operated.
If you hook up an OBDII reader and drive around, you can usually monitor the engine temperature in real time. The temperature gauge on the dash on most modern vehicles is useless to this and I've often called it a "glorified idiot light." The reason for this is that basically, the gauge will "creep" up as the engine warms up until it gets to the center. At that point, the ECM will generally lock the needle there for operation. At least in vehicles I've had, if you see the needle move past N, it's often already too late. There are basically two positions past N-almost all the way over at "H", which means "things are getting dangerously hot" and then pegged which is usually accompanied by the engine going into limp-home mode. I saw both of those positions one time in a previous car when I had an almost impossible to track down bubble in the cooling system that would cause falsely high gauge readings.
I know why you have an issue with the MG. It was designed to run in the UK where the cold temperatures and rain provide natural cooling!
Had the first frost of the winter yesterday. Today the car is covered and it’s much heavier frost. Normally when I cover the car the night before, there isn’t a frost.
We call that Murphy’s law over here.
What most people miss in a EV is the network support! The Network support in Europe is stronger than in the US or Canada for sure!
Yep. that's a great take on it. I own a Mustang, love the classics, but I'm in no way put off by this.
No, it doesn’t, at all. I remember when Ford toyed with the idea of a Mustang sedan... As I recall it wasn’t received too well, though that would have made more sense. It seems like a cheap way for Ford to give more appeal to their new EV from purely a marketing perspective.
To some degree I think the branding makes sense from a marking standpoint. The problem with a lot of EV’s is that they’re not “cool”. I think Tesla’s initial success was be cause they made EV’s that looked sporty and were fast... unlike a Prius. “Mustang” is obviously associated with sportiness / performance. The Ford name alone isn’t exactly enticing to a lot of buyers outside of their loyalty base.
I think it would look a lot better with a more conventional grill... and there’s something off about the headlights. I also am not a fan of the coupe-SUV look (GLE coupe, X4, X6, etc). It doesn’t look good aesthetically and it defeats the “utility” in Sport Utility Vehicle by cutting the trunk space in half.
I find the exterior design of the car quite unattractive though.
Agreed, there’s very few cars in my mind without grills (or hidden/minimalists grills) that look very good- and most of them are Porsches which benefit from their iconic style.
Normally I’m not a fan of fake intake vents and exhaust pipes on cars, but grills generally seem like a necessary requirement as part of the schema of car design.
I think the grill-less design on EV’s is entirely aesthetic marketing language. By not having a grill they’re advertising they don’t have an engine that needs extensive cooling.
As others mentioned, EV’s still require cooling systems for their batteries as thermal management is essential for their efficiency. Their drivetrain motors also require cooling as well. The Taycan which has a 2-speed transmission also utilizes a liquid cooling system. Additionally, the AC system requires cooling of the condenser.
Aerodynamics can probably have slight improvement without a grill, though an increasing number of cars have grill vents that’s open/close to improve aerodynamics or cooling depending on the situation. Even though the benefit is probably pretty small, manufacturers have been doing lots of rather ridiculous things for minimal improvements. Those flush pop-out door handles supposedly improve aerodynamics by like 0.3% on the Range Rover Velar. I suppose however if you’re trying to make a super efficient car you’ll try to get gains wherever you can.
Ugh. Another step towards a desolate future populated entirely by crossovers, SUVs and pickup trucks. The E-Type and Miura are spinning in their graves. Kill me now.
I’ve got nothing whatsoever against hybrids and electrics. But the prevailing form factors these days....like I said, Ugh.
I’ve got nothing whatsoever against hybrids and electrics. But the prevailing form factors these days....like I said, Ugh.
I read an article a while back, it was specifically analyzing the Cali market (where EVs probably have had the most impact), anyway, one of the key factors of ownership for many people, was for it to be totally clear, they were driving an EV or Hybrid. Terrific implementations of hybrids that looked too much like their pure ICE counterpart sold poorly.
So it's like there's some kind of established - butt ugly - design language, that many manufacturers have adopted because it's the "EV look", I mean, holy crap, no offense, but the Model 3 is one of the ugliest designs on the road, but it's kind of the model for a bunch of the EV design elements.
However, there's hope, see the post above about the new Audi, sure it's got some "I'm an EV" design ticks, but it looks way more like an ICE vehicle than not
True, and it's always been that way. There are some very practical reasons for making EVs look different (maximum efficiency demands styling driven more by aerodynamics than may be typical; they don't require a radiator and thus a grille may be superfluous). But the biggest reason is that virtually everyone who buys one wants to be seen driving an EV. You might argue that this really not so different than the motivations behind the styling in other segments. Trucks are made to look extra butch, even when their owners use them primarily as commuter vehicles. Sports cars and (ugh) sporty SUVs are full of go-fast, "racing-inspired" styling details - some of which are non-functional. SUVs come with hokey little touches like integral first aid kits, highly visible tie-down points, running boards, and chunky body cladding - even if they are fragile and mostly for show.
Crossovers look like swollen versions of station wagons or softened SUVs though, they will always be visual mashups and thus irredeemably hideous.
The opposite end of this spectrum, of course, is the "Q-ship" or "sleeper." This attracts a much smaller group of diehard enthusiasts, but the reality is that subtlety is not a selling point for most consumers. They want to brand their lifestyle by driving a vehicle with a certain "look."
The future is EVs though, and there will come a point when this styling distinction ceases to exist.
Oh man, the weather is GLORIOUS for convertibles this week. People sometimes say, "Oh it must be fun to have a convertible during the summer", but honestly, it's mostly too hot and summers here are incredibly humid. Unlike late fall and spring where we get cool days, bright sun, and much lower humidity.
It's one of those, oh wait, I need something from the grocery days (that we really don't ...)
It's one of those, oh wait, I need something from the grocery days (that we really don't ...
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