Not strictly EV related but Volvo installing massive casting presses
These new casting techniques seem to offer a lot of advantages in reducing complexity and weight, which should in turn benefit the consumer with lower prices (assuming cost savings are passed on). But I do wonder what happens when these elements are damaged in an accident and can they be repaired economically or does the car become a write off?
https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121189876/#Comment_121189876
Reminds me of how over the last couple of decades passenger 4WD design migrated from a ladder chassis to monocoque design to relfect the fact the majority of these cars never (or very rarely) went off the blacktop.
Big improvements in on-road handling and weight and hence fuel economy, but if you actually did use them in the rough stuff off road, they often suffered stress related damage and much more difficult (and costly) to repair.
For any of you that's interested, 2 minutes is the time for closing, squirting aluminium in under pressure, aluminium hardening and the opening and removal of the 500c casting, and repeat, every 2 minutes.
The 8400 ton pressure is to keep the thing closed and to stop aluminium leaking out, enough force to stick to the roof in that picture, what does not stick falls down on you, its ok its just hot, not hot liquid.
Based on this video by Sandy Munro, the castings are less repairable but they are also much harder to damage. It's like any process there will always be a trade off between repairability and strength.
It was a good demo by Mr. Munro who went in the full rant mode as non-material-scientist folk were implying that the cast components would have less strength than the welded steel structures that they replaced.
I love how Sandy, having gone to the trouble of putting on a full face visor, forgets to lower it half the time.
Yeah it's not an area I'm an expert in, but the fact that Geely are doing it via the Volvo brand gives me a high level of confidence, Volvo of all brands has the most to lose when it comes to a safety reputation.
Bjorn versus The Sun (the rag newspaper, not the fiery orb in the sky)
TLDR, the sun spliced footage from two of his videos and misrepresented a load of quotes to make it seem like the car ran out unintentionally
Unsurprisingly, the whole thing is BS
Bjorn pointed out that they didn't link to his channel at all so there's no easy way for any readers to confirm anything, and he also doesn't make any money because they chopped footage from his videos and hosted them on their site instead of linking to the originals
So his strategy now is to make some money by trolling the sun, pretty funny response IMO
I think most sane people realise the sun is an absolute garbage paper which invents 99% of their "articles". Pretty much everything on the site now is just reposting YouTube or Tiktok videos and some idiot contract reporter talking nonsense about it (probably for the equivalent of £1 per article)
Unfortunately there's a strong cohort of people who believe the garbage and regurgitate this BS to others. Bit like how there's often posters drifting in here saying they read some article about how EVs are bad. Or maybe Mike down the pub told them about how he was reading up on this stuff, and since Mike can barely read it must have been serious
Moral of the story, don't believe Mike and the sun is a rag. If you're visiting the sun website, ideally don't, but if you do then use an adblocker so they don't make any money from you 😁
Wouldn't touch that rag.
Ah now, it has some uses.
For example, it's handy if you've run out of toilet paper 😂
AHH those student days....
Really makes me wonder, in NI. There is another pillar in a spot with no disabled. 50% of the charging spots are disabled only. They could have made the other spaces disabled size but unmarked or marked charging only and disabled people could park there too.
If you really needed a top up to get you to your destination and found these 2 spaces empty as they will inevitably be the majority of the time what would you do?
Park in them to charge, stay with the car and move as soon as I could/space was needed if the second space was in use.
Seems like a good argument for having an extra long charging cable
I'm not against disabled charging bays, particularly for AC, but if there isn't enough chargers for the other bays then it just leads to abuse
Also, what happens when two petrol cars with blue badges park there? It doesn't say charging only and if there's no other disabled bays then there's not much alternative
You could go further and say that designating 2 charging spaces as disabled only, where there is little or no alternative for non disabled drivers, is an abuse of non disabled ev drivers.
More truck news
Interesting tidbit, mercedes mentioned the truck is 2.5 times the price of the diesel equivalent (without mentioning that price)
Ouch!
Still, they're confident that the trucks will achieve cost parity within 5 years or 600,000km depending on factors like diesel and electricity prices
I think it's pretty obvious then that the only buyers in the short term will be large fleet operators. The issue is that they'll likely buy a few electric trucks and supplement them with diesels in the near term, unless they're going to increase their budget for new equipment by 250%
Couple of Budget 2023 announcements affecting EVs
The trucks where I work cost around €120k I believe but they're used in the Dublin area so not huge mileage, would probably take forever to offset the cost which is a shame.
I guess in that case they'd be buying the smaller battery models which are closer in price to a diesel
The assumption is that the VRT sliding scales are staying the same. They didn't mention any changes anyway but it might be in the finer detail.
No mention of the SEAI grant either so not sure if they have allocated for that next year or not. Presumption is yes until we see otherwise I suppose.
The BIK relief is for another 2 years, no ? :
In relation to the BIK regime for company cars, I am extending for a further year the temporary universal relief of €10,000 to the Original Market Value which I announced earlier this year.In order to encourage the use of electric vehicles for company car purposes, I am temporarily suspending the tapering of the preferential BIK relief. I am therefore maintaining the existing €35,000 Original Market Value reduction for 2024 and 2025.
Taken together with the extension of the universal Original Market Value relief of €10,000, this measure will mean that an employee with an electric company vehicle will see an overall BIK Original Market Value relief of €45,000 in 2024.
Fleet rental might become a more attractive option if the upfront cost of the vehicles is going to increase so much.
Any mention of toll discount extension?
Didn't see anything and the RTE app is frozen now
They must be close to the 50,000 cars limit by now
It's definitely worth looking at. I don't think it'll be cheaper in terms of monthly payments, but a lot of those leases include servicing and tyres so if you're a higher mileage driver it's probably worthwhile
I'm guessing the idea is to avoid the same pitfall as Germany where they removed the business subsidies and fleet customer demand cratered instantly
Rivian + U2 ?
Anyone want to place a bet on how long it takes them to blame an EV?
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