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  1. #21
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15 View Post
    Ripley fought the OG Alien in next to nothing. I'd post a reference, but I don't know if it would be DBR friendly.
    Tell me I'm wrong!

    gihiya-la0120 c.jpg

    Tesla_Cybertruck_outside_unveil_modified_by_Smnt.jpg

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by bundabergdevil View Post
    Ohhhh... The sequel. In the first, she basically fights in her underwear. In the second she gets guns, a Elon tank, and an exoskeleton.

  3. #23
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15 View Post
    Ohhhh... The sequel. In the first, she basically fights in her underwear. In the second she gets guns, a Elon tank, and an exoskeleton.
    Oh, shoot. Good call. You’re right, it’s been a while but that first one is pretty bare bones.

    Cameron likes his exoskeletons.

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by bundabergdevil View Post
    Oh, shoot. Good call. You’re right, it’s been a while but that first one is pretty bare bones.

    Cameron likes his exoskeletons.
    I still say the original Alien is one of the greatest movies ever.

  5. #25
    Wouldn’t mind someone pushing Elon out of an airlock.

  6. #26
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, DC area
    Fun story in the WaPost today, comparing the Tesla to an Iphone. Sorry if the rest is paywalled, but here's the opening:

    Tesla released its futuristic “Full Self-Driving” package last year to great fanfare, criticism and the usual stream of video uploads showing off cars that could seemingly drive themselves.

    Then something strange happened.

    The electric vehicle giant revoked access for some drivers, it said. Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter in March that some users who had received access to the company’s most advanced driver-assistance features “did not pay sufficient attention to the road.” Tesla did not say how it made the determination or who among the feature’s 2,000 beta testers — who shelled out thousands for the package that Tesla now priced at $10,000 — would lose access.

    But in Silicon Valley, the decision reflected a well-understood formula: Consumers are the subject, and tech giants are in control.


    While I'm happy with my iPhone world, I'm not sure how much I want to buy into the Tesla world.

    -jk

  7. #27
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    From the replies on the thread named "OK - Who Has a Tesla?" it appears that no one on DBR has one.
    Sage Grouse

    ---------------------------------------
    'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013

  8. #28
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Outside Philly
    Quote Originally Posted by sagegrouse View Post
    From the replies on the thread named "OK - Who Has a Tesla?" it appears that no one on DBR has one.
    More like sagegrump...

  9. #29
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by bundabergdevil View Post
    More like sagegrump...
    Merely a casual observation.
    Sage Grouse

    ---------------------------------------
    'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013

  10. #30
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Chesapeake, VA.
    I thought hard about making the down payment to reserve a 3 series sedan, but decided against it at the last minute.
    "We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by sagegrouse View Post
    From the replies on the thread named "OK - Who Has a Tesla?" it appears that no one on DBR has one.
    Some may be afraid to admit it😀

  12. #32
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO
    Quote Originally Posted by arnie View Post
    Some may be afraid to admit it😀
    Yeah, perhaps Moonpie got some PMs.
    Sage Grouse

    ---------------------------------------
    'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013

  13. #33
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Lynchburg, VA
    Congrats moonpie! I don’t own a Tesla but I hear they are incredibly fun to drive. Performance alone makes EVs very tempting. I placed a refundable $100 reservation for a F150 Lightning a few days ago. I’m ~75% likely to complete the purchase, contingent on the final specs (particularly battery performance with payload/towing) and purchase price of my preferred trim package.

  14. #34
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    Put me in the range anxiety/convenience/not-quite-ready category. As much as I love the idea in theory, I also love the fact that I can get off the interstate with a low fuel tank and get back on five minutes later with a full tank. You can't do that with an electric car.

    My Camry hybrid has 98K miles on it and I should be able to keep it until electric batteries get better and charging stations become more common and quicker.

    Of course, by then I'll be too old to do much more than drive around the block so the point becomes moot.

  15. #35
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington DC
    Ok, I'll confess - I is a Tesla owner of ~3.5 years. Overall I love the car - it is a technical marvel that is amazing to drive, but does have some drawbacks. Mini review below:

    Driving / Performance - this is where the car really shines. Responsiveness, acceleration, handling are all stellar. As someone who enjoys driving (as the speeding cameras frequently tell me), and coming from my 6 speed manual transmission German car, I was skeptical, but I would never go back. Really fun car to drive.

    Interior / Controls - there are many times where it's clear that Tesla is a tech company that makes cars vs an auto manufacturer, and this is one of them. Interior is pretty basic and spartan (they would brand it as "minimalist"). All digital controls take a bit to get used to (ie when you just want to change the temp but don't have a knob to turn and instead have to look at the screen to find the place to swipe). And fit/finishes aren't really up to par as there are panel gaps and numerous horror stories of Tesla trying to deliver flawed cars to people who bought them. Also, for a tech company there are a few missing tech features such as birds-eye 360 camera view that many competing cars have, and the media interface is vastly inferior to Apple/Android car play. There are some things that Tesla gets right like calendar integration (ie when you get into the car it pulls where you are supposed to be and initiatives Navigation, which is cool).

    Range / Charging - for me, my daily commute (back in the olden days when I went into an office) was short, and I live in an area with a lot of chargers, so charging has never been an issue. I charge the car maybe once per week and enjoy not having to go to gas stations (especially in the last few weeks). For road trips, personally I think anything less than 6 hours is easy. I've made the trip from DC to Durham a bunch and I stop to charge once for 20 minutes or so on the way. And batteries are getting better and charging faster, so newer cars will likely have an even better experience. Tesla builds charging stops into trip navigation so it's fairly worry free. I do have to think a little about the destination and where chargers will be, but they are becoming much more prevalent in a lot of places. Now if I routinely had to make 8+ hour drives, the extra stopping time would probably be a hassle but for me it's not been an issue.

    Autopilot - This is a way overhyped and oversold feature. When I bought the car, the salesperson told me "in 2 years your car will be able to drive itself, so it can make money for you as an automated Uber when you aren't using it!" Putting aside the creepiness of that, the car is NOWHERE CLOSE to that level of automated driving. It has very good dynamic cruise control and lane keeping, which is nice on highway driving or bumper to bumper traffic, or when you want to unscrew a water bottle or something when driving, and it has a chime when the light in front of you turns green (which I wish every car in America had), but many other cars have similar features. They are starting to add features for city driving like traffic light and stop sign recognition, but it's fair to say you wont be reading DBR while the car drive you places. It's getting better but overall probably not worth what they charge for it.

    Service - Back in the early days, Tesla's service was fantastic, but it has done a 180 into terrible. Not just the initial delivery issues I mentioned above, but any time you need service Tesla is difficult to deal with. They are a closed network, so you have to take your car to a Tesla service center (and the "mobile service techs" the advertise never actually work). And then you can never actually speak with a human, everything is done via text. Fortunately my car has had very few services issues (hardware upgrade, nail in tire, and someone hit my mirror), and EVs are supposed to be better to maintain than ICE cars due to fewer parts, so hopefully it stays that way as I don't want to have to take my car in.

    Again, overall it's fantastic, and I don't see myself purchasing anything other than another EV, but I'm also glad that most major manufacturers will have electric models in the near future to create more competition.

    Let me know if there are more questions I can help with.

  16. #36
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh
    thanks for all of that info....much of it has been on my mind.

    technically, the device is amazing....i was on the test drive for less than 10 minutes and was ready to cash out my dogecoin...(lol)...it is superior to any car that i've owned or driven.(i've driven ferraris , but never any lambo's or high end things like aston's or bugatti's...so, i prolly made a mistake by actually falling in love with the car before learning about the peripherals of the company as a dealership...

    i'm learning that the "customer service" is clunky. I've emailed my sales person 3 times regarding stuff i'm supposed to be doing to get through the registration, and uploading info on my benz for trade in....no reply....i texted her ...again, no reply... questions about financing can't be answered online...the rims for the 3 suck...so now i'm in hell trying to decide on some decent ones..

    one thing that is becoming obvious is that the website is crap when it comes to handling the online traffic...i'll blame all the tesla owners on the west coast, because the site simply crawls, with many 404's from the hours of 4-8pm eastern....at 5am eastern, it seems to work fine...

    these things are bending my view on actually going through with the sale....i absolutely love my benz every time i drive it or look at it....i'm not sure that will hold up if i feel like i'm waiting in line at the apple store for the new iphone...

    more to follow...
    "One POSSIBLE future. From your point of view... I don't know tech stuff.".... Kyle Reese

  17. #37
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    Atlanta, GA
    Quote Originally Posted by moonpie23 View Post
    got my order in for a 3 last week...excited...

    i did not get the over-priced "sport wheels"...i'll take the stock ones and buy some actual cool rims...

    tell me your good and bad...
    Quote Originally Posted by sagegrouse View Post
    From the replies on the thread named "OK - Who Has a Tesla?" it appears that no one on DBR has one.
    I own a 2018 Model S 75D

    Very fun vehicle. A real head turner. I had no idea so many complete strangers would want to talk to me about it.

    More and more charging stations popping up, which can often provide you with premium parking spaces.

    Only bad thing is that there are so few body shops that can work on a Tesla. This will change with time though.
    Hard at work making beautiful things.

  18. #38
    Join Date
    Nov 2020
    Location
    Western NC

    Plug-in Hybrids?

    I hope no one minds if I ask a question in a slightly different vein. I am in the market for some sort of electric vehicle and I'd like to hear some opinions. I recently installed 15.8 kW of solar panels on my roof and want to take as much advantage of them as I can. That means ditching the gas lawn mower for an electric (easy to do), and more importantly a plug-in car. I'm not ready for full electric because this will be the car I'll use for road trips and I don't think the charging infrastructure or rapid charging time is ready for my needs yet. That leaves a plug-in hybrid.

    So far most of what I know is from reading. Some things sound positive, such as a range of about 30 miles on a full charge before the gas engine kicks in. That would take care of almost all the daily driving. On the other hand, other sources say that under load or at highway speeds, the gas engine kicks in regardless of the charge state. I don't know that either statement is wrong, but I'd like to separate the theory from the practice.

    With the pandemic, I haven't felt good about going to dealers and test driving anything, and with the reported chip shortage, it's not clear that there is much inventory of plug-ins to test drive, so I would like to hear any opinions. BTW, the two models that I am thinking of are the Toyota RAV4 (I believe it is called the Prime), and the Ford Escape. Both were originally scheduled for release this spring, but I don't know how available they are. At least nobody local is advertising them.

    Thanks for any thoughts,
    Section 15

  19. #39
    Join Date
    Feb 2018
    Location
    Dur'm
    Quote Originally Posted by Section 15 View Post
    I hope no one minds if I ask a question in a slightly different vein. I am in the market for some sort of electric vehicle and I'd like to hear some opinions. I recently installed 15.8 kW of solar panels on my roof and want to take as much advantage of them as I can. That means ditching the gas lawn mower for an electric (easy to do), and more importantly a plug-in car. I'm not ready for full electric because this will be the car I'll use for road trips and I don't think the charging infrastructure or rapid charging time is ready for my needs yet. That leaves a plug-in hybrid.

    So far most of what I know is from reading. Some things sound positive, such as a range of about 30 miles on a full charge before the gas engine kicks in. That would take care of almost all the daily driving. On the other hand, other sources say that under load or at highway speeds, the gas engine kicks in regardless of the charge state. I don't know that either statement is wrong, but I'd like to separate the theory from the practice.

    With the pandemic, I haven't felt good about going to dealers and test driving anything, and with the reported chip shortage, it's not clear that there is much inventory of plug-ins to test drive, so I would like to hear any opinions. BTW, the two models that I am thinking of are the Toyota RAV4 (I believe it is called the Prime), and the Ford Escape. Both were originally scheduled for release this spring, but I don't know how available they are. At least nobody local is advertising them.

    Thanks for any thoughts,
    Section 15
    I just bought a Prius Prime, so maybe it's too new to us for me to be much use, but FWIW, so far I really love it. I only have a 120V outlet to work with at the moment, so a full charge takes a long time (a bit over six hours). It would definitely be better to install a 240V circuit if you can. But once charged, the EV mode is snappy and effective. We have not had much opportunity to truly run a lot of different tests, but my understanding is that at sustained high speed, the gas engine will automatically fire up for maximum efficiency if the car is left to it's own devices. However, you can override the automatic function and choose EV mode. Over an admittedly short distance of about two miles, we tested that and the gas engine did not engage. You do use up a lot of charge that way, though.

    I don't know what "local" is to you, but in the Triangle we were able to locate a pretty fair number of in-stock Prii Prime, but only three at the trim level we wanted. we were able to take a test drive without the salesman, so the pandemic issue was not a problem. We just kept the windows down for the first two minutes to air things out and went from there. However, my understanding is that there are very few of the plug-in Rav4s available nationwide. That didn't matter to us, as we were not looking for those. The salesman just happened to mention it.

    So far, we get about 25 miles of range in full EV mode at full charge, but that number depends a lot on the environmental conditions and your driving style. If you like to accelerate a lot, your EV range will be reduced by quite a bit. As far as acceleration goes, though, we have actually found EV mode to be peppier than hybrid mode. The gas engine is mostly used for high speed, steady-state driving (i.e. freeway), while the EV mode does better in town.

    Regardless of mode selected by the user, once the battery is low enough on juice (maybe 20% or so), the vehicle operates just like a standard Prius, switching between battery charging and using the electric motor for boosting from moment to moment. We found it is just as, if not more, effective than the older generation Prius once that happens (we get 50+ mpg). Keep in mind that the Prius Prime's battery is 8.8kWh, while the original was only around 1kWh, so it essentially "reserves" standard Prius performance for when the traction pack can't handle more. However, most of our trips so far have been all or mostly EV mode.

    I recommend it, at least so far, but keep in mind my actual experience is so far very limited.

  20. #40
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Los Angeles
    Quote Originally Posted by sagegrouse View Post
    From the replies on the thread named "OK - Who Has a Tesla?" it appears that no one on DBR has one.

    I do. Best car, and most fun by far, that I've ever had.

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