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Peter wrote:

They are really big cars

Just 9cm narrower than a full size Transit van, IIRC. They are ridiculous.

Supercars are also ridiculously wide. There are a couple of Ferraris around here, and they are absurd – due to their width, they aren’t going anywhere fast. The nimbler, narrower Mazda MX-5 will be a lot more fun to drive on our roads.

Last Edited by alioth at 26 Apr 11:40
Andreas IOM

I couldn’t agree more. Fortunately, more and more choice in the market so there will be EVs for everybody’s taste. No proper convertibles on the horizon, though, sadly.

Biggin Hill

It is however clearly difficult to do “European style” (i.e. smaller and nice looking) cars, with a decent range. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it, but AFAICT nobody is.

One low hanging fruit is a “big car” because you can pack the whole bottom of it with batteries. The hybrids which are all the rage in Europe (and are a poor solution to anything) are all tank sized too, because they need the ~30cm extra height to stuff batteries and other stuff into, and they sell because lots of people like huge cars (for “perceived safety” especially on the school run, etc). The other low hanging fruit is a “little car” with a crap range, which is actually the only viable thing in volume – until the whole power generation stuff goes nuclear and all the streets are ripped up and bigger transformers installed everywhere.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

It is however clearly difficult to do “European style” (i.e. smaller and nice looking) cars, with a decent range.

Indeed.

The modern hatchback is a highly-evolved beast which has taken a good few decades to arrive at a great compromise of all the important purchase factors.

The flipside of this is that with every aspect of the design (and use of space) evolved to almost its max extent, trying to switch in a totally different propulsion system (especially one which requires a lot of space for batteries) is not easy at all.

EGLM & EGTN

No proper convertibles on the horizon, though, sadly.

@cobalt. Yes, a pity, would love to have one, let’s keep each other informed if we hear anything A thing like this would be fun:

https://www.carwow.co.uk/volkswagen/id3/news/5125/vw-id3-cabriolet-convertible-electric-car-price-specs-release-date

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

What is it about these “techy” cars that they have to have stupid looking wheels?
They look like something a 8 year old designed…

And whats the point of a cabriolet if you cant hear that flat-six or V8 sound??

Germany’s constitutional Court ruled against the government in a landmark ruling that will lead to climate protection measures needing to be drastically tightened in the future.

The government has until the end of next year to improve the 2019 Climate Protection Act so that it is sufficient to reach the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (limiting global warming to 1.5°C)

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

Life is so wonderful if somebody else pays for everything

Can I please have an airport, and a hangar? 30×30m would be nice.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

MedEwok wrote:

The government has until the end of next year to improve the 2019 Climate Protection Act so that it is sufficient to reach the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (limiting global warming to 1.5°C)

That is actually not what the court has decided. To the contrary (as it was challenged as well) the court explicitly decided that currently there is no indication that the measures need to be tightened.

The only thing that the court decided is, that it is unconstitutional to pass a law that says “We will reduce x by 100% until 2040. Here is the plan to reduce it by 50% until 2030 and we will figure out how to do the other 50% later”.
To follow the ruling of the court, the legislator does need to specify the plan how to get from 2030 to 2040 now.

There is even an English version of the press statement of the court: https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2021/bvg21-031.html

Germany

gallois wrote:

Chernobyl should never have happened and I agree lessons have been learnt and technology is much better.

Same goes for three-mile-island and Fukushima too. And several others which did not really see the light of the press, as they were contained (actually, so was TMI but it was highly publicized). And yes, there are not many ways around bringing nuclear back or at least keeping it going, as the song goes, “I hope that something better comes along”.

gallois wrote:

But unless you are a dictatorship you will have to persuade the public that is the case.

Brown outs and stranded Teslas will do it too. Much faster than political debate. And I guess it is not a bad idea to have a diesel generator stashed away at home, at least if you have a nice big heating oil tank buried in your garden. At least the stuff in the freezer won’t go to waste like that.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland
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