Waiting for Subaru to jump in. The day they offer a CrossTrek with CarPlay I'll be laying down my bucks. Until then my 1998 Civic will just keep on rolling.
Gas based car? It's a joke. Pure EV or bust.
If you're buying a car that uses gas with the expectation of keeping it for more than 5 years, you're making a massive mistake. The value is going to plummet to nothing.
I'm putting down my deposit on the Tesla Model 3 in 13 days, 1 hour, and 35 minutes. It starts at $25K (after incentives) with a 200 mile range, full autonomous driving, and being a pure EV means it's stupid easy to maintain. No transmission, oil, gas, etc to maintain. It's just a couple of motors connected to a giant battery. 1/10th as many parts as an engine, meaning 1/10th as many things that can fail. $80 to swap out the battery every 50K miles (they refurbish them). The most vulnerable part of the car is the tires. It uses ordinary tires, so they'll need replacing as often as any other car, and it's just as difficult as on any other car. Recharge whenever you're at home for about $0.02/mile (gas will never be that cheap. You'd need a car getting 50 MPG at $1.00/gallon... more efficient than any hybrid I've ever seen, at a lower price than I've seen gas in the last 15 years.) Recharge for free in 30 minutes at a supercharger whenever you're going more than 200 miles on a trip.
If my current car fails before my Model 3 arrives in mid-late 2017, I'll be finding myself an old, cheap junker to get me through until then. Under no conditions will I ever be buying another gas based car that costs more than $4K.
My wife had the 2014 CX-5, with the nav and BT, and she hated it. She liked the features, but the software was very slow, buggy, and inconsistent. The forums have many complaints about it from other users. Mazda has used the same CX-5 infotainment system since the CX-5 came out, up to at least the 2014's. Maybe they have since fixed it in the 2016 models.
She traded in the 2014 CX-5 for the 2015 Mazda5 when they were being discontinued last year. I told her to get the base model and I would install an aftermarket CarPlay headunit, which ended up being a lot cheaper and better than any factory option.
Side note: Nice MR2, have you posted pics in the cars or car photo thread(s)? I had a high HP Supra (4th gen), major build with a big single, custom paint, TIEN coil-overs, AP 6-piston setup, etc., but I always wanted to do up an MR2 as well.
. . . $80 to swap out the battery every 50K miles (they refurbish them) . . . .
Lol ok. It will take at least 15-20 years for electric to be in such a strong position. In the UK the infrastructure just doesn't exist to support electric cars as a mass mode of transport.
I personally think your timeline is way off. We are at least a decade from electric being the standard if not much further. The infrastructure needs to be developed more for a fully EV to be practical IMO. For example, I live in an apartment without a garage. It wouldn't even be an option.
Talk about utterly irrelevant garbage that has absolutely nothing to do with the thread.
Go be an elitist somewhere else, your timeline of a death knell for gas in five years is a complete joke. If anything, it's you buying a 200 mile range EV that's going to find yourself with a value plummeting to nothing when 350-400 mile range EVs are the norm in 5 years. There's a reason all those current Volts and Leafs are leases, you should think about that one.
You're still an early buyer in the EV market, and you'll be the one getting burned, bigtime. The range isn't there.
Wake Up Acura!
I really hope they upgrade Sync2 vehicles to Sync3... sigh
Interesting argument. I'd expect I can swap out my old 200 mile battery for a newer 400 mile battery in the future, but I'll have to investigate.
Also, it's not irrelevant. MacRumors is talking about this car like it's something desirable. I'm refuting that.
What infrastructure do you need? The car goes 200 miles on a charge. Your home has outlets, right? You can charge at home at night. You can plug into two ordinary outlets at a time giving you a range of 10 miles per hour, or about 100 miles per night. If that's not good enough for your daily needs, you can also have an electrician install a beefer outlet that'll give you 40 miles per hour for about $400 - you'll fully charge the battery in just 5 hours.
For road trips that are longer than the battery can handle, there's the free supercharger network (I linked that to a map of the superchargers in the UK for you... it looks like there's around 40 of them spread around the country so far. The UK is under 900 miles from end to end, so those 40 superchargers should easily accommodate any trip you want to make.)
If your concern is whether the grid can handle it, it takes 6 kWh of gas to refine a single gallon of gasoline. That same 6 kWh can drive the Tesla Model 3 for 20 miles. Which means if the UK is refining their own gasoline right now (I assume they are... IDK which other refiners you'd be importing it from), your grid will handle it fine. You'll be increasing the stress by charging your car by the same amount that you're reducing the stress by not needing as much gasoline refined.
You don't need a garage. The chargers can be installed outside. It's about $400 to have a charger installed. Alternatively, you might already have outlets in your parking lot - those might be good enough. Ask your landlord - if you're willing to foot the bill, it's likely they'll sign off on having the work done. Threaten to go elsewhere if they won't sign off.
Interesting argument. I'd expect I can swap out my old 200 mile battery for a newer 400 mile battery in the future, but I'll have to investigate.
Also, it's not irrelevant. MacRumors is talking about this car like it's something desirable. I'm refuting that.
What infrastructure do you need? The car goes 200 miles on a charge. Your home has outlets, right? You can charge at home at night. You can plug into two ordinary outlets at a time giving you a range of 10 miles per hour, or about 100 miles per night. If that's not good enough for your daily needs, you can also have an electrician install a beefer outlet that'll give you 40 miles per hour for about $400 - you'll fully charge the battery in just 5 hours.
For road trips that are longer than the battery can handle, there's the free supercharger network (I linked that to a map of the superchargers in the UK for you... it looks like there's around 40 of them spread around the country so far. The UK is under 900 miles from end to end, so those 40 superchargers should easily accommodate any trip you want to make.)
If your concern is whether the grid can handle it, it takes 6 kWh of gas to refine a single gallon of gasoline. That same 6 kWh can drive the Tesla Model 3 for 20 miles. Which means if the UK is refining their own gasoline right now (I assume they are... IDK which other refiners you'd be importing it from), your grid will handle it fine. You'll be increasing the stress by charging your car by the same amount that you're reducing the stress by not needing as much gasoline refined.
You don't need a garage. The chargers can be installed outside. It's about $400 to have a charger installed. Alternatively, you might already have outlets in your parking lot - those might be good enough. Ask your landlord - if you're willing to foot the bill, it's likely they'll sign off on having the work done. Threaten to go elsewhere if they won't sign off.
Interesting argument. I'd expect I can swap out my old 200 mile battery for a newer 400 mile battery in the future, but I'll have to investigate.
Also, it's not irrelevant. MacRumors is talking about this car like it's something desirable. I'm refuting that.
Talk about having no idea - how can this scale to support the millions of cars on the roads each day - might be a few queues with only 40 recharging points!
Lastly the range indicated for all these electric vehicles is under ideal conditions - add air conditioning, heating, lights etc and the range drops dramatically.
expectation of keeping it for more than 5 years, you're making a massive mistake. The value is going to plummet to nothing.
Why? CarPlay doesn't do anything that could distract more than an iPhone. If anything, I think it would reduce the distractions. Example: Using Siri hands free for texting, and reducing the amount looking down at your phone.Expect increased car crashes starting May 2017.
Anyone that purchases a DD car as a long term investment should not be trusted with money.
Electric or gasoline, cars are horrible investments.
I'm not sure what you mean by "DD car". Looked it up online and couldn't find anything... unless you meant "designated driver"? I don't understand your argument.
$80 to swap out the battery every 50K miles (they refurbish them). The most vulnerable part of the car is the tires. It uses ordinary tires, so they'll need replacing as often as any other car, and it's just as difficult as on any other car. Recharge whenever you're at home for about $0.02/mile (gas will never be that cheap. You'd need a car getting 50 MPG at $1.00/gallon...
I drove a rental 2015 or 2016 Escape (not sure which) over the holidays. I chose it specifically because I wanted to test out the new eco-boost technology that replaced the hybrid they were previously offering. It felt like a really well built solid vehicle. It drove nicely. But I was very disappointed with the gas milage. Whatever the eco-boost does, it didn't make me feel as good as a hybrid would have about the fuel economy or the environment.
But the true low point was the infotainment system. That thing was an absolute mess, with the tiny screen mounted way up on the dash, and remotely accessed physical buttons that you had to align with the virtual buttons on the screen. I needed an instruction manual to understand how it all worked. Alsmot drove off the road the first time I was trying to figure something simple out, and realized this was going to take more attention than I could casually give it while driving.
This stands in stark contrast to they Nissan sedan I rented previously which just connected to my phone and had intuitive controls that didn't require any elaborate explanations. CarPlay will go a long way toward completing the overall experience I had with Ford. Normally I would have just ripped out the head unit and replace it with something reasonable, but unfortunately the Ford system was integrated into the dash, which would leave behind a number of buttons, even if it could physically be replaced.
I like the picture at the lake, because it looks like something that could actually happen in real life.
I really don't get Carplay.
Who want's to be fiddling with buttons, listening to or dictating messages etc whilst driving?
It means you are probably old. If you can't see why nice screen showing maps/directions linked straight from your phone is helpful then good for you. Or why having all the music on my phone immediately available, including podcasts and audiobooks is nice then whatever.
I'd rather just drive, and enjoy some (increasingly rare) gadget free time.
Carplay quite frankly, sucks.. It's a half baked solution that doesn't work very well..
When you see a picture and immediately realize, oh this is just advertisement. When the picture is not about the people or the landscape only the product to be sold. When I look at this picture, I don't think the car is the most important thing happening in this situation. It could be the car was only driven to the lake, because the girls wanted to be at the lake and the car ended up being in the picture accidentally.What's an example of a car pic that couldn't happen in real life?