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I had a really long detailed post about the reason why I think people base reliability on neglect, but decided to not post it. Instead I wanted to just say, for me, all cars can be reliable. For me reliability is when a car doesn't leave you stranded, protects you against a crash, and is just dependable.

If it goes, stops, and turns on.

I've owned cheap speed cars like the Cobalt SS Turbocharged, to nice cars like an Acura, all have been great. 33 years on planet earth has taught me to see things a little differently in terms of car reliability. For me each car requires a different level of attention. If you don't meet that it's neglect. Then things go wrong.

I would say a good comparison would be a puppy. Some breeds require a lot of attention, but they're not broken because of it. They're just built that way. While other breeds require less attention. You can still love them both and one may fit your lifestyle more, but that doesn't mean that puppy is defective or bad, just not for you.
 
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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.

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.
 
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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.

You are correct, the 2016 model is a brand new system and it is leaps and bounds better than the previous gen.
 
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.

I looked through the thread and didn't see any Supras, maybe I posted on a different one.

I love my Turbo MR2. It is a rare car that can turn heads without costing crap loads of $$. Driving the MR2 is very different than any other car I have driven, and even though it is not as fast as some others, I think it is the most fun.

My MR2 is mostly stock, I tend to upgrade parts if they go bad. It has a Motoria exhaust, custom intake, Enkei Kojin wheels. The suspension was heavily upgraded with Koni yellow struts, Eibach Profit springs, and a full Prothane urethane bushings kit.

I am currently having a turbo rebuilt (ATS CT 27) which should be done in a few weeks, which I will be changing the SMIC and all new pipes when it is done.

To keep this post on topic with the thread, I just bought an open box Alpine iLX-007 with CarPlay for $311 at Best Buy, and will have it installed this weekend.
 
. . . $80 to swap out the battery every 50K miles (they refurbish them) . . . .

They'll never hold that price for the batteries no matter how much they recycle. Oh and BTW, the last estimate of lithium reserves world wide was 13 million tonnes and we are currently using about 600 thousand tonnes per year. Recycling costs for lithium are about 5 or 6 times higher than mining costs. You better hope and prey they find some new technology. The real battery costs for the model 3 is around $15,000 and they are hoping to get that down to about $5,300 in 3 to 5 years, but no promises. I think that $80 is for the labor costs, you better have that $80 cost in writing.
 
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.
 
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I really hope they upgrade Sync2 vehicles to Sync3... sigh
 
Wake Up Acura!

Wake up Honda, you lost one of our family long time Honda owners to Hyundai, kept one who bought a '16 Fit (but regrets it due to no CarPlay, and a radio interface requiring PhD level competence, and thus is not recommending it to friends despite liking it otherwise), and will likely lose a 2nd family member to a CarPlay using brand.

We all got a bad taste in our mouth that you were listed as a CarPlay partner in '14, images of your display audio were used in Apple advertising, CarPlay was successfully tested via firmware update via USB stick in customer production vehicles early '15; you left customers who were led to understand that Honda's great customer satisfaction reputation would ensure existing cars would also receive a backwards software update; announced no MY '15's would get such update; introduced CarPlay on 2 new models, but models launched before '16 with display audio are left wanting, with these customers again believing there will be a firmware update.

Want surprise, delight and satisfaction, give or sell the firmware update for, say 25 or 50$, to existing customers.

By doing customers with newish cars a solid favor by updating because you want to not compete against the 1000$ Honda Navi option in current model, or to use CarPlay to try and sell the latest models is disappointing (and more akin to move a bottom tier OEM would make.)
 
I really hope they upgrade Sync2 vehicles to Sync3... sigh

That's a bummer, but unfortunately, it's extremely likely it won't happen, since Sync3 is a whole new set of a hardware. It's a different display (resolution and capacitive vs. resistive), different control unit (Sync2 is 400MHz, Sync3 is 1.7GHz dual core among other things), and different interconnect. It would be one thing is there was a small modular swap out (kind of like some Samsung smart TVs), but you're looking at about $1500+ in parts, and there's not really any incentive for the manufacturer. With Sync3, since they're not changing any hardware with the '17s, I guess they figure, it's a nice courtesy, and it effectively costs them nothing (just an end user download and flash, heck, my Sync 3 even has WiFi).
 
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.

The 200,000-300,000 Ford sells every year would say otherwise.

I also doubt you'll be able to swap out the battery, and even if you could, the cost would likely be prohibitive and the other tech in the then-newer car wouldn't make it worth it to sink a massive investment into the old one. EVs are basically disposable and will continue to be so for a while.
 
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!

There are so many issues with initial cost, battery life, range, charging stations etc that it will be at least 15-20 years before I would consider a fully electric vehicle. Having said that I do think the future is electric but I actually think your argument is the wrong way round - it's you that is making the risky investment not me with my new petrol car.

Lastly the range indicated for all these electric vehicles is under ideal conditions - add air conditioning, heating, lights etc and the range drops dramatically.
 
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.

Infrastructure is needed. If everyone has electric cars, outlets would need to be all over. $400 to install an outlet is infrastructure
 
Ford, better to be late than never. In my humble opinion now that phone connectivity (carplay,androidauto) is available; one must not buy new car/suv/etc without such feature built-in and software upgradeable. Typically, most people don’t replace car often, less than 10 years. So, why to live with for the next many years without such feature when available.Hope, car manufacturers in process of providing such feature also support wireless carplay. We all need to put pressure on auto makers/dealers to get off their laurels.
 
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!

The only people who need to use a supercharger are people going on long trips. Day to day they shouldn't be necessary. Tesla estimates that about 10% of all miles driven are driven on long trips. That would suggest we only need about 10% as many charging stations as gas stations.

Then again, it takes 6 times as long to use a supercharger as it does to fill up your gas tank. So maybe you'd need 60% as many stations.

Lastly the range indicated for all these electric vehicles is under ideal conditions - add air conditioning, heating, lights etc and the range drops dramatically.

Lights don't touch range at all. They consume a few dozen watts. The battery supplies a few dozen kW. The total impact is around 0.05% (0.1 mile) of range on a full battery - not worth considering.

Running the AC costs you about 5% (10 miles). Heater costs you above 10% (20 miles). Those are worth considering, but I don't think I would call them dramatic.

But that isn't unique to an EV - running the AC in a gasoline based car will similarly reduce the range, will it not (heater won't - it just uses excess heat from the engine.)
 
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expectation of keeping it for more than 5 years, you're making a massive mistake. The value is going to plummet to nothing.

Anyone that purchases a DD car as a long term investment should not be trusted with money.

Electric or gasoline, cars are horrible investments.
 
Expect increased car crashes starting May 2017.
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.
 
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.

I am aware that any car is a depreciating asset. You should buy a car because you need one, not because you want one. As I see it, electric is far more reliable and will require less repair than ICE. So even if they're more expensive at the start (which it isn't - it's only costing me $25K... I couldn't even get anything comparable with an ICE for that price), it would pay for itself over the long term. Much like Macs pay for themselves despite their higher upfront cost.
 
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.

DD = daily driver, sorry, it is used a lot in car forums.

I agree that electric cars will become more popular in the future, but not in the timeline you mentioned. I think everyone will be perfectly safe buying a car that costs more than $4k for at least the next decade if not more. Also, there is not a good replacement yet for gasoline vehicles. Once there is an decent electric SUV or crossover that cost less than $30k, then I think electric might take off, but until then, what electric vehicle will fit a normal size family?

$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...

Do you mean the $80 battery swap is $80 to replace of the battery?
The Tesla event that they did to show off the swap was not a battery replacement, but just borrowing a fresh battery to keep on going for long drives. Equivalent to pumping a tank of fuel. If you do not return the battery, then you will be charged for a new battery which is thousands of dollars not $80.

Also, the $.02/mile is a little low for most people, at least in the US. It would be closer to .04/mile.

And about the infrastructure, how is the US ready for everyone to have electric cars? Is everyone going to be running long extension cords from their house to their cars?
 
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.

Hmmm, that's odd. Because I have a '15 Escape, and while the MySync isn't the greatest, it's pretty easy to set up and use. But we have the "premium" version w/ the nav and the good stereo.

I get rentals all the time, and they usually give you the "crap ass basic bare bones" system, so maybe that was it?

I've heard the latest version of MySync is better still, and CarPlay will be (obviously) preferable to either.

Agree about the gas mileage, but, honestly, unless you go hybrid you're not going to get better than 35 highway (which is about what I get on my escape). And we lease, so going hybrid or electric doesn't make any sense.
 
I like the picture at the lake, because it looks like something that could actually happen in real life.

What's an example of a car pic that couldn't 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..

My car has it and it's awesome. It works very well for me so go figure.
 
What's an example of a car pic that couldn't happen in real life?
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.
 
I don't get carplay. They can do the same by installing iphone/ipad stand and a connector to the car. It doesn't have to be built in
 
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