OT: Brakes seizing on electric cars? (2024 Update)

[soup]

My 'workaday' disc is an SSD. I have a 'normal' hard disk for bulk storage. It is named "spinning rust storage (Z:)".

[soup]

That's what I get for replying with finger up bum and brain in neutral.

[Commander Kinsey]

AFAIK she still had two arms.

[Commander Kinsey]

Now we have the concept of hazards for "I braked a little hard".

There's such a thing as crying wolf.

[Commander Kinsey]

Bullshit, absolute and utter bullshit. A manual car tends to have 12345, where they ratios of 12345, for example my current car will go up to 20/40/60/80/100mph comfortably in each gear.

So in an auto which will go 40/60/80/100mph in each gear, those are 2345.

It will to prevent overrev. The 123 is a request.

Overdrive is meaningless. It's just a higher ratio.

Nothing to do with foolproofing, more convenience. "I wish to slow down as fast as possible" - select 1.

[Commander Kinsey]

Emphasizing things is the sign of a f***ed up mind.

It's from experience, I know how fast the car will go at the red line in each gear. Every car I've had, 12345 have been in the ratio 12345.

And enables 2 to act like 1. So it certainly does enable a lower gear, just like you slipping the clutch in 2nd when your 1st is broken.

If something can be wrecked it's been designed badly. Drivers have better things to do than synchronize themselves with the internal workings of the transmission.

Disabling the TC improves economy, this is well known.

It certainly is. I got my VW Golf 1.9TDI auto to do 58mpg (more than stated in the specs) by using a light foot. Driving normally got 35mpg.

You're travelling at motorway speed in top gear, an obstruction is ahead, if you like, someone else f***ed up. Or maybe a stupid deer ran into the road. For maximum deceleration, you select 1, the car will drop as quickly as possible through all the gears. Why do you find this very simple concept so difficult to understand? Maybe you're really a cyclist.

[Brian Gaff]

Don't know but we had an Austin like that when I was a kid, one day while going around what used to be Tolworth roundabout, one of them flew off onto the middle of the Roundabout and we had to stop to get it back. Back home it needed two screws to fasten it back on. The other side was loose as well so blobs of varnish were applied and no further problems. You had to take them off t change the bulbs which were like mini strip lights with filaments as I recall. Later on the extra lights came along as retrofitted break lights withed a divided orange bit and side lights the same. Of course they did seem stupid, as all were a bodge. With regard to the original sub line. Brakes on any vehicle if not used for a while tend to stick and since much of the normal breaking on electric cars is done by them motor, its only the emergencies that tend to find the use of real breaks, or so I'm told. Brian

[Max Demian]

Trafficators!

They originally didn't have lights. Lights on their own aren't any good; you need *flashing* lights to attract attentions, and how do you do that?

(I'm not sure that direction indicators are compulsory even today.)

[AnthonyL]

In my young days (mid-50s) the trafficators worked by twisting the appropriate ear of my uncle when we sat in the back seat. He'd say that we were going to turn right soon but needed to twist is ear, and out the trafficator popped. That must have been an early implementation of AI.

A sharp thwack on the door pillar often helped propel the arm out.

That was also in the days that windscreen wipers came to a standstill when labouring up hill but went like the clappers on the way down.

[NY]

Yes, but it is a *lot* easier and safer for a driver to flick a switch on the steering wheel central hub or on a stalk, than it is to wind down a non-electric window, take one arm off the wheel for an extended period while giving a hand signal (which the car behind has to distinguish between rotating (turning left) and flapping up and down (slowing down).

When did flashing indicators (initially white and red, only later changing to amber) first become available on cars? And when did they become mandatory? My mum's 1960 Morris Minor had trafficators when she bought it in in 1966, although flashing amber indicators had been retro-fitted, either by the previous 1960 owner or else by mum and dad. The trafficators worked in parallel for a year or so, but eventually jammed (maybe I played with them too much!!!!!!!) and dad disconnected them.

[Commander Kinsey]

Who came up with the silly idea of flimsy stalks? The obvious way to me is just have lights on the four corners of the car, like we do now.

ROFL at one flying off, I had a Ford Sierra windscreen wiper do that once. The girlfriend thought it was hilarious. For some reason it wiped a greater angle than it should, and went past the edge of the windscreen. It got caught on a windy day and snapped off when the motor tried to return it.

Apparently electric cars use the real brakes under 5mph because the regeneration doesn't work. Sounds like they need to work on the regeneration system.

[Commander Kinsey]

So that's a real word? I only ever saw it on a kid's toy, they were called "flasher trafficators".

You also need them to be the right colour. Stupid BMW and Volvo have models with orange sidelights, WTF? I love pulling out in front of them and making rude gestures to say I have no idea where they're going. "Permacators" is the official term for these loonies. No I will not stare at their car long enough to see if the light goes on and off, I have two other directions too look at at the junction.

The pigs always test them at a safety check.

[Commander Kinsey]

Sounds like "right turn Clyde!"

I had a car where using them above 60mph was inadvisable. They couldn't get back down. Not a very good design since the car could do 110.

[Commander Kinsey]

That was still in the highway code when I took my test in 97. Incase the indicators broke. I never learned it.

When I was getting a lift car sharing home from work in 99, in his old Vauxhall Nova, someone was waving their hand, palm down, up and down. We both thought he was trying to tell us the boot had come open and we should stop and close it. A friend later told me it meant "slow down", not sure how that gesture is supposed to mean slow down. True enough there was an ambulance or something round the corner.

I once had someone look like they were firing a gun at me, but using their finger, turns out that means "speed trap ahead". I thought he was being rude.

They alternated white and red? How? Or were some red and some white?

AFAIK the USA still has, or recently used to, flash the brake light for an indicator. Very primitive, stupid, and ambiguous.

My dad had a Citroen 2CV when I were a young lad. Me and a friend used to break into it, simply by turning the boot catch quite hard (for a 7 year old), which bypassed the "lock", so we could climb into the front and pretend to drive. The next car he bought was a Morris Marina with a retrofitted alarm. We used to bounce the back of it to set it off, and hide in the bushes across the road to watch him come out and look confused.

[Bob F]

Are you always this clueless?

[Xeno]

They *were* being rude.

White light to the front, red to the rear.

[Xeno]

No, sometimes he's even more clueless - if such a thing were possible.

[Commander Kinsey]

What?

Not even consistent? What idiot came up with that piece of nonsense?

[Commander Kinsey]

And yet neither of you know the answer.

[The Natural Philosopher]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I cant believe you are that stupid