OT: Driving electric cars in winter

[bert]

In article , Mr Macaw writes

You really are a dick

[Mr Macaw]

refore no taillights. Because they are already illuminating in front of=

doesn't even work, because they think they have their lights on.

For remembering to use my lights in the dark?

-- =

A teacher wanted to teach her students about self-esteem, so she asked a= nyone who thought they were stupid to stand up. One kid stood up and the= teacher was surprised. She didn=E2=80=99t think anyone would stand up s= o she asked him, =E2=80=9CWhy did you stand up?=E2=80=9D He answered, =E2= =80=9CI didn=E2=80=99t want to leave you standing up by yourself.=E2=80=9D=

[Mr Macaw]

No, they increase accidents by causing a distraction, which is why some EU countries have actually BANNED them.

[Mr Macaw]

I don't use fog lights at all. They don't work in fog, nothing does.

[NY]

Do you mean front or rear fog lights?

Front fog lights help to illuminate the the road (eg kerb and white line) to help you position your car correctly on the road. Being low down, they cause less scatter into the fog at head height so you can see lights of cars in front etc which might be masked by scatter of headlights in fog. They are not perfect by any means, but they are better than no illumination ahead.

I still find that an occasional flash of my main beams helps in really dense fog: OK it causes horrendous light scatter but it also illuminates reflective objects further ahead which gets around the "help - I can't see

*anything* ahead" problem.

Rear fog lights are essential. I can see the fog lights of the car in front when the fog is too dense to see the tail light at the same distance. I just wish it was mandatory for cars to have *two* fog lights which serve as "fog tail lights", defining the width of the car so you can work out how far behind it you are and also so you can see either side of the car if you pull out to overtake it: sometimes in dense fog I can move into the left lane to overtake a stationary car at a junction, only to find that what I thought was a bicycle/motorbike has "turned into" a car as I get closer.

[John Rumm]

So are you trying to say that it will be much quicker say from 0 - 30 than a petrol car of similar power output?

How about we compare the i MiEV with the petrol Mitsi i 660cc turbo ?

ok, 0 - 30, for the electric 4.5 secs, for the petrol 4.3 secs. Hmmm, so same power output engine, and a bit slower.

What did the reviewer say: "Acceleration Comments: Acceleration is as uneventful and seamless as using a kitchen mixer and is accompanied by very similar sounds. Just put your foot down and speed builds slowly with little drama. No shifting. No thinking. No caring -- just like people will want with this kind of car."

Although 0 - 60 the lekky version is quicker... how could that be right, it was the opposite of what you claimed?

[Peter Parry]

Pah - amateurs. For 0-3MPH my milk float can beat the lot of them and my Jaguar mit superchargers.

We won't talk about what happens after 3MPH because like Harry it is a bit of an embarrassment.

[harry]

The engine/motor are not the same power output.

[T i m]

Are you a milkman then (OOI) or do you just happen to have a milkfloat for some reason?

We (a mate and I) bought an old milkfloat (I think it was a Smiths but Wales and Edwards is in my mind for some reason) that had been previously converted into a flatbed tipper. He rented a cottage on what was a working arable farm with a small orchard and the EV was really good as a mobile working platform for fruit picking. ;-)

Whilst my EV was only good for about 30 mph it could get there pretty quickly if I wanted it to. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

p.s. A milkman once told me that a xmas load on a float could be around 3 tonnes?

[John Rumm]

63 bhp on both according to that page...

[Adrian]

Other sources have the i-MIEV at 49kw, or just under 66bhp, with the petrol i at 57bhp.

Either way, one fact remains. The petrol i was so underwhelming that Mitsubishi UK couldn't sell enough to bother keeping it in the range several years before re-launching it with a washing-machine engine at many times the price...

It might have made sense with Japan's Kei-car regulations, but it certainly never did over here, not when it was far more expensive than the C1/107/Aygo.

Quite why PSA bother re-badging it when they had plenty of in-house production electric vehicle experience going back to the '80s, I'm not sure. It was probably thrown in as a sweetener as part of the (equally ill-judged) diesel engines/Outlander JV deal.

[Mr Macaw]

Both.

In thick fog, no light is useful at all. In thin mist, you don't need lights.

I find any light doesn't illuminate anything ahead, just the fog. However I don't have a problem driving in fog, I just drive slower, to match the reduced distance I can see ahead.

If you could crash into a car in the fog before you see its tail lights, you're driving too fast.

I don't use rear fog lights because the person behind won't know when I brake.

I assume you're moaning about cheap shit cars which have a fog light on one side and a reverse light on the other. Decent cars have two of each.

I once rewired the fog and brake (swapped them) on a Peugeot, so the brake was seperate from the tail instead of in the same bulb. Easier for someone to notice they'd come on.

[NY]

In *any* reduced visibility (whether mist, fog or night time) lights are essential to be able to see (by reflections) any obstructions that are in front of you. In the ideal world, it would be possible to make a light which reflected off obstructions but not off fog vapour. Since this is not possible, the best compromise is to position lights so they cause minimum scatter while still shining ahead to reflect off obstructions.

Are you really saying that in fog you would drive on side lights (so your car can be seen by other people) but with no headlights/fog lights to shine on the road ahead? Yes, driving in fog is difficult because you are looking for faint reflections against a light grey background, but that's better than not being able to see the obstructions in the first place and having to drive slow enough to allow for that.

I find that sometimes the lesser of two evils is to increase the brightness of the lights to produce brighter reflections of obstructions, even if this also produces a brighter reflection off the fog.

I've driven in fog where you can't see the tail lights of the car ahead until you are a few yards away whereas if it had fog lights you could see it many times further away. Apart from the fact that not everyone uses fog lights, is it better to drive so slowly that you can stop within the distance that you can see a car's tail lights, or to be able to drive a little faster so that you can stop within the distance that you can see its fog lights?

The problem with fog is that the only way you can judge how far ahead you can see is when you can see an object (reflection or transmitted light) that is distinguishable from the fog. If all you can see is whiteness, you've no way of knowing how far ahead you can see and therefore how fast it is safe to drive for your stopping distance. That's why lights which reflect off kerb markings, white lines and cats eyes, and the tail lights of other cars, are so useful.

But would you use them if the fog lights were sited separately from the brake lights eg tail/fog as 5/21W bulb behind one light and separate 21W brake light behind another some distance away?

Most cars I've had since the 1990s have had only one fog light and one reversing light: Renault 5 Mk1 and Mk2, VW Golf Mk2 and Mk3, Peugeot 306, Peugeot 308. Fortunately all except the Peugeot 308 have had two reversing lights (so you can see both sides of the road that you are reversing along) and have had a fog light on the right except with no bulb inserted (easily remedied!). Sadly the 308 goes one stage further and only has a clear lens on the nearside and only a red one on the offside. Unless I want a red reversing light on one side or a white fog light on the other, there's no way round this unless I buy my own lights and drill holes in the bodywork to attach them.

Interesting that even my wife's Honda CR-V has only a nearside fog light, though I've not taken the light cluster off to see if there's a socket with no bulb on the offside.

The fact that so many cars nowadays have only one fog light makes me wonder if there's more to it than just saving a small amount of money on the light cluster, socket assembly and a bulb. Is there a legal restriction in some countries which prevents two fog lights that act as tail lights (ie marking the boundaries of the car) in fog?

The worst cars for visibility of lights are the recent marks of VW, where the rear indicator is a central disc that is surrounded by the brake/tail light - almost impossible to see the indicator if the car is braking.

[John Rumm]

Yup quite plausible. When you factor in the weight, they are similarly dismal (and within 2 bhp/tonne of each other).

To sell a Kei-car over here is needs to be something a bit different or special really. The Suzuki cappuccino used to generate a fair amount of interest ISTR.

[dennis]

You do know that not all road hazards are fitted with fog lights so you can't see them at a greater distance? In fact the majority have no lights at all!

[Adrian]

None whatsoever.

It really is as penny-pinching as the cost of a bulb and a holder and a bit of wire, times a few hundred thousand cars.

[Adrian]

Which the i failed miserably at.

The i-MIEV has it, a bit, but nowhere near enough to compete properly with "proper" electric cars.

Also the Honda Beat.

Novelty value, mainly, and fairly comprehensively flattened by the MX5 in the long run.

A Renault Zoe is less than £13,500 plus battery lease, or £18,500 with the battery owned. A Nissan Leaf is £15,800 plus battery lease, or £20,800 with the battery owned. An i-MIEV is £28,500 with battery, and no battery lease option.

No-brainer...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They usually have one fog light and one reversing light on the other side. If they all fitted two each, you'd not know the supervisory paper clip salesman was driving the deluxe model at night.

[polygonum]

Which results in the ridiculous situation of them being wrong-sided when used in an opposite-side-of-the-road country. Should be mandatory to be on both sides - fog & reversing.

[bert]

In article , NY writes

Especially now that they are LEDs I must confess here to falling into this trap a few years ago and ran into the back of such a car with my Land Rover Defender. Felt sorry for the driver - first company car and she'd only had it 3 days. I blame it on the council for not gritting the road properly as it was icy at the time.