Efficiency, yes. The second part is a little misguided though. The different gears in a transmission allow the vehicle to move at your desired speed while keeping the engine’s speed low, thus reducing fuel consumption.

Power to fuel consumption isn’t really a thing afaik. Naturally, a slower spinning engine will use less fuel.

[–] Player2@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Sorry for unclear wording, I meant that you obviously need some level of power output to move, but you need different levels of power output to keep moving at any given speed, hence the gears. What I meant by 'power to fuel consumption' was that while you theoretically could go at a high speed using a low gear up to a point, that would be very inefficient. I'm not actually an engineer, though I pretend to be one at university.

Good thing I'm not an educator!

[–] RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

EV drivers be like

(Extra irony given Clarkson's dislike of EVs)

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I miss my Leaf. Great car, with no fucking active cooling for the battery. In the desert. It pained me. You could have been perfect, you could have been the chosen one!

Japan makes some fantastic things. The fact that it was so painfully obvious that they didn't bother to test it in any other climate was just suicide.

[–] RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, they never intended the chemistry for the extreme southwestern US environment. The production design included an aging process that was supposed to minimize initial degradation but it wasn't enough without active cooling, even in a pouch design.

Around mid 2014 a chemistry change was made that was intended to alleviate some of the issues, and a fair number of US packs were replaced under warranty.

Through design changes for the 64kWh packs for the newer models, they were insisting active cooling still wasn't needed, so out they went, still sealed up without any cooling system, but I haven't looked them up to see how well they've been faring since they dumped the production to a Chinese company.

Uh, I may or may not have been involved..

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I was on track to get a pack replacement, as it was at 30k and like 75% SoH. I had a stroke and had to return the car, but just a few days before that I was investigating dealers that did the pack replacement and verifying that it would be no cost to me, a new formula pack (snake-something was the name, don't remember), and it'd be done locally with minimal wait.

If Nissan would just have went with active cooling, it'd be a peak vehicle imo. I racked up a touch over 10k miles in 4 months, used '11 SV with all the options ticked (not accessories). Driving 70 miles, hooking up a CHAdEMO (capitalization?), filling it to 100%, another 70 miles, full, and the pack temp would be right up or close to the overheating level. But that thing was a trooper.

I want to get back on the road, in one of those 1st gens, but with an aftermarket battery that is higher capacity (27kW good lord not again) and with proper cooling. Swap out the L3 for whatever is the new standard, and enjoy that car. It was a gem.

[–] RojoSanIchiban@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Oof, sorry to hear that. And yeah I think folks in the Leaf subreddit were calling them "crocodile" cells/packs, and I'm completely blanking on the internal name, only vaguely remembering one translation as 'high heat' which was incorporated into the warranty packs and the cell upgrades in 2015 for the 40kWh "HC1" version.

And yeah, originals were 24kWh and there's no getting around that being just for short commutes. I'm assuming at this point on the newest models, that they're beyond the 63kWh, but those did have a different pack design. The 40s would absolutely physically fit on an older leaf, but the battery controller wouldn't be compatible with the computer without 3rd party changes, though I'm sure people have done that and probably more by now.

[–] VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Saying Clarkson dislikes EVs is like saying that the Pacific Ocean is rather large: while technically correct, it's a woefully inadequate descriptor 😄

[–] spicytuna62@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Which is where CVTs excel. Maybe I'm old school, but if you have something too powerful for a CVT belt to handle, fuel efficiency is not your top priority. Maybe I sound like an old fart going "nobody needs FIVE gears when three is plenty!" but imo the only vehicles that have any business having 10 or more ratios are the ones that regularly pull a few dozen tons of cargo. We should have stopped at six. More than that and a CVT is what you need.

I have a 26 year old car with a 5 speed manual. I can't say I'm sure any of these new 10 speed auto cars will still be running in a quarter century with a quarter million miles on the clock.