Well, I think the point I was trying to make is that the phrase "V2L" can also mean different things to different people. After all, far more technically advance interconnections like V2H and V2G can be generically referred to as forms of V2L. That we have been getting different answers at...
I think we'll need to make these questions more specific when writing Slate.
V2L (vehicle-to-load, for those not familiar with this abbreviation) can be interpreted to be a number of different things.
Beyond comprehensive systems that allow the Truck's battery to interface directly with a...
No, as far as I know, there aren't any commercially available V2x systems in the US that would be able to integrate with CHAdeMO. Nissan and Mitsubishi both had V2x systems available for the European market back in the day, but Europe's 230V 50Hz grid is different enough from our 240V 60Hz one...
Yeah, I wouldn't go near that thing with a 10 foot pole. It's big and fugly: the worst of a Korean car company's attempt to replicate the worst trends of what's already available, ad nauseum, in the American marketplace. It probably has the same sort of overly-complex infotainment/entermation...
In 1975 (high school junior) I was given the opportunity to test drive an early 1960s Chevy Corvair: the original Unsafe At Any Speed car. This one had the famed early rear suspension design that was noted to be particularly dangerous and prone to flipping the car over unexpectedly. The...
Before I had a driver's license, my father bought me a 1946 Willys CJ-2A Jeep (this would be the early 1970s) that I decided I wanted to take apart, down to the gears and bearings. I never did get it back together, but it was an experience I'll defend for the knowledge I gained about cars in...
Oh yeah, me too! The hardest part, from what I understand, is being able to integrate a physically large inverter into the tight spaces of a vehicle that can handle the rather massive DC voltage input (400V or so) of an EV traction battery and take it down to standard household voltage (120V...
I'd say any of the ones I mentioned (and several that I didn't) are a good deal. It's a very quickly evolving market that really didn't exist 5 or 6 years ago. There were people building their own from raw components, and many still prefer to do it that way (see Will Prowse's DIY Solar Power...
If you want to simply be able to run higher current draw electrical appliances (power tools, induction cooking devices, etc.) when you're out and about with your Slate, you might want to consider the purchase of a portable power station (I call them solar generators, or "solgens," because...
Ironically, the 12 year old i-MiEV I drive (as do all Nissan Leafs) has V2x capability, because the DC CHAdeMO specifications has that written into to the standard. Trouble is, you'll never find a turn-key aftermarket interface generally available in North America to take advantage of that. You...
My hypothesis: the more people attempt to turn the Slate into something other than a basic pickup truck, the less they're going to be satisfied with the results. If people really want a vehicle that's consistently carrying more than two people, damn near every SUV - and the vast majority of...
Yeah, I don't think many here are aware that a bench seat instead of a pair of bucket seats is more involved than a simpleupholstery decision these days. Also, if you want to hang stuff off the dash (tablet, soundbar, etc.) the deployment pattern of a middle cabin airbag is going to be right in...
Boy, I'd really be surprised if the Slate's battery is built around an 800V architecture. Most mainstream EVs - from present day Tesla 3s and Ys on down to 14 year old Nissan Leafs - in North America these days are 400V cars.
Also, with the exception of Tesla's Cybertruck, I think most cars in...
My wife bought our 4-door Saturn SL1 in 1996, a lightly used 1995 one from the dealer. I ended up taking over payments on it a few years later, when the next big auto purchase she financed was a minivan. I drove that Saturn for almost 2 decades as my own car. It was a 5 speed manual shift and...
Tesla Supercharger cables are around 6+ feet long, although the newer V4 locations are using 9.5+ foot long cables. Still, that's pretty short by industry standards. All Teslas have their charging inlet on the driver's side rear. So, these cars traditionally back into the stalls to charge and...
So glad that Slate doesn't seem to care about any of this self-driving sh*t. Does anybody notice that very little goes wrong with electric vehicles when it comes to things like batteries or traction motors failing? The multi-decade promise with EVs being superior to ICE has been the simplicity...
Yeah, I can't account for that discrepancy with Car and Driver. I don't think we're really going to know the true range of the Truck until it goes through the EPA testing cycle.
One of the things I took away from the Engineering Explained and Jeffery Dahn interview videos (above) was the...