Yes, I love ‘em! I hate Bluemobiles because people take perfectly good Monacos and convert them into Bluesmobiles.
I just looked up rapidly on the internet some photos, it is basically just an another coupe with a big v8, an another sport car from this era.
Try typing ‘1976 Dodge Royal Monaco Brougham Virtual Parking’ on the net. --- Post updated --- Basically all Bluesmobiles that currently exist are stock Monacos/Royal Moancos that have been converted into Bluesmobiles, making a rare car (the Monaco/Royal Monaco) even harder to find in stock form.
Continuing here so I don't drag another thread off topic That's... kind of annoying. The only cars in vanilla that I can confirm to be pillarless are the Barstow and hardtop Bluebuck. SBR4, Wendover, and K-Series could count (although the latter would be a sports car anyway due to lacking a back seat) but are unlikely, and it's impossible to tell because of the way they're set up and JBeamed. So far what I'm thinking is: Superlight: No back seat and no cargo area (i.e. Caterham 7, Ariel Atom, purpose-built sports prototypes) Sports car: 2 side doors, no back seat, no or fully-enclosed cargo area Grand tourer: 2 side doors with a back seat? Back seat and no B-pillar? Back seat capacity of 2? No idea what the dividing line should be for this one Compact/Medium/Large Sedan/Wagon: More than 2 side doors, but not tall enough to qualify as a light truck? Back seat and a B-pillar? Back seat with a capacity of more than 2? This and GT depend on each other. Further divided by wheelbase; also include vehicles which have 2 side doors and exposed cargo areas but aren't tall enough to qualify as light trucks (i.e. coupe utilities). Multipurpose: Tall enough to qualify as light truck, fully enclosed cargo area Light truck: Tall enough to qualify as light truck, cargo area exposed by default The problem with GT is that none of the three options I've thought of really "work" with which cars self-evidently do or don't go in the category. Option 1 (2 side doors with a back seat) pulls in cars that were considered and should be classified as sedans, option 2 (back seat and no B-pillar) makes it a dead category after the early 70s as pillarless 2-row cars basically no longer exist, option 3 (back seat capacity of 2) introduces gray area when dealing with BeamNG original designs as some are pre-seatbelt and I don't think any have seatbelts modeled. A fourth option, judge by roofline, is too hard to properly quanitfy.
That clusterfuck at the roundabout one was gold, and goodness you had a heart attack or something? Are you alright? At least you weren't actually driving...
Interesting read. Tire wear emissions are indeed an so far mostly overlooked and heavier vehicles inherently put more pressure on the road, leading to higher emissions. A fact not helped by the global trend of ever increasing vehicle size and mass, culminating in the SUV being the de facto new standard vehicle. Also not helped by ever increasing horsepower ratings that make it easier than ever to grind that tires. EVs then take both of this dubious trends to the peak with the - inherently - heavy battery adding significant additional mass and the torque curve of the used electric motors that offer - fun - but tire wearing instant torque and early power. It does not help that the very high efficiency of electric motors greatly reduces the penality for an "oversized" engine. Driving a 600 HP petrol engine inside the city comes with a significant fuel economy penality compared to a more reasonable motorized petrol engine. That effect while still there is far smaller for an electric motor, leading to the - technical great - but in terms of energy and ressource consumption unwelcome effect that there is very little egoistic reason to be tame on power output. A calmly driven high power EV is pretty close to a calmly driven reasonable powered one... so why not take the additional horsepower? Not to mention that regenerative braking is basically negative engine torque, so to have large regenerative braking, you need a somewhat powerful engine, meaning that the hardware for more forward power output is already there. Of course you could software limit that, but why should manufacturers do that? Reducing tire emissions is quite difficult as the very operating principle of tires generating grip and traction is friction in the first place. They are also inherently out in the open, which makes collecting that dust much more difficult than for example exhaust, because you can force exhaust down a closed (at least in the beginning) piping system. Resarch is done into using less problematic tire materials and reducing wear but that is neither easy nor does it come without conflict of objectives. A tire in fact is already an engineering marvel that tries to bring a lot of conflicting goals together: - For safety reasons, you want an high amount of grip. But this grip also means more wear because you are basically creating that grip with rubber on asphalt wear. - For economic reasons, you want low rolling resistance. But this directly reduces grip because the same attributes that create grip are pretty much the opposite of what you want for rolling resistance. A trains steel wheel is perfect for low rolling resistance but really sucks at braking, accelerating and turning which is why it is only used on railway tracks. Very energy efficient but the drawbacks are so significant, you need an entire vehicle class and infrastructure to handle it properly. One reason for trains having so much safety built into them and their infrastructure is the resulting enormous long braking distances, measuring hundreds of meters or even km. German automotive club tested the "long life hard wear" tires used by most delivery vehicles... braking distances where arround 1/3 higher than for regular car tires.... there is a price to pay and that price may be the difference between you needing new pants or you needing a trip to the hospital or worse. Personally I dislike energy saving tires for this reason because their effect is comparable minor compared to the safety implications and there are much larger levers one can pull if you care about energy efficiency. - A good tire for dry weather (slick) sucks at wet weather but the added drainage channels required for safe operation on wet road are directly diametral towards dry asphalt grip. - Ohh and it is also supposed to not make a lot of noise and several other considerations. - A tire has to withstand a lot of pretty harsh conditions for ten thousands of km and for many years: A more enclosed wheel - with a filtering system - can reduce tire emissions but is costly, increases maintainance demands and may lead to issues in snow or mud. Recent innovations include some sort of electrostatic filter that can reduce emissions a lot without the need to enclose the wheel particularly much. This particular type of fine dust is also very hard to get rid off completly as any type of tire (not only car tires) has this issue. Everytime you create traction/grip with friction, something wears off. Even the steel wheels of trains are abrading to an extent, creating steel dusts although obviously far less than any rubber based tire per km. The tires of your bicycle but even the very shoes you are wearing rub off with time and movement. Pantographs wear on the catenary and that unique subway smell is actually caused by copper dust that is created when the train moves along the third rail for power. That is not to say that we shouldnt look into reducing those emissions, just noting that this is pretty hard and complex and that to an extent those emissions are unavoidable. But enough on tires. Unfortunately the article has no real date on it although with testing done in March 2023, one would assume it is meant to be pretty up to date. Assuming a current article however, would make this statement pretty bold: There is little uncertainty by now... the future of most if not all cars is going to be electric. Battery electric. All of the supposed alternatives are years if not decades away from being mainstream viable. Hydrogen Fuel Cells - which require a battery btw - have no infastructure and with Battery Electric Vehicles having mainstream acceptable range and recharge speed, their supposed market niche is quickly evaporating. Advances in battery technology and cost have mostly destroyed its appeal even in heavy vehicles which were supposed to be its main stay. Germany has recently introduced it second hydrogen fuel cell train. It is going to be the last of its kind, as even in trains, batteries as of 2023 are simple more economical. There are also questions about the long term reliability and maintainance cost of the fuel cell. Hydrogen Combustion Engines are like Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles... just worse. After all the inefficiency (and energy losses) of turning electricity into hydrogen, you then make it worse by burning it in the same inefficient combustion engine? Yes, you can do that.... but why should you? Maybe there is a particular small niche where it makes sense but that niche is not going to be mainstream car market. There is also not enough production capacity available nor is there one build or even planned. Green hydrogen will play a major role in industry but considering the low availability of both it and the clean power required to create it, it is unlikely to be available or affordable to the masses any time soon. E-Fuels are like hydrogen... just even worse. Maybe for aviation but since production is even more energy inefficient, expect sky high prices. Also, if one wants to make the existing fleet of combustion engine vehicles cleaner with it - which is pretty much its only redeeming point - then by now there should be huge amount of building projects to produce it. There are basically none beyond a few experimental sites that are magnitudes to small to even make a dent into global petrol and diesel consumption. By the time they will have ramped up production - for which they will require gigawatts of not yet build clean power - the combustion engine car will only exist in museums. Also good luck, getting people to buy your E-Fuel.... it will be much more expensive than petrol or diesel and considering people here already boycott E10 (petrol with 10 % ethanol instead of 5 %) for fear their beloved car taking damage from it, it is going to be a tall order to convince them to refuel with E-fuel. Biofuel is very space inefficient (you get more useful energy out of a hectare of photovolatic than out of an hectare plant based fuel) which makes it an unsuitable solution for the huge vehicle fleet we have today and will have in the future. Fuel out of bio waste is climate neutral but there simple isnt remotely enough bio waste to power any sizable vehicle fleet. Going full biofuel is also not an option for the already existing fleet, at best you can mix it in but even that creates resistance as mentioned above. Using hydrogen, E-fuels or biofuel in a combustion engine also comes with all the inherent drawbacks of the combustion engine: Cold start efficiency is abysmal with the resulting large fuel economy penality and horrible emissions because most exhaust cleaning systems require high engine/exhaust temperatures. Yet you cant fix that... it inherent to the operating principle. Fuel condenses on the cold cylinder walls, increasing fuel consumption. Pistons get very hot under sustained operation so to fit inside the cylinder when hot, they have to be slightly to small when cold. This leads to increased blowby which then introduces fuel and combustion products into the engine oil, leading to oil poisoning. The entire engine block assembly has be warmed up before the - still miserable - peak engine efficiency is even possible. Oil returns to the oil pan due to gravity and as a result, cold starting an engine also means starting an engine with very poor lubrication. Many moving parts will require several seconds before they receive sufficient lubrication. Since engine oil also gets pretty hot under sustained operation, it has to be comparable thick when cold... this increases the time it takes the oil to reach all parts and reduces lubrication quality. There is a reason, why the rule of thumb is that 100000 km of inner city driving (with frequent cold starts) are as bad for the engine as 300000 km of (reasonable) highway driving. It also helps explain why taxis often have a pretty high mileage with few issues..... their engine rarely gets cold and as such remains much better lubricated throughouts its life. Meanwhile an electric motor is one single spinning shaft with lower peak temperatures and no corrosive combustion byproducts to worry about. Its fully lubricated after the first revolution and suffers none of the cold start drawbacks of a combustion engine. Which might explain why its lubrication tends to be rated lifetime, similar to manual transmission or differential oil. Hybrids generally indeed tend to be better than pure combustion engine vehicles as they use an electric drivetrain to mitigate some of the worst drawbacks of Internal Combustion Engines. (ICE). Both air quality and the environment would have benefited from more hybrid in the past, but I disagree with Nick Molden that their great time is about to come. What makes a hybrid better than an ICE vehicle? The electric drivetrain addon. What makes a plug in hybrid better? That you can drive from and to work electric only, saving fuel, avoiding cold start wear and tear, greatly reducing emissions and improving air quality. Notice a pattern? We use an electric drivetrain to compensate for the shortcomings of the ICE. Would it not be wise, to ditch the ICE - that needs so many crutches - in the first place? Historically battery size and charging speeds made that a non mainstream sellable proposition. But with those constraints being increasingly done away with, one has to begin to ask the question... what is the point of carrying that ICE arround? Sure, it offers additional range and shorter refuelling stops, but with EV ranges in excess of 400 km being available in mainstream, how big of an issue is that really in real life? Most people rarely drive such long distances in the first place and after 400 km, most people dont mind waiting an additional 25 minutes to recharge to 80 %, after all they just may need to visit the restroom anyway and the remaining 15 minutes... might as well grab a coffee or so. Certainly the battery comes with significant initial cost both, money and ressource wise, but once it is there, it requires little maintainance. Hybrids compared to BEVs just save on battery weight... the electric drivetrains parts are all there and you have an entire ICE engine assembly on top of that. One might guess that a smaller battery (if range range anxiety wasnt a thing) EV could be of similar weight to an Hybrid because the combustion engine related parts tend to weight several hundred kg as well. If terms of parts can that break, a Hybrid has all the parts of an ICE vehicle and all the parts of an EV. While the ICE may see less use, it will still require regular oil chance and maintainance and the exhaust will still rust away with time. Nick Molden, the CEO of Emissions Analytics Limited appearantly had/has high hopes into Hybrids, Hydrogen and E-Fuels. I am not saying he has vested interest or is bribed, but could it maybe just that he has made a lot of predictions about how the market will develop and now has his professional reputation on the line if he is proven painfully obviously wrong ? I also dont mean to deliver harsh judgement over him. I can understand why a lot of people have difficulty keeping up with the pace of developments in the area.... I am even regularly amazed myself. 5 years ago, mass switch to EVs seemed to be in the far future, to power trucks with a battery seemed like a pipe dream. Yet today, mainstream EVs are available and with the chinese entering the market, the price war has just begun. Meanwhile, batteries have gained enough energy density to be viable in a lot - not yet all - trucking applications. Rising energy densities also allow for far less use of critical materials and a lot of analysts predict that the mainstream EV battery will be based arround less energy dense but cheaper (and safer) compounds. When you can have mainstream range with cheaper and safer batteries.. why not take it? This also reduces the dependency on chinese raw materials. Oh, and arround 95 % of a battery can be recycled. So unlike 25000 liters of petrol that are gone forever, you can regain most of the material in the battery at the end of its lifetime. This creates a far lower dependency than fossil fuel imports. If germany stops getting oil... soon all combustion engine cars will be stationary. But if the chinese should one day, decide to stop delivering batteries to us, all battery cars already in Germany, will keep running just fine. (Which is similar to Photovoltaic btw) Nick Molden brings up some very valuable points, but between the lines and in the tone I can feel a certain desperation.... desperation that has now befallen quite a lot of people inside the internal combustion engine related industry. Because none of them expected things to happen that quickly..... now they are seing the writing on the wall and rightfully fear for their future. And it isnt so much car manufacturers themselves..... those in the end dont care much what powers their cars.... it is their entire - combustion engine related - supply line that sees "carmageddon" dawning upon it. Not to mention the oil industry. If you are like ZF Friedrichshafen and a lot of your business is based arround producing parts for combustion engines, the outlook of that business unit being obsolete at the end of the decade is frightening. I am sure their automatic transmission with integrated hybrid system is a marvel of engineering.... but from a used car buyer standpoint.... if anything goes wrong inside that thing, it will pretty much total the car for me because it is so complex and expensive, that repairs are going to be more expensive than the car. Give me a battery over that any day..... for once you can look at a batteries SOC and get a pretty good idea about its remaining life time and then that battery is going to be cheaper at the end of the decade than all the wear and tear parts of a combustion engine drivetrain and auxilary systems. A hybrid starting the combustion engine, will exhaust the same cold start emissions as a regular ICE vehicle. With the same wear and tear. With e-fuels not being reasonable available for at least another decade and with hydrogen and biofuel not working out of the box, a hybrid will entrench the life of the petrol/diesel combustion engine in cars.... which is what big oil and of course combustion engine parts manufacturers want but what is not in the interest of buyers and citizens alike. The chinese lack the knowledge to build great ICEs. But they are the worlds largest car market. And are leading in EVs. It is only a question of time, until they will pull the gas pump nozzle. Only recently a new emission standard was barely avoided... a standard so strict, that most of all european and american manufactured ICE cars would have failed it, thus not being allowed anymore to be sold. Billions are sunk into battery research and development. Puny amounts of money in comparsion go into hydrogen fuel cells and e-fuels. EV batteries are actually hundred or even thousands of smaller battery cells linked together. Or to say in in economic terms... the scale very very well. Want an battery for a an electric bike? Link up 50 cells. Want a battery for a small car? Link up 500 cells. Want a battery for a big car? Link up 1000 cells. Same factory, same item, maximum scalability = mass production = cheap. This is how VW got from an expected 110 € per kWh of battery to just 80 €. "Oh you want a few millions of those things? In that case we will invest into large scale production facilities which will drive prices down". That race... is over. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehicles You might also find interesting: https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwi...ion-for-2035-and-let-hybrids-take-the-strain/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwi...ut-hybrids-make-powerful-interim-case-report/
