Message to FCA: Don't Mess With My Challenger!

[MrObsessive]

OK, I know time marches on and we can't stay stuck in the past, but there's something to be said about gasoline powered cars. I just can't get into either hybrids or full electric whatever.

Having said that, I came across this article here and all I can do is have a "wait and see" attitude. I sure hope they don't mess with what's been a good thing for them.  

[The Junkman]

Hybrid tech has come a long way and isn't much of a sacrifice in performance, as proven by the various high end hybrid cars on the road.  I think we're at about the same place, aircraft enginewise, as we were at the end of WWII.  The epitome of piston engine development but soon to be supplanted by jets.  If we ever reach the point of getting the same range on a charge as a tank of gas and followed by an equivalent time to refuel/recharge only then will the IC engine be in danger.  I live in a rural/small town area.  65 miles to the next city of any real size.  The idea of spending an hour to drive there followed by 4-5 hours of recharge time so that I can go home is, and will remain, a non-starter with me.

[Richard Bartrop]

Apparently, one big problem with using electric cars in cities, is that most condos and apartments aren't wired for charging them.  This is too bad, because if ever there was an ideal environment for electrics, this is it, though I can see apartments eventually making the upgrade if the demand is high enough.

[gasman]

[Spex84]

I'll be on board when a basic electric "people mover" is available that charges reasonably quickly, has 500 mile range, 4WD, batteries that don't go flat in -30C weather, and isn't drowned in 15k worth of sensors, cameras, and infotainment systems. I might be waiting a while.

But for luxury performance vehicle buyers, it might finally reach the point where IC engines can't compete with electric. I still think the main audience for the Challenger is mostly concerned with traditional "muscle" rather than simply going fast...and electric just doesn't have the right aura. That might change as all the supercars and hypercars in the world transition to electric, and take the measuring stick with them. In that world, a gas-powered Challenger will seem like a complicated novelty rather than a relevant vehicle...sort of like a blown hemi T-bucket is technically a "car" but the average buyer would say "you really drive that thing on public roads? ...Huh."

I don't think we're at that point yet....so I could see the Challenger going electric-hybrid, with the electric motors sold as a fuel-saving and power-adding measure. "Superchargers in every wheel!!!" Sounds good to me!

 

[OldTrucker]

I think the real driving force  behind it (which the car companies seen not to understand) is to make owning a car impractical for most people whether through price of that vehicle or the fuel and high maintenance cost  to operate it that we are mostly all eventually pushed into public transportation.

I know they clean air people and environmentalist that help drive these issues also believe that all people need to live close into urban areas near their places of work negating the need for personal vehicles.

[Jim N]

49 minutes ago, OldTrucker said:

I think the real driving force  behind it (which the car companies seen not to understand) is to make owning a car impractical for most people whether through price of that vehicle or the fuel and high maintenance cost  to operate it that we are mostly all eventually pushed into public transportation.

I know they clean air people and environmentalist that help drive these issues also believe that all people need to live close into urban areas near their places of work negating the need for personal vehicles.

Johnny, you are absolutely correct.  The utopia of the greens is to have everybody live in the cities in high density apartment type buildings.  The problem with their fantasy is that this type of living is not suited for families or people who just want some space.

[CapSat 6]

2 hours ago, MrObsessive said:

OK, I know time marches on and we can't stay stuck in the past, but there's something to be said about gasoline powered cars. I just can't get into either hybrids or full electric whatever.

Having said that, I came across this article here and all I can do is have a "wait and see" attitude. I sure hope they don't mess with what's been a good thing for them.  

 

I'm a Challenger owner too, Bill - I know how you feel. My 2010 has been serving me very well, and I have REALLY enjoyed it every step of the way. I'll hold onto it for as long as I can. That being said, these proclamations we sometimes get about future products from the car manufacturers, especially the ones from FCA, usually turn out to be a little hazier than they first seem. I'm not sure that what they detail will happen quite as fast as they might say right now. 

We have had a good run- they have been making new Challengers in more or less the same form for about 10 years, with around 50,000 sold every year. It's been a much bigger sales success than the original. Even the new 6's give nice performance, whereas the old Slant-6's and 318's of the first generation weren't exactly movers in those cars. I still think back to when I saw the spy photos of the show car- I thought it was a photoshop or something- I just could not believe that they were able to get so close to the looks of the old one, with modern design. I was a little bummed that the show car interior didn't really carry over to the production car, but as it is, the current car is much more than I would have ever imagined being possible in my wildest dreams from the 80's, 90's and early 2000's!!!     

That being said, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to these changing technologies. They will become more widespread as they get better, that's just today's reality. A good friend of mine, who happens to be a car guy, recently bought a Chevy Volt to replace his aging Mazdaspeed 3 as his driver. I can attest to the old 3's abilities to scare the pants off of anybody who dared ride in it! He will be the first to tell you that the Volt will not do many of the same things that the 3 did, but he has gotten that kind of, ahem, startling performance that the 3 provided out of his system, and he now really enjoys the virtues of the Volt. Granted, his commute is about 10 miles round trip a day, but, he likes not having to put gas in it, and, the Volt will still go pretty well when you want it to...

Now- combine the Challenger's style with new powertrain technologies, while keeping performance to an acceptable level (because even I would not ever NEED a Demon, even if I could afford one) - what's not to like about this?  

  

 

 

Edited January 23, 2019 by CapSat 6

[Atmobil]

4 hours ago, OldTrucker said:

I think the real driving force  behind it (which the car companies seen not to understand) is to make owning a car impractical for most people whether through price of that vehicle or the fuel and high maintenance cost  to operate it that we are mostly all eventually pushed into public transportation.

I know they clean air people and environmentalist that help drive these issues also believe that all people need to live close into urban areas near their places of work negating the need for personal vehicles.

They could just do the same thing that is on the doorstep here in the worlds outpost and ban private car ownership all togheter. One of the parties that is in our current goverment was playing that card in the last election. A total ban from 2030 or so. Ofcourse, that will never happen. One can't just make more than half the population criminals over night. But, I don't see my self living here in a future where I am not allowed to own my own cars any more. Ideally I would be like Jay Leno, warehouses full of cars and employing mechanics to take care of them. That will never happen either...

[SfanGoch]

4 hours ago, Jim N said:

The utopia of the greens is to have everybody live in the cities in high density apartment type buildings.

That's not utopia, that's dystopia; a post-apocalyptic, totalitarian nightmare already becoming a reality here in New York City.

[THarrison351]

9 hours ago, gasman said:

Back when I was in high school,  a friend's parent bought one of these brand new. It seemed at the time to be pretty quick with the "Hemi" 2.6, and 5-speed, but reviewing the specs doesn't seem to confirm that feeling. Still a neat little Mitsubishi Galant.

[Motor City]

4 hours ago, SfanGoch said:

That's not utopia, that's dystopia; a post-apocalyptic, totalitarian nightmare already becoming a reality here in New York City.

So I guess Manhattan is even more congested than when our family passed through in 1966? 

[lysleder]

5 hours ago, Atmobil said:

... here in the worlds outpost ....

So how is it to own a car in your neck of the woods Gaute? Do they still tax displacement, and then tax horsepower as well? And then tax the gas so that it retails for about  eight bucks a gallon? 

[SfanGoch]

39 minutes ago, Motor City said:

So I guess Manhattan is even more congested than when our family passed through in 1966? 

Between bike lanes (Which, on any given day in any neighborhood are rarely used. Only stupid, interloping flyover state transplants from tract housing communities in Wiscovaniabraskagon need instructions painted on the street to tell them how to ride bikes in traffic. Real New Yorkers grew up riding in traffic and know how to handle themselves.)  squeezing traffic into one lane each way on two-way streets and major intersections, like Times Square, being converted into pedestrian plazas/butt parks for lameasstic tourists to wallow in and completely closed off to any vehicular traffic, almost 80,000 Uber/Lyft and other B.S. car services clogging the streets, to the detriment of yellow cab drivers who had to pay upwards of $1,000,000 for their medallions (and now, virtually worthless. Six taxi drivers committed suicide last year because they watched their life savings go down the toilet because the value of said medallions has nosedived to less than a quarter of what they are in hock for due to the obscene overabundance of the for-hire services.), it is a living hell to get around. All this is a diabolically calculated move by the city government to discourage private ownership of automobiles and make people dependent on mass transit, ie, buses and subways. It takes the M42 Crosstown bus over an hour to travel 42nd St. from 1st Ave., by the U.N. Building, to 12th Avenue. Forty-Doo Wop Street is only 2 miles long east-to-west. Never mind the subways. Because of deferred maintenance, neglect and fiscal mismanagement, up to 20 of the 23 subway lines are either shut down at night, weekends and experience long delays because of repair work. Of course, if you happen to be the present mayor, you get police escorts, causing even more traffic, from Gracie Mansion to the YMCA in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn so you can get your daily workout in. Or, you can abuse your position and misuse city resources by commandeering a NYPD helicopter for non-governmental business to fly you into Prospect Park if you're really in a hurry.

[espo]

Right up front let me say that I have no particular interest in battery operated vehicles. I concede they may have a place in the overall picture, just not mine. My personal sticking point with such vehicles has to do with the source of power to recharge the batteries. Should the energy be generated from a Solar, Wind, Hydroelectric source then the major thing I would worry about is that a reasonable Road Tax be collected to pay for upkeep of the roadways. Government financial support should not be part of the deal. My feeling is that if Fossil Fuels are used to generate the electric power to recharge the batteries you're defeating the whole purpose of an Electric Car. This would still create air pollution and that is supposed to be the reason for an electric car.    

[Richard Bartrop]

Your typical fossil fuel power station converts fuel into power with about 50% efficiency, compared to the 15-20% of your typical IC car engine,  so depending on what kind of losses you get in transmitting the current and in charging up a battery, in theory, you could still end up ahead of the game.   An electric motor isn't drawing power when it isn't moving, so in the kind of stop and go driving you're most likely to encounter in the real world, your hard earned money isn't going out the tailpipe while you sit there going nowhere.  If you live in one of those places where geography traps in all the pollution, there's a lot to be said for being able to stick the tailpipe somewhere else, so to speak,  and if you ever replace that fossil fuel powered plant with nuclear, hydro, solar or whatever, then you've cleaned up the emissions of all the cars that charge off it, instead of trying to hassle several million individual car owners to clean up their act.   So electric cars are probably still worth doing, regardless of how the electricity is being made.

Practically all of our tech has required some governmental assistance, so I'm okay with some government financial help, whether it be in the form of rebates, or sponsoring research into better battery tech, just so long as the amounts are kept reasonable, and the rebates stop once the industry is shown to be self supporting.  If you have money for a Tesla or a Challenger, then you probably don't need a government rebate.    What the government should most certainly not do is try to legislate people into electrics.  If the technology is really ready, you won't need to force them.   Seeing how the electrical grid will need to be upgraded to handle a mass switch to electric cars, it's probably best not to rush things too much.

If anything, the petrol heads should welcome the electric car.    The fewer people who need gas means that much more for you,  and if it does clean up the air, that takes the pressure off you.   The people I know who have gone electric say it costs a lot less in electricity than it did to buy gas, so if they can keep dropping  the purchase price of electrics,   then the less you spend on your daily commute means more money you can put towards  your fun project car.

 

[Atmobil]

18 hours ago, lysleder said:

So how is it to own a car in your neck of the woods Gaute? Do they still tax displacement, and then tax horsepower as well? And then tax the gas so that it retails for about  eight bucks a gallon? 

That is about dead on, they have changed some of the taxes in later years but that is ofcourse on new cars. They are still taxed trough the roof. Then there is the road tolls, wich may soon be replaced with road pricing where every car has a GPS tracker so that one is taxed according to where and when you drive. The fuel costs about somewhere between 15 and 16 kroner pr litre (about 1,8$ US pr) and that is about 6,8$ US for one US Gallon. I did read somewhere the other day that if the taxes where removed from the fuelcost it would be about 7 kroner pr litre. So around half of what it is today. And you guys in the US pay about 3$ pr gallon right?

The only ones that get away with it is the electric car people. There is no purchase tax on them, normally purchase tax is 25%. There is no taxes at all when buying an electric car. Then they have less road tax pr year, they don't have to pay road tolls or parking and can drive in the bus lanes. They also get lower rates on the loans so that it much cheaper pr. month than a "fossile car". The most sold car in Norway is the Nissan Leaf and Tesla is also very high up there. But what is most annoying is that the electric car people are acting like some religous fanatics trying to convert anyone they see and treating anyone that like "fossile cars" as a heathen.

[jeffdeoranut]

before i retired i would drive anything to work but its gotta b a v-8 if im gonna have a pleasure car...

[Motor City]

22 hours ago, SfanGoch said:

Between bike lanes (Which, on any given day in any neighborhood are rarely used. Only stupid, interloping flyover state transplants from tract housing communities in Wiscovaniabraskagon need instructions painted on the street to tell them how to ride bikes in traffic. Real New Yorkers grew up riding in traffic and know how to handle themselves.)  squeezing traffic into one lane each way on two-way streets and major intersections, like Times Square, being converted into pedestrian plazas/butt parks for lameasstic tourists to wallow in and completely closed off to any vehicular traffic, almost 80,000 Uber/Lyft and other B.S. car services clogging the streets, to the detriment of yellow cab drivers who had to pay upwards of $1,000,000 for their medallions (and now, virtually worthless. Six taxi drivers committed suicide last year because they watched their life savings go down the toilet because the value of said medallions has nosedived to less than a quarter of what they are in hock for due to the obscene overabundance of the for-hire services.), it is a living hell to get around. All this is a diabolically calculated move by the city government to discourage private ownership of automobiles and make people dependent on mass transit, ie, buses and subways. It takes the M42 Crosstown bus over an hour to travel 42nd St. from 1st Ave., by the U.N. Building, to 12th Avenue. Forty-Doo Wop Street is only 2 miles long east-to-west. Never mind the subways. Because of deferred maintenance, neglect and fiscal mismanagement, up to 20 of the 23 subway lines are either shut down at night, weekends and experience long delays because of repair work. Of course, if you happen to be the present mayor, you get police escorts, causing even more traffic, from Gracie Mansion to the YMCA in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn so you can get your daily workout in. Or, you can abuse your position and misuse city resources by commandeering a NYPD helicopter for non-governmental business to fly you into Prospect Park if you're really in a hurry.

that's really sad, Joe; God help a person who has an emergency medical situation; the politicians always get the favored treatment because they are special people 

[espo]

Another down side of owning an electric only car became apparent to me just last week. Locally we had some winter weather, 2 to 4 inches and it was very heavy wet type snow. IN the KC Metro area and much of the surrounding parts of the city has a lot of beautiful trees and almost all of the power lines are run through it all with very few lines underground. The tree limbs often bend down under the weight of the snow and takeout the powerlines. Large portions of the city was without power for 2 or 3 days and many for a longer time still. I had to make several trips "into town" at this time and I don't recall seeing many electric cars running around. Single digit temperatures after the storm and no way to charge your car even if the batteries would operate at the low temps leaves a lot of people unable to get to work or the store to buy anything.  

[SfanGoch]

4 hours ago, espo said:

IN the KC Metro area and much of the surrounding parts of the city has a lot of beautiful trees and almost all of the power lines are run through it all with very few lines underground. The tree limbs often bend down under the weight of the snow and takeout the powerlines. Large portions of the city was without power for 2 or 3 days and many for a longer time still.

Penny wise and pound foolish. After the Great Blizzard of 1888, March 11-14  (when two to five feet of snow fell on NYC and drifts as high as 30 feet occurred), the city required that electric, telephone and telegraph infrastructure be placed underground because the weight of the heavy, wet snow caused the lines, which were strung on utility poles, to be snapped and destroyed. The blizzard also hastened the construction of the subway because the elevated system was completely immobilized.

4 hours ago, espo said:

I had to make several trips "into town" at this time and I don't recall seeing many electric cars running around.

For a city as large as NYC, there are very few charging station locations. Solution: knock the kick plate out of a lamp pole and charge courtesy of the city. That's how we plugged in TV's and stereos at the park to entertain ourselves while having keg parties.

[espo]

23 hours ago, SfanGoch said:

Penny wise and pound foolish. After the Great Blizzard of 1888, March 11-14  (when two to five feet of snow fell on NYC and drifts as high as 30 feet occurred), the city required that electric, telephone and telegraph infrastructure be placed underground because the weight of the heavy, wet snow caused the lines, which were strung on utility poles, to be snapped and destroyed. The blizzard also hastened the construction of the subway because the elevated system was completely immobilized.

For a city as large as NYC, there are very few charging station locations. Solution: knock the kick plate out of a lamp pole and charge courtesy of the city. That's how we plugged in TV's and stereos at the park to entertain ourselves while having keg parties.

Your keg parties sound like a great idea. The problem in KC right now is that there are people using those kick plates to get the copper wire out to resell at the recycler. This is costing the different cities in the area a lot of money. Interesting story about how NY came to terms with the snow problems. We are about 30 miles outside of the center of KC. Most of the area has been developed in the last 20 years and has really started a big increase in just the last 5 years. Wisely the power lines were all placed underground.  There are a few larger support lines in the area but usually aren't effected by snow, but a Tornado or two have taken out a power line every now and then. The few times we have lost power it has usually had to do with new construction in the area. Rather than digging a trench for the power lines and the fiber optic lines they just use a boring machine and force a large conduit into the ground and often don't pay attention to what ever else is buried in the area. This has even caused a large gas explosion a few years ago burning down a locally famous restaurant and killing several people. There is no perfect solution but I think that burring the lines is the best answer for that. 

[Joe Handley]

On 1/25/2019 at 9:28 AM, SfanGoch said:

Penny wise and pound foolish. After the Great Blizzard of 1888, March 11-14  (when two to five feet of snow fell on NYC and drifts as high as 30 feet occurred), the city required that electric, telephone and telegraph infrastructure be placed underground because the weight of the heavy, wet snow caused the lines, which were strung on utility poles, to be snapped and destroyed. The blizzard also hastened the construction of the subway because the elevated system was completely immobilized.

For a city as large as NYC, there are very few charging station locations. Solution: knock the kick plate out of a lamp pole and charge courtesy of the city. That's how we plugged in TV's and stereos at the park to entertain ourselves while having keg parties.

The History Guy on YouTube just did a video on that blizzard, sounded like it was a mild hurricane with a lot of snow, from what he described.

Funny thing about what you suggested about the streetlights, I think I read somewhere that London was going to add street side chargers (that the car owner has to pay to use, of course) to light poles to help with charging while the cars are parked on the street.

[oldcarfan]

On 1/23/2019 at 11:34 AM, gasman said:

My best friend in the Navy had one of these in Maroon and silver. It was old by then, but it was a neat car and it was tough! We'd take off to Ft. Walton Beach and hang out all the time. A lot of good memories attached to that car.

[oldcarfan]

I prefer IC engines, but hybrids seem to be a good alternative. One thing I don't get though is why they have both the IC engine and the motors hooked up to drive the vehicle. That seems needlessly complicated. Why not do them like trains and have the electric motors at the drive wheels running off a battery and a gas or diesel engine generator that only comes on to recharge the battery or when extra horsepower is needed. Full electric will only be an option when chargers are as common as gas stations and every home has a charger. Range is still a problem too.