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Electric Cars


gdevoy

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  • 8 months later...
On 7/26/2017 at 2:58 PM, Lroy said:

They should be making about 20,000 of them per month by Dec (2017) and the waiting list is 375,000, so more like 18 months right now.

They've made around 80,000 and are on about 6000 per week. Slower than expected and still no news on the UK version.

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On 11/18/2017 at 12:45 PM, gdevoy said:

The Truck looks smart but still a bit short on range to compete with diesel.

Tesla is also currently experiencing production target issues. It predicted it would make 1,500 Model 3 cars in the third quarter of 2017, in reality it only managed 260. It expects to reach a production target of 5,000 Model 3 cars per week in 2018.

Yes he can build them but making them commercially available to the consumer needs a Henry Ford character.                

It's not short of range if the charging ports are easily accessible. A 30 minute charge is a standard drivers break and every 500 miles or so is probably beyond the range they will do between breaks. There's nothing to stop you multiplying range by buying additional batteries. The technology is there. It's a matter of waiting for costs to come down.

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22 minutes ago, Scooby_Doo said:

He handed it back the next day. Bastard fooled me into thinking he'd bought it too!

Fast as f**k though. It's properly the next generation of car, the acceleration was unbelievable.

Ehh? Was it just a rental or something? Cheeky so and so.

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Scooby Doo thought I’d either won the lottery or was having a nervous breakdown. Letting him think that for a while was as much fun as getting the car.

Whilst I can’t comment on the day to day practicalities of owning one, even 8 months later I’m buzzing about it.  It was absolutely amazing. I would recommend it to anyone who works in an office job and can trickle charge it during the day and overnight. I cover all of Scotland in my job, and never know where I’ll be from day to day, so it wouldn’t work for me with a 250 mile (ish) range especially if I’m working at a burnt out shed in the middle of nowhere when I get there. Also, if you cane it, like I did at every opportunity, then the range drops a bit, brining on the range anxiety.

If they could get the range up to somewhere in the region of 500 miles I’d buy one in a heartbeat. It was easily the best thing I’ve ever driven and I’ve driven airport crash trucks, Dakar race trucks and the Australian Special Forces Bushmaster (all of which are amazing too).

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  • 3 months later...

Meanwhile, as we wait for the model 3, there's a pile of "affordable" electric cars coming with 200 mile real life ranges. Hyundai Kona and Kia e-Niro look to be the best of the bunch at the moment. Jaguar have released the iPace, which is more of a Model X competitor in terms of price but VW look to be aiming for the affordable "not an SUV" market. On the same platform they're building a Golf sized car with a 300 mile ranger and a reboot of the old Camper.

Meanwhile, +300kw chargers are popping up all over Europe that could charge a car from 0-80% in less than 15mins. All the while our electricity is getting greener and more and more charge points are being installed.

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7 hours ago, Scooter said:

Looks like we'll be waiting a while yet for the $35,000 Tesla though...

They admit that if they were to make it now it would be at a loss. They're up to full speed with manufacturing now though, battery costs are always falling. We should see model 3 deliveries in Europe by the start of next year and they've been sensible and are sticking the defacto standard charging port on the car in the UK. The longer they wait to shift the £35k model, the more competitors there will be.

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Here is a fully autonomous series hybrid-electric vehicle that I helped develop 15 (or so) years ago. It had a VW turbo-diesel engine powering an on-board generator and a fully electric driveline. In-hub motors allowed enormous suspension articulation and therefore unrivalled off-road mobility. 

If you watch the video to the end you'll get an idea of the scale of the thing.

Edited by CSI Kilmarnock
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57 minutes ago, CSI Kilmarnock said:

Here (sorry about the link) is a fully autonomous series hybrid-electric vehicle that I helped develop 15 (or so) years ago. It had a VW turbo-diesel engine powering an on-board generator and a fully electric driveline. In-hub motors allowed enormous suspension articulation and therefore unrivalled off-road mobility. 

If you watch the video to the end you'll get an idea of the scale of the thing.

Looks a bit big for UK roads.

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The battery technology just is not there yet. 200 miles would be fine if you could re charge in under 15 minutes. Overnight I would be looking for 500.

The mass production needed to get the cost down to "affordable" for even the moderately well off is way behind overcoming the technical issues.

So I can't see electric cars being anything more than a curiosity for at least another 10 years

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15 minutes ago, gdevoy said:

The battery technology just is not there yet. 200 miles would be fine if you could re charge in under 15 minutes. Overnight I would be looking for 500.

The mass production needed to get the cost down to "affordable" for even the moderately well off is way behind overcoming the technical issues.

So I can't see electric cars being anything more than a curiosity for at least another 10 years

Very few people drive over 70,000 miles a year. 

If you drive to Glasgow and back each day for work, and perhaps to Asda and back or something similar each day, then I would say the battery tech is absolutely there. 

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1 hour ago, gdevoy said:

The battery technology just is not there yet. 200 miles would be fine if you could re charge in under 15 minutes. Overnight I would be looking for 500.

The technology isn't widespread, but 200 miles in 15mins is today's  technology. If I can charge 200 miles overnight, that covers 99.9% of drives I've ever done. If I can get 150 in a 15min charge at a services I'm good to go anywhere in the UK as far as I'm concerned. I know that's not for everyone but I'm sure that's roughly the habits of most UK drivers. Nearly nobody needs 500 miles in one charge. Especially not daily.

1 hour ago, gdevoy said:

The mass production needed to get the cost down to "affordable" for even the moderately well off is way behind overcoming the technical issues.

I'd say cost parity with combustion engine cars will happen around 2020.

1 hour ago, gdevoy said:

So I can't see electric cars being anything more than a curiosity for at least another 10 years

In 2028 I'd be surprised if EVs weren't outselling combustion engined cars in terms of new sales.

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5 hours ago, gdevoy said:

200 miles on an overnight charge means I could not risk driving from here in Edinburgh to the football in Kilmarnock then on to my mother in law's place in Greenock then back here in one day. So such a vehicle would be an expensive ornament for me.

Why not? That's 185 miles.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I'm very tempted by the e-Nero - purely so that I can call it Robert and constantly laugh at my joke.

Seriously though, need a new car in August, and the Kona and Nero both have really interesting ranges which make them realistic options. Wish Kia had also launched an e-Stonic, as it's definitely a better looking car than the slightly dull Nero.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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