Electric cars

Martyn1981

Just wondering what folk's take on the buying of Maxwell is?

Tesla acquires ultracapacitor and battery manufacturer for over $200 million

Is it just because they seem to have an interesting advantage on battery energy density, or is Tesla looking at including super-capacitors in their cars too?

Imagine P100D (ludicrous) or Roadster performance, but without such large battery packs (to deliver the enormous power needed for that short term performance).

I'm simply guessing here, but perhaps just 1 or 2kWh's of supercapacitors would be enough to cope with hard acceleration and re-gen braking. Is the RoadsterII coming with ~200kWh's of batts, to necessitate the 1.9s 0-60, when it might become possible with half the pack size?

I don't know!

Martyn1981

Nice to see that Porsche and Audi are waking up to both the potential and the need for cheaper EV's. We need more supply, and the cheaper the better. I hope they can make some headway.

Tesla Model 3 cost surprised Porsche and Audi after reverse-engineering

According to the report, Audi and Porsche could delay the PPE in order to improve the cost and be competitive with Tesla.

The PPE is becoming increasingly important for Audi according to Manager-Magazin’s report, which describes a failing e-tron program:

The e-tron as the first electric Audi is not only late. It does not reach some target values and has become far too expensive with more than two billion euros in development costs. The approximately 600,000 cars sold for the break-even are now regarded as an illusion.

Nearly_Old

gzoom wrote: »

Not sure what graph your looking at but the diesel Golf is coming in at just under €45k and the eGolf €33k, thats a tad more than 5% difference. The graph in the report linked to from post 3283 Quote: Electric cars offer the biggest savings over diesel in Norway (27%) as the battery-powered vehicles are exempt from a heavy registration tax. The ICCT analysis was updated for the Guardian after recent cuts in the UK’s grants for electric car purchases. It shows British drivers see the smallest saving – 5%. In Germany, France and the Netherlands, the saving varied from 11% to 15%.

There is no point not taking tax/EV grants into the calculation as the one thing you can be certain of in life is tax . I agree but the reports do take into account the tax/EV grants.

As I've already posted the REAL LIFE longterm ownership costs of EVs is staggeringly low.

Am paying £0 VED, 2.5p per mile in fuel, no servicing costs in 20k (and none for another 10k at least) all in a 2.5 ton, 6 seater SUV that does 0-60 in under 5 seconds. No petrol/diesel car can get close to those running cost figures, let alone one with similar performance.

Deprecation is another area EVs are really strong at present, thats across the range from 4-5 year Leafs holding their prices really well, to Kona EVs currently been sold ABOVE list price due to massive demand, and 'premium' EVs like Tesla/iPace commanding really strong used prices.

Put it another way if your about to spend £30k+ on a brand new car, which do you think will be more relevant in 2027? A diesel, petrol, or EV version of that car?

In terms of buying a new £30k+ brand new car it's not something that I personally would do and sorry but the thought of driving a 2.5T SUV just horrifies me. We have just replaced a 16 year old Citroen C5 with a 1 year Skoda Octavia for less than £15k. We need one car with a decent boot for B&Q, tip, 3 sets of golf clubs. The other cars are an 11 year old BMW Z4 and a (soon to be) 20 year BMW Z3 - think of the number of new cars that have not been built because people like us keep cars for a long time. Also with these cars happiness is not round the corner happiness IS the corner.

buglawton

gzoom wrote: »

Not sure what graph your looking at but the diesel Golf is coming in at just under €45k and the eGolf €33k, thats a tad more than 5% difference.

Bare in mind BIK for EVs is dropping to 2% for 2020 if that affects you.

There is no point not taking tax/EV grants into the calculation as the one thing you can be certain of in life is tax .

As I've already posted the REAL LIFE longterm ownership costs of EVs is staggeringly low.

Am paying £0 VED, 2.5p per mile in fuel, no servicing costs in 20k (and none for another 10k at least) all in a 2.5 ton, 6 seater SUV that does 0-60 in under 5 seconds. No petrol/diesel car can get close to those running cost figures, let alone one with similar performance.

Deprecation is another area EVs are really strong at present, thats across the range from 4-5 year Leafs holding their prices really well, to Kona EVs currently been sold ABOVE list price due to massive demand, and 'premium' EVs like Tesla/iPace commanding really strong used prices.

Put it another way if your about to spend £30k+ on a brand new car, which do you think will be more relevant in 2027? A diesel, petrol, or EV version of that car?

The one thing in life you can be sure of is tax. Currently my petrol car covers 50 miles on about £2 worth of fuel. Oh, plus £4 in tax. Who believes that road pricing won't arrive to hammer peak time EV commuters? And are those people envisaging 10 years of ownership with their upcoming EV, putting road pricing estimates into their total cost of ownership calculations?

AdrianC

buglawton wrote: »

The one thing in life you can be sure of is tax. Currently my petrol car covers 50 miles on about £2 worth of fuel. Oh, plus £4 in tax. Who believes that road pricing won't arrive to hammer peak time EV commuters? And are those people envisaging 10 years of ownership with their upcoming EV, putting road pricing estimates into their total cost of ownership calculations?

And if anybody is in ANY doubt about this, look at last year's VED changes.

Average new car CO2 dropped so much that the average new car was £30 VED - the last time it cost that was the mid 1970s.
VED was rejigged so that all cars are a flat £140 (the same as in the mid 1990s), with a premium for expensive cars - and a rebate only for 0g/km CO2.

Now remember that fuel duty and VAT are a much larger proportion of government revenue from road transport than VED - and that grid-supplied electricity isn't even currently subject to the normal 20% VAT, but the reduced 5%.

Anybody who doesn't see an imminent change in the tax situation for EVs is in denial.

NL bases their VED (MVB) on the vehicle weight. A 1,600kg petrol car is €1,000/year. Diesel is considerably more expensive. Yes, electric is currently free there, too... But we come back to where we are on that technology adoption curve.

gzoom

buglawton wrote: »

The one thing in life you can be sure of is tax. Currently my petrol car covers 50 miles on about £2 worth of fuel. Oh, plus £4 in tax. Who believes that road pricing won't arrive to hammer peak time EV commuters? And are those people envisaging 10 years of ownership with their upcoming EV, putting road pricing estimates into their total cost of ownership calculations?

Ofcourse VED/tax will change, but given past policy new changes are rarely applied retrospectively. I suspect our EV will remain £0 VED for its entire working life, by the time everyone else gets on broad am sure road pricing will change, so surely the incentive is to get on broad early?

By the time any road tax changes come in I suspect I will have done well over 100K+, probably approach 150K in EVs, with all the associated low running costs.

gzoom

Nearly_Old wrote: »

In terms of buying a new £30k+ brand new car it's not something that I personally would do and sorry but the thought of driving a 2.5T SUV just horrifies me.

Everyones needs/likes are different. If I didn't get the Tesla I would now be in a F10 M5/XJR supersport neither weigh much less than our Tesla. But actually if I was 'forced' to choose a combustion car now to replace X it'll probably be an Alfa romeo stelvio quadrifoglio, or possibly a Lexus GSF-R.

Compared to all those cars our Tesla really is costing pennies to run. This is why Tesla started at the 'premium' end of the market, as getting the numbers to work on an EV versus all the cars I mentioned is much easier than versus a Fiesta/Golf.

But its also why cars like the Hyundai Kona, Kia Nero are so good, as much/more range than our Tesla, at less than half the cost. If you don't want all the fancy 0-60 times/powered doors etc, they make much more sense per £.

gzoom

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I'm simply guessing here, but perhaps just 1 or 2kWh's of supercapacitors would be enough to cope with hard acceleration and re-gen braking. Is the RoadsterII coming with ~200kWh's of batts, to necessitate the 1.9s 0-60, when it might become possible with half the pack size?

I don't know!

Tesla have also said the next Roadster will have an EPA range of 600 miles, your need a 200kWh pack for that.

Tesla is trying to cut battery production cost more than increase capacity at moment.

AdrianC

gzoom wrote: »

Tesla is trying to cut battery production cost more than increase capacity at moment.

They're the same thing, to a certain extent.

You're designing an EV for market.
You want a market-acceptable range.
You don't want it pricing out of the market.

So you have a balancing act - increase battery capacity to give range, but you increase cost and you increase weight.

Add in charge time as another factor. The more battery capacity, the longer the charge. As range increases, charge time becomes less important, because journeys won't need breaking. But charge infrastructure needs to keep up - and Tesla are the only ones who have that within their partial direct control (the grid still acts as a cap). But, again, that comes at a cost - even with introducing then increasing usage costs for the supercharger network, they admit it will always be loss-making. In other words, the cost of charging is hidden within the purchase price of the car.
https://electrek.co/2018/03/11/tesla-increases-cost-supercharger/

Ultracapacitors will help provide steps forward in that capacity/weight/charge time balancing act, but (currently) at a massive cost hit - and they increase the charge infrastructure issue, because they make the grid cap more relevant.

GZoom's right about Tesla's appeal being in part about the gizmos - but they help to give the early-adopter geek gloss which excuses the price for those who can afford them.

gzoom

AdrianC wrote: »

GZoom's right about Tesla's appeal being in part about the gizmos - but they help to give the early-adopter geek gloss which excuses the price for those who can afford them.

Tesla nailed it with £ to performance ratio of the S/X. I was in the market for a £50k+ performance Saloon/SUV. But why would I buy a combustion car which costs 20p per mile in fuel costs when the EV version cost the same to buy, has the same on road performance but a 1/10th the fuel costs??

But for proper mass market adopting prices have to come down as most people aren't interested in performance cars, so cannot justify the high initial cost of purchase. Prices are starting to fall though as Hyundai/Kia are showing.