Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

Solarchaser

ABrass said:

JKenH said:

Tesla sales crash in China as buyers choose domestic models over Elon Musk’s models

https://www.standard.co.uk/business/technology-media/tesla-sales-fall-in-china-for-elon-musk-b950175.html

Again? This happens every first month in each quarter as that's when they ship cars to distant ports.

I have to admit I did laugh out loud at this reply.

It's been stated SEVERAL times that Tesla doesn't ship every month either... financial quarters etc etc

Solarchaser

Solarchaser said:

So as I said I've had the Tesla for 4 weeks, and thought it was a good time to put up my evolving thoughts on the tesla.

The good.
Very smooth car, power delivery and composure on the road is very good.
The acceleration is awesome
Very settled at speed
Very quiet
Very efficient 
Love sentry mode (side note, don't pull your knickers out of your rear near a Tesla, it will record it🙄🙈)
Supercharging is the gold standard in charging
Adaptive cruise control 

The bad.
Huuuuge glass roof/rear windscreen but you can hardly see anything out of the back (though I do like my seat as low as possible)
I really don't like the lack of dials
Huge screen but a 20 character max on the radio station, so you can't see what tune is being played, same with USB pen. So frustrating that one.
Everything has to be controlled from the screen, even rear heated seats, just silly imo.
Can't hang up a Bluetooth call from the steering wheel, only the screen. 
Adaptive cruise control

I've now had the Tesla for around 10 weeks and done around 5k miles and thought I'd just add to the earlier thoughts.

Still absolutely loving the drive, and am happy enough to stay in chill mode (lower power) the vast majority of the time.
Doesn't seem to be too. It a difference between 60mph and say 80mph in terms of consumption. 
Like a ff car, you stick to 50mph and you have really good efficiency. 
Over the 5k miles ive averaged 270wh/mile.
Colleagues in lower England (London mostly) have been low 200's and upper England more like 235-260wh/mile, so it really seems its the hills and speed that affect the efficiency. 

Adaptive cruise control in stop start traffic is great, really chills out a drive that would normally irritate me, all those clutch, 1st gear and bite point and roll forward 5 meters, clutch back in etc etc are gone,  tesla moves you forward when the car in front moves forward, slows when it slows etc, it's surprising how much of a difference it makes to your mood.
When it stops everything is still, no diesel engine giving everything a little vibration etc, it's just a better environment. 

Good in heavy moving traffic too, but I don't like it on fast roads, it still has a bad habit of slowing down because someone approaches an on ramp on junction on the same road, its playing it safe I realise, but as a driver you can judge who is likely to pull out of the junction, and tesla judges it wrong in my opinion.

Not using much of the lane guidance thing, tend to just drive it, but do use the adaptive cruise control alot in traffic.

Getting used to the lack of dials, but colleague got a Mercedes eqa delivered and I had a bit of dial envy once again.

So far had no real issues with charging, I say real issues because for some reason the Tesla seems to be a bit more fussy than most cars for chargers.
A few times now I've pulled up to a bank of chargers, and the first one won't communicate with the Tesla, move to another stand and its OK, then a different type of ev pulls up at the first stand and charges fine.
Anecdotally have had a few people say the teslas are fussy chargers, so it doesn't seem to be just me, but glad there are so many chargers in the Scottish central belt that I've so far only arrived twice at chargers to find them all being used. 

Sometimes when driving north or south I lose all radio stations, its always been this way through various cars, and so I have a usb pen with a couple of thousand tunes on it, and for 70% of the time, tesla will play through the usb pen absolutely fine, however that other 30% it just doesn't seem to be able to see the pen, so it's a silent drive.
Merc c class, mondao, skoda and mazda 6 never had this issue.

Music controller irks me, it covers 1/5th of the screen, or if you prefer 3/5th or 5/5th by your selection, but even with full screen, you still can't see the radio station full text, same with usb pen, I just dont get why the character count is locked down on a huge screen 🤷‍♂️

Vampire drain as I believe its called, for having sentry mode on, seems to take around 3-4% a night, if the scottish chargers weren't free, I'd probably have switched it off by now, but since I'm using it every day, and most days have access to a charger while I'm working, I barely notice it.

Was able to get a non tesla roof rack and with nothing on it, seems to cause about a 10% reduction in efficiency,  and it whistles a bit, but does mean I can take the bikes around.
And comes off and on in less than 10 mins.
Attaching it to that glass roof is always a bit unnerving though it has to be said.
(It's not actually on the glass,  just seems that way)

So anyway in short, some things irk me, but in general, just an awesome car

shinytop

Nice to see a real world review. You're quite a high mileage user or are you still going for drives just for the fun of it.    That's a big fuel saving compared to an ICE, especially if your charging is free.   

One thing I wondered; Teslas have the best range for now.  Is this just because of a bigger battery?  Or are they more efficient? What wh/mile do other EVs achieve?  I wonder when/if the emphasis will shift from range to efficiency. 

  

EVandPV

Scotland's first electric-powered aircraft begins Orkney test flight

Scotland's first electric-powered aircraft has taken to the skies from a new test centre in Orkney.

One of the twin engines in Ampaire's six-seater Cessna Skymaster has been replaced with an electric motor.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-58177865

JKenH

Electric cars: Do ministers put their motor where their mouth is?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-58170665

Solarchaser

shinytop said:

Nice to see a real world review. You're quite a high mileage user or are you still going for drives just for the fun of it.    That's a big fuel saving compared to an ICE, especially if your charging is free.   

One thing I wondered; Teslas have the best range for now.  Is this just because of a bigger battery?  Or are they more efficient? What wh/mile do other EVs achieve?  I wonder when/if the emphasis will shift from range to efficiency. 

  

It's a company car, so I'm using it for business. 
The company is saving the cost of the fuel more than me to be honest, but I'm still saving it on the private miles.

Tesla have slightly better efficiency than other evs of a similar size, but mostly its the amount of batteries imo.

Martyn1981

shinytop said:

Nice to see a real world review. You're quite a high mileage user or are you still going for drives just for the fun of it.    That's a big fuel saving compared to an ICE, especially if your charging is free.   

One thing I wondered; Teslas have the best range for now.  Is this just because of a bigger battery?  Or are they more efficient? What wh/mile do other EVs achieve?  I wonder when/if the emphasis will shift from range to efficiency. 

  

Funny you should ask, as I happened to watch a vid yesterday looking at both range and efficiency over an assortment of 10 vehicles. Spoiler, the TM3, Kia E-Niro and Zoe had the highest efficiencies (4.1m/kWh, 4 & 4 respectively), whilst the Ford Mach-E had the greatest range, but lowest efficiency (3.4m/kWh). Skip to ~5min for a table if you don't want to watch.
Also worth considering that higher efficiency also means faster charging in terms of mph added.

Electric car real-world range test – FULL RESULTS | Tesla Model 3 vs rivals | What Car?

Exiled_Tyke

As  you will appreciate I don't usually frequent this discussion as I don't yet have a BEV (but like a typical minister am hoping to get one soon).  I was taken by this though. I know cars can be programmed to charge at certain times but I'm guessing this would allow me to sit at home and decide that the sun is strong enough to warrant some extra charging?
https://www.hivehome.com/shop/electric-vehicles/hive-electric-vehicle-charging?icid=HP:CB1

Any thoughts? 

[Deleted User]

Exiled_Tyke said:

As  you will appreciate I don't usually frequent this discussion as I don't yet have a BEV (but like a typical minister am hoping to get one soon).  I was taken by this though. I know cars can be programmed to charge at certain times but I'm guessing this would allow me to sit at home and decide that the sun is strong enough to warrant some extra charging?
https://www.hivehome.com/shop/electric-vehicles/hive-electric-vehicle-charging?icid=HP:CB1

Any thoughts? 

You are entering a minefield. Most EVs will allow the owner to set charge times. A number of EVSEs (the charger for want of a better word) will also allow times to be set. EVSEs such as the Zappi 2 will use excess solar to charge the EV. Mine has been charging since 10am at a rate of >1.3kWs depending on the amount of sun.

A number of EVSEs are now appearing on the market that make use of the Open Car Charging Protocol (OCCP) which links the EVSE to smart tariffs such as Intelligent Octopus.

https://octopus.energy/intelligent-faqs/

EVandPV

Exiled_Tyke said:

As  you will appreciate I don't usually frequent this discussion as I don't yet have a BEV (but like a typical minister am hoping to get one soon).  I was taken by this though. I know cars can be programmed to charge at certain times but I'm guessing this would allow me to sit at home and decide that the sun is strong enough to warrant some extra charging?
https://www.hivehome.com/shop/electric-vehicles/hive-electric-vehicle-charging?icid=HP:CB1

Any thoughts? 

A Zappi charger goes a step further.
You can leave the car plugged in and set the Zappi to 'eco' mode and it will automatically divert any surplus pv to your car similar to an immersion diverter.

https://myenergi.com/product/zappi/

Edit : Didn't spot Dolor beat me to it.