Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

QrizB said:

JKenH said:

I was at Donington Park circuit yesterday and both my son and I had our Leafs plugged in which tends to trigger conversations. We take every opportunity to explain the benefits of EVs to our fellow car and racing enthusiasts but in a community such as that there are very few takers around.

I do occasionally wonder if this is because electric cars aren't very exciting to look at / listen to. Take the Tesla Model S, for example; performance-wise it's in supercar territory but it doesn't pop and grunt like a tuned Subaru, or look like an Aventador, or smell of Castrol R.

Despite loving my EV I refuse to watch Formula E. The whining sound really gets on my nerves. I don’t know if things have changed recently but the excitement used to be whose battery would go flat first. Not the finest advert for electric cars.

Nothing comes close to the  visceral experience of hearing a screaming V10 F1 car or the smell of Castrol R. I used to use our old 2 stroke kart fuel in my chainsaw which relieved the tedium of cutting 100 yards of Lleylandii hedge. 

CKhalvashi

EVandPV said:

Martyn1981 said:

Edit - BTW the Hyundai IONIQ (all caps for some reason) is a mid size car, quite similar in size and shape to the TM3. I have the 28kWh model, good for 130 miles, or 150 if driven gently.

That's pretty damn decent for a medium sized battery !
My 40kwh Zoe does about 160 to 180 driven gently, so not a huge difference for the extra 12kwh.

Mine is the slightly larger 35kWh version and is roughly in the 160 mile range. 160 is 2 days commuting for me generally, so costing less than £2 to charge for a day isn't bad at all.

For comparison, my old Jag XE (180bhp diesel) was around £12 for the same round trip commute, so an instant saving of £200-250/month, which I figured should pay for a lot of the depreciation. It's cheaper to insure and isn't noticeably slower/smaller too, despite the dimensions being a little smaller.

CKhalvashi

CKhalvashi said:

michaels said:

Are we going to see toilet rolls effect - the rumour of petrol shortages might be self-fulfilling even if deliveries are normal?  What a shame I have an EV so am not worried in the least.

The problem is possibly yes.

The Ioniq is charged nightly, the Yeti currently has a full tank of diesel (minus around 25 miles) which should be good for 9 round trips to work for OH, which should do until at least 9 October at a quick glance of OH's roster, but looking at the dates she's working and I can WFH (subject to change), we could make last until around the end of October and still have 2 cars without visiting a petrol station at a rough guess.

I see no point in stockpiling fuel, but doubtless many will.

Update: Large argument tonight with someone attempting to stockpile fuel as an attempt to get around a large queue of cars ensued.

'It's (deleted) electric, mate, and so is that' (pointing to an Audi E-Tron behind me doing the same thing) is the fastest way to get the more aggressive stockpilers to back down and mind their own business

Martyn1981

Tesla may have opened the data floodgates now with the release of the FSD Beta 'request button' in the US. Hopefully this will increase the amount of learning 'opportunities' that FSD can work through, and accelerate the learning curve.

Still scary stuff, to me, but looks like a lot of potential for 2022, with rapid updates/upgrades now. V10 only came out a couple of weeks ago, V10.01 already out, and V10.1 due now(ish).

Tesla “Request FSD Beta” button formally gets released

After months of waiting, Tesla owners who wish to take part in the company’s FSD Beta program could now formally request the advanced driver-assist system to be loaded into their vehicle. The release of the “Request FSD Beta” button comes before the rollout of FSD Beta 10.1, which is expected to be distributed to the company’s testers over the weekend. 

The wait has been long for Tesla owners who are looking to test out the company’s most advanced driver-assist system to date. Initially intended for release months ago, the rollout of the “Request FSD Beta” button has been delayed multiple times. True to Elon Musk’s recent statements on Twitter, however, the wait for the famed button is now over, with Tesla releasing the function in its software update 2021.32.22. As per the update’s Release Notes:

JKenH

CKhalvashi said:

CKhalvashi said:

michaels said:

Are we going to see toilet rolls effect - the rumour of petrol shortages might be self-fulfilling even if deliveries are normal?  What a shame I have an EV so am not worried in the least.

The problem is possibly yes.

The Ioniq is charged nightly, the Yeti currently has a full tank of diesel (minus around 25 miles) which should be good for 9 round trips to work for OH, which should do until at least 9 October at a quick glance of OH's roster, but looking at the dates she's working and I can WFH (subject to change), we could make last until around the end of October and still have 2 cars without visiting a petrol station at a rough guess.

I see no point in stockpiling fuel, but doubtless many will.

Update: Large argument tonight with someone attempting to stockpile fuel as an attempt to get around a large queue of cars ensued.

'It's (deleted) electric, mate, and so is that' (pointing to an Audi E-Tron behind me doing the same thing) is the fastest way to get the more aggressive stockpilers to back down and mind their own business

This could get a bit embarrassing for those doing track days this weekend at a circuit without its own pump. I have often rocked up at a petrol station and put 80litres in jerry cans. (Yes, I know the rules but there isn’t an alternative.)

EricMears

silverwhistle said:

When I was biking back in the late 70s/80s there wasn't such a thing as electrically heated gloves etc., and if there were I wouldn't have been able to afford them. 

Funnily enough,  late 70s/early 80s was exactly the time when I was doing most of my biking.  Heated gloves were readily available and not extortionally priced.  Heated trousers weren't  but I recycled lengths of element from a faulty electric blanket and sewed then into a tatty pair of lightweight trousers that I wore under leathers

orrery

JKenH said:

We mustn’t assume however that everyone sees the world that way....

Denying there are issues with the charging infrastructure and maintaining everything in the EV garden is rosy is just sweeping obstacles to adoption under the carpet...

The negative stories may be click bait but there is often an element of substance behind them. To be believed and to be convincing we need to be honest about EVs, good and bad. 

Oh I agree. I've subscribed to the Daily Mail site so I can comment on the stories they run - the comments from readers are very enlightening (although the readers aren't).

But that isn't where the changes will come from. People know people who have EVs, and the more who have EVs the more this will happen. My daughter and two friends were celebrating a birthday yesterday evening and no taxi was available (the current fuel crisis presumably), so I had to go round and pick them up and take them, then pick them up and take them home, dropping off along the way, then take the babysitter home. My daughter proudly told all her friends (these are ladies who drive 4x4s, mainly Audi) that we were in an EV and not worried about filling up with petrol ... "Wow, isn't it quiet, wow, you mean it doesn't use petrol at all, wow, it costs how much for a full charge!"

Also, the facts on the ground don't support the consumer resistance you imply. It seems to me that almost all the manufacturers are selling every EV they can make, with newer models on long waiting times - the dealer told me that a new Enyaq will take 6 months, the eNiro was on 12 months at one point. There is enough demand in the market for prices to be kept high at the moment.

The DM readers are uninformed, making statement after statement that need to be corrected. They regard it all as a con. Sooner or later, they'll have an EV owner living on each side of them and reality will start to dawn.

EricMears

JKenH said:
Yes, I know the rules but there isn’t an alternative.

There's probably no alternative to murdering mother in law if she really gets on your nerves but most of us manage to resist temptation 

Grumpy_chap

Martyn1981 said:

Edit - BTW the Hyundai IONIQ (all caps for some reason) is a mid size car, quite similar in size and shape to the TM3. I have the 28kWh model, good for 130 miles, or 150 if driven gently.

I saw an IONIQ (with no number after it) and it seems pretty much the same as a Prius.

Ignoring whether the ~150 mile range would be adequate, the price difference is still in the same ball-park as other comparisons:

• Hyundai IONIQ hybrid from £23k
• Hyundai IONIQ electric from £30k
• (With a PHEV version also available, but that seems quite limited in target market.)

So, additional price to entry on the EV is £7k.

QrizB said:

Grumpy_chap said:

Scarily, even a Corsa is "from £17k" and the Corsa EV "from £26k"!  Oddly, that is the same £9k uplift for the EV as in the more premium vehicles but percentage-wise a bigger bar to entry.

We talked about this upthread in the early summer. The PHP price for a Corsa ICE is roughly the same as a Corsa EV because the depreciation on the 3-yo EV is a much smaller % than on the ICE. If you can afford a new Corsa ICE, you can afford the EV.

I am not sure that the price to enter the EV rather than the ICE can be simply be dismissed by considering clever marketing and finance for the first owner.  In particular, the tricks played on PCP to make monthlies low, but ignoring the deposit and balloon.

If a car costs £7k or £9k more, someone has to take that hit cost across the life of the car. 

I am not aware that the predicted age to scrappage for EV's is any different to the 14 or 15 years that ICE achieve - there are arguments why an EV could have a longer life (simpler mechanicals for motive power), or shorter life (battery degradation) or same life (body work failure beating mechanical failure as cause for scrapping).  It would be good to understand (for both ICE and EV).

There is a real danger in PCP pricing that it makes very vastly different cars the same price.  My local Jaguar dealer landing page today has a brand new I-Pace for £579 per month.  Also a 2012 Jaguar XF, 51k miles, £704 per month.  Clearly, not everyone interested in the £11.5k used car can afford the brand new EV just because they played clever with the monthly payments.

So, if the increased capital to acquire an EV versus equivalent ICE does not fall to the first owner, who does pick up that tab?

Martyn1981

The additional capital is covered by the reduced running costs as mentioned many, many times. Hence why the monthly cost (outgoings) of leasing, or buying via a PCP lease, a BEV v's an ICEV can be the same or less from day one, or to be more precise at month end when paying the leccy bill, or credit card bill.

You seem to be obsessed with an initial price differential (the con's), whilst completely ignoring running costs (the pro's) every single time. But we need to consider all costs, and time, for the TCO.


BTW - You quoted the specs (and range) I gave for my IONIQ, with a 28kWh battery, but appear to have quoted the price of a new IONIQ, which now has a 38kWh battery.