Random EV thoughts.....

unkel

@KCross - "The key questions will be.... can Tesla keep the prices down AND more importantly can they deliver the volume quarter after quarter."

They easily can keep the prices down as they still have about a 20% margin, which is insanely high. Competing mass manufacturers barely do better than breaking even.

As for ramping up. Well, we will have to see. It's an enormous result to go from a few hundred thousand cars per year to a few million cars in a handful of year. Berlin is only in the early stages of ramping up. So is Austin. Shanghai will need to grow a lot bigger. Before the end of the decade several more new gigafactories, I heard rumours about one in Mexico yesterday. But from the last year or so, it looks like Tesla have mass manufacturing well under control at this stage. About 1.3 million last year, a bit under 2 million this year, 5 million by 2025 and 10 million cars by 2030. Extremely aggressive of course, but not unthinkable.

KCross

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120248795#Comment_120248795

I agree. Ireland is irrelevant in terms of global car markets.

Im just giving a probable reason for why VW Ireland (and others) have not decided to compete on price.... yet.

If Tesla eat their breakfast they will have to drop prices then. They wont go for the knee jerk reaction of chasing Tesla to the bottom of the market... as unkel said, they are too indebted and have too low a margin... they need to milk that ICE train more first!

You can be sure they are discussing it in their board rooms though!

Tesla need to deliver much higher volumes to hurt them and I suppose people need to want to buy a Tesla.... Tesla's are not for everyone so some will happily pay 5-10k more for a VW or Merc or Toyota etc even if the Tesla has a better spec on paper.

unkel

@KCross - "they need to milk that ICE train more first!"

Exactly. They need it to survive. Like Toyota. At least with VW we have seen that they can mass produce pretty decent EVs and have no problem selling them at the prices they have been selling them at. If that is good enough, we will have to see. I suspect you are right about people wanting to keep buying VWs, even at a premium. With Toyota, I'm not so sure. They might have left it too late to be able to come out of this at all.

KCross

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120248936#Comment_120248936

With Toyota, I'm not so sure.

The CEO is gone now and he was anti-EV. They are making the right noises about BEV now but they have alot of catching up to do. They are saying Lexus will be all EV in a few years. Lets see if they deliver on that.

I suspect Toyota will survive. They are too big to be left fail. Japan will look after them like Germany will look after its industry.

traco

Here is a piece about BYD and capacity into the future. Things could get competitive and hopefully they will but there will always be people that pay more for a product due to marketing and brand positioning.

https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/byds-world-beating-evs-brace-rougher-ride-2023-02-15/

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120248950#Comment_120248950

I think you nailed it there, car industry employs a lot of people in <insert country name> and that gets them a lot of political clout

Look at how GM and Chrysler got bailed out by the US government.

L1011

I need to get an "island car", as in it is going to be permanently living on an offshore island where there is legally no requirement for an NCT; and motor tax is 102 flat rate... however, considering its only ever going to do maybe 10km a day I was thinking an older EV that is tipping towards an unviable for normal use battery life and/or is an NCT failure on something not particularly serious might be an idea. That said - what not particularly serious NCT failures are likely to affect an EV?

Are there any of the now ~10 year old EVs that would be particularly suited for short trips around a fairly hilly island. Lots of chance for regen when coming back down those hills! Also, excepting for the 12V battery draining I'd presume an EV is likely to be more suited to being left sitting for 6-10 weeks at a time sometimes than an ICE is what with modern petrol being so volatile.

Could probably get a charger installed at the house there; but there are also standard destination chargers being installed currently as far as I know. House was rewired in the late 90s, dunno what amperage the master fuse is.

On that topic, in prep for the inevitability of getting an EV at my normal house, I had my ancient 40A tails and fuse replaced with 80A today. Already have the spur for a charger from when this gaff was rewired

Rowley Birkin QC

Random question that might fit this thread....

I don't drive enough here at home to give up a (pretty economical) 3.0 petrol, 15 year old car and bear the expense of a move to EV (yet). I travel a bit for work and when I rent I try to rent something interesting and EV where possible.

I had a Polestar 2 for a weekend in Spain recently. Nice car, bit cramped inside and I wasn't blown away by the tech. All in a good experience .

My question is around charging; I plugged it in via the granny cable at the villa I was staying in and walked away for the night. Car lit up and said "initializing charge" or something to that effect. Walked away but when I came back the next day, it had not worked and lost charge. Assumed I had done something wrong and went about my day. Had to return it full to avoid charges so looked up public chargers nearby. Got up early on Sunday, drove to the first one, downloaded the app, connected up the fast charger, registered my card and......nothing. Rang an EV owner friend who helped to ensure everything was connected correctly and still could not get it to work after multiple attempts.

I drove to the next charging point as per the Shell App reccomended by Hertz, 10 mins away. Infuriatingly, this was inside the locked courtyard of a Ford Dealership. Next one was 5 mins away, outside a closed Burger King and was switched off. So, getting increasingly annoyed / worried I drove to the next one 10 mins away in a fairly crappy industrial estate. I repeated the exercise and still nothing. This time though, I fiddled with the display screen in the cabin that showed "amps" on a sliding scale. I bumped it up to the maximum and the car started to fast charge. Fully charged it and returned to the villa.

Plugged it in again (it was at about 96% now) via granny cable, same as before it just got stuck on initializing charge. I fiddled with the amp setting but still no bueno.

So my question is, was I doing something wrong or did I just come up against bad chargers? Is there any reason it wouldn't charge at home?

TLDR: Had issues with charging at home and at public stations. Operator or hardware error?

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120249533#Comment_120249533

Good thinking. Any of the older EVs will do fine. Best choices are Nissan Leaf and Renault Fluence. They are basically the same car underneath, but the Fluence can not fast charge at all. Be careful though that you get one that is battery owned (and not battery lease). The Fluence is by far the better looking car, I don't think anyone will argue with that 😂

Presuming the island is remote and somewhere off the west coast, you might have some trouble buying the car and then driving all the way over there. Unless you buy locally

You don't really need to install a dedicated charge point, a granny charger overnight will fully fill up either of these cars with their degraded batteries

josip

If it wasn't a very big island, an E36 318tde might also fit the bill 🙂

Old diesel

Well Bjorn Neyland is back from Thailand and it looks like a Model S Plaid 1000 km challenge will be happening.

That motor trade guy that often lends the Teslas Bjorn tests - has two new Model S.

A white long range and a Plaid which looks like it's got a green wrap.

Bjorn is going to have both for a week each.

I want to see how far the Plaid makes it to the first charge.

Never really took sufficient notice before but is there enough V3 sites on that Norway to Sweden and back route to allow the Plaid to ride the 250 kW wave....

eagerv

I am out of the country atm, saw a red EV earlier, really nice red, sort of similar to the cherry red of Mazda or Renault. Mid size perhaps similar size to new Niro. Really caught my eye but couldn't make out name on back as was in traffic, but looked like a BYD?. If so the future looks bright..☺️

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120250342#Comment_120250342

BYD Atto 3

Depending on the pricing, that can be a big hit world wide.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120250317#Comment_120250317

😁

I'd say it can go around the biggest island in Ireland several times without charging. With it's new 2019 BMW 530e battery 😎

No regen braking though...

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120250274#Comment_120250274

The ferry is ~10mins drive from the last ESB charger (which is actually a 50kW fast charger site); but to get something with say 70km range left up there from Dublin would be an exercise in precision trip planning and probably an overnight stay somewhere. Do it as a bit of an adventure on a warm weekend with a sleeping bag just in case!

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120250408#Comment_120250408

And the Fluence can only slow charge, so would need a 4-5 hour charge every time it's empty. But at least it's not ugly 😂

eagerv

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120250364#Comment_120250364

Yea, think that was it. Fine looking bus, but don't think it had the silver strip on the front but looked the better for that. I did notice the wheels looked similar to my old ID.3. I am in SE Asia presently, many cars look familiar but the names mean nothing..

unkel

Atto is hugely popular in many SE Asian countries, even Australia.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120249637#Comment_120249637

Well that certainly wasn't a good EV driving experience, I hope you explained to the rental company why they're a bunch of idiots

I'd say it's roughly 50/50 operator Vs hardware issues

Definitely sounds like something was up with that granny cable they gave you, possibly a communication issue with the car

I'm guessing someone before you set the charging power all the way down because they thought they were on a dodgy connection or something. The rental company really should have reset that but they generally can't figure out which hole to insert a key into so not much hope there

One thing I'm confused about, did you connect to a DC charger and have to bump up the charging current to get it to charge?

I'm not familiar with the Polestar, but in general the current limit only affects AC chargers, DC will always go as fast as possible

Kind of brings up another difficulty which is the different charging characteristics of every car. Someone from the rental company really should educate the drivers on this, but again I don't think customer experience is high on their priorities

kanuseeme

Going from weirdo to weirder,

https://www.bmw.co.jp/ja/topics/fascination-bmw/bmw-concept-vehicle/bmw-i-vision-circular-highlights.html

It envisions some sort of crystal 3d display, plus the front grill seems to evolve into a smaller part slantier version, I am going to say nothing about the rear end

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120252946#Comment_120252946

Is it just me, or does that look a lot like a Yaris (hatchback, not the chunky Yaris crossover)?

zg3409

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120249637#Comment_120249637

Often public chargers don't work and have no worked for weeks or months. Best to check review apps like plugshare and zapmap to see if they have been ok recently. There was a report from UK that 1/5 of all chargers were not working typically.

The granny cable may have been faulty or a night rate charge only at hight or day may have been set. I have received sat navs from hire companies that did not charge.

Typically it's best to plan and check chargers in advance, have the app already downloaded and an account set up. Always have a plan b in case charger is busy, blocked or broken. Similar happens in Ireland too.

zg3409

I'm terms of an island car consider a Renault Zoe too. I would search for EVs and filter by price. Depending on the car you may want to trickle charge the 12 volt if not driving it for a few weeks or keep a jumper pack handy.

unkel

Zoe can be very picky about AC charging though. First off, I would check the grid AC voltage. And I'm not so sure how stable the grid voltage is on a remote island. If you see it go to 250V from time to time, I would forget about a Zoe already. There could be low voltage issues too.

wassie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120248041#Comment_120248041

I'll be keen to see their 7 seat offering, the 'Tang'. Retails in Norway & Germany at over €70k at the moment and has a 86kWh LFP battery. Rumours been going around since last year that they are looking to increase this to over 100kWh. Only concerns I would have would be around long term reliability, but they are fast becoming the biggest EV manufacturers on the planet.

BYD also reportedly planning on building a US$1.2 billion EV battery plant with up to 40GWh annual production capcity.

silver_sky

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120253859#Comment_120253859

As a Zoe owner I would tend to agree. Sometimes they can just throw a fit if they don't like the charge point. Honestly I would go for something like a Leaf, or perhaps even an eGolf. The non-EV parts should be fairly cheap and readily available.

unkel

eGolf is a lovely car, far nicer than it's econobox replacement the ID.3. But it will cost 3 times as much for the cheapest one you'll find compared to a Leaf and @L1011 only needs very little range which would easily be covered by a Leaf or Fluence.

sh81722

The cheapest and most degraded leaf will do as an island vehicle ad long as they come with the supplied granny charger.

kanuseeme

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120253300#Comment_120253300

Maybe BMW are trying to appeal to the west and east, look at the front Herr Schmidt, see any thing familiar Toyoda San.

unkel

@kanuseeme - very interesting they managed to feck Toyoda San out. Wasn't expecting that. Would love to have been a fly on the wall for that. If they're very quick and radical, they might still survive, without bail out from the Japanese government. That said, if I were them I wouldn't count on the government to do anything. The whole Japanese manufacturing industry has gone to sh1t and their most important one (automotive) has gone to the biggest sh1t.

Problem of course is that quick and radical is opposite to their culture...