Random EV thoughts.....

And today on twitter.....

EV's are useless because you'll be left stranded someday.

The batteries are 14k to be replaced.

I heard it was 10k.

(Guy who said it was 14k)...it's actually double that.

The media have a lot of untruths to start setting right.

good to see competition in tech, dont know anything about it, if its niche or not

some beast, are xpeng available here?

Why is he complaining? It's a newish high tech vehicle. £10,000 to replace an important component is about what you would expect.

about what you’d expect as an EV owner for a battery pack perhaps, but not for anyone else - or not for any component in a 2nd hand Leaf sized car anyway.

Downtime to diagnose and repair an ev battery problem is a key issue at present and no one wants to be without their car for extended period. Hopefully this problem will reduce as expertise becomes more available.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/7/24028300/verge-electric-motorcylce-ts-ultra-price-photo-ces

The TS looks like nothing else on the road because it is like nothing else on the road. It’s electric, for starters, making it still a rare thing in the world of motorcycles, but its performance is even more radical. It has a whopping 201 horsepower and 885 pound-feet of torque, almost twice as much as a Corvette E-Ray. 

“We came to a conclusion that we would need to move the motor outside of the main chassis, out of the body of the motorcycle,” he said. So they decided to try something different: putting the motor inside the rear wheel. 

It’s a hubless ring design, which means you can put your hand right through the center of the wheel. This creates a radical look and while it does have some drawbacks, namely adding a lot of weight hanging off the rear suspension, Lehtimäki said the practical benefits of that battery placement more than outweigh it.

My 11 days stint with the Eclipse ended and I'm writing down my thoughts maybe will help/inform someone in making a decision when pondering EV/PHEV.

Overall the car was a bit annoying with a clutter of buttons and beeping software. Sometimes the beeps would be followed by a message on the display but most of the times I had no clue what those beeps meant. The good bit of having an electric motor was that it had less lag when accelerating from stand still compared to other ICEs I drove. At speeds over 120 km/h the engine was roaring. On the motorway the"power meter", left side in the picture below, was always above 75 kW and I could feel the engine struggling hard.

I managed to find a CHAdeMO charger which are very rare, those I knew from previous years got replaced with CCS hubs. When connected the charger said the battery is at 26% although the car displayed no range in the electric. It charged to only 80% and estimated a range of 30ish kms. Based on this I decided it is an absolute waste of time to keep charging. Maybe if the rental company would have provided Type2 cable I would have charged more often. I found AC chargers everywhere I parked, more on this later. I found that I could use the engine to charge the battery and I did it few times but never got to 100% or above 35km range. I drove about 1000 km and had to refuel 3 times a total of about 90l of petrol. Going to return the car, the petrol range display jumped from 44km to ---km, 10km before the destination. Not fun. Consumption was unbelievable high. 9l/100m +21 kWh/100km, telling me I drove 36% on electric when in fact I charged 35km out of 1000km. Same old tricks.

For me, driving EVs for the last 5 years, this PHEV was definitely a step back from all points of view. Power, comfort, software. I know I'm subjective, but it is hard not to be. Last night driving home I couldn't marvel how nice and quiet the drive in the EV is.

Has anyone else heard anything about GoPlugable? They were on Matt Cooper I think Friday last.

They describe it as a sort of Air B&B for your home charger.

You register and you can let others use your charger for a fee.

The payment is handled through the company so nothing between the owner and user.

Sounds like a good idea in theory for people without access to their own charger.

They have one other installation "on the island" in Strabane NI, at a McDonalds also. The reviews on Plugshare aren't great unfortunately, but it's good to see new operators coming in.

What are you implying here? Hard to know by the way you asked.

Is it that you believe that this is BYD indicating to customers that a battery can be taken out of a crashed vehicle and moved into a new/second-hand chassis as a matter of course.... then no.

But if it's a battery validation step as part of a demonstration of the resilience of their vehicles and also their battery module and is completely unrelated to how BYD will operate their customer crash-repairs, then it's a valid test and should be welcomed to increase trust in EV's overall.

Nice review, yep they're a complete waste of time. I had a phev myself and wouldn't recommend them at all.

Came across this car park with an interesting PV installation

getting closer I noticed each structure has 2 EV chargers.

Are we going to see something similar at Cliffs of Moher anytime soon? Or it is just a sore thumb like the charger in Hollywood, WW?