Tesla have come a long way recently but it's a well-known fact the build quality was sub-standard, it's still not on par with BMW/Audi/VW etc. but it's mostly less important stuff (panel gaps etc.) now.
I hope VW release performance figures for the ID.3 soon, the eGolf is stupidly slow. I don't intend doing any drag racing but I'd want sub 7 second 0-60mph in an EV if I was spending £30k+
Still undecided about the Tesla Model 3, I'd have to take out a loan for most of one and still not sure I want to actually own an EV at the moment (although the battery warranty seems decent enough on it). Will see what lease deals are like I guess (S & X's leases seem to be on the high side so hopefully there's not just a general 'Tesla' premium being applied)
but I’d want sub 7 second 0-60mph in an EV if I was spending £30k+
Driving an EV might change the way you view performance figures. How often do you do 0-60 flat out? Never in my case. How often do you do 0-20 flat out? Now and then in my case, pulling out of junctions. EVs, even the slow ones, do that so well the performance feels more than adequate. You're always in the perfect gear and flooring the throttle always produces instant go.
The guy who does tear downs of cars, costs them and sells the info to competitors had an interesting opinion of the model 3 tear down. Build quality a bit poor (it was early production) compared to BMW (I think he likened it to a Kia in the 1990's), but said that the electronics (circuit boards etc) were like nothing he'd ever seen before in a car and were a big leap ahead compared to others.
BMW tore down a Tesla and were very impressed with the tech in it i.e it was ahead of anything they had.
uponthedowns
If you're interested there are two short vids here where vid 1) he rips it apart on the fit and finish. vid 2) gushes about the drive and electronics / battery.
There's a longer vid somewhere where he goes into more detail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAS-yjWj9DY
We know you’re a VAG fan, Drac. Don’t let that cloud your judgement to the point of losing all reason.
I am don't worry it's not. Just trying to point out that VW has released a reasonably priced electric car which more than completes with Tesla. Yes others will too which is why it's a wake up call for Tesla.
Thanks Banana. Have already seen those.
The German teardown found much the same thing. Healthy profit margin and advanced battery tech
I am don’t worry it’s not. Just trying to point out that VW has released a reasonably priced electric car which more than completes with Tesla. Yes others will too which is why it’s a wake up call for Tesla.
You're just trolling now Drac.
1/ the Golf hasn't been released, you won't be able to buy one for a year. It looks expensive compared to a Leaf to me. The Zoé 2 will be on the market sooner.
2/ it's not in the same market sector as the Model 3 which is more up market and benefits from the Supercharger network, and will have trouble competing with the Leaf with anyone except a VAG fan.
3/ others will too but Tesla still has a lead in its market segment.
4/ Tesla was the wake up call, diesel gate was the loudest alarm clock ever made and most manufacturers are still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, including VAG.
VAG are spannered with dieselgate. The UK isn't buying diesels anymore (in any numbers). They need something shiney again to keep the money rolling it.
Do you seriously think if making a £25,000 car made business sense to a start up like Tesla that they wouldn't be making one now? They have to play in the premium sector just now to generate the cash to keep the company running as they can make the electric drive train cost competitive with ICE in that sector. As the electric drive train costs come down then it will compete in the lower tier segments. Like I said earlier Tesla is the wake up call to the incumbent OEMs and is the only reason (OK maybe Kia too) we are seeing any meaningful BEV product from them this side of 2025.
They need something shiney again to keep the money rolling it.
Or we just all need to see the emissions reducing. Please at least make sure you look at all the costs for the miles you drive, not just the purchase price. It's very clear then that a Model 3 and, for example, a BMW M3 are not a straight comparison, despite the Tesla's ability to keep up easily. And that is only on financial cost - environmental not factored in. Take just generation & grid emissions vs mpg and its a lot better. Factor in emissions for electricity generation, oil industry etc etc and the calculation becomes very stark.
You’re just trolling now Drac.
🙄
As the electric drive train costs come down then it will compete in the lower tier segments.
I have my doubts they will, that would require significant manufacturing scale (global) and a much bigger dealer/servicing network. I can't see them going to a lower price point than the 3 directly but I can see them licensing the batteries and drive train to other manufacturers
I have my doubts they will,
They already are. Renault are claiming a 40% reduction in R&D costs and a 30% reduction in production costs for the Zoé 2 compared to Zoé 1.
https://www.auto-moto.com/nouveautes/scoop/renault-zoe-2019-174346.html#item=
I meant Tesla competing in the lower price markets...
I notice there still aren't any UK lease deals yet for the Model 3 (well one but for a business lease), can manufacturers control when leases are available from 3rd parties (I figured the 3rd party would just order them in the same way a private buyer would)? Although apparently Tesla's own lease deals should be available soon so that might kick start things
Tesla are a small company with a teeny tiny market share...they really are a microscopic company in comparison to the established brands, so their initial models had to be expensive premium models as they had to recoup R&D costs and the costs of bringing a new model to market, industrialising a new product from scratch without any existing industrial base to start off from, so they had to go for premium models with a hope to get some profit. Small cheap cars make very little profit and rely on volume, which Tesla will take decades to build up if they survive long enough. So IF Tesla survive then they will ultimately expand into higher volume cheaper models, but that would be some way off...they're still not making a profit now and are only here by the grace of their investors who are cutting them a lot more slack than other investors would because their investors are fanboi's and willing to give the company time...but their generosity won't last forever and one day they will start knocking at the door for their promised return on their investment and the pipeline of money that is keeping Tesla afloat start to throttle off.
I think Tesla's aim is to move away from traditional ownership and leasing models and try to innovate in this space anyway, so we'll see what that is when they launch it. But they will find it difficult to compete head on with the established brands. 2019 and into 2020 are going to be interesting as all the big established manufactures will be launching loads of EV models and consumers will, for the first time, have genuine choice and Tesla wont have the market to itself any longer.
their initial models had to be expensive premium models as they had to recoup R&D costs and the costs of bringing a new model to market, industrialising a new product from scratch without any existing industrial base to start off from, so they had to go for premium models with a hope to get some profit
That and the batteries required. If it takes £20k of batteries to make a car go 300 miles then it's much easier to turn up the taps and make it do 0-60 in 2.5 seconds, then you can get away with charging £60k for it. What we really need is a car that does 200 miles on a charge and costs £12k. There's a reason we don't yet have one of those.
Tesla was the wake up call, diesel gate was the loudest alarm clock ever made and most manufacturers are still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, including VAG.
There may be an element of that, however Tesla were prepared to operate in a way that VW &co aren't - throw something together, borrow a shitload of money and hope for the best. They're a startup, which means they can operate like that.
throw something together, borrow a shitload of money and hope for the best.
Sick business.
What we really need is a car that does 200 miles on a charge and costs £12k. There’s a reason we don’t yet have one of those.
Given the exchange rate at the time that's about what I paid for the Zoé (16000e) and in Summer 200 miles (320km) is what I regularly get.
eGolf here, waited 9 months for it and in that time others have come along with better range (e.g Nero) for the same money but again I believe they have a waiting time. The eGolf range meets our requirements exactly - 95% of our mileage is less than 100 miles return trip so we only ever need to charge at home. We have a second larger car for the long distance trips. Someone on here said it was slow - well the 0-60 figures are nothing to shout about but 0-30 is a different story - great fun at the lights 🙂 Happily carts family of 4 of us and 2 dogs. I expect the residuals to be pretty poor so we opted for business lease.
Given the exchange rate at the time that’s about what I paid for the Zoé (16000e)
New ones are £21,000 here.
Obviously you can get them less second hand (I know how buying and selling things works) but until they are £12000 or so NEW they won't sell that well. Someone has to buy them new obviously.
£21 000 - £3 500 plug in car grant = £17 500.
If you "know how buying and selling things works" you'll know that's the starting point for negotiations.
What we really need is a car that does 200 miles on a charge and costs £12k. There’s a reason we don’t yet have one of those.
That's going to be a tough price point to crack.
That's my point Drac. Not cheap enough yet for anyone who wants something to get around in that they don't have to think about. As soon as you mention stuff like mandatory battery hire 75% of small car buyers will just switch off. People are not rational and a great many of them hate car buying and just want something normal.
The battery hire seems to be fading out it was something Nissan seemed to do to help initial prices, they're getting cheaper prices are dropping but not sure they'll get as low as £12k anytime soon.
EVs are very soon going to be less expensive to develop and manufacture. The upfront development for EV components, is lower, and those components are much more easily shared across different platforms. Add in the fact that there is no emissions or OBD certification, a process that costs something like £20M per platform currently during development and takes 3 years and the savings start tumbling in.
Today, at low volumes EVs cost a little bit more to make today than the mature build process for ICE models. However, they are highly parallel by design and hence uniquely scale-able, and hence perfectly suited to volume production, and the resulting cost reduction potentials.
In as little as 2 to 3 years, we are going to see volume EVs drop too, or just below their ICE cousins in terms of cost. Market forces i think will mean they won't drop significantly lower for a while yet as demand is outstripping supply currently, and will for at least 3 years imo.
People are erroneously saying that EVs can never match ICE because of the battery size needed, but they are missing the massive parallelism of that battery. ie, yes a large chemical battery is made up of a lot of parts, but the vast majority of those parts are extremely simple and crucially identical to each other (the cells), which intrinsically drives up volumes for that part, and hence brings down the cost per part. By comparison, your ICE is full of very complex parts, which are not only all different, but also different between models and platforms. By comparison, scaling the powertrain for an EV is simple and as mentioned, broadly an act of repetition rather than revision!
If you want to grasp the scale of the implications, perhaps consider how you make just one part of an ICE that we all take for granted and that is made in millions per year, the crankshaft? Seriously, think about it, if i said, make me a crankshaft, how would you do it? Turns out, it's really pretty difficult and extremely complex (have you got a 1000 tonne forging machine, or a blast furnace, or a disc grinder, or a precision balancer etc). And your ICE is literally packed full of very complex, highly tolleranced, precision machined components made out of high grade materials like high carbon steels, all of which need extensive testing to make sure they work and stay working. By comparison, a lithium battery is stupidly simple. No moving parts, just some chemicals warped up in a bit of plastic sheeting pretty much. Sure, the cell itself has complex chemistry, and required a clean room to manufacture, but by comparison, the process is very cheap and easy.
This is why EVs are taking over, and will continue to do so!
(worth noting that the OEM Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers, massive billion dollar multinationals like Bosch, Denso, Continental, BorgWarner, Valeo, Mahle, Elring Klinger, Lear, American Axle, GKN, ZF, Schaefner, Dana, Jatco, Autoliv, Federal-Mogal, etc etc are not going to allow their companies revenue source to simply disappear, and are all tooling up to supply EV components. The money and financial resource involved is quite literally mind boggling)
Thanks for the industry perspective maxtorque. The process you described happened with semiconductors decades ago. Very difficult to manufacture at first but now they have it cracked we can churn out microprocessors for virtually nothing.
The only potential issue the EV industry could have is raw materials.
Exactly Maxtorque. BEV drive train cost parity with ICE drive train was predicted for 2025 but every year that is brought forward. Currently prediction is 2022. Also the price will fall below ICE and at that point BEVs become cheaper to buy so why would anyone buy a ICE car? The large OEMs will try to prevent that happening for as long as possible but hopefully Tesla and the Chinese will keep them honest.
Yes when you think how complex an ICE is its a wonder they work as well as they do even after 100 years of development
The large OEMs will try to prevent that happening for as long as possible but hopefully Tesla and the Chinese will keep them honest.
One of the big ones that they are gearing up for is the EU legislation that starts in 2021 (baseline) and then CO2 targets thereafter against that 2021 baseline. Big fines if they don't meet them. I think this is why Co like Hyundai / Kia are restricting supply of their EVs at the moment, they all will want their baseline to be set as low as possible so easier to achieve their CO2 targets and avoid fines. (I might be talking garbage)
They already are. Renault are claiming a 40% reduction in R&D costs and a 30% reduction in production costs for the Zoé 2 compared to Zoé 1.
https://www.auto-moto.com/nouveautes/scoop/renault-zoe-2019-174346.html#item=/blockquote >
I bet it ain't 30% cheaper to purchase though.
It's all bolix, the 'energy' has to come from somewhere. We all need to stop buying cars every few years - that's far more environmentally friendly in 'life time' costs. Battery production has some very bad environmental impacts as it is.
I'm tempted to get a second hand Zoe, as mentioned earlier. I drive a 17 year old family saloon car. Costs me nothing, it's still in fab condition, but in traffic stop start it does 25 mpg. £70 a month battery rental plus free recharging might halve my fuel bill, but I've got a newer car to pay for, when my old one still does everything it needs to do. It transports 4 MTB's on the roof and four adults - a Zoe wouldn't get far with that. We also have a family SUV - that's better on fuel than my old car, but would be an ass to transport bikes on - an extra lift !
Electric cars aren't the answer at the moment, when electricity is still very dirty to generate.
But it's getting cleaner all the time.
But it’s getting cleaner all the time.
And things like NOx and particulates don't get dumped into crowded urban environments.
The last time I looked UK electricity was 32% renewable. And for the first time since 1882 the country managed a few days without coal-fired powerstations (second link at bottom).
Electric cars are also exceptionally economical in energy terms when compared with ICE. The Zoé has averaged 12.8kWh/100km from new. Even when you take into charging losses that's sweet **** all. There are about 9.85 kWh in a litre of petrol (link at the bottom) so a petrol car doing 5.8l/100km (my previous 1.2l TCE Renault also driven economically by me) is using four and half times the energy. Both of the figures I obtain are very close to the manufacturers claims.
So even when you compare with a worst case of charging 100% from a gas fired power station the EV does much better. The power station (32-38% efficent according to wiki) produces electricity as efficiently as the best petrol engines (35% according to the article linked) and the electric car uses that energy more efficently than a petrol car.
Energy recovery braking: not just a bit like a hybrid but a shed load. Braking moderately downhill results in a charge of 36kW
Zero consumption when it's standing still (without the irritation of stop/start).
Very low consumption at very low speed, it'll trickle along in slow moving traffic at 1 or 2kW
A very clean aero design with a flat bottom and a smaller need for cooling vents/radiators, .29cx
No excessive consumption during warm up.
Always in the right gear.
My conclusion is that in real use with the current UK energy mix a Zoé produces about half the CO2 per km compared with the equivalent petrol Clio. And zero local emissons. So you need to back uo your "bollix" claim with some numbers Fossy.
I see that others have beaten me to challenging the 'dirty' electricity statement above, but a few more facts anyway...
As stated by Edukator the precentage renewable for the UK electricity supply is 30% so far in 2019. It has ranged from approximately 10% to 50%.
I have been away walking for a sunny weekend and in that time my solar panels have fed 31kWh into my Renault Zoe. That is more that a weeks driving for me with no grid energy. I doesn't get much cleaner than that.
Decarbonising of the electricity grid is a big issue at this time, the share or renewables is expected to rise with time. EVs are not the one 'magic bullet' to solve all our problems however they are better than 'conventional' cars for the reasons mentioned by the three posters above.
Since driving an EV I have also found myself much more aware of trying to reduce energy use when driving, I think that the lower range (still >150 miles), longer charging times and real time data as you drive make you think harder.
I agree that the consumption habits of our society need to change, but to critisise EVs for using dirty electricity is just not true and has been deservedly challenged.
Just provoking debate. I really would buy a second hand Zoe, they look great also. It would be ideal for my work commute, and we have loads of charging stations. I wouldn't need to use it at home. But, as someone that regularly goes down to the N. Wales coast, only 70 miles, but I can't get a Zoe recharged easily down there (static caravan electrics are a no-no) and very few EV charge points.
We have an SUV that would take the bikes, with step ladders. I need convincing more. I'm not convinced hybrids are any better, my FIL didn't get much better fuel use in his Prius than we got in an older Yaris non hybrid.
PS also, bear in mind some of us won't be leasing a car - buying and running an EV has potentially more complicated issues.
Zap-map will give you an idea of where charging stations are Fossy. Might be worth looking if you're thinking about it.
Every campsite we've been to with Zoé has had somewhere to charge. We carry the standard campsite blue plug adaptor and ask to be pointed at a 10A or more socket.
If worried about safe ampage on a socket, even if it's a 3 pin, you can throttle down the charging current of the cars I've experienced, although that doesn't include a Zoe.
Also, charging points being few and far between isn't the same as them being non-existent and the numbers are rising all the time. Personally I take the view that the decision I'm making (to buy an EV) isn't so much driven by today's infrastructure, more by tomorrow's. I can stomach a bit of mild inconvenience in the meantime. YMMV of course!
The Zoé defaults to level 1 10A charging unless it detects that is connected to Greenup socket. To put 10A into perspective that's 2.2 kW. Now go and look at the base of your kettle and check the rating of that, no doubt somewhere between 2.2kW and 3kW. Your kettle is more likely to trip the electrics than a Zoé.
The problem with charging an ev from a normal socket isn't so much the power, but the length of time it's running for; a kettle won't burn out slightly dodgy socket wiring in two minutes, whereas an ev charging for fifteen hours might.
The Zoe will always charge as fast as the EVSE it is connected to will allow; the only way to slow it down would be to use a charger that has a selectable maximum rate. Some cars like the BMW i3 let you set the rate yourself, but not the Zoe.
I'll try another approach then as you don't like the kettle. The car is less than most of these:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oil-Filled-Radiators/b?ie=UTF8&node=11712371
the only way to slow it down would be to use a charger that has a selectable maximum rate. Some cars like the BMW i3 let you set the rate yourself, but not the Zoe.
I think there is new legislation coming in july where all home chargers have to be smart. So they can be remotely communicated with by the user to do what you're suggesting, but also to allow reduction in high peaks of electricity demands. So essentially the 'grid' will be able to throttle your smart charger as well, I think.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-funded-electric-car-chargepoints-to-be-smart-by-july-2019