Yes, but being “4” higher up” increases the area, so the number you want for a fair comparison is CdA. And 0.29 doesn’t strike me as trying that hard, to be honest.
And being narrower reduces the Cda. As for Cx .29 "doesn't strike me as trying that hard", who does better?
Fiesta .32
Renault Capture 0.35
Nissan Juke 0.35
Volkswagen polo 0.32
The only small hatch I can find that equals the Zoé and i3 on CX is the
Peugeot 208 .29
Still needs Electric motors, two on performance models, each is about the size of the ICE’s gearbox.
I confess to not exactly knowing the size of gearboxes auto and manual, but I think you might be a bit mistaken about the size of electric motors, they're not all that big.
https://insideevs.com/news/382377/vw-id3-electric-motor-compact/
but the range of both of those is half that of the SUVs that are coming out.
The Zoé has a 395km range WLTP, there isn't an EV on sale with a range double that let alone an SUV. The highest range is the 100kWh Tesla model S at 610km WLTP
PHEVs only exist as a tax dodge. Fundamentally flawed in engineering terms.
1) A tax dodge is a way to avoid the tax you should be paying, but the low tax on PHEVs is a deliberate incentive - they want you to buy one.
2) It's not flawed. Most journeys are short, and the battery with a 30 mile range easily covers short hops around town which are a) most common and b) cause the most local pollution. The same car can still do long journeys without rolling out big infrastructure. They are a great engineering solution to the problems we face right now.
I think Edukator and molgrips have (inevitably) missed my point.
Why the dig?
The Zoé has a 395km range WLTP
Which Zoé has that much range?
You don’t really NEED and estate
Unfortunately I do need an estate to accommodate my wifes wheelchair, plus some SUV's the seat height makes it awkward for to get in/out.
PHEVs are flawed. The two most popular (due to previous tax incentives - Outlander, and legacy goodwill - Prius PHEV) are generally acknowledged to be absolute rubbish in every way. The Outlander is an abomination of a vehicle that drives 90% of its miles on a hugely inefficient petrol engine yet has to cart around an electric motor and batteries as well - typical mpg on petrol is around 32mpg. The EV bit is good for 20 miles in real life and the batteries take up half the boot. The Prius PHEV is crazy expensive, does less mpg than the Prius Hybrid overall and again, hardly any distance on EV in the real world. Both really only sold due to loop holes in the tax regime
Even BMW have discontinued the i3 range extender.
Non plug in hybrids seem to work more efficiently than anything else you can buy except EV's with 60kwh batteries or above if you need long range at sub motorway speeds i.e a long commute in traffic and on national speed limit roads. Diesel is still king of the transcontinental journey for efficiency.
32mpg? My current long term average is about 78mpg from just over 2 years of ownership. You’re right about the Outlander though it’s a bad example of a PHEV.
We have a PHEV (Golf GTE) and it works well for us. It's a very short range EV 95% the time, and a hybrid with a really big battery reserve for the odd longer journey. Easily does all our local trips and running the kids about on battery, it preheats nicely in the mornings, and if I did want to do 200+ miles in one hit (like heading to Wales with my bike in the back after a day's work) I can.
Yes, a lot of them were bought for the tax benefits and it's always been insane that a company car driver with a fuel card would actually be out of pocket if they plugged it in at home, but there are lots out there doing a great job for people that can plug in and do a lot of electric miles but still conveniently do the big trips.
I'd love to see more 50+ mile PHEVs that can properly be used in EV mode (lots of Outlanders, and stuff like the Kia Optima couldn't use the heater on electric), they're a good fit for many people.
Personally I think the current focus on medium to large format EVs is all wrong anyway, at least this side of the pond. Its the smaller cars that matter in the UK and Europe, Bollox to what the American and Chinese markets want.
The most Heavily pushed "Family" cars in the UK of the last 20 odd years have been MPVs, that craze has mostly come to an end I'd say. And yep the modern SUV (basically a Jacked up hatchback) has become the over-sold vehicle of the last few years. Saloons have long been pitched as the leased Rep-mobile option and will probably remain so whatever is under the bonnet.
The major link in the market both in the UK and wider Europe is the small, cheap, hatchback. The Corsa/C2/Fiesta/208s/etc have long been the solid cars for major manufacturers over here that have sold in volume for at least the last three decades.
This is because they mainly offer an 'adequate' mixture of load and passenger capacity, general fuel economy and affordability.
For every E-class/5-Series/A5 Estate sold you'll probably find a sensible hatchback sat on the drive next to it.
Setting aside aspirational products like Tesla' the EV market this side of the pond will be cornered by whoever can deliver a more affordable equivalent to something like the Zoe or Smart ForFour EQ (they're still too much), drive that purchase price down under £10-12k and sales will rocket, obviously the constraint here is emerging battery technology and the associated new manufacturing costs...
But Whoever gets in that position first, lots of market penetration with an affordable small EV hatch can start spinning off all the other EV platform types people want from there.
When you think about it EVs are mechanically much simpler, making an estate/Saloon/MPV/SUV is (broadly) just a scaling exercise if you have started with a hatchback platform.
But you don't start that market penetration by trying to replace "Dad's V70", you start with "Mum's little Clio", Estates will follow eventually...
A tax dodge is a way to avoid the tax you should be paying, but the low tax on PHEVs is a deliberate incentive – they want you to buy one.
I stand by the assertion. Many company cars are now PHEVs, despite the fact that they never get plugged in, run on their big petrol motors all of the time and produce more CO2 by far than the fleet of relatively clean diesels that they replace. The incentive was created for good reasons, but has been abused by car manufacturers. I’m talking about the hybrid beemers and Lexuses (Lexi?🤔) in particular. Big, heavy, polluting cars with extra tech to carry around, paying less tax than a traditional IC car that puts out far less real world emissions.
Tax dodge. Exploiting ill thought out tax rules. Whatever you want to call it.
The Outlander is an abomination of a vehicle that drives 90% of its miles on a hugely inefficient petrol engine yet has to cart around an electric motor and batteries as well – typical mpg on petrol is around 32mpg. The EV bit is good for 20 miles in real life and the batteries take up half the boot.
Transformed into a much better car by binning all that shite and sticking a gert big diesel in it.
Much better economy, much less weight and two extra seats.
Which Zoé has that much range?
The current Zoé 50. They're already on the roads around here. I've ordered one which should be delivered in january.
Hmmm! No 32mpg here but like Cookeaa it would be better again with longer E mode but this was their option at the time.
The current Zoé 50. They’re already on the roads around here. I’ve ordered one which should be delivered in january.
250 miles range?
I’m looking at full EV for my next as the ID 3 may not be here in time I’m looking at other options, I’ve not seen claims the Zoé 50 has that much.
Oh wait just had a good look on the Renault site they seem to claiming that. Interesting might need to add that to consideration.
I can't link the Renault site it just ****s up, but the WLTP figures are widely reported in the press as
Zoé R110 52kWh 395km WLTP
Zoé R135 52kWh 384km WLTP
I'm paying 25 800e on the road for an R110 fast charge in blue with its battery.
My guess, well it'll be a couple of factors really.
1) There are only really a few EVs on the market at the moment. Estate cars are a little non-standard so I would bet some are coming, but it will be down the road when EVs are more 'the norm'.
2) There have been a few attempts to make EVs versions of ICE cars, but they rarely work well, the requirements for packaging are different and the results often are too expensive and have poor performance/range compared to cars built 'ground up' to be EVs, that's why there's no EV Passats, V60s, 5 series etc.
3) Current EVs aren't really SUVs, even by 2019 standards of what an 'SUV' is, they aren't one - again you can be a bit freer with the design of EVs but they're heavy and to make them work well the weight it kept as low as possible - they're pretty tall vehicles, but they're just cars, there's no extra ground clearance or anything like that - really they're hatchbacks and saloons with tall rooflines. I would guess that's because it gives a nice airy cabin, plus there are batteries under the floor not just a thing bit of metal and then the ground, it's probably more aerodynamic.
4) Saloon cars (most, if not all Estate cars are big booted saloons) are really old hat, even the expensive German brands who a known for saloon cars are pushing into SUV shaped cars. I think the big load lugging EVs of the future won't be 'Volvo' shaped, they'll be more like a Tesla 3 or X shaped, you'll still get a 500/600l boot, but it will be a different shape.
It’ll be interesting to see you figures Edukator when yours arrive.
After 2.5 years with the 41 kWh battery Zoé I've averaged 12.1kWh/100km. It was about 12.5kWh/100 at the end of the Winters so taking that:
52/12.5 x 100 gives 416km range for the type of driving I do - a mix of town and main roads with an occasional autoroute trip.
The UK is colder, more stop-start and has a higher national speed limit so I'd expect you to get a lot less.
The Prius PHEV is crazy expensive, does less mpg than the Prius Hybrid overall and again, hardly any distance on EV in the real world.
It would suit us nicely. EV distance is enough for it to hardly ever need petrol, and whenever we need a longer trip it's good for 70mpg.
I look out for PHEVs and EVs - mostly around here I see Leafs, i3s and the occasional Zoe. One neighbour has an Outlander, another has a 330e. Down south there are many more Outlanders, but if you are only driving around town under 20 miles then it's not an issue. My neighbours work 5 miles away (they are doctors), and they plug it in every night, so I doubt it sees a filling station.
Many company cars are now PHEVs, despite the fact that they never get plugged in, run on their big petrol motors all of the time and produce more CO2 by far than the fleet of relatively clean diesels that they replace.
When I'm looking at a used PHEV in a couple of years, I shall be sure to be put off by the possible under-use of the battery during its first couple of years of life as a company motor.
The current incentives are getting them out there onto the market. This is not a bad thing. It means a bigger market of viable PHEVs for us second, third and fourth owners to choose from.
Many company cars are now PHEVs, despite the fact that they never get plugged in, run on their big petrol motors all of the time and produce more CO2 by far than the fleet of relatively clean diesels that they replace.
This is one thing I've not really got my head around, for years we had Hybrids, then we have Plus in Hybrids which make sense - they've only got small batteries compared to EVs, but you charge them up over night for a bit of stored energy.
Of course, if you make a new thing, you have to give the old thing a name so Hybrids became 'self charging hybrids' which sounds great.
But Shirley if you don't plug in your plug in hybrid, it will just work like a 'self charging' hybrid aka a Hybrid like we've been using since the late 90s?
I’m talking about Lexuses (Lexi?🤔) in particular.
Why? I have a Lexus, I get 57mpg and it's fully self recharging.. So I'd like to hear why you think I'm a flouting any initiatives.
You do know right, that Toyota have been developing the Hybrid since 1968... Yeah, thats right.. When all the petrol heads were making 5.7ltr station wagons Toyota decided the cleanest and most efficient way to manage transportation and cut emissions was to combine a low power ICE and EV power.
Back in 1968.
The Prius has been massively sucessful, manufactures around the world have mimicked the technology and claimed it as their own. Which is praise enough.
Many company cars are now PHEVs, despite the fact that they never get plugged in, run on their big petrol motors all of the time and produce more CO2 by far than the fleet of relatively clean diesels that they replace.
When you say many do you actually mean there are some.
You do know right, that Toyota have been developing the Hybrid since 1968
That's a James May fact from his YouTube channel. But Porsche trumps Toyota by many decades. They were messing around with hybrids and EV's back in the turn of the century. They even developed a hybrid tank for the Reich during WW2 - a diesel engine generating power for an electric drive train so no mechanical drivetrain. And don't forget the U-Boats...the ultimate hybrids.
I'm sure many of the big car companies have been developing hybrids and EV's for many decades. They tend to think of technology development in terms of several decades. Either they develop it themselves or know where they can source future technologies they might need if they think they don't have the resources or knowhow to develop a particular technology.
Many company cars are now PHEVs, despite the fact that they never get plugged in, run on their big petrol motors all of the time and produce more CO2 by far than the fleet of relatively clean diesels that they replace.
When you say many do you actually mean there are some.
This is the reason I've heard why the gov dropped the BIK incentive on PHEVs as it was being abused by fleet users who took the BIK but didn't use the PHEV as intended. So I'd guess it was significant enough numbers.
And don’t forget the U-Boats…the ultimate hybrids.
I've often wondered why this hasn't taken off in cars. A generator ICE (low rpm diesel) which is either on or off charges batteries (far far less of them than in a full EV). Powerful electric motor drives the wheels. Its a type of series hybrid, but not in the auxilary generator plug in type or PHEV type.
As is often pointed out on here, motorway cruising takes roughly 35 hp to maintain speed on the flat. A 40-50hp ICE with an electric motor that can put out 150 to 200hp for maximum acceleration.
Here's an old timey car that did it,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche, most diesel electric trains do it.
Is it legislation, or do the numbers not work or both? Here's my working:
30kW (40hp) diesel generator
Engine model Mitsubishi S4S
Number of cylinders 4
Cylinder capacity 3331 cc
Bore & stroke 94 × 120 mm
Air consumption 2.8 m³/min
Engine cooling Indirect
Fuel consumption (no load - full load) 1-6 l/hr
6 litres per hour at full load - eg 1 hour of 70mph motorway driving, 70 miles. (112km)
6 litres per 112 km = 5.35 l/km
= 52.8 mpg.
say that extra 5hp is used converting to electric and back again
From a fuel efficiency point of view, that's basically what a modern diesel car will cruse at. But for tax/company car purposes, you're in a 3.3L diesel car.
Just proved myself wrong I guess, suppose I'm keeping my diesel until the proper EVs come out!
I’ve often wondered why this hasn’t taken off in cars. A generator ICE (low rpm diesel) which is either on or off charges batteries (far far less of them than in a full EV
Yeah, I never got that either. It got lost in the plug in sexiness. It came up long before batteries capable of driving any distance were available. ICE engine, small, designed to run hyper efficiently at a fixed rpm, driving a generator, driving electric motors at the wheels. We could all be driving them now and have benefitted from 10 years of reduced emissions.
The vauxhall Ampera had that type of extender... From memory it did about 100 miles on battery, but had a small petrol engine (and small tank) to extend it. It wasn't horrific to drive and was good in town.
Oddly, I was cycling to work behind an estate PHEV this morning. I think it was a Hyundai. Where I live there are actually quite a few Passat GTEs too, so a lot more common in Sweden I guess.
Talking of the Ampera, I was really impressed with them at the time. The only thing that put me off was the lack of boot space. Two dogs means I have to have a decent sized boot and that was a deal breaker. If they had made one, I would have bought one.
I did briefly see an article about a new solely EV estate from VW or Audi yesterday. Possibly timely news?
Old Volvo estate will liv forever and getting an older car is greener than a newer model anyway whether it's hybrid or full EV.
Or is 'new/nearly new' part of the criteria?
PHEVs were a tax dodge in the past, less so now that battery range has improved to 30 miles or so. This way the actual pollution happens on the motorway (and should be fairly limited) and nothing is chucked out in urban areas.
Test drove a Volvo T8 estate the other day, was a remarkable experience and infinitely better than the shite Prius I had as an Uber last week.
The vauxhall Ampera had that type of extender… From memory it did about 100 miles on battery, but had a small petrol engine (and small tank) to extend it. It wasn’t horrific to drive and was good in town.
It had a normal 1.4l 4cyl in the normal place (i.e. under the bonnet) didn't it? I think the i3 range extender is also a generator based on a motorbike engine. Although that's small but very inefficient, the car gets very poor MPG when driven on the range extender IIRC.
I think the reason that hasn't been explored more is packaging and cost. It's costing a shitload of money to completely re-work their cars, supply chain, plant, and all the rest of it. So far most (apart from BMW) have just adapted existing cars, where there's a nice big engine shaped hole at the front designed to accomodate existing engines. And they want to put batteries where fuel tanks went, and so on.
We will probably see more range extenders in future I think. After all, a genny is probably smaller and cheaper than a crapload of extra batteries, even if it's just got 200 miles of fuel to get you out of the Highlands or wherever.
My idea: A trailer that you can hook up to the back of your EV either with a load of extra batteries in for a long trip or a generator. It has space for the batteries/genny and then load space on top, for your holiday needs.
Bin dun, molgrips:
No imminent release, but wait a bit and the EV estate prayers will be answered
I see that's 4wd. I wonder if there's an inherent advantage to driving all four wheels, because the current flowing to front and rear would be half that required by just one axle, so you'd save on wasted heat.
EDIT it also has under-seat storage in the back! Fantastic!
Doesnt the new transit custon phev have a little 1.0l petrol engine that powers the electric motor when the leccy runs out. Think it gets about 350 miles on the petrol....
Yep, that was the one I saw...
The Ampera's engine was there purely as a generator. When it was in extended range mode, the revs would be constant and it was there purely to generate power for the electric drivetrain. From what I remember, it meant that the petrol could be used as efficiently as possible if it had to be used.
For all the drawbacks of that car (really vile interior and lack of boot space for dogs) it was not bad.
That VW estate looks great. Except for the white seats obviously...
BMW have an i4 coming next year (or maybe the year after) in true BWM style it's got some very good performance stats (0-60 in 4, 375 mile range) which may, or may not be achievable in real world testing.
Anyway, it's got a unique body/chassis but it's based around a 4 Series Grand Coupe - aka the 4 door hatchback version of the 3 series, so it's likely there will be a saloon and Estate version at some point.
They seem to be following VWs high voltage model so it runs cooler and charges faster than Tesla, but not as fast as the Porsche Taycan which has roughly the same size battery in the 'basic' version but it's 35 mins for a 80% charge or possibly more interestingly it's 6 mins for 60 miles.
If they can make it for high-end 3/4 series Money (£50K) they won't be able to make them quick enough, yes £50k is still a LOT of money, but in the world of PCP a top of the range 440i is £450 a month and a 440i driver doing 12k miles a year is paying about £200 a month in petrol at the moment.
Yes I know lots of people spend £10k / £5k or whatever on a 5/10 year old car and maintain it for a nice long life, but one day it will be in that price range.
ICE engine, small, designed to run hyper efficiently at a fixed rpm, driving a generator, driving electric motors at the wheels.
I don't understand why that isn't done more, either. I've driven a Toyota Auris and was expecting it to work like that, but it has a really complex scheme for driving the wheels by a combination of a 1.8L ICE and electric motor. I think the Prius is similar, so there must be a good reason.
I really hope the id.5 is on sale by the second half of 2021, that's when the lease on my company Passat GTE is up and with an estate of that range I'm ready to go full electric. Hope it doesn't cost more than the Passat either. Wishful thinking? Hopefully not looking at the id.3
@molgrips - article says there will be 2WD and 4WD versions
Doesnt the new transit custon phev have a little 1.0l petrol engine that powers the electric motor when the leccy runs out. Think it gets about 350 miles on the petrol….
Yeah. Looks utterly pointless. It will do 25-30miles on battery alone then the petrol motor will kick in and charge it giving a woeful mpg (can't find the figure). It will suit a city based short miles operator I imagine, but a full electric van would be much better. It looks like a gap-filling product before the fully electric transit appears.
You mean like the Nissan NV200 electric version?
They have been out for ages, but I have only ever seen a couple out on the roads.
Yeah. They are smaller though. Chipps and Clover did a magazine article in one I think.
Anyway, it's the larger medium sized panel van, and variants, combis etc that will be out soon I think.
