A new Tesla for £25k? Sounds good.

if wishes were paychecks…

in summary: well done Tesla for making this car, but the leccy-car revolution will have to overcome trickier problems than price…

So the car isn’t suitable for Stuart. What about Dave, Dave has a 50mile each way commute and lives in a nice suburban semi detached house with a driveway.

Dave would save about £2700 a year with an electric car and thinks it’s a great idea.

Dave looks down on Stuart because Stuart live in some war torn hell hole where people vandalise cars because they run on a different fuel?

Don’t be a dick, live like Dave. 😆

Stuart, seeing his mate Dave’s electric car asks the council to install electric charging points around town and if they can put one on his street. Seeing this is a really good idea they put one in for a few cars to use. Seeing that now Stuart has both cheap fuel and easy parking all his neighbors do the same, cut down to one car while they’re at it and Stuarts war torn cess pit becomes a hipster enclave and property prices rise so Stuart moves to a nice semi next door to Dave.

And everyone lives happily ever after. Apart from Dave, who’s wife is now having an affair with hipster Stuart.

Good for Dave, i’m sure he’ll love his new car.

most people work for someone like Dave, they don’t have the same options (house).

. 1) what happens when i can’t park outside my house – next to ‘my’ charging point? do i have to trail the cable to wherever my car may be? – what if that’s over the road?

Key here is lots of public charge points so it doesn’t matter. People will undoubtedly get possessive though as they do about the bit of road outside their house.

The others I can’t help with as that is society and I too would move!

I would say hopefully there will be a change from the need/desire to own cars facilitated by a public transport system that actually works. That’s a long shot though.

Meet Spider. Spider lives down the road from Stuart and makes a nice living dealing to the locals. Spider is a big fan of electric cars as she can hack into all those charging points to power the lights for her plants. Dave doesn’t even know Spider exists, but Mrs Dave and Stuart both enjoy her wares while Dave’s busy driving to and from work when he could be using virtual technology to work from home.

i understand that i’ve probably been misunderstood.

under slightly different circumstances*, our next car may well have been electric. For the majority of our driving needs, they sound ideal.

(*those different circumstances being: finding an additional £600to800 per month to move house)

Wasn’t Uber talking about banning car ownership in urban areas and replacing with a massive fleet of driverless cars which you just call up when you need one.

The idea being that you free a load of space from not having car parks and it would reduce congestion.

Great concept that probably never work for a number of reasons.

Spider is a big fan of electric cars as she can hack into all those charging points to power the lights for her plants.

lolno

Spider would just take the supply from the incoming fuse on his meter board surely?

The charging points I’ve seen on the streets have a chip+pin payment on them, although there is a free one in the work car park.

The idea being that you free a load of space from not having car parks and it would reduce congestion.

Great concept that probably never work for a number of reasons.

I don’t see why not, A ban probably wouldn’t be effective, but if you’re inside the M25 car ownership becomes less and less useful as congestion goes up and public transport gets better and better the further in you get, to the point underground maps now have notes on them to tell you how close the stations are above ground because people just default to going everywhere on the tube.

do i really have to explain why kerbside charging is a crap idea?

You can try, but given most of Scandinavia has kerb site charge points for the sump heaters, you’re facing an uphill struggle…

asks the council to install electric charging points around town

Hang on, so the government subsidizes the cars, then the council pays for charging points, all the while the government gets less tax from VED and Fuel Duty (& in London avoids congestion charge).

Talk about a huge subsidy for the well off paid for by the poor.

If car manufacturers want to push EV’s then they should pay for it.

Given that roads are paid for out of general taxation, it’s arguably the 1% who are or will be footing the bill for it.

I’m sure tax structures will have to change if fuel duty drops, but the smoking lobby said the same thing.

No idea who pays for charging points, just noticed that a few are poping up around town now and assumed it was coming out of the highways budget.

The other great thing about EVs is that most of them are bought on PCPs subsidised by the manufacturers (at least until they achieve market penetration) meaning that their values drop like a stone. You can buy a lovely low mileage Leaf for about £7k. Big enough for a family and most journeys, and if you’re sitting in it you don’t even have to look at it.

No off-street parking?

You will probably be able to just have the car go off and charge itself when you’re not using:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMM0lRfX6YI

Talk about a huge subsidy for the well off paid for by the poor.

You’re forgetting that the cleaner air, from less local pollution, disproportionally benefits the poor, who tend to live in the most polluted parts of towns and cities.

I’m not sure these cars are aimed at people who can’t afford off-street parking.

But charging is going to be one of the major challenges in UK cities. Various people (Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith amongst them, seem to think in a small number of years London’s pollution and congestion problems will be solved by electric vehicles. Quite apart from the fact that a road full of electric vehicles is just as congested as one full of diesels putting in place the charging infrastructure for the majority (?) of London’s cars which are parked on street is going to be expensive and time consuming.

Easier in those big new high rise blocks with underground parking but the majority of London housing remains old terraces. The new connection for my house cost c£2500 when the parking suspensions were included. There’s going to have to be disabled type bays “for electric car charging only”. It’s not insurmountable but I think it’s going to slow take up in some fairly large parts of UK cities.

I’m surprised how many people won’t even entertain the idea of switching to a more environmentally friendly car until it’s cheaper for them than the fossil fuel variety…

I’m not sure these cars are aimed at people who can’t afford off-street parking.

Painfully if I wanted off street parking I’d have to spend another £300,000 for the privilege. None of the £550k+ terraced houses round us have off street parking either…
I like the idea of the Tesla, but I don’t really do the kind of driving that makes it work. I don’t drive during the week, because you have to be some kind of idiot to drive 5.5 miles then park a mile away from the office and take longer to walk than it takes to cycle in the first place.
Next week I’m driving to Roubaix. Its further than 200 miles, and I want to do it in one go. The week after I’m going up to the lakes – that’s 330 miles, also further than 200.

Given the simplicity how long until we can buy self contained axles with motors/inverters/firmware/and kers all built in. All you then need is an approved battery and you can stick it into a kit chassia of your choice? Then I’d be interested 😉

Pre orders on this totalled 7.5 billion pounds!

Stoner – Member
Given the simplicity how long until we can buy self contained axles with motors/inverters/firmware/and kers all built in. All you then need is an approved battery and you can stick it into a kit chassia of your choice? Then I’d be interested

Was having a similar discussion with my neighbour yesterday. He is very anti-EV and extremely anti-self driving car. I pointed out how cool it would be when he is in his 70/80’s to have his volvo amazon converted to EV with the option to self drive and he started to see the benefits.

I can’t see conversions taking off really though except for rare cases like the above. It should be easy to swap out the rear axle on a FWD car for an electric assist one though with batteries for town driving by the enthusiast but with all the seamless integration that would be needed for the mainstream punter it’s just not worth the effort.

There are a few cars around here that charge at the kerbside. No significant problems. If you live somewhere the neds would do that to an electric car they’d probably do it to something else anyway

Did anyone suggest that these were wonder cars suitable for absolutely everyone?

I must admit, though, driving an electric car around California is a lot different than than the UK – remember there’s no big petrol engine warming the inside of the car up…

California is a big place. Sometimes it’s very hot in some places and sometimes it’s very cold. But unless it’s the perfect temperature, you’re going to want chilling or heating

I love the critique of the interiors yet this is the choice of champions according to STW

😯

We have a Tesla. It is lovely. I will leave it at that.

oh don’t remind me! I went to look at Octavias and Passats given how much praise they get on here….they really did feel nasty and this is coming from someone who drives an old french estate and a freelander!

Next week I’m driving to Roubaix. Its further than 200 miles, and I want to do it in one go. The week after I’m going up to the lakes – that’s 330 miles, also further than 200.

Likewise, we drive to the south of france/spain each year which is considerably more than 200 miles. However, the theory is that once you add Tesla Superchargers to the motorway service stations this becomes a lot easier

https://www.teslamotors.com/en_GB/supercharger

170 miles after a 30 minute charge. That’s not really much longer than a pee stop. Plug in when you arrive, go for a pee, pick up a few things in the shop and you’re not exactly going to be waiting long.

We’re edge cases as well – most people, most of the time, can easily cope with a 200mile range. It would happily take me to Newport down the M4 or to the relations in Hereford.

Awaits the first Street Legal electric dragster conversion.

Not practical for me unfortunately, if I want off street parking I sacrifice my garden, if I want on street charging its the other side of the road. I work in a power station belonging to a company who installs charging poles, guess how many we have on site?

Oh and that interior? Works for me, at least its not a butt ugly VW dash or god forbid a Saab

Stoner – Member

Given the simplicity how long until we can buy self contained axles with motors/inverters/firmware/and kers all built in. All you then need is an approved battery and you can stick it into a kit chassia of your choice? Then I’d be interested

MG midget
http://www.electricmgmidget.com/index.php/convert-your-midget-to-electric

MG MGF
http://www.evalbum.com/3250

Loads of VW Beetle
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=electric+vw+beetle&oq=electric+vw+beetle&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4271j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

It’s pretty much just battery + controllers + motors, and hook it upto the gearbox.

packer – Member
I’m surprised how many people won’t even entertain the idea of switching to a more environmentally friendly car until it’s cheaper for them than the fossil fuel variety…

I’m not against “going green” but if that really is your driving force (if you excuse the pun) “switching” is the last thing you should do, there’s a horrific amount of energy, water and oil (in the form of plastics) that go into building a new car, a staggering amount – and simply shifting pollution from the car to the powerstation isn’t going to make much of a dent in that. Plus the associated impact of building the massive batteries with their limited lifespan means it’s not guaranteed that an EV will be lower impact than all petrol / diesel cars.

If you want to reduce the impact on the environment keep your current car, maintain it properly and get 200-300k miles out of it before it’s finally and completely worn out, even if it means making repairs that cost more than its resale value – if everyone did that you might only buy 2 cars your whole lifetime.

If it really was £25k to buy, then I would be interested, but given the dollar to pound ratio, it’ll end up being too much.

The idea of eV conversions sounds good, I would be interested in that sort of concept as well.

packer – Member
I’m surprised how many people won’t even entertain the idea of switching to a more environmentally friendly car until it’s cheaper for them than the fossil fuel variety…

I’m not. Many people live paycheck to paycheck with no savings. Increasing their vehicle spend for a less capable vehicle (smaller range and fewer refueling points) is the last thing they are going to do.

I think the point is though that most people commute less than 200 miles each way or even round trip. Its also not people who are living paycheck to paycheck who should even be considering buying a new car but rather those who can afford to buy a new car in the first place.

Agree that a new car is energy intensive but the new ones dont just pop out of thin air, if a decent enough finance deal was to be had I may seriously consider one but I would have to work out how the hell I charge it both at home and at work and until that happens its a non starter. We cant even get the council to maintain the roads so the thought of them installing chargers is just hilarious…

$10 billion worth of orders with $270 million in deposits.

It’s like the HebTroCo kickstarter all over again…

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/04/tesla-motors-sells-10bn-model-3-two-days?CMP=twt_a-technology_b-gdntech

It shows that there’s certainly an appetite for EVs. Told my BIL about it and he put his deposit down immediately!

http://www.evalbum.com/3959

This is a guy at works “kit car”.

My problem with Tesla is whether they’ll exist in 3 years. They lost 40% of their €2bn float just last year, if they don’t turn a profit soon, they’ll be in administration and then what?

$10 billion worth of orders with $270 million in deposits.

😀

Refundable deposits though, they’ve still got to turn those deposits into orders and build them for <£25k to make a profit.

Told my BIL about it and he put his deposit down immediately!

In order to actually buy the car or in the hope of flipping his deposit slot for a profit

@zilog – they have $270m in refundable deposits, they will burn through that in a heartbeat.

I am sure someone will come along and work out how long it would take them to manufacture that many cars at current volumes

EDIT Tesla sold 17500 cRs last qtr of 2015 a record. So assuming 80,000 cars a year and first delievry in 2017 (optimistic) latest depist can exoect a car in 2020-21. Of course production can be ramped up or Tesla could go bust and you lose your deposit

now trying to work out what an ‘eval bum’ is.

Well if their powerwall turns a profit then it should help. If the choice was to continue with some of the old industry and subsidise something that will never turn a profit or invest in something like tesla which would make more sense?

A friend’s son has had an S model Tesla for a year or so. He likes it but finds it a bit too big.

He’s put his (refundable) deposit down for an M model. He reckons the UK version won’t be available until late 2018 at the earliest, by which time he may be thinking about replacing the S model anyway.

So they have at least one happy customer.

And the recharging thing – apparently a dedicated Tesla charging point will re-charge 80% in 30 minutes but home charging takes a LOT longer than that. He lives in a flat so can’t home charge. Apparently he doesn’t find this a problem.

And if you use a Tesla charger, its free. Other chargers cost.