Viewing 40 posts - 121 through 160 (of 299 total)
  • A new Tesla for £25k? Sounds good.
  • zilog6128
    Full Member

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

    He won’t have a problem drumming up more investment if required. Considering what he’s already achieved I think you’d have to be pretty dumb to bet against him.

    dragon
    Free Member

    Is no one worried about quality issues? The Tesla forum isn’t exactly glowing and US car manufacturers don’t have good rep of late. Add in this is a big step change in volume and I can see a failure happening. Suppose it depends if there are enough Elon Musk fans to keep chucking him money.

    sharkbait
    Free Member

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

    To actually buy the car although if he doesn’t want it he’d pass it to another member of the family.

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    bikebouy
    Free Member

    Of the 4 charge points in Waitrose carpark in CW, barely 1 charge per day out of them is taken. These stats are off the readout above them showing availability of the charge point (you can book a slot)

    You’da thunk in CW of all places, where “showey, me, me me” is tattooed on yer braces, there would be more of these milk floats.

    Personally I think they’re awful to look at, too expensive, 250 mile radius max a laughable joke. Until they decide to stick a petrol/diesel support motor in it and make a hybrid out of it, it’s just another expensive toy that you have to walk home from.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    You’da thunk in CW of all places

    When people use a local abbreviation that means nothing to most people…

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    Personally I think they’re awful to look at, too expensive, 250 mile radius max a laughable joke. Until they decide to stick a petrol/diesel support motor in it and make a hybrid out of it, it’s just another expensive toy that you have to walk home from.

    How often do you go more than 250 miles? It would have done my old lakes to Warrington trips and back on one change.

    dragon
    Free Member

    Is it really 250 miles though? Guy on Tesla’s own site was saying in the UK he only got 175 out of his S. Plus people are saying things like in traffic they are getting less than 200 miles. So I’d say in real world 200 miles or a bit less is more like the safe distance. Which is still plenty for the day to day commute, but that makes it a 2nd car really and not the primary family carrying vehicle.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    Is it really 250 miles though? Guy on Tesla’s own site was saying in the UK he only got 175 out of his S. Plus people are saying things like in traffic they are getting less than 200 miles. So I’d say in real world 200 miles or a bit less is more like the safe distance. Which is still plenty for the day to day commute, but that makes it a 2nd car really and not the primary family carrying vehicle.

    Or it makes it the perfect family car for day to day life, and you can hire a diesel car for the occasional time you need to do 200+ miles without stopping (bearing in mind you can get 80% charge in 30 minutes at a charge point). Even if it’s ‘only’ 200miles, that’s still Reading to Blackburn. I bet almost no one (a lot lot less than 1%) of people do more than 200miles in a day. And probably only a small subsection of those do more than 200 without stopping. It might even reverse trends in car ownership, now cars are cheap and fuel is expensive, so households have 2+ cars, if the cost of cars go up and and fuel becomes cheap we might go back to 1 car, or even no cars and rent them.

    I can see charge points popping up on forecourts if that’s the case, 30 minutes is a cup of tea and a slash, which is a cup of teas more profit than they make by selling petrol!

    jam-bo
    Full Member

    250 mile radius max a laughable joke.

    my car I commute to work in, has probably done one trip over 250 miles in the five years I’ve owned it. And I could have taken a pool car for that.

    electric would suit me fine for my next car if they weren’t so bloody expensive.

    phiiiiil
    Full Member

    After 200 miles non-stop I’d be dying for a pee anyway, so if I’m stopping anyway another twenty minutes or so is no hardship at all.

    I’d love one, and I kept thinking about making a reservation, but I don’t really drive that often so it would just be sat doing nothing most of the time which would make it a bit of a pointless investment.

    phiiiiil
    Full Member

    30 minutes is a cup of tea and a slash

    …also it’s only 30 minutes on the longest of drives; if all your journeys are under the range limit it’s entirely possible you won’t need to go find a charge station at all, which would save time in the long run compared to petrol or diesel cars where you have to fill up mid-journey every few hundred miles whatever distances you’re doing.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    It sounds more like a fear of the unknown from some people, a little scared of the magic and sorcery. Next we will have the any bloke can fix a petrol car line etc.

    We are currently at denial but not far from anger. Oil running out a myth, stranded as I forgot to look at the charging light (never happened with a petrol car) emissions, who cares with China/India etc. still using coal fired electric… and my personal favourite – buying a new car is bad for the planet as you presumably scrap the 3 year old car you had previously.

    We are burning the oil, warming the planet and depleting one of the most useful resources by not embracing change.

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    Yup, as said 200 mile radius is fine for me and can hire/borrow a diesel for the occasional towing duties.

    Half an hour is actually a pretty sensible break anyway, assuming you’ve been driving for three of those hours already.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    bearing in mind you can get 80% charge in 30 minutes at a charge point

    Pretty standard for Li-ion car battery. Kia Soul is the same at a fast charging station (the type they have at service stations).

    bikebouy
    Free Member

    Appolz, CW = Canary Wharf.

    But still, lets say if you do get “real world” mileage out of the battery, then whats been said it’s about 175-200 miles. Obvs you can add into the equation all the gubbins the cars running (AirCon/Radio/lights..) and thats still rubbish for running around Town for a couple of days.
    Ok, you have to factor in a lifestyle change to remember to plug it in every night, or every other night. But you’d be in panic mode if you’d decided not to plug it in the night before last, then some emergency happened, and you jumped in it to find you had <25 miles before Armageddon turned the lights off.
    Ok, so you could call out a tow truck to tow you to a charge point, whereby you sit in it looking and feeling like a dork waiting for the thing to charge enough to get you to whatever emergency is still pending.

    And it’s happened.

    I used to do a milk float round when I returned from the States whilst doing my A levels, bit of a giggle and earned a few quid. You could feel the panic set in when the needle dropped to just below 1/4 charge with 6miles to go back to the depot..

    I still wonder why they’re not designed with a backup 3cyl diesel engine or something like the iOne thing BMW have designed. Was the Scope to just produce “the worlds, not quite, fully electric car with leather seats”?

    Hydrogen’s the only real world alternative IMO. For years it’s been on the back burner of a designers crayon. BMW had a stint a few years ago then dropped it because of the fashion for Batteries, only to return back to Hydrogen last year. I don’t know of any more Brands adopting this technology, surely there should be some more.

    What I do think is good, and worthy (almost) are delivery vans that only drive around Cities and Towns (a bit like Milk Floats) where restricted mileage is <200 miles and then back to the charge point/depot. Good to see UPS doing this, I wait for all the others to catch up, then Taxis/Black Cabs and Busses and tipper trucks.

    doris5000
    Full Member

    Ok, you have to factor in a lifestyle change to remember to plug it in every night, or every other night. But you’d be in panic mode if you’d decided not to plug it in the night before last, then some emergency happened, and you jumped in it to find you had <25 miles before Armageddon turned the lights off.

    but if you’re doing 200 miles every other day then you’re somewhere in the region of 30K miles a year. Which would make you somewhat of an outlier, as far as average car use is concerned….

    dragon
    Free Member

    Aberdeen has hydrogen buses, quite a few broke down on initial use, but I think that is sorted now.

    Ok, you have to factor in a lifestyle change to remember to plug it in every night,

    I think that’s it people would have to plug in pretty much every night.

    ahwiles
    Free Member

    bikebouy – Member

    Hydrogen’s the only real world alternative IMO.

    there’s a lot to be said for hydrogen as a replacement fuel, but overall it’s less efficient, and you can’t really store it adequately…

    andyl
    Free Member

    Regarding the breaks I see it as a good thing forcing people to stop for the appropriate time.

    As navigation systems get more advanced (eg Google telling you when you need to leave by to get to a meeting) I see the breaks just being planned automatically as your nav system will know how much range you have and book you a charging slot.

    One problem is what if 200 cars all want to charge at once at services? The number of charge points and the power network to them becomes a problem. But again with integrated navigation it could book you a slot earlier if needed due to over demand at the ideal location or you should have enough reserve to make the next as it will be conservative in case of incident.

    I have no doubt we will see a lot more people running out of battery on the motorways though unless cars can actively alert you and try and stop you joining a motorway if you dont have enough juice for the next services.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    But still, lets say if you do get “real world” mileage out of the battery, then whats been said it’s about 175-200 miles. Obvs you can add into the equation all the gubbins the cars running (AirCon/Radio/lights..) and thats still rubbish for running around Town for a couple of days.
    Ok, you have to factor in a lifestyle change to remember to plug it in every night, or every other night. But you’d be in panic mode if you’d decided not to plug it in the night before last, then some emergency happened, and you jumped in it to find you had <25 miles before Armageddon turned the lights off.
    Ok, so you could call out a tow truck to tow you to a charge point, whereby you sit in it looking and feeling like a dork waiting for the thing to charge enough to get you to whatever emergency is still pending.

    Pluging in takes I imagine about 30seconds? And it’t not like petrol where you can weigh up things like the cost of filing up now Vs after payday, because it’s only going to cost you £2, and it’s not weighing the car down being full of electricity. Even the archetypal stressing single parent on the school run could manage to plug something in whilst hearding their offspring into the house.

    They actually do a lot more ‘MPG’ around town than out of town, because all that stop/start driving is recoverable energy whereas driving at 70 loses it all to wind resistance. As others said, 200miles+ a day is not ‘normal’, even less so in London (do even cabbies manage that?). And even so, 200miles without a lunch break?

    As noted, 200miles to Canary Warf, where are you commuting from, Sheffield?

    I still wonder why they’re not designed with a backup 3cyl diesel engine or something like the iOne thing BMW have designed. Was the Scope to just produce “the worlds, not quite, fully electric car with leather seats”?

    Because then you have not only almost a ton of batteries, but also another half ton of diesel engine, and fuel tanks, and not just the weight, you’ve added another £10k to the cost of the car.

    Hydrogen’s the only real world alternative IMO. For years it’s been on the back burner of a designers crayon. BMW had a stint a few years ago then dropped it because of the fashion for Batteries, only to return back to Hydrogen last year. I don’t know of any more Brands adopting this technology, surely there should be some more.

    It’s expensive and inefficient through.

    doris5000
    Full Member

    Ok, you have to factor in a lifestyle change to remember to plug it in every night,

    I think that’s it people would have to plug in pretty much every night.

    Most people wouldn’t even need to plug it in every week –

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28546589

    (although they probably should do…)

    dragon
    Free Member

    One problem is what if 200 cars all want to charge at once at services?

    That’s most motorway services between about 22nd Dec and 1st Jan (minus Xmas day).

    and even so, 200miles without a lunch break?

    I’ve done over 300 miles in one go fairly regularly, it isn’t a big deal tbh.

    solamanda
    Free Member

    I don’t know if this has been pointed out yet but the fact it’s not a hatch back like a model s is a big flaw. I’m very keen on the concept and I know their deposit numbers show big demand but I feel that having such a small rear opening has really limited how useful the Model 3 is.

    bails
    Full Member

    I used to think the same as this:

    One problem is what if 200 cars all want to charge at once at services?

    Charging takes longer than filling up with petrol, so you’d expect bigger queues.

    But I’m swaying towards this now:

    which would save time in the long run compared to petrol or diesel cars where you have to fill up mid-journey every few hundred miles whatever distances you’re doing.

    You can ‘fill up’ without going to a petrol station, for most people, they’d never need to go to a charging station, they could just charge at home overnight/during the day.

    I could go and use the computers in the library, but if I can do it at home for a few more pennies on my electricity bill, why bother? It’ll be the same with charging stations. If you can’t do it elsewhere or you’re on an exceptional journey (The national travel survey [document nts0308] says that 99% of car journeys are less than 100 miles) then you’ll use a charging point at a petrol/service station, otherwise you’ll just do it at home.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    I will openly say I just don’t get if, would buy a small engined petrol car all day long over a ‘lecy car. You see many many Smart cars in Paris as they are useful for parking. Despite all the charging points very few electric cars. AFAIK Hybrids pay zero/less congestion charge in central London so I get the Hybrid thing (even on Cayenne and Panamera). IMO a full electric vehcike is still at least 5-10 years too early and they only make any economic sense as petrol taxes are so high.

    As for range/distance I’ve driven 400-500 miles without stopping many times. 200 mikes with a compulsory 30+ min stop, would be a right pita

    konabunny
    Free Member

    I wouldn’t expect many electric cars at Canary Wharf Waitrose – if only because practically no one commutes by car there, and those who do aren’t going to saunter out twice in the middle of their working day to charge their car in a supermarket car park. Those who live locally to CW aren’t going to be buying expensive electric cars either

    I think many people will be happy to plug in at home – after all, loads of people seem happy to drive all over the place to save thppence hapenny on a litre of diesel

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    i think some people have an odd idea about what “normal” driving is for most people.

    HINT:- almost everyone you know will be able to do almost all their driving for a week on one charge.

    jambalaya
    Free Member

    @ghostly I understand your comment that many people do less than 10,000 a year but many do nit and many may not use the car much one week but do 500 miles the next. I do only 3,000-5,000 pa in my car but it sits unsed for weeks then we might do 500-1000 in one period

    Also right now the government raises many billions from motorists via fuel duty. If we all drive electric cars we’d be taxed on those instead and the economics would chnage.

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    This is based on statistics from where?

    Or just assumptions, guesswork and made up?

    Those who do sit outside the customer profile (much fewer than you seem to think) simply won’t be customers. Unless they are mis-sold the cars, like the thousands who bought diesels for pottering round the city.

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    And FWIW, the electric car is seen as one major step towards a major change in the whole car ownership model.

    deadlydarcy
    Free Member

    As for range/distance I’ve driven 400-500 miles without stopping many times.

    Wow. That’s pretty unsafe.

    Sui
    Free Member

    deadlydarcy – Member
    As for range/distance I’ve driven 400-500 miles without stopping many times.
    Wow. That’s pretty unsafe.

    4-500 might be a little bit too much for regular, but i’ll easily do 300 non stop, quite easy really and i’ve just done it again from UK to Germany and will do the same back from Luxembourg on Friday. Eleccy cars have theor place for the school run (no i don’t agree with the school run), but for general business users, whom are the people that use most fuel, eleccy cars are too far off from being viable.

    edit: 4-500 miles non-stop is normsl for an alps trip 🙂

    Northwind
    Full Member

    thisisnotaspoon – Member

    Because then you have not only almost a ton of batteries, but also another half ton of diesel engine, and fuel tanks, and not just the weight, you’ve added another £10k to the cost of the car.

    The Tesla battery pack is a little over half a ton. A typical car engine is way under half a ton never mind a little one (my 2.2 is apparently 340lbs but that’s not what you’d put in it)

    ghostlymachine
    Free Member

    Some of the range extenders being developed (think very small single speed optimsed engine running a tiny gearbox/generator) are under 100 kilos, complete. (Engine, gearbox, generator, charging kit, fuel tank/supply and exhaust system)

    phiiiiil
    Full Member

    4-500 miles non-stop is normsl for an alps trip

    500 miles at an average of 70mph involves basically sitting down, barely moving, for over seven hours!

    Do you need to be lifted out of the car at the end? Can you still walk? My legs would have seized up hours ago, never mind bladder capacity issues…

    bruneep
    Full Member

    Ha try nearer 1161 miles

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    Range extenders are fine but if they are really going to be efficient the car it is driving needs to be specced more like the Tesla and less like an Ampera. They don’t fit into Teslas image though and thats their choice.

    Definitely agree it should change ownership, even now if I lived in a city I’d be considering joining a car club,

    Hydrogen has been actively pursued by Honda for years now, whoever brought that up. You can run a regular IC engine on it with sufficient strengthening but the primary source of problems is the limited fuel capacity derived from the strength needed in the tanks. Hydrogen buses have the entire roof space devoted to gas cylinders as thats what you need to make it viable. Fuel cells are better but the energy required to generate hydrogen is enormous and certainly cancels out any good unless its done emission free.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    ghostlymachine – Member

    Some of the range extenders being developed (think very small single speed optimsed engine running a tiny gearbox/generator) are under 100 kilos, complete. (Engine, gearbox, generator, charging kit, fuel tank/supply and exhaust system)

    Aye- people still think in terms of standard automotive drivetrain, power levels etc rather than generator.

    konabunny
    Free Member

    @ghostly I understand your comment that many people do less than 10,000 a year but many do nit and many may not use the car much one week but do 500 miles the next. I do only 3,000-5,000 pa in my car but it sits unsed for weeks then we might do 500-1000 in one period

    That just means this model is not for you. It’s not for everyone. No one has said it is.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    That just means this model is not for you. It’s not for everyone. No one has said it is.

    I refer you back to the graph on the previous page. People working so hard to tell you it’s a bad idea based on a series of completely outside cases. The vast many of people don’t do over 200 miles non stop. It’s about the right distance to be stopping for a break anyway for the safety of those around you.
    There was a thread a while back on soft drinks that ended up with people utter disbelieving that people could carry around a reusable water bottle and fill from a public source. They came up with all sorts of reasons which were mostly crap.
    Like most changes those hating it the hardest will be the ones looking most stupid later.

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