The Golf’s rival will be the Leaf 60kWh rather than the Tesla for most EV buyers. I can’t see VW fitting a powerful enough motor to allow journos to empty a battery in a tour of the Nurburgring in the first edition so I expect performance (which is totally irrelevent to most potential buyers) to be Leaf+ rather than Tesla Model 3.

The name is intersting. ID (idée) reminds me of this:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_ID
And 3 is the same number as used by a number of prestigious (tarty) cars in the sector.

Anyhow the ID is conservative without being boring which befits the model and will hopefully bring the EV to people who make up the conservative without being boring market.

Complete guess, but ID.1 = city car / Up replacement, ID.2 = Polo replacement, perhaps?
Lets hope they make more available than Kia and Hyundai have with their recent efforts.

Edit: and new MG eZS expected in the summer
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mg/zs/105257/new-electric-mg-ezs-on-track-for-summer-arrival

VW have announced details on the ID and it’s a serious contender to wake up Tesla.

That’s a laugh. Its Tesla that are shaking up the major OEMs. Do you really think we’d be seeing the ID, i-Pace, eTron and Taycan this side of 2025 is if wasn’t for Tesla?

I can’t see VW fitting a powerful enough motor to allow journos to empty a battery in a tour of the Nurburgring in the first edition

Which is almost exactly what VW have said in that article.

And 3 is the same number as used by a number of prestigious (tarty) cars in the sector.

Again in the article it explains why they use 3 and B.A.Nana has it.

That’s a laugh. Its Tesla that are shaking up the major OEMs. Do you really think we’d be seeing the ID, i-Pace, eTron and Taycan this side of 2025 is if wasn’t for Tesla?

No, just you’re forgetting that Tesla charge far more for what’s a poor quality build and low production numbers. VW are pricing these at £26k which is around the same as their ICE equivalent. And yes of course they would have produced these regardless of Tesla.

I notice the £750 deposit for pre-booking the ID.3 is also refundable. – As is the £500 I’ve already paid on the e-niro. I’m tempted to order both and see who comes up with the quickest delivery date.

No, just you’re forgetting that Tesla charge far more for what’s a poor quality build and low production numbers.

and yet they are outselling Mercedes in the US. So much for low production and if the build quality was that bad no-one would be ditching Mercedes and BMW to get into a Tesla.

If you’ve ever driven an American car you’ll know they don’t care about quality just that it’s American.

Not that I believe your claim of course.

Its happening in Europe too

“In February, Tesla sold 3,657 Model 3s in Europe. That figure places it ahead of many vehicles, including the Renault Zoe, Nissan LEAF, BMW i3 and Hyundai Kona Electric, just to name a few of the electric competitors. Additionally, the Model 3 outsold the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, BMW 3 Series and Audi A4.”

And if Americans dont care about quality why do Mercedes , BMW and Audi sell any cars there at all?

The February and March figures were a blip as Model 3s were delivered, the Zoé is back on top as best EV seller in Germany for April and probably other European markets too.

I think putting all US cars in the same basket is as daft as putting all Eyropean cars in the same basket. There are good ones and dogs in both zones.

We know you’re a VAG fan, Drac. Don’t let that cloud your judgement to the point of losing all reason. One huge advantage Tesla has is infrastructure. Anyone who’s crossed a few countries in an EV will tell you either “the Supercharger network is ace” (Tesla), or “in some places charging is in inconvenient places and painfully slow” (anything else).

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

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

https://evannex.com/blogs/news/german-engineers-teardown-teslas-model-3-heres-what-they-found

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)