Electric Vehicles
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@jegga Hard to disagree with him having tried a few. Cheap to run, fast, all wheel drive, not much to not like.
He's probably right about driving a car with a stick shift but it is a shame. I have 3 manual vehicles and still prefer them to autos (of which we have 2). All a bit long in the teeth (like me) but the control and drive of a "stick shift" is still the winner on our shitty roads. I might have already mentioned that...
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@NTA said in Electric Vehicles:
@MN5 one for you nerds
That looks awful. Beautiful car with a crap paint job.
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@Snowy said in Electric Vehicles:
Thought about doing a conversion to my TVR, but weight and distribution would be an issue I think.
Still cool though.
Do one to your hilux, Musk said trying to convert his original lotus roadster to electric was a painful exercise . Especially trying to get it to handle properly again with the different weights etc.
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Had a whirl in one of the new Nissan Leaf models on the weekend. Bloody nice car, but I think perhaps a bit too small for our needs - I set up the driving position for me and the boy would struggle to fit in the back.
Look, its $55k onroad, and that is a lot for a hatch. But you get full leather interior, heated front and rear seats, heated steering wheel, a pretty big boot, and for the toys you have 360 degree camera for parking, Bose Stereo, Apple / Android compatibility, and a ~300km range. All the bloody annoying alarms for shit as well.
Best bit for me was the ePedal - this is Nissan's "special thing" that basically makes one-pedal operation possible, and its great in traffic. Take your foot off the accelerator and the car will come to a complete halt. Took a few minutes to get accustomed but once I did it was pretty cool, and could be used with standard mode or full regen to help keep the battery at a decent level.
Good takeoff - nothing like the Model S of course - and very smooth drive with light steering. Almost too light but would be very much appreciated by the wife I've no doubt. Good visibility as well and the cameras I imagine are really handy for those difficult parks where another car just beeps at you but can't say what's wrong.
I'm still concerned by the lack of liquid cooling for the battery, and the rumoured difficulties with fast charging. Regardless, as I explain to the nice Kiwi sales lady, we're sadly not in the market for another car just yet, and I had my concerns over the interior room even as a second car. Plus, Nissan might be bringing out an SUV/Crossover electric in a couple of years that could convince me to part with the X-Trail:
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I should add: in the last month since the Tesla Model 3 dropped, I've seen about 8 of them driving around my part of Sydney. These might otherwise be BMW 3 series or MB C Class owners who are going electric. It is interesting that I might see a Model S or X occasionally, but now it will become so commonplace as not to be remarked upon.
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@MajorRage said in Electric Vehicles:
Lots of model 3 around us. I like them, but still think price is wrong.
40k realistically
US or STG?
Here you're looking at ~AUD$70K drive away for the base model, which is roughly BMW 3 Series territory.
Problem is you add another whack as soon as you step over a certain base price due to the luxury car tax that was supposed to protect Australian manufactured vehicles from Euro cars.... but is still here even though Australian car manufacturing died years ago
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That's GBP.
Reality is that you still have to pay quite a premium for electric power, and I'm dubious how many people will pay it for a Tesla. It's the same price as a BMW 330e which gives you much less range, but still gives the real-world benefit of electric. In that all short journeys can be made on electricity (school run, shopping centre, gym etc) and then you get full fossil fuel related benefits as well if you want to go on a longer journey. So me, who is realistically a potential buyer will get the 330e without a second thought.
So what about others? Well, this is Britain, and British, or should I say "British", cars get a lot of cred. A top of the line e-Mini comes in about 35k, and the full petrol powered John Cooper works is only around 30. Assuming you get 10 l/100k (which is fairly pessimistic) and price at 1.30 a litre, that 10k price diff gets you 77,000 km.
Or if you don't care about cred, the blue-motion range from VW, can easily get 5-6l p/100k in real world and (assuming golf) for 20k less. Or the e-golf gets 200-300k range for 10k less as well.
At 40k, the maths just doesn't add up.
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@NTA said in Electric Vehicles:
I should add: in the last month since the Tesla Model 3 dropped, I've seen about 8 of them driving around my part of Sydney. These might otherwise be BMW 3 series or MB C Class owners who are going electric. It is interesting that I might see a Model S or X occasionally, but now it will become so commonplace as not to be remarked upon.
Tesla sold 329 of them in September, placing them third in passenger cars behind Corolla and Yaris.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/116287086/ev-breaks-into-the-top-ten-sellers-in-new-zealand
It's one month, but that's really interesting. Starting to see a lot of them around too; they're not the novelty they were. Entry level is 75k here, and it's kind of a leap that is meaningful for a lot of users; go electric for an extra 30k. May not be the most efficient way to reduce carbon footprint, but it's a very visible one.