Electric Vehicles
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@nostrildamus Friends of mine took a year off and toured Oz. They maintain there's heaps they haven't seen.
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@antipodean My old man did that when he retired but spent five years on the road. Went everywhere you could in a Toyota van. Fruit picked for a season, lived underground in Coober Pedy working an opal plot - had the time of his life.
Back on topic; my partner bout an EV and last weekend took it on a longish journey for the first time. She shouldn't have as she was sick, got serious range anxiety (unnecessarily) and as a result spent a couple of hours on a trickle charger at (ironically) Huntly Power Station.
I only became aware of all this when it was already a
donedumb deal. -
Picked up the BYD Atto 3 this week and pretty happy so far. Getting around 15kw/100km so should get 400km range.
I have a good solar system on the roof so should be able to charge the car cheaply during the day.
This is my first EV and I'm loving it so far.
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Sat in the Volvo C40 Recharge EV at the local shopping centre this afternoon.
Nice compared to my 10yo X-Trail, but then for ~$80k it would fucking want to be. TBH found the interior styling a bit bland, seats comfortable. Back seat room was OK despite the fastback approach.
Would I buy it? No. But I'll test drive that and the XC40 Recharge just to say I have.
Fark me I just looked at the Ioniq 5 after an email came through noting a new release - pricing isn't much different to the Volvo! TBH for that money I'd rather have the XC40.
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Got behind the wheel of the I4 recently. With Mrs MR back to the grind I've been doing all the school runs and we need something better for this than our X5 .
In summary, it's brilliant with one colossal short coming. It drives like a BMW, handles like a BMW, has the fit and finish of a BMW. The steering feel is spot on and the pedal action is exactly how a drivers car should be. I drove the RWD e40 and I'm not sure why you'd want the 4WD M50. Electric acceleration (which is all you get) has absolutely no drama or excitement. Just a painful neck.
The tech in it is excellent, although I'll concede it's not close to Tesla. But as I've previously said, Tesla has too much for me. I want to drive a car, not an iPhone. I don't see how having karaoke, Netflix etc is going to improve my car.
The colossal short coming is the price. It's 60k for a decent spec'd base model. Now that's not necessarily bad. But when brand new 420d is sitting right behind you at 43k ... you do wonder what you get for your 17k The 420d will return on average 5-7 litres per 100k. That's a lot of milage for 17k. Lets do some stats with things based in the I4's favour.
3 years, 30k miles lets say 35% deprec on 420d, 25% deprec on I4. Your cash depreciation is then the same. Using 7 litres for 100km, thats 3500 litres of diesel. Currently at 1.70 thats around 6k. BMW looks to return around 2.5 miles / kw (which isn't great and quite poor compared to Tesla) so you'll use around 12000 kw. Electricity currently around 0.36 per kw, but this is elevated. So lets assume it drops to 0.25 ... then your spend is 3k, so thats roughly half.
Now, you used to get back on the car tax, which is zero. Vs around 600 for he diesel (as it's over 40k). So in 3 years thats an 1800 saving. That's gone. The electric car is more expensive so will probably be 200/year more to insure. So thats 600 more.
So now, your 3 year ownership of the I4 is around 2,400 cheaper. And this assumes that the depreciation is slower than on the 420d. Which is one hell of an assumption to make given that the Model 3 has just cut it's list prices by 20%.
Sorry BMW, it just doesn't add up. Which is a shame, as I bloody loved it. I'm BMW through and through and if you EV doesn't work for me ... I wonder if any ever will?
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@NTA said in Electric Vehicles:
Also: seeing Tesla Model Y everywhere, and must say I don't like it. The Model S is nice, the X is horrid, and the 3 is OK. But the Y looks like the result of a mongy Model 3 getting knocked up an X who was its cousin.
Fairly good summary there.
Model S looked great, but the styling dated very very quickly. The Model X is terrible to look at, and the Model Y just looks like a baby Model S.
Model 3 is the best by far, although it's styling is not ageing that well either.
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@MajorRage Yet to see a Tesla that I wouldn't feel embarrassed to be seen in.
the styling is all very bland and old fashioned.
My partner bought a Peugeot and while it is about 20K (Kiwi clams) more than the comparable petrol model that gives her a pay back in about three years. Might be the comparative fuel and lecky charges here? she loves it but ironically all the reasons she chose it now don't apply - can't fit a tow bar for the bikes, has osteo arthritis so not going camping and has range anxiety so when we travel it's still shoe horn everything into the S5 for a roadie. Which suits me TBH
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@MajorRage I picked up an i4 M50 just last year. It's a good all round car but the throttle response is brutal. I'd have preferred a true 4 series shape rather than the gran coupe but there doesn't seem to be any prospect of them making a two door version so I figured there's not much point waiting for something that won't necessarily happen.
The one thing I don't like is the move away from physical buttons for some of the functions. Soft controls for the climate controls don't really add anything except being more like a Tesla. The older iDrive in my X5 has the programmable shortcut buttons that I find very handy too.
Also not 100% sure about the Hans Zimmer acceleration noises in Sport mode. They're a laugh when you're by yourself but I always feel vaguely embarrassed when they kick in if somebody else is in the car.
Edit: BTW, they're a lot more than 60k quid over here!
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Saw a BMW iX in the carpark today. TBH I like the shape of BMWs generally, but not this one. That grill is plain fucking weird and the back end curves around strangely to my eyes. The curve on the dashboard screen is quirky but just being different is not enough.
Probably has all the toys and goes like stink tho. Starting at AUD$136k it would fucking want to. Makes my desire for the XC40 look cheap at $80k
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@MajorRage said in Electric Vehicles:
@JC did you try the e40?
Naturally I lean to the M50 but literally all the reviews say the e40 is the better car.
Gran Coupe perfect for me. Kids stuff plus room for golf clubs.
No I didn’t try the e40 sorry. I have the hybrid X5 for sensible and was looking for something a bit more fun. I tried an M4 but I have a feeling the arse will fall out of the resale market for them in the next few years.
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@NTA The iX is a lovely car if you’re on the inside. Because then you don’t have to look at the front. Not sold on the vegan leather option though, it looks to me like it will go baggy and shapeless pretty quickly. I would consider one in future if the facelift does something about that nose, but not the current one.
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@JC said in Electric Vehicles:
@MajorRage said in Electric Vehicles:
@JC did you try the e40?
Naturally I lean to the M50 but literally all the reviews say the e40 is the better car.
Gran Coupe perfect for me. Kids stuff plus room for golf clubs.
No I didn’t try the e40 sorry. I have the hybrid X5 for sensible and was looking for something a bit more fun. I tried an M4 but I have a feeling the arse will fall out of the resale market for them in the next few years.
Yeah behind the 420d was an m3 with 6k miles for 65.
I’m not as convinced it will fail on the sports cars. They will always be desirable. The likes of a well specd 330i, absolutely.
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@dogmeat said in Electric Vehicles:
@MajorRage Yet to see a Tesla that I wouldn't feel embarrassed to be seen in.
the styling is all very bland and old fashioned.
I agree, with the asterisks that, I am not a car person and I think Musk is a piece of shit.
But the Telsa's look like mid 90s cars to me. I thought they were supposed to be luxury cars?
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@Nepia said in Electric Vehicles:
I thought they were supposed to be luxury cars?
I think they are supposed to allow you to feel smug about saving Gaia
I'm probably wrong but I suspect Tesla will become a footnote in automotive history. Fair dues for raising the bar but they still don't seem to have the scale to really compete with the big boys and their product id, in the main, pretty bland.
Like The Boring Company and driverless cars the optics outshine the outcomes.
Give Musk his dues though he goes whether others shy away from and Space X has been revolutionary.
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@dogmeat said in Electric Vehicles:
@Nepia said in Electric Vehicles:
I thought they were supposed to be luxury cars?
I think they are supposed to allow you to feel smug about saving Gaia
I'm probably wrong but I suspect Tesla will become a footnote in automotive history. Fair dues for raising the bar but they still don't seem to have the scale to really compete with the big boys and their product id, in the main, pretty bland.
Like The Boring Company and driverless cars the optics outshine the outcomes.
Give Musk his dues though he goes whether others shy away from and Space X has been revolutionary.
By optics I assume you mean bold faced lies.
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A lot of the Tesla design (and even some of the Big Boy Manufactured EVs) comes down to aerodynamics. They made the cars that way in order to squeeze the most out of every kWh.
Not as big a concern in fossil fuel cars where you've already lost half the primary energy before it even turns a crank, and 70% at the tyres.
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As for Tesla becoming a footnote - they'll probably become a niche brand IMHO as the emissions standards force the big boys to move to EV.
EV looks very hard to get right, and it isn't even about the moving parts, but the attached tech. You've had pretty much the same explosions-make-wheels-turn in the car industry for a century, gradually adding tech to it over decades. Now you need to chuck out the bit that matters (making the car move) and adapt everything else to that.
I've seen a few reviews of things like the VW id3 and id4 and the presenters are often disappointed. They give VW a pat on the head for making a start, but all the reviewers have driven Teslas or Polestars or Rivians and, while those cars aren't without fault, they get things right more than the big boys at this point.
If Toyota had continued the evolution of the Prius into PHEVs and EVs, there is a reasonable chance we'd all be at least driving PHEVs by now. Toyota has been one of the notable stonewalls in the EV landscape, and the CEO of BMW says EVs will never be "cheap".
TBH as a brand, BMW is not really in everyone's "cheap" or "affordable" category, particularly here where tariffs and taxes make the cheapest beamer more than twice as much as a similar Korean build.
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@dogmeat said in Electric Vehicles:
I'm probably wrong but I suspect Tesla will become a footnote in automotive history.
I think it all depends on how battery technology and production go. While Tesla have an edge there, they'll dominate I think...EV are batteries with a car attached.