View from the sceptical side

[gangzoom]

Amateurish said:

Range: we were driving a 75D and after about 10 miles of 70 mph motorway driving (cold and wet), it said we had about 160 miles of range left.

I persume you have tried the same type of driving in the Leaf, the last time I took the Leaf out on the M way at 70mph the range estimate was about 50 miles and dropping. Even at 160 miles thats three times the range of my current Leaf, I managed to get 360wh/mile on the 10 mile M-way section of the test drive I did in a Model X with 22inch wheels. Same conditions/speed the Leaf would have managed 300wh/miles, I was actually shocked at how similar the consumption was given the size/speed differences.

[gangzoom]

Amateurish said:

Range: we were driving a 75D and after about 10 miles of 70 mph motorway driving (cold and wet), it said we had about 160 miles of range left. That's really poor in my book, given the price. I need to be able to drive 130 miles at proper UK motorway speeds in all weathers, with some reserve in case of diversions. I concluded that the 75kwh battery would not be sufficient.

Working on the basis of 72kWh of usable battery to get 160 miles of range you must have been using nearly 450wh/mile. That a pretty high consumption figure, if a Leaf was using that much power the max range would be 44 miles!!! So even the Tesla with lowest range can cover over 100 miles more than a Leaf in your specific situation.

So am very confused why you found the range of the Model S a negative, especially when you seem to drive a Leaf. For me the range difference between the Leaf and a Tesla was by far the biggest positive. Today I have a 80 mile work trip to do, but in the cold weather I know the Leaf isnt going to make it even when driving at 50mph on M ways so am taking my wifes hybrid, I cannot wait for our Tesal to arrive so that I can hand the Leaf back to Nissan.

Edited by gangzoom on Thursday 19th January 06:36

[Amateurish]

gangzoom said:

I persume you have tried the same type of driving in the Leaf, the last time I took the Leaf out on the M way at 70mph the range estimate was about 50 miles and dropping. Even at 160 miles thats three times the range of my current Leaf, I managed to get 360wh/mile on the 10 mile M-way section of the test drive I did in a Model X with 22inch wheels. Same conditions/speed the Leaf would have managed 300wh/miles, I was actually shocked at how similar the consumption was given the size/speed differences.

Yes, I would estimate the Leaf's range at 50 miles in the same conditions. So the Tesla had about 3 times the range.

[Amateurish]

gangzoom said:

Working on the basis of 72kWh of usable battery to get 160 miles of range you must have been using nearly 450wh/mile. That a pretty high consumption figure, if a Leaf was using that much power the max range would be 44 miles!!! So even the Tesla with lowest range can cover over 100 miles more than a Leaf in your specific situation.

So am very confused why you found the range of the Model S a negative, especially when you seem to drive a Leaf. For me the range difference between the Leaf and a Tesla was by far the biggest positive. Today I have a 80 mile work trip to do, but in the cold weather I know the Leaf isnt going to make it even when driving at 50mph on M ways so am taking my wifes hybrid, I cannot wait for our Tesal to arrive so that I can hand the Leaf back to Nissan.

Edited by gangzoom on Thursday 19th January 06:36

Firstly, I always expected the range in the Tesla to be much better than the Leaf. Much better. But I was disappointed in the apparent real life range that was demonstrated. Like I said, it was displaying 160 miles left after 10 miles. I was sticking to the speed limit of 70, at around 0 degrees in the rain. I can only report what I experienced.

Now I understand that Tesla recommend only charging to 80% on a regular basis. So that reduces my real life range to 136 miles!

Maybe that works for you on your 80 mile work trip, but it doesn't work for me on my regular 130 mile work trip.

[Otispunkmeyer]

Max_Torque said:

larrylamb11 said:

Everybody else is playing catch up

True. But boy oh boy are they catching up fast!

larrylamb11 said:

the other manufacturers have let Tesla get too big a head start to have a chance of competing

Rubbish. Tesla's current platforms are hand-me-down platforms with a cheaply developed Electric powertrain. They simply couldn't afford the money or time to develop their own powertrain from scratch (hence the AC motor and "cylindrical" cell battery). Those practical limits don't apply to the established OEMs. For example, i sat in a meeting last week where a big OEM is specifiying the battery cells for their high volume platform, and because the optimum cell wasn't available off the shelf, they just paid the cell supplier to make an entirely new cell, just for them. The cost including global market certification? Around £25M including tooling. TWENTY FIVE MILLION QUID! And the OEM didn't blink an eyelid at that.....

Tesla have some parts bin sharing with Mercedes don't they?

anyway, yes they'll catch up quickly. Especially the likes of Daimler (who have $11 bn going on EV investment) and VW who have the engineering clout and the pockets to back it up. What is more, they already have all the boring car stuff nailed down and they haven't been sitting idle whilst Tesla romp off into the sunset. Whilst Elon/Tesla were only talking about doing EV trucks and that other start up Nikola were about to show a (so far as I saw) functionless micro-turbine range extended HGV.... Mercedes had already built and demo'd a 26 T rigid fully EV HGV with a 125 mi range and all the ancillaries it needed to function as you would expect a 26 T Rigid delivery truck to do.

Unlike Tesla, the likes of Mercedes are not really into Beta testing with help from paying customers (though for Tesla I do see how that model is beneficial to them, they get some really good real world test data that would have otherwise cost them a fortune in both time and money).

Edited by Otispunkmeyer on Thursday 19th January 18:58

[gangzoom]

Amateurish said:

Maybe that works for you on your 80 mile work trip, but it doesn't work for me on my regular 130 mile work trip.

So how on earth have you managed with a Leaf?? I estimate our 60D Model X will have enough range for 99.5% if our needs compared to the Leaf which is at about 95%. I'm pretty sure even our 60D X will can cover 150 miles in winter if you slow down to 65mph. But I wouldn't be doing that as there are enough supercharger on our regular routes to mean we can drive as fast as we like stop almost exactly half way for a 10-15 minute top up and than go. Given the 60D battery is a software limited 71kWh pack we can also charge to 100% daily without worry.

Far from been not impressed with Tesla, even my wife was so impressed by the X she gave the go ahead to chnage our order from the S to a X despite the rather large jump in price.

If we couldn't afford a Tesla we would now be getting a 41kWh Zoe. Personally I have loved every EV ive driven, ill happily drive a Zoe instead of a Tesla if the alternative was a petrol/diesel car.

[MarshPhantom]

Amateurish said:

AW10 said:

Amateurish said:

I visited the local Tesla showroom last week and went for a test drive. I came away fairly disappointed in the whole experience. This would have been my fourth electric car had I proceeded, so it should have been an easy win for Tesla. I fail to see what all the fuss is about.

Can you expand on why you were so disappointed and what your previous EVs were?

"Fairly" disappointed! The Model S is lovely to drive. What really impressed me was the integration of the tech with the driving experience. The Sat Nav, music, info systems are all first rate. Previous EVs - Volt, i3, Leaf.

Negatives:

Poor showroom setup. They have a showroom in the shopping centre and the test drive cars in the car park. I think they are trying to make the showroom like an Apple Store. I did not think that worked well at all. Only two models on display, one of which (Model X) seemed to be pre-production so not the finished article. When it was time for a test drive, we had to hang around in the freezing car park (no coats) while the man went looking for his car. He twice returned to apologise to say he couldn't find where his colleague had parked it. Then one of the two cars we could only test by driving around the underground car park!

Range: we were driving a 75D and after about 10 miles of 70 mph motorway driving (cold and wet), it said we had about 160 miles of range left. That's really poor in my book, given the price. I need to be able to drive 130 miles at proper UK motorway speeds in all weathers, with some reserve in case of diversions. I concluded that the 75kwh battery would not be sufficient.

Autonomous driving: we asked for a demonstration during the test drive and were told that even though the hardware was available, the software had not yet been released. So it didn't even have adpative cruise working. Just basic cruise. Yet they want us to pay a £5k option?

Price: £75k and no free supercharging, before options? I pay less than £2k per year for my Leaf's lease. And it is better specced.

Younger people are bothered about "tech". Very, very few could afford or want to spend 75 grand on a car.

[MarshPhantom]

I thought Tesla's success was, certainly in part at least, down to subsidies provided by the American Govt. Buyers have so far received $330 Million in incentives and rebates, Tesla have so far sold 125,000 cars.

www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2...

One can only assume we won't be getting the same incentives in the UK. Will this carry on under Trump?

[CooperS]

Well he keeps banging on about making America great and supporting big business.

Also hasn't he got a $1tr dollar investment plan into roads and bridges.....

[anonymous-user]

MarshPhantom said:

I thought Tesla's success was, certainly in part at least, down to subsidies provided by the American Govt. Buyers have so far received $330 Million in incentives and rebates, Tesla have so far sold 125,000 cars.

don't forget the US gov lost 10 billion bailing GM out, after investing 50 billion from 2009 to 2013, 300 million is small fry.

[AW10]

MarshPhantom said:

I thought Tesla's success was, certainly in part at least, down to subsidies provided by the American Govt. Buyers have so far received $330 Million in incentives and rebates, Tesla have so far sold 125,000 cars.

www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2...

One can only assume we won't be getting the same incentives in the UK. Will this carry on under Trump?

He's clever spreading manufacturing around to get maximum benefits from tax breaks and incentives etc. Reminds me of what the big American defence contractors do on large programmes like the F-35 - spread the work around geographically so that you have loads of politicians supporting the programme's continuation lest their constituents actually lose jobs if funding is cut.

[98elise]

Max_Torque said:

larrylamb11 said:

Everybody else is playing catch up

True. But boy oh boy are they catching up fast!

larrylamb11 said:

the other manufacturers have let Tesla get too big a head start to have a chance of competing

Rubbish. Tesla's current platforms are hand-me-down platforms with a cheaply developed Electric powertrain. They simply couldn't afford the money or time to develop their own powertrain from scratch (hence the AC motor and "cylindrical" cell battery). Those practical limits don't apply to the established OEMs. For example, i sat in a meeting last week where a big OEM is specifiying the battery cells for their high volume platform, and because the optimum cell wasn't available off the shelf, they just paid the cell supplier to make an entirely new cell, just for them. The cost including global market certification? Around £25M including tooling. TWENTY FIVE MILLION QUID! And the OEM didn't blink an eyelid at that.....

Where did they get the powertrain,I understood it to be a tesla designed and built? I could be wrong though.

Whats wrong with AC an motor? If you want a variable speed motor then a 3ph induction motor with an inverter seems to be a perfectly good way of doing it (and doesn't need any rare earth minerals).

[babatunde]

more sceptics

62% Of Auto Execs Think EVs Will Fail Due To Infrastructure Challenges

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/01/31/62-auto-execs...

Because its really really hard to install a socket.

Also
“27% see BMW as unrivaled leader in autonomous driving followed by Tesla with 9% and Honda with 9%.” Some real Blackberry thinking going on here

[JonV8V]

babatunde said:

more sceptics

62% Of Auto Execs Think EVs Will Fail Due To Infrastructure Challenges

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/01/31/62-auto-execs...

Because its really really hard to install a socket.

Also
“27% see BMW as unrivaled leader in autonomous driving followed by Tesla with 9% and Honda with 9%.” Some real Blackberry thinking going on here

Tesla as in their own IP are nowhere near leaders in autonomous driving - the Model S with AP1 was class leading but this is Mobileye IP. Read any review of Teslas own hash at AP2 and you can see they've a long way to come and they only need one mistake and a driver to be seriously hurt using their current tech and they're in deeper trouble. Stories of cars slamming their brakes on as they come up to overhead gantries is not uncommon on their cars.

And a socket is not the issue. Charger roll out is heavily curtailed by getting sufficient power to a location. One decent rapid charger (the 50KW type, not Teslas faster ones) takes as much power as 2 houses fully loaded and realistically few houses take more than 50 Amps so 4 houses. The supply to put a pair of chargers at a location is therefore equivalent to the supply for 8 houses. Tesla work in pairs, and a pair can only deliver about 150 kw but thats still 6 houses for a pair. When you drive past a location with 8 super chargers that's the same as 24 houses being built.

Houses typically only have a max 100A fuse, and some only 60A. A 32A charger takes as much spare as exists and technically you need to notify the electricity company if you want 2 chargers. How many 2 car homes are going to have to juggle sockets with the current house electric supplies?

I don't agree with much of whats written by any commentators as every article is either biased to EV or biased to fossil but the problems are not insignificant.

[modeller]

JonV8V said:

Tesla as in their own IP are nowhere near leaders in autonomous driving - the Model S with AP1 was class leading but this is Mobileye IP. Read any review of Teslas own hash at AP2 and you can see they've a long way to come and they only need one mistake and a driver to be seriously hurt using their current tech and they're in deeper trouble. Stories of cars slamming their brakes on as they come up to overhead gantries is not uncommon on their cars.

And a socket is not the issue. Charger roll out is heavily curtailed by getting sufficient power to a location. One decent rapid charger (the 50KW type, not Teslas faster ones) takes as much power as 2 houses fully loaded and realistically few houses take more than 50 Amps so 4 houses. The supply to put a pair of chargers at a location is therefore equivalent to the supply for 8 houses. Tesla work in pairs, and a pair can only deliver about 150 kw but thats still 6 houses for a pair. When you drive past a location with 8 super chargers that's the same as 24 houses being built.

Houses typically only have a max 100A fuse, and some only 60A. A 32A charger takes as much spare as exists and technically you need to notify the electricity company if you want 2 chargers. How many 2 car homes are going to have to juggle sockets with the current house electric supplies?

I don't agree with much of whats written by any commentators as every article is either biased to EV or biased to fossil but the problems are not insignificant.

This is why local storage is critical (Tesla have this covered again). Very few places will be able to deliver a 350kW charge straight off the grid.

[anonymous-user]

JonV8V said:

babatunde said:

more sceptics

62% Of Auto Execs Think EVs Will Fail Due To Infrastructure Challenges

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/01/31/62-auto-execs...

Because its really really hard to install a socket.

Also
“27% see BMW as unrivaled leader in autonomous driving followed by Tesla with 9% and Honda with 9%.” Some real Blackberry thinking going on here

Tesla as in their own IP are nowhere near leaders in autonomous driving - the Model S with AP1 was class leading but this is Mobileye IP. Read any review of Teslas own hash at AP2 and you can see they've a long way to come and they only need one mistake and a driver to be seriously hurt using their current tech and they're in deeper trouble. Stories of cars slamming their brakes on as they come up to overhead gantries is not uncommon on their cars.

And a socket is not the issue. Charger roll out is heavily curtailed by getting sufficient power to a location. One decent rapid charger (the 50KW type, not Teslas faster ones) takes as much power as 2 houses fully loaded and realistically few houses take more than 50 Amps so 4 houses. The supply to put a pair of chargers at a location is therefore equivalent to the supply for 8 houses. Tesla work in pairs, and a pair can only deliver about 150 kw but thats still 6 houses for a pair. When you drive past a location with 8 super chargers that's the same as 24 houses being built.

Houses typically only have a max 100A fuse, and some only 60A. A 32A charger takes as much spare as exists and technically you need to notify the electricity company if you want 2 chargers. How many 2 car homes are going to have to juggle sockets with the current house electric supplies?

I don't agree with much of whats written by any commentators as every article is either biased to EV or biased to fossil but the problems are not insignificant.

You don't need a fast charger at home. 7 to 10kW is fine

[JonV8V]

Max_Torque said:

You don't need a fast charger at home. 7 to 10kW is fine

And what do you do if you have 2 everyday cars like most households? And your neighbour does? As I touched upon, donextic supply to households isn't up to 2 cars per house trying to charge at the same time in many houses.

Storage helps, but doesn't cure.

[chandrew]

There are two sides to this:

Public charging spots: seems likely that it would require a commercial grid access, possibly with local storage (we probably should assume that major routes will use 350+ KW chargers that seems to be the incoming CCS standard)

Home charging: It's probably wrong to look at the UK standards as determing the global market. In Switzerland we have 3 phase supply as standard, so Tesla owners in Switzerland just install the relevant point in their garage.

Smart grids are likely to make a big difference, coupled with batteries. Do I need a supply all night? No. Would I be happy for my network company to manage my supply for reduced cost? Probably, as long as the days I really wanted 100% or 70% charge I could set it easily (by smartphone?)

Of course the other side is car-to-grid provision. The big issue for the supply companies isn't total need, it seems to be minimising peaks / troughs.

[anonymous-user]

JonV8V said:

Max_Torque said:

You don't need a fast charger at home. 7 to 10kW is fine

And what do you do if you have 2 everyday cars like most households? And your neighbour does? As I touched upon, donextic supply to households isn't up to 2 cars per house trying to charge at the same time in many houses.

Storage helps, but doesn't cure.

So you have two EV's then it's even more likely that neither will be completely flat when they get home in the evening. My i3 uses around 8kWh a day, and charges in about 3 hrs on the normal 3kW (12A) supply. As the car gets home at 6pm, and isn't needed till 7AM the next day, there would be plenty of time to charge two (or more) cars sequentially.

Yes, if you're doing 1000 miles a day as a carpet salesman, and you have to leave home before you've got back, and your wife does the same, you're not going to be able to use a normal slow charger. But for the other 34 million people who do less than 30miles a day, it's fine.........