RE: Audi to rival Tesla with 590hp e-tron GT

RE: Audi to rival Tesla with 590hp e-tron GT

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DonkeyApple

55,396 posts

170 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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964Cup said:
250 mile range. What use is that? I wonder when they'll stop chasing "ludicrous" acceleration numbers and start giving us usable ranges. To come close to replacing our ICE car, we need a 400 mile range with no more than 30 mins refuelling time at the outside. Otherwise a routine 11 hour journey will become some kind of "dog walking on its hind legs" marathon odyssey.

There's a US SUV with a 180kwh battery coming. That makes much more sense to me, but the charging infrastructure to cope with it is years away.
This really is an inane perspective not worthy of people capable of reading and writing.

There is buckets of audited data that show the real average U.K. daily mileage. Even stats on the anomalous long journeys. There is a very good reason as to why the automotive industry which harvests real usage data directly from all its clients everytime their car is plugged in to a computer has settled on an almost de facto EV range of around 250 miles. This range allows almost every type of commuter to only have to charge once a week if needs be while also catering for the vast majority of anomalous journeys.

And then there is the basic economics of the extremely rare 11 hour drive. If you can afford a £100k toy car then why on earth would you ever be driving for 11 hours? You pick up your phone and have a car with a driver arrive to drive you to the train station or airport. You then use your phone to have a car with or without driver waiting for you at the other end.

And if you’re on a lad’s road trip then if your income permits you to throw £100k on a toy car then it also permits you the luxury of taking more time off so you design your trip to leap between top end hotels and indulge yourself with booze and food while that hotel charges your toy.

Obviously, if you are getting hold of a £100k toy car and you cannot afford to use the sort of hotels that offer charging or cannot take an extra day or two off to restructure your road trip or you have to drive nonstop for 11 hours on a regular basis or cannot work out how to use a smartphone to structure those trips properly then you are clearly a monumental spanner and merely a short term guardian of the car for the smarter people.

Kenny Powers

2,618 posts

128 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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DonkeyApple said:
This really is an inane perspective not worthy of people capable of reading and writing.

There is buckets of audited data that show the real average U.K. daily mileage. Even stats on the anomalous long journeys. There is a very good reason as to why the automotive industry which harvests real usage data directly from all its clients everytime their car is plugged in to a computer has settled on an almost de facto EV range of around 250 miles. This range allows almost every type of commuter to only have to charge once a week if needs be while also catering for the vast majority of anomalous journeys.

And then there is the basic economics of the extremely rare 11 hour drive. If you can afford a £100k toy car then why on earth would you ever be driving for 11 hours? You pick up your phone and have a car with a driver arrive to drive you to the train station or airport. You then use your phone to have a car with or without driver waiting for you at the other end.

And if you’re on a lad’s road trip then if your income permits you to throw £100k on a toy car then it also permits you the luxury of taking more time off so you design your trip to leap between top end hotels and indulge yourself with booze and food while that hotel charges your toy.

Obviously, if you are getting hold of a £100k toy car and you cannot afford to use the sort of hotels that offer charging or cannot take an extra day or two off to restructure your road trip or you have to drive nonstop for 11 hours on a regular basis or cannot work out how to use a smartphone to structure those trips properly then you are clearly a monumental spanner and merely a short term guardian of the car for the smarter people.
With respect, you’ve just shouted down someone’s opinion as nonsense and then written a fictional story that supports your own biggrin

DonkeyApple

55,396 posts

170 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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RobDickinson said:
DonkeyApple said:
RobDickinson said:
borat52 said:
Interesting, but until someone proves you can produce a profitable £30k electric car with a decent range that is a relatively nice thing to drive we’ll be seeing the ICE as the mainstay of transport.
What like the Kona electric you mean?
A hugely expensive Hyundai.
Its EXACTLY what you specified, a 30k EV with decent range. now you again promptly move goal posts.
Two different posters!.

RemarkLima

2,375 posts

213 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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964Cup said:
manracer said:
Where to start with this? So much crap in one post.

You know what, I can't be bothered any more. You enjoy you mythical, 5 ton, 180kwh battery unicorn.
Oh look, another 12-year-old.

Here's the mythical unicorn: https://www.pistonheads.com/regulars/ph-ev/rivian-...

Yes, not in production yet (but then, neither is the eTron). Yes, not really credible, but at least they've tried to put real range into the car. It probably weighs not much more than the previous model full-fat Range Rover, and is about the same size as the current one.

We drive to Italy and back 5 times a year (so that's 10 x 11 hour journeys), and to France and back 10 times a year (6 hours each way). That's the only reason we own a car at all. I don't want to have to stop every 400km on a 1200km journey to wait 45 minutes to recharge, assuming there's a charger available - of course, once EVs gain any kind of real popularity, the queues will be comical. I also don't want to have to find a charger in our tiny Italian village - clue: there isn't one. Our entire apartment runs on 16A, so i don't think I'll be charging the car at home there.

Sure, with a 250 mile range I'd only have to stop once to charge on the way to France - instead of not at all - and I could charge the car there as we actually have something resembling a first world electricity supply. But in the real world that charge stop is going to add an hour to the journey, assuming only one person is waiting in line before me for the charge point. The infrastructure just isn't ready for mass adoption, and the range just isn't there for anyone who uses a car for long journeys.

EVs make good sense in town. But then, so does a bicycle. Which doesn't need a charger and runs on oatmeal. So I use a bicycle to get around town.
To get all Dragons Den on this but... "You're not the market".

"Most" people do not do those journeys, or maybe once in a lifetime... So they could hire for that, or buy and ICE and sell.

So, whilst it doesn't fit your use-case, they do suit 95% of everyone else's and let's face it, get the majority sorted first and then work on the weird ones around the edges.

Or just have 2 cars like lots of people - one electric and one ICE.

BricktopST205

926 posts

135 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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Jimbo. said:
Goodnight Tesla...
My first thought too. When they big boys get on to EV they have lost their USP but i guess it needed Tesla to kick start this craze.

cookington

103 posts

143 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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Pornography.

borat52

564 posts

209 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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RobDickinson said:
DonkeyApple said:
RobDickinson said:
borat52 said:
Interesting, but until someone proves you can produce a profitable £30k electric car with a decent range that is a relatively nice thing to drive we’ll be seeing the ICE as the mainstay of transport.
What like the Kona electric you mean?
A hugely expensive Hyundai.
Its EXACTLY what you specified, a 30k EV with decent range. now you again promptly move goal posts.
But the electric Kona is 50% more expensive than the ICE kona, so it’s a £20k car really being dressed up at a £30k car in electric form. £10k is a lot of fuel.

In fact work it through, a 24kwh leaf costs about £3 to charge in order to go 80 miles in the real world.

The ice kona will go 80 miles on 2 gallons, £11.80.

So just considering fuel (simplistic but probably ok for the reasons below) you save £8.80 per 80 miles so a £10k premium is 91,000 miles of fuel.

You then have to look into the resale of an EV with 91k miles or if your keeping it the battery degradation that you now have.

The numbers are of course exacerbated in favour of the EV due to tax on petrol being far higher than on electricity.

SturdyHSV

10,098 posts

168 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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I'm ashamed to say that other than that vast black plastic st around the grill, I think that looks fking brilliant.

And it's an Audi. I'm not sure who I am any more.

Baldchap

7,668 posts

93 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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964Cup said:
250 mile range. What use is that? I wonder when they'll stop chasing "ludicrous" acceleration numbers and start giving us usable ranges. To come close to replacing our ICE car, we need a 400 mile range with no more than 30 mins refuelling time at the outside. Otherwise a routine 11 hour journey will become some kind of "dog walking on its hind legs" marathon odyssey.
On a full charge our Model X's range is a gnat's whisker shy of 300, which is a real world 250. You can add 200 in 20 minutes at a Supercharger.

You're an outlier in your requirements, and you surely recognise this? Nobody is asking you to buy an EV, but the fact remains that claiming a 250 mile range to be useless is nonsense in the case of virtually every journey made by drivers in the UK.

Regarding acceleration, you're showing your ignorance. Unlike a petrol car where for potential of lots of power we need a big, thirsty engine, in EV terms the battery gives us lots of range OR lots of power in the same package - ludicrous acceleration is an indicator of big range on an EV.

Edited by Baldchap on Thursday 29th November 09:56

scottygib553

533 posts

96 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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I could be weird but my favorite thing is the seats.

rxe

6,700 posts

104 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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Witchfinder said:
The only way you could be more of an outlier is if you also said you need to tow your helicopter on a trailer while you're doing it, and have enough room for your antique cat coffin collection in the boot.
I think the far more normal requirement is someone doing the sort of commute I was doing last year.

Monday morning - drive 210 miles to client site. Be utterly grateful that I have a parking space at all, no chance of one with a charger.

Monday night - drive to hotel, 10 miles. As of last year they had no chargers, now they probably have two. Do I want to play musical cars at 11:00 when one becomes free - no, I'll be asleep.

Tuesday morning - phone work, I'll be in late as I'm in the queue for the charger at the hotel.

Oh dear.

Until every single parking space has a charger, particularly at busy work sites, this will continue to be a problem. I don't see this happening for, well, a decade. At least.

Until then, I'll carry on with a diesel. Why I'd buy/lease a £100k car to save £70 a week in diesel, I have no idea. As someone commented above, until someone starts building cars with decent range and quality for less than 30K, its all a bit niche.




Midgster

571 posts

235 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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Kenny Powers said:
DonkeyApple said:
This really is an inane perspective not worthy of people capable of reading and writing.

There is buckets of audited data that show the real average U.K. daily mileage. Even stats on the anomalous long journeys. There is a very good reason as to why the automotive industry which harvests real usage data directly from all its clients everytime their car is plugged in to a computer has settled on an almost de facto EV range of around 250 miles. This range allows almost every type of commuter to only have to charge once a week if needs be while also catering for the vast majority of anomalous journeys.

And then there is the basic economics of the extremely rare 11 hour drive. If you can afford a £100k toy car then why on earth would you ever be driving for 11 hours? You pick up your phone and have a car with a driver arrive to drive you to the train station or airport. You then use your phone to have a car with or without driver waiting for you at the other end.

And if you’re on a lad’s road trip then if your income permits you to throw £100k on a toy car then it also permits you the luxury of taking more time off so you design your trip to leap between top end hotels and indulge yourself with booze and food while that hotel charges your toy.

Obviously, if you are getting hold of a £100k toy car and you cannot afford to use the sort of hotels that offer charging or cannot take an extra day or two off to restructure your road trip or you have to drive nonstop for 11 hours on a regular basis or cannot work out how to use a smartphone to structure those trips properly then you are clearly a monumental spanner and merely a short term guardian of the car for the smarter people.
With respect, you’ve just shouted down someone’s opinion as nonsense and then written a fictional story that supports your own biggrin
It may be fictional, but is a bit more like a real world scenario. I think he's spot on.

The previous poster who "claims" he drives to Italy and back 5 times a year (so that's 10 x 11 hour journeys), and to France and back 10 times a year (6 hours each way) is basically saying he does what most people would consider a bloody long, boring journey every 3 and half weeks. The same journey at that too.

Bearing in mind each trip takes up 2 days in travelling, and I'm assuming these are holidays trips, he must be spending at least a week (an assumption) in each location before travelling back again. By my calculation he basically spends 2 weeks at home before setting off again to either France or Italy. I like a long drive across Europe as much as the next Pistonhead, but every three weeks? No thanks.

If I had the cash to splash £100,000 on a very nice electric car, I sure as hell would be hopping on a plane to fly to Italy and France for holidays instead of wasting 2 days travelling each way in a car, regardless of it's range.

How many people in the world really do this? Maybe this guy does if so this car is not for him, the same way a Ferrari is not for him. Doesn't mean the Ferrari is a pointless car.

I'm also guessing on an 11 hour journey, you stop perhaps every 3 or 4 hours to at least stretch your legs, maybe have a pee, maybe some lunch, a coffee even. How long do you reckon you stop for? 20 mins, maybe even 30 mins for lunch? If you were averaging 70mph, that's about 200 miles every 3 hours, perfect timing for that pee break. How long did it take to get another 200 mile range into that battery again? Perfect.

Fact is, a 250 mile range will work for at least 90% (I've made that figure up) of people, on the odd occasion 250 miles isn't enough, I would either plan the journey accordingly to stop for lunch for an hour somewhere to recharge or if we are time conscious, we'll take the wife's car (most people have 2 cars in their household, especially if you can afford a £100,000 Audi).

The whole paranoia about 250 miles not being good enough has no meat to it for most people. Of course there will always be a few where 250 miles just isn't good enough, so it's a good job you can still buy a good old derv mobil.

As for the car itself, I think it's bloody lovely.


Edited by Midgster on Thursday 29th November 11:20

Durzel

12,275 posts

169 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
quotequote all
964Cup said:
Oh look, another 12-year-old.

Here's the mythical unicorn: https://www.pistonheads.com/regulars/ph-ev/rivian-...

Yes, not in production yet (but then, neither is the eTron). Yes, not really credible, but at least they've tried to put real range into the car. It probably weighs not much more than the previous model full-fat Range Rover, and is about the same size as the current one.

We drive to Italy and back 5 times a year (so that's 10 x 11 hour journeys), and to France and back 10 times a year (6 hours each way). That's the only reason we own a car at all. I don't want to have to stop every 400km on a 1200km journey to wait 45 minutes to recharge, assuming there's a charger available - of course, once EVs gain any kind of real popularity, the queues will be comical. I also don't want to have to find a charger in our tiny Italian village - clue: there isn't one. Our entire apartment runs on 16A, so i don't think I'll be charging the car at home there.

Sure, with a 250 mile range I'd only have to stop once to charge on the way to France - instead of not at all - and I could charge the car there as we actually have something resembling a first world electricity supply. But in the real world that charge stop is going to add an hour to the journey, assuming only one person is waiting in line before me for the charge point. The infrastructure just isn't ready for mass adoption, and the range just isn't there for anyone who uses a car for long journeys.

EVs make good sense in town. But then, so does a bicycle. Which doesn't need a charger and runs on oatmeal. So I use a bicycle to get around town.
Presumably a 2 seater would be useless to you too. And an HGV would be unsuitable too?....

You might be the edge case where short/medium term EV isn't suitable. That doesn't mean cars like this one are flawed, it means you're an edge case that can't realistically be satisfied by the vast majority of EV users who this and future cars will be targeted at.

Veeayt

3,139 posts

206 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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It's Audi's tayk an Tesla

Greg the Fish

1,410 posts

67 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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on looks alone I prefer the Tesla.

964Cup

1,443 posts

238 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
quotequote all
DonkeyApple said:
This really is an inane perspective not worthy of people capable of reading and writing.

There is buckets of audited data that show the real average U.K. daily mileage. Even stats on the anomalous long journeys. There is a very good reason as to why the automotive industry which harvests real usage data directly from all its clients everytime their car is plugged in to a computer has settled on an almost de facto EV range of around 250 miles. This range allows almost every type of commuter to only have to charge once a week if needs be while also catering for the vast majority of anomalous journeys.

And then there is the basic economics of the extremely rare 11 hour drive. If you can afford a £100k toy car then why on earth would you ever be driving for 11 hours? You pick up your phone and have a car with a driver arrive to drive you to the train station or airport. You then use your phone to have a car with or without driver waiting for you at the other end.

And if you’re on a lad’s road trip then if your income permits you to throw £100k on a toy car then it also permits you the luxury of taking more time off so you design your trip to leap between top end hotels and indulge yourself with booze and food while that hotel charges your toy.

Obviously, if you are getting hold of a £100k toy car and you cannot afford to use the sort of hotels that offer charging or cannot take an extra day or two off to restructure your road trip or you have to drive nonstop for 11 hours on a regular basis or cannot work out how to use a smartphone to structure those trips properly then you are clearly a monumental spanner and merely a short term guardian of the car for the smarter people.
I don't normally rise the to ad hominem stuff, but I suspect it's time somebody explained how the world actually works for some of us. Let's do this really slowly.

We're not travelling to hotels. We're travelling to houses we own. The less time we spend getting to them, the more often we can go, and the more time we get to enjoy them. We could fly to Italy, but then we'd have to rent a car to get to our village from the airport, and from our flat to the ski lift. We'd also have to travel a lot lighter, put up with airports and air travellers, and adhere to someone else's schedule. It's cheaper, more efficient and more economical to drive. We can't install an EV charger in Italy because rural Italian infrastructure is some way behind the curve of modernity. We can't even run the kettle and the washing machine at the same time. You may laugh, but I have an Alp in my back garden, so it's not all bad.

We can't fly to France since no UK airline flies to our local airport any more. And we'd have to keep a car there anyway, because we're in the middle of the countryside where there is no public transport. We could take the train, but it's a fortune, involves changing trains at Paris, and takes about an hour and half longer door to door. So we drive. See also previous answer about keeping to our own schedule. Thanks to Flexiplus, we can come and go on a whim - that's a luxury I wouldn't give up even if they started flying to Deauville again. And no, sadly, we're not rich (or suicidal) enough for a helicopter.

I don't need a £100k toy car. I'm not 12, so I don't get all hot and sweaty over acceleration numbers. I don't find driving in the UK enjoyable; nor is driving enjoyably socially responsible when the roads are as crowded and badly-maintained as ours. I don't need a car to impress women, and (hot tip) it doesn't work anyway.

What I need is a large car in which to sit comfortably for a long time on cruise control. One that will accommodate my family and all our stuff (including but not limited to my newly-acquired collection of cat coffins) and that doesn't require me to spend hours planning a route that accommodates a half-arsed and inadequate refuelling infrastructure. We've had a succession of Range Rovers and Discoverys, but since JLR singularly failed to see the diesel backlash coming, we've got an XC90 T8 arriving in January. I wish it had greater electric range - it would be nice to be able to get all the way out of London on electricity only, but I doubt it will manage it, but it's at least a sop to ecological responsibility.

We also have a Fiat 500 twinair for my wife to tool about town in, since I can't wean her off driving, even though we're seeing a routine average speed in London of about 6mph (in other words it would be faster to jog). I thought about replacing it with something electric, and will probably do so out of conscience at some point, but the economics make no sense. It's essentially free - no tax, very low servicing costs, and for 2.5k miles a year the fuel costs are irrelevant.

Yes, we're an outlier. But then I want a car that suits me, not one that suits someone else. I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed to complain that no electric car comes close, given that there's no shortage of commodious ICE cars with 400-mile-plus ranges. I'd quite like it if, before they ban ICE completely, somebody came up with an electric vehicle that didn't require us to change our lifestyle completely.

What amuses me is that one of the main criticisms of the Bentley Continental GT W12 when it came out was that its real-world range was about 200 miles. This in a car you can refuel in 5 minutes, and one that fans of £100k toys who froth on about "lads' trips" in the pub apparently still dream about. We had an RS6 Avant a while ago (the original 4.2 bi-turbo thing). That had a real-world range of about 200 miles, too. I sold it and bought a Range Rover diesel after spending one trip to Italy repeatedly passing the same diesel Shogun. We were cruising at about 100 leptons. They weren't. But they also didn't have to stop every two hours to refuel, and they got there without ever having to watch their rear view mirror for a flic on a BMW 1100. Range matters.

Baldchap

7,668 posts

93 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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I don't get 300 miles from a tank in my petrol car.

RacerMike

Original Poster:

4,209 posts

212 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
quotequote all
964Cup said:
250 mile range. What use is that? I wonder when they'll stop chasing "ludicrous" acceleration numbers and start giving us usable ranges. To come close to replacing our ICE car, we need a 400 mile range with no more than 30 mins refuelling time at the outside. Otherwise a routine 11 hour journey will become some kind of "dog walking on its hind legs" marathon odyssey.
964Cup said:
...we've got an XC90 T8 arriving in January. I wish it had greater electric range - it would be nice to be able to get all the way out of London on electricity only, but I doubt it will manage it, but it's at least a sop to ecological responsibility.
Autocar said:
Volvo XC90 T8 Real-world range: 342 miles
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/our-cars/volvo-...

So you clearly don't 400 mile range then? Either that or you're going to be sending the XC90 back. You'll actually have to stop on the way down! My God!

964Cup said:
I sold it and bought a Range Rover diesel after spending one trip to Italy repeatedly passing the same diesel Shogun. We were cruising at about 100 leptons. They weren't. But they also didn't have to stop every two hours to refuel, and they got there without ever having to watch their rear view mirror for a flic on a BMW 1100. Range matters.
964Cup said:
We've had a succession of Range Rovers and Discoverys, but since JLR singularly failed to see the diesel backlash coming
So again....you bought a petrol electric Volvo because you fell for the ruse about dirty diesel? Seems to me you're not really sure what you want!

In all honesty, if you really wanted to, you could make this Audi or a Porsche Taycan work. I'm assuming you already have a 7kW charge point at home now as you have a PHEV which realistically needs charging to achieve that real world 346 mile range (if not it will be around 300 miles I guess). With Ionity expanding over Europe already you'd be able to charge the Audi probably quicker than you can fuel 70L, go in, pay, use the toilet, buy a croissant and wait for your missus to powder her nose, and I suspect the Audi would actually be a lovely car to own....and a lot more dynamic than the XC90 (which is a lovely car, but it's very much an SUV in the way it drives).

But then....having an EV probably wouldn't suit the 'I don't care' image you like to project. Wouldn't want anyone thinking you were brash enough to be showing off....

Witchfinder

6,250 posts

253 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
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DonkeyApple said:
It’s the £15k 300 mile Golf that will announce that the world has changed forever not a £100k toy for the wasteful excess consumer.
Given the current Golf (the second best selling car in the UK) starts at £18,500, I think that's unlikely. The more popular versions like the R-Line and GT are around £23k.

The equivalently-sized and specced Kona is around £30k, but would save the owner over a grand a year on maintenance, fuel, and tax.

Price equivalence is pretty much here. In 2-3 years, EVs will be cheaper to build and sell.

1974foggy

677 posts

145 months

Thursday 29th November 2018
quotequote all
For me, thats the the best looking Audi of recent times, I have not liked much to come from them lately (seem a bit over fussy) but this is lovely.