How does a electric car compare with a diesel performance

[essayer]

gangzoom said:

Aren't you a bit close to that car?

[jjwilde]

essayer said:

Aren't you a bit close to that car?

Probably in a car park... but will the falcon wing doors still manage to open?

[Pooh]

I have done 25k miles in 10 months in my 41kwh Zoe, mostly on country roads, l save a lot more in running costs than the monthly payments. I have managed 185 miles in the summer but this drops to around 120 miles in the winter.
It is very nippy around town and fast enough to overtake on the country roads, it even corners pretty well as long as I am smooth.
I use it mostly for visiting customers and I can’t have anything too flashy so it suits me and I cannot see me going going back to an ice car for my main car.
I did the first 6k miles without a home charger, I used a charger near my office which is 21 miles from my house, it took a bit of planning but it was perfectly possible.

[gangzoom]

jjwilde said:

Probably in a car park... but will the falcon wing doors still manage to open?

The FWDs are fab, when we stay at the in-laws getting into the front passenger seat is much harder than getting people into the back .

[AER]

gazza285 said:

WinstonWolf said:

Baldchap said:

We have a Model X P100D, which is the big people carrier. Torque is absolutely instant. It's not far off my motorbike in terms of throttle response at pretty much any speed, but especially below 100mph.

I'd wager there isn't a diesel anywhere that goes faster at any point sub 100mph.

Re heating: It has 'normal' climate control, heated seats (all six), screens and wheel. It doesn't seem to significantly impact range.

I've got a 4.2 twin turbo V8 diesel, it can't keep up with my mate's Tesla...

That would depend on how far you are going, it would take you about fourteen hours in your diesel to get from Land’s End to John’O’Groats, and about forty five hours in the Tesla, assuming it started with a full charge...

Edited by gazza285 on Thursday 6th December 19:33

Yes, 'cause commuting from Land's End to John O'Groats is a daily problem for so many people these days...

[D6Phev]

Had diesels for years, bought a leaf as our second car, loved it so much test drove a diesel plugin hybrid. Admittedly the novelty of the leaf has worn off after nearly 40k, but it also makes any normal 'premium' car feel so unrefined.

Needless to say we now have 2 plugin cars, once you've experienced it I would be surprised if anyone sticks to petrol/diesel other than missing the noise!

basically, if your worried the electric doesn't keep up with a go test drive one... Even the most basic electric car should impress the way it delivers the power.

But for me, 5 pot diesel hybrid is the future until I can do m 8,000 mile world trip on one charge

[feef]

One could also argue that there's a benefit to taking longer to charge than it takes to fill up with fuel.

The AA recommends:

• Don't drive for more than 8 hours in a day
• Take regular fifteen minute breaks in journeys over three hours
• Aim to stop every two hours or so, especially if you're not used to driving long distances
• Plan journeys so that you can take breaks, allowing for an overnight stay if necessary
• Don't start a long journey if you’re tired

If you follow those recommendations, then there's ample opportunity to get a few charges in on longer journeys.

[RayTay]

AER said:

Yes, 'cause commuting from Land's End to John O'Groats is a daily problem for so many people these days...

[RizzoTheRat]

HD Adam said:

RizzoTheRat said:

Parking's similar to that around where I'm living a the moment in the Netherlands, there's about 15 or 20 charge points within 100 yds of my flat. They just have a post on the side of the road with marked up space either side of it. If you buy an EV or a PHEV you register it with the municipality so they know the requirement, and they're trying to increase the number of charge points in line with the need.

I'm sure they do.

I used to live in Holland and was always struck by how much more environmentally friendly they were.

But this is the UK I'm talking about.

The Govt have had 2 years to prepare for a "no deal" Brexit and have failed miserably to do that.

It wouldn't be beyond our clowns to do something like ban all ICE yet not have charging points in place.

A fair point I was merely pointing out that there's no technical reason that people without driveways should have any issue charging cars, although I suspect they get charged a bit more.

Not sure what domestic electricity prices are here but municipal chargers are 30c/kw, which if Nissan's quoted 24.14KW/100miles for the Leaf is correct is about the same fuel cost per mile as 78 mpg on diesel, which isn't bad but doesn't make them crazily cheap to run.

[PixelpeepS3]

We ran the i3 for around a year with no charge point at home -20 minutes at BMW every few days - grabbed a free coffee and read a book. Something to be said for being forced to just relax for 20 minutes

we've had it for 18 months ish i think and we still haven't got round to getting a proper home charger installed - we run the domestic plug one in the garage...can be a pain if you get in late one night and need an early start in the morning but that's our fault for being lazy

[MrOrange]

RizzoTheRat said:

Not sure what domestic electricity prices are here but municipal chargers are 30c/kw, which if Nissan's quoted 24.14KW/100miles for the Leaf is correct is about the same fuel cost per mile as 78 mpg on diesel, which isn't bad but doesn't make them crazily cheap to run.

€7.20 per 100 miles is closer to 90mpg in UK diesel terms. But, domestic charge rates are under half that in the UK, so around 180mpg equivalent. Plus zero RFL, no congestion charge, and mostly destination charging is free (think IKEA, hotels, supermarkets etc).

And, of course, zero tailpipe emissions.

Edited by MrOrange on Monday 10th December 16:15

[RizzoTheRat]

Ah, good point. Diesel's cheap here but road tax is high, which I forgot to include above.

If I'm reading the website correctly my diesel Octavia would be about €2300/year, while an EV would be €0 that makes an EV way more attractive. So a Leaf could do about 32,000 miles on the money I'd be paying just to tax my car If I've got my maths right I can see why there's so many Teslas and PHEVs around here.

[underphil]

cptsideways said:

EV's always in the right gear!

Not exactly true, full torque from zero rpm is great but no so great if you have only 1 gear that has to also define your top speed!!

(fine for the Tesla S/X with huge reserves of power, but a factor for the smaller EVs)

[poing]

underphil said:

Not exactly true, full torque from zero rpm is great but no so great if you have only 1 gear that has to also define your top speed!!

(fine for the Tesla S/X with huge reserves of power, but a factor for the smaller EVs)

It's why a lot of smaller ones are restricted in top speed, often to less than 100mph.

[underphil]

poing said:

underphil said:

Not exactly true, full torque from zero rpm is great but no so great if you have only 1 gear that has to also define your top speed!!

(fine for the Tesla S/X with huge reserves of power, but a factor for the smaller EVs)

It's why a lot of smaller ones are restricted in top speed, often to less than 100mph.

And also why maximum power isn't available until the car hits around 40mph (whereas with an ICE car you can access full power at much lower speeds, although you have to waste time with gear changes (and often turbo lag))

[kambites]

poing said:

It's why a lot of smaller ones are restricted in top speed, often to less than 100mph.

As the push for greater range continues, I think we'll see less of that because increasing battery capacity essentially gives you more power for free (or at least for negligible cost). Not that there's anything wrong with a UK market road car being limited to, say, 90mph.

[anonymous-user]

kambites said:

poing said:

It's why a lot of smaller ones are restricted in top speed, often to less than 100mph.

As the push for greater range continues, I think we'll see less of that because increasing battery capacity essentially gives you more power for free (or at least for negligible cost). Not that there's anything wrong with a UK market road car being limited to, say, 90mph.

It's more about the trade off between maximum torque (and hence gradeability) and the road speed at which peak power is gained for a vehicle with a single speed transmission. A typical electric machine with a CPSR of say 2.5:1 means that if you set peak power to 40mph, you run out of available motor speed at 100mph.

[kambites]

Indeed but the higher your peak battery draw (assuming battery is power limited, as usually seems to be the case), the higher up the speed range you can push peak power without compromising low-speed performance unacceptably.

For example I would guess that the two different power levels of the Kona EV will have slightly different gear ratios to allow the higher top speed of the more powerful model?

Edited by kambites on Tuesday 11th December 11:11

[colin_p]

I see a business opportunity.

Using diesel engined vans with diesel engined generators in the back to go out to and emergency charge dead flat and stranded electric cars.

And once that kicks off enough to fund some development, design a ICE generator pack that could go onto an EV roof rack.

You get to work, park up, pull the rip chord on the Briggs and Stratton that is strapped to the roof to start it up and then let it run all day in the works car park. I'm sure you could even have the roof-rack engine running whilst you are driving.

Afterall, them new power stations are not going to build temselves.

[anonymous-user]

kambites said:

(assuming battery is power limited, as usually seems to be the case),

The battery these days is not the limit, because they have got so big in order to give enough range, that the power requirements are easily handled, especially for transient events like WoT accels. IN any case, because the driving inverter acts as a voltage /current convertor, so you can pull peak power from the battery at any vehicle speed, whereas the eMachine can only make peak power once it has reach the minimum road speed that co-incides with the motors fundamental peak power speed.

(The big compromise is getting sufficient zero speed tractive efffort (stall torque) to pass the various sign off tests (like driving over a kerb, or out of a pot hole, or up a "US" drive etc) with a fully laded vehicle and still get a suitable top speed. The i3 for example is a 4 seater (rather than 5) simple to limit it's maximum mass and hence be able to pass those tests .)

Edited by anonymous-user on Tuesday 11th December 11:17