Discussion
saaby93 said:
Love it! Needs a bit more power, imho then it'd be perfectSadly there are no demo's available yet. They have changed the battery pack and are requalifying the new one before production starts around the end of this year.
I was intrigued so tried out a V-twin version and that was an experience!
I think it is fair to say that unless you have ridden an old motorbike without a helmet, then nothing else could prepare you for a 3 Wheeler test drive. The assault on the senses is difficult to describe, and everything is different, from lining yourself up on the road using the wheels as bomb sights to keeping the revs higher than you ever would with a fourtWhile there is a fair bit of wind buffeting, it is less than I expected and glancing at the speedo I found several times I was barrelling along at 60ish when I thought I was only doing 40, which is really odd as it feels like you are going crazy-fast at whatever speed you are doing.
The staccato roar of the exhaust is fantastic, but it is all the other noises from the drive train which really set the 3 Wheeler apart from anything else I have ever driven before. It is an orchestra of clatters, clonks and rattles which gives away the pre war origins of the design and provide a large slice of the character of the car.
I have to say after I climbed out I could not wipe the smile off my face for at least an hour. However, my plan would be to use the car as much as possible for a 25 mile each way commute on country roads and I think the stock 3 Wheeler drive train would wear me out.
This led me to the conclusion that the EV3 drive train could be the perfect compromise. I suspect it may be similar to comparing the experience of flying a glider vs. a piston engined aircraft. Even if the wind buffeting gets tiring then the Fairbourne Carriages larger aeroscreen sounds like a possible upgrade.
Anyway, cutting a long story short, I put down a deposit for an EV3 last summer (subject to a test drive in an actual EV3 with Mrs Spunagain so she has the opportunity to try and talk me out of it). I am extremely excited and looking forward to the next bits of news to be telegraphed from Malvern.
The delivery date was originally this summer but now likely to be next summer and I expect the test drive to be late 17 to early 2018. I am number 86 on the list.
Surely there must be other Morganistas on here who have a deposit down?
I found this video from Robert Llewellyn quite helpful/tempting:
Fully charged EV3 protype test drive
The striking thing is that they are having a conversation while driving which would not be possible on a v-twin version without a lot of shouting!
I was intrigued so tried out a V-twin version and that was an experience!
I think it is fair to say that unless you have ridden an old motorbike without a helmet, then nothing else could prepare you for a 3 Wheeler test drive. The assault on the senses is difficult to describe, and everything is different, from lining yourself up on the road using the wheels as bomb sights to keeping the revs higher than you ever would with a fourtWhile there is a fair bit of wind buffeting, it is less than I expected and glancing at the speedo I found several times I was barrelling along at 60ish when I thought I was only doing 40, which is really odd as it feels like you are going crazy-fast at whatever speed you are doing.
The staccato roar of the exhaust is fantastic, but it is all the other noises from the drive train which really set the 3 Wheeler apart from anything else I have ever driven before. It is an orchestra of clatters, clonks and rattles which gives away the pre war origins of the design and provide a large slice of the character of the car.
I have to say after I climbed out I could not wipe the smile off my face for at least an hour. However, my plan would be to use the car as much as possible for a 25 mile each way commute on country roads and I think the stock 3 Wheeler drive train would wear me out.
This led me to the conclusion that the EV3 drive train could be the perfect compromise. I suspect it may be similar to comparing the experience of flying a glider vs. a piston engined aircraft. Even if the wind buffeting gets tiring then the Fairbourne Carriages larger aeroscreen sounds like a possible upgrade.
Anyway, cutting a long story short, I put down a deposit for an EV3 last summer (subject to a test drive in an actual EV3 with Mrs Spunagain so she has the opportunity to try and talk me out of it). I am extremely excited and looking forward to the next bits of news to be telegraphed from Malvern.
The delivery date was originally this summer but now likely to be next summer and I expect the test drive to be late 17 to early 2018. I am number 86 on the list.
Surely there must be other Morganistas on here who have a deposit down?
I found this video from Robert Llewellyn quite helpful/tempting:
Fully charged EV3 protype test drive
The striking thing is that they are having a conversation while driving which would not be possible on a v-twin version without a lot of shouting!
Edited by Spunagain on Friday 21st April 22:56
ash73 said:
How much is it?
£40k with three headlightshttps://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-gen...
or £52.5k for a special edition with four
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/07...
At the moment they are not being sold as such. Morgan has opened the book to reserve order slots due to popular demand.
The price is not yet fixed but the last I heard from my dealer (and on the autocar article above) was that they were aiming to get being close to the price of a stock 3 Wheeler ~£31,140. (The £40K quoted above was for a Morgan petrol 4/4 and not an EV3)
To reserve a slot in the queue you need to make a £1000 deposit, which is refundable if you don't like it following a test drive. To be honest it is a bit of a gamble but the money would be doing sweet FA in a savings account at the moment so I am not losing out on much.
Between the 1st time I contacted Richard Thorne last summer and making my order a month later, the queue had become 50 places longer, so there does seem to be a fair bit of interest.
So the next step will be either a factory visit when a demo is available, or a visit to Richard Thorne's if there is a demo tour.
I would prefer to visit the factory and chat to the engineers involved as I do have some interest in electric car design. In fact a few years ago I was the second choice for being the program manager to look after the DTI electric car research funding program, but I lost out to someone from the automotive business. I think I got as far as I did because I had done a paper design for an EV conversion of a Lotus Elise (because I am a bit of a geek) and as such had a lot of technical information at my finger tips following the research I had done as part of that design. Once upon a time I was an electronic engineer, but succumbed to the dark side of project management in the late 90's but still like to tinker.
After my experience of the 3-Wheeler, I do not think it is a car which is all about driving with your hair on fire all the time and I suspect 60 in less than 9 seconds will feel quick enough. Bearing in mind that for me performance is gauged against the Mk2 Fiesta XR2 which in its day was a respectable hot hatch with 0-60 of 9.2s. (Guess my age yet?). You also need to remember that with full torque from 0 rpm it will be much faster off the line than the pure numbers suggest. A Nissan Leaf feels very frisky indeed at town speeds.
The EV3 does seem to be in a class of it’s own though, it’s closest rival I guess would be a tuned Renault Twizy (which you have to rent the battery for), and the EV3 trounces it in all areas apart from having a roof.
I feel that the combination of the EV3’s low weight and a respectable battery pack (remember the Mk 1 Nissan Leaf has 24kWh) is what will keep it unique. So I would be tempted to resist adding extra weight unless it really enhances the overall package of what could make an electric wheeler such a fun toy to live with.
The Ashwoods motor fitted to the EV3 looks to be quite chunky so I suspect a second one would add a fair bit or weight.
Here are a few numbers I have managed to find to compare the two cars
The actual Twizy performance above quoted with a tuning box from Norway fitted. I extrapolated the power from the quoted torque improvement. See video below for the actual run:
Even with its reduced performance the Twizy does look fun so the EV3 should be fantastic fun! See a Twizy owners thread on PH.
The Twizy would not work for me as the range is way to low, and for me the EV3 looks so much nicer.
For my planned usage I will almost always charge from home, let’s be honest the EV3 is not really a practical means of transportation, it is a (very nice) toy and I am probably going to use it more than most as I have a great commute from home to work through beautiful country roads which I loved in my Elise with the top off.
The EV3 does not seem to have a fast charge capability which if that is correct is a shame as it will limit long distance tours, but with a little planning you can arrange a tour where you call in advance to make sure you can charge and top up at stop offs, lunch, tourist attractions etc. But let's wait and see what the final spec is.
Re. the queues for charging, the network is growing as quite a rate. As of today there are 4215 charging locations and more than 11000 chargers, see Zap map statistics for details of the rate of growth!
The Map map here shows where they all are too.
I do not think it is reasonable to expect charging points, free or otherwise from Morgan, they will be making handfuls of cars and charging points cost a lot of money to set up and maintain which would add a huge amount to the cost of each car even if they were subsidised from increasing the costs of the petrol Morgans, and I don't think anybody wants that!. Leave that to the big boys like Nissan, BMW, Renault and Tesla who are setting up EVs to be genuine replacements for internal combustion engined cars.
Personally I think Morgan should be given credit for the years of forward thinking research they have been doing into alternative drive trains which puts many of the big boys to shame!
There have been worries that there may be a repeat of the M3W experience which some saw as being seriously underdeveloped at launch and led to the some early adopters having a lot of issues. But I am going into this with my eyes open, it is well known that most low volume car makers use their customers for a degree of shake down and debug, and I have plenty of experience with that. I have found the key is to find a good dealer and keep a good relationship with them, which has served me well through TVR and Lotus ownership. However looking at the 2015 date of the video I have posted earlier they have had the EV3 up and running for a while so it looks like they are spending a good deal of time getting it as bug free as possible!
So even though it is well over a year away I am starting to think about colours. Not many EV3s to choose colours from yet though, here's what I have found so far:
There's the very pale blue prototype driven on the Fully Charged video from 2015 which is nice.
There's the grey motorshow car, very classy.
And the metallic black Selfridges car, which is great but I swore never to have a black car again as it always looked filthy.
But look, there's a yellow prototype from 2014!
I am waiting for red or blue ones to look at, but the yellow is my current favourite. Harks back to the 60's yellow on black Lotus Elans.
I suppose at some point I need to let Mrs Spunagain know I have placed a deposit
But for a 4 week wait and a mere €1792 you could get a 1:8 scale model:
Wespe models EV3 page link
The price is not yet fixed but the last I heard from my dealer (and on the autocar article above) was that they were aiming to get being close to the price of a stock 3 Wheeler ~£31,140. (The £40K quoted above was for a Morgan petrol 4/4 and not an EV3)
To reserve a slot in the queue you need to make a £1000 deposit, which is refundable if you don't like it following a test drive. To be honest it is a bit of a gamble but the money would be doing sweet FA in a savings account at the moment so I am not losing out on much.
Between the 1st time I contacted Richard Thorne last summer and making my order a month later, the queue had become 50 places longer, so there does seem to be a fair bit of interest.
So the next step will be either a factory visit when a demo is available, or a visit to Richard Thorne's if there is a demo tour.
I would prefer to visit the factory and chat to the engineers involved as I do have some interest in electric car design. In fact a few years ago I was the second choice for being the program manager to look after the DTI electric car research funding program, but I lost out to someone from the automotive business. I think I got as far as I did because I had done a paper design for an EV conversion of a Lotus Elise (because I am a bit of a geek) and as such had a lot of technical information at my finger tips following the research I had done as part of that design. Once upon a time I was an electronic engineer, but succumbed to the dark side of project management in the late 90's but still like to tinker.
After my experience of the 3-Wheeler, I do not think it is a car which is all about driving with your hair on fire all the time and I suspect 60 in less than 9 seconds will feel quick enough. Bearing in mind that for me performance is gauged against the Mk2 Fiesta XR2 which in its day was a respectable hot hatch with 0-60 of 9.2s. (Guess my age yet?). You also need to remember that with full torque from 0 rpm it will be much faster off the line than the pure numbers suggest. A Nissan Leaf feels very frisky indeed at town speeds.
The EV3 does seem to be in a class of it’s own though, it’s closest rival I guess would be a tuned Renault Twizy (which you have to rent the battery for), and the EV3 trounces it in all areas apart from having a roof.
I feel that the combination of the EV3’s low weight and a respectable battery pack (remember the Mk 1 Nissan Leaf has 24kWh) is what will keep it unique. So I would be tempted to resist adding extra weight unless it really enhances the overall package of what could make an electric wheeler such a fun toy to live with.
The Ashwoods motor fitted to the EV3 looks to be quite chunky so I suspect a second one would add a fair bit or weight.
Here are a few numbers I have managed to find to compare the two cars
| Battery: | Twizy: 6.1 kWh | EV3: ~20 kWh |
| Range: | Twizy: 62 mi | EV3: ~150 m |
| Length | Twizy: 2.32 m | EV3: ~3.2 m (3 Wheeler) |
| Width: | Twizy: 1.19 m | EV3: ~2.33 m (3 Wheeler) |
| Curb weight | Twizy: 450 kg | EV3: ~450 kg |
| Power | Twizy: ~25bhp* | EV3: 62 bhp |
| 0-60 | Twizy: 36s* | EV3: <9s |
| Max speed | Twizy: 71mph* | EV3: >80mph |
The actual Twizy performance above quoted with a tuning box from Norway fitted. I extrapolated the power from the quoted torque improvement. See video below for the actual run:
Even with its reduced performance the Twizy does look fun so the EV3 should be fantastic fun! See a Twizy owners thread on PH.
The Twizy would not work for me as the range is way to low, and for me the EV3 looks so much nicer.
For my planned usage I will almost always charge from home, let’s be honest the EV3 is not really a practical means of transportation, it is a (very nice) toy and I am probably going to use it more than most as I have a great commute from home to work through beautiful country roads which I loved in my Elise with the top off.
The EV3 does not seem to have a fast charge capability which if that is correct is a shame as it will limit long distance tours, but with a little planning you can arrange a tour where you call in advance to make sure you can charge and top up at stop offs, lunch, tourist attractions etc. But let's wait and see what the final spec is.
Re. the queues for charging, the network is growing as quite a rate. As of today there are 4215 charging locations and more than 11000 chargers, see Zap map statistics for details of the rate of growth!
The Map map here shows where they all are too.
I do not think it is reasonable to expect charging points, free or otherwise from Morgan, they will be making handfuls of cars and charging points cost a lot of money to set up and maintain which would add a huge amount to the cost of each car even if they were subsidised from increasing the costs of the petrol Morgans, and I don't think anybody wants that!. Leave that to the big boys like Nissan, BMW, Renault and Tesla who are setting up EVs to be genuine replacements for internal combustion engined cars.
Personally I think Morgan should be given credit for the years of forward thinking research they have been doing into alternative drive trains which puts many of the big boys to shame!
There have been worries that there may be a repeat of the M3W experience which some saw as being seriously underdeveloped at launch and led to the some early adopters having a lot of issues. But I am going into this with my eyes open, it is well known that most low volume car makers use their customers for a degree of shake down and debug, and I have plenty of experience with that. I have found the key is to find a good dealer and keep a good relationship with them, which has served me well through TVR and Lotus ownership. However looking at the 2015 date of the video I have posted earlier they have had the EV3 up and running for a while so it looks like they are spending a good deal of time getting it as bug free as possible!
So even though it is well over a year away I am starting to think about colours. Not many EV3s to choose colours from yet though, here's what I have found so far:
There's the very pale blue prototype driven on the Fully Charged video from 2015 which is nice.
There's the grey motorshow car, very classy.
And the metallic black Selfridges car, which is great but I swore never to have a black car again as it always looked filthy.
But look, there's a yellow prototype from 2014!
I am waiting for red or blue ones to look at, but the yellow is my current favourite. Harks back to the 60's yellow on black Lotus Elans.
I suppose at some point I need to let Mrs Spunagain know I have placed a deposit
But for a 4 week wait and a mere €1792 you could get a 1:8 scale model:
Wespe models EV3 page link
saaby93 said:
ash73 said:
How much is it?
£40k with three headlightshttps://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-gen...
or £52.5k for a special edition with four
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/07...
Max_Torque said:
That motor is pretty terrible:
ELMO-D
45.5kW <20Kg (so probably 19.9kg then) that's just 2.7kW/kg, oh dear.......
Guess it's cheap ;-)
That seems a little harsh, a quick Google shows a few typical EV motors. And the only one I looked at that had a better power to weight ratio was a Tesla.ELMO-D
45.5kW <20Kg (so probably 19.9kg then) that's just 2.7kW/kg, oh dear.......
Guess it's cheap ;-)
| Motor | Weight | Power | Power to weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| BMW i3 | 65kg | 125kw | 1.92kW/kg |
| Curtis hp-50 | 55.3 kg | 50kw | 0.9kW/kg |
| Siemens Azure | 86.1kg | 47kw | 0.55kW/kg |
| Warp 11 DC | 101kg | 43.2kW | 0.43kw/kg |
| Nissan Leaf | 58kg | 80kw | 1.34kW/kg |
| Tesla | 31.8 kg | 270kW | 8.5kW/kg |
| Morgan EV3 brushless axial | 19.9kg | 45.5kW | 2.7kW/kg |
Spunagain said:
That seems a little harsh, a quick Google shows a few typical EV motors. And the only one I looked at that had a better power to weight ratio was a Tesla.
These motors are all pretty good, remember they all typically work single speed so can produce their maximum power over a 3:1 speed range or more.| Motor | Weight | Power | Power to weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| BMW i3 | 65kg | 125kw | 1.92kW/kg |
| Curtis hp-50 | 55.3 kg | 50kw | 0.9kW/kg |
| Siemens Azure | 86.1kg | 47kw | 0.55kW/kg |
| Warp 11 DC | 101kg | 43.2kW | 0.43kw/kg |
| Nissan Leaf | 58kg | 80kw | 1.34kW/kg |
| Tesla | 31.8 kg | 270kW | 8.5kW/kg |
| Morgan EV3 brushless axial | 19.9kg | 45.5kW | 2.7kW/kg |
The Tesla motor though on those figures is particularly so. I believe they use copper rotor induction motors rather than magnets. High power density induction motors have been around quite a while for use in aircraft on 400Hz.
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