Had a ride a in a Tesla P90D today

But people could buy an equally capable ICE car of that type for a third of the price and have vastly more refueling points and vastly faster refueling. The only market would be rich people who want to make an environmental statement and that's not enough of a market for Tesla. Or anyone else.

I disagree. I think many families in London or similar would love a small, silent, green, cheap to run, no congestion charge, no road tax, rechargeable at any socket runabout alongside something bigger for family outings. If they could produce a hatchback for say £20k it would fly off the shelves. Remember the Gwiz? When they were released here they were everywhere, and that was a two seater (at best) car which was rubbish in every possible way yet *started* at £10k. I'm not saying it's financially feasible to build a small hatch for £20k but if it was and Tesla did it, they wouldn't be able to build them fast enough.
 
I disagree. I think many families in London or similar would love a small, silent, green, cheap to run, no congestion charge, no road tax, rechargeable at any socket runabout alongside something bigger for family outings. If they could produce a hatchback for say £20k it would fly off the shelves. Remember the Gwiz? When they were released here they were everywhere, and that was a two seater (at best) car which was rubbish in every possible way yet *started* at £10k. I'm not saying it's financially feasible to build a small hatch for £20k but if it was and Tesla did it, they wouldn't be able to build them fast enough.

I want to completely agree as i am a real fan of the concept of hybrid drive and electric cars, but when did you last see a Renault Zoe?

Cheap as chips too:
https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/zoe/specifications.html
 
This is something that concerns me a little about an all electric future. Unless range increases greatly, we're going to need A LOT of public chargers.

Until then a hybrid is the answer, the fuel range listed for Electric vehicles is along the same lines as for petrol/diesel vehicles, i.e grossly exaggerated.

So what happens if your out & about touring in remote parts & there is nowhere near for a a plug in charge & you crawl to a stop. Will the AA etc be up for standing there for an hour of their time to give you a big enough boost from their engine/ batteries or a tow without a clause in the contract I wonder
 
Most I've driven do that, even if you're driving them normally. Deploy the performance on offer (or if it's cold, or you use the AC and lights, etc, all tots up) and it tumbles.

If you adopt a steady 60mph cruise and don't touch anything you'll get about 1-ish mile per depleted mile of indicated range, if the temperature's OK and the battery's healthy - but outside of that and it'll dip fairly promptly. We had one crash from an indicated 80 miles to 'recharge now', which wasn't amusing.

No cover for degradation, either, and I've seen a few that have lost a fair chunk of charge in a short period of time, hampering their long-range capabilities further. Plus there's the challenge of actually getting access to a Supercharger when you need it. Can be problematic in mainland Europe where there's comparatively loads of them.

Put a few hundred miles on a P90D last week and that was much the same, but if you gunned it the range would just drop away at a crippling rate of knots. Great fun, though, and little else feels like it - not even GT-Rs. Still fab bits of kit, either way, and the issues are likely moot for most buyers (one chap I met had bought one off the cuff, just because he was interested - hadn't driven it prior to signing for it).

The sweet spot is the 70D for me at the moment :)

The owner of this one 'just wanted one'. He had not driven one before getting his and I am not sure what we was expecting. I've made this point before, but electric cars really aren't for people to do business miles in, which to me makes me wonder the value of a car built to look like a large saloon used to cruise the country in like 5/7/A8/E/S/XJ class type cars. So far I see videos of people showing how quick it gets to a 100 and then telling me how doing 30 miles to the office is no problem to them.

Again my view is the mileage limit on these cars hasn't really improved or changed in 20 years, just they now make them look like normal cars, not odd things from Space 1999. Will find out what version he has but no person using a car for business miles will sit at 60mph everywhere.
 
Don't forget when discussing other manufactures having to invest vast amounts in R&D, TESLA electric technology is open patent.

Even the super charger is open source. Other manufactures are free to use the same plug and charging system in their cars if they wish.

TESLA hope to develop a shared approach, with other manufactures, thus increasing the speed of development, reduced costs to consumers and get electric cars to market quicker.

https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
 
Don't you think such silly looking doors will sell well in other markets? I think in the USA they will do fine with model X, over here I'm not so sure. Although the doors actually have a very good purpose for opening that way.
Doors like that mean I'd often have to choose between parking inside somewhere (garage, lot, work space) or leaving it on the street so my passengers could get out. Lot of low ceilinged car parks around...

GM already did an electric car
Microsoft also did a tablet PC way before the iPad... Not that it inspires me to buy a Tesla, though. These things all seem to be cars designed around massive iPads. I'm really not a fan of either that, or how they externally look like every other modern car. Too dull and featureless.
 
I agree with Housey on this, its not much use to someone doing a lot of business miles but for someone travelling 30 or so miles each way its a good proposal.
 
But people could buy an equally capable ICE car of that type for a third of the price and have vastly more refueling points and vastly faster refueling. The only market would be rich people who want to make an environmental statement and that's not enough of a market for Tesla. Or anyone else.

The BEVolution is coming.
 
The rav4 EV tom hanks has is about as normal as they come years ago.

Jez 2000 Zoes sold year to day. Similar to both versions of i3. They had silly deals on them and the end of last year aswell.
 
I want to completely agree as i am a real fan of the concept of hybrid drive and electric cars, but when did you last see a Renault Zoe?

Cheap as chips too:
https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/zoe/specifications.html

I wondered how they could sell a car with a 22 KWh battery for £14K. Manufacturers won't even talk about existing battery cost (they just make vague predictions about future costs based on joyful optimism) because it's the elephant in the room.

I found the answer and it's hilarious: Batteries Not Included.

On the plus side, Renault only charge £5K for the batteries so they're selling them at about cost.

Also, it's not the real price anyway even if you ignore the extra cost of the battery (which is, obviously, essential). It's the price after heavy government subsidy. Renault charge about £24,000 for the base model Zoe. The base model Clio, which is a much better car that the Zoe is based on, is less than half that (it's on Renault's UK sight right now for £11,115).

So I stand by my original point in response to the statement "What Tesla *should've* done is made a little hatchback for zipping around town". Making a mediocre car that's still twice the price of a better car is not what Tesla should have done and that's the only option on the table at the moment regarding mass market EVs.
 
Im not against electric cars for our daily transport, if they can make them work like diesel or petrol cars in range and guarantee an infrastructure that makes them usable anywhere I would be driving an electric car. I think we need to reduce our needs for fossil fuels and remove the control the middle east has on our daily lives. But as I have said before I am not really sure the battery tech has evolved at the pace we hoped, or if it has they are using it to power stuff or deliver performance that older generation cars didn't have or need. So in simple terms chasing the wrong metrics.
 
Problem for tesla is when the big boys get going and they have exhausted all their engineering talent it might get a bit messy.

As I understand other premium manufacturers are looking at releasing cars with actual door stowage!

In terms of things to criticise a car for, door stowage seems to be a pretty minor thing but then I never use it.
 
In terms of things to criticise a car for, door stowage seems to be a pretty minor thing but then I never use it.
I think the cup holder location is much worse than the missing door pockets, literally right where my elbow wants to be and the armrest slides over it. It's another small irritation, but for the price of them I don't think asking for a bit longer spent on the interior would be too much to ask.
 
Where do you put your empty crisp packets, coffee stirrers, mints, sun glasses and empty burger wrappers ? :confused:

Sun glasses and full snacks go in the centre console. Rubbish gets thrown on the back seat and forgotten about until something smells bad.
 
In terms of things to criticise a car for, door stowage seems to be a pretty minor thing but then I never use it.

It was a joke to highlight it's not the most resolved package. Infact it's not a joke just a clue into some of the car that have been over looked.
 
I wondered how they could sell a car with a 22 KWh battery for £14K. Manufacturers won't even talk about existing battery cost (they just make vague predictions about future costs based on joyful optimism) because it's the elephant in the room.

I found the answer and it's hilarious: Batteries Not Included.

On the plus side, Renault only charge £5K for the batteries so they're selling them at about cost.

Also, it's not the real price anyway even if you ignore the extra cost of the battery (which is, obviously, essential). It's the price after heavy government subsidy. Renault charge about £24,000 for the base model Zoe. The base model Clio, which is a much better car that the Zoe is based on, is less than half that (it's on Renault's UK sight right now for £11,115).

So I stand by my original point in response to the statement "What Tesla *should've* done is made a little hatchback for zipping around town". Making a mediocre car that's still twice the price of a better car is not what Tesla should have done and that's the only option on the table at the moment regarding mass market EVs.

Your comparison of the Zoe and the Clio is more than a little dodgy. There are two models of the Zoe sold in the UK - the Dynamique NAV and the Dynamique NAV Rapid. The equivalent Clio would be the Dynamique S NAV with rear parking sensors as an extra - £16k for petrol, £18.5k for diesel. Though the list price is only half the story.

The Zoe's list price is vastly inflated (I assume they do this to make full use of the PICG). My invoice is for ~£8,800 after some hefty contributions from Renault and the dealer. That would suggest a true price of around £18,800 after removing the PICG and adding in the battery cost. Not vastly more than a similar Clio, even after haggling the Clio's price down. Baring in mind that there's no VED, very low servicing costs and a per mile cost of 2-3p in electricity, the Zoe isn't bad value. It just needs more range, which will come as batteries get cheaper.

Battery costs are tumbling by the way. From about $1000 per kWh in 2007, to $450 per kWh in 2014. We're now down to around $200 per kWh. Tesla are aiming for $88 per kWh by the end of the decade to facilitate mass market production of the Model 3. It's likely LG and others will arrive at that figure around the same time. Until then, building a reasonably priced family hatchback with good range is difficult - you'd need a 60-80kWh battery pack, at a cost of $10-20k.

As for Tesla's strategy, I think you misunderstand the company. This decade is something of a write-off for them. They're playing a long game - become the world's leading battery manufacturer, own the world's best charging network, and then sell or licence these assets to the competition. If they can compete against the likes of the Golf with the Model 3 then that's a bonus, but the big money will be made from selling batteries and charger network licences. The Model S is a side show - a publicity stunt. It was never intended to shift big numbers or scare VW.
 
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