When are you going fully electric?

Caporegime
Joined
20 Jan 2005
Posts
45,610
Location
Co Durham
Update on running a PHEV, car is great, electric only mode is amazing and getting around 32miles of range from it and then 400+ miles on petrol. That last part is a god send as a trip to the lakes (220 miles round trip) found no chargers at all for electric cars and Edinburgh (250 miles round trip) is looking just as barren.

Also why are there so many different companies for charging, everyone needs a new app and new sign up. It's an absolute ball ache getting them all set up. If petrol was such a faff to fill up the car would have died 100 years ago.

Rant over. Would seriously consider an electric car next time if range was 400 miles as the charging infrastructure is a huge let down.

Which PHEV out fo interest? Exactly the same reason I went with a PHEV this time round and not a full EV. Charging network is awful in the North and rural areas. I think there are only 5 chargers within 50 miles of me and none of them that fast.
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Dec 2011
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5,419
Location
Belfast
I find that people that mention the build quality tend not to be actual Tesla drivers. I also think that because of this rep, new owners do tend to go full ham on looking for faults. I previously never would have thought to look at panel gaps, yet alone measure them. Yet this is exactly what I have seen a lot of people say they are doing. They are far from perfect, but in my experience, they are no worse than any other car mfr. At least, the Model 3. I did have a friend that has had to have a whole nvidia unit on his S as they had soldered in a storage chip that was woefully under-provisioned because of the amount of data processed through the chips. But that same owner also had a battery upgrade for free, so swings and roundabouts.

Why does someone have to own a Telsa before they are allowed to mention the well documented build quality issues? It is always advisable to check over any car you are considering to purchase regardles of brand, or if new or used.

I have been a passenger in a late 2019 Tesla Model 3 a few times and apart from the neck breaking performance being fun once or twice I found it a largly mediocre experience. It rattled from a few places, the ride quality was a bit rough, it had noticeable wind noise on the motorway and I felt the quality of material (for luxury car prices) were a bit meh. I did also notice some minor rear door alignment issues but could forgive those more than the other stuff.

The guy who owned it loved it though and he was obvlivious to these issues. To be honest these are issues I have endured with cars of my own before, so I can understand why people put up with it because there were a lot of positives with the car.

The point I am trying to make is that just because you can overlook such issues does not mean others will. I will not deny other car brands can be problematic (JLR) but the issues with Tesla and quality are well documented. What prospective owners need to decide is if they can live with these potential issues that the majority of times would be relatively minor first world problems.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/03/business/elon-musk-tesla-quality-problems/index.html

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/elon-musk-blames-production-ramp-tesla-quality-issues
 
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mjt

mjt

Soldato
Joined
31 Aug 2007
Posts
19,994
Boss just picked up his Mustang Mach-E AWD. Nice piece of kit! Just had a nosey in the car park but it's not THAT big and materials seem pretty decent.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
21,047
You don't need such chargers at 'every service station'. When the majority of EVs on the road have a range of 230-310 miles then away-from-home charging will be a fairly rare event. There's already enough 350kW chargers around to enable me to visit any part of the UK I would ever wish to visit :cry: with a single top-up.
Welcome back :)
 
Associate
Joined
9 Jul 2019
Posts
204
Yes the Kuga PHEV and yes I'm from the north east of England where coal is still heralded as the future of our energy supply problems.

I know technically it's the worst of both worlds but it's proving invaluable especially with the summer of stay home holidays.

Any advice of charging or is it just suck it up because this is the future?
 
Soldato
Joined
19 Oct 2002
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16,401
Location
Shakespeare’s County
Im a big advocate of PHEVs, can make a lot more PHEVs from the cells in a single BEV. Just use Zap Map, choose where you want to stop on a journey and maybe a plan B incase its not working or a queue.

Reality of a PHEV doing long journeys on mainly EV is a pretty unrewarding & draining task, where as BEV I only ever really need to stop once.
 
Caporegime
Joined
20 Jan 2005
Posts
45,610
Location
Co Durham
Boss just picked up his Mustang Mach-E AWD. Nice piece of kit! Just had a nosey in the car park but it's not THAT big and materials seem pretty decent.

Apart from using the Mustang name I have always thought they looked good and great value for money. Good looks and well specced.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Mar 2010
Posts
21,778
CMA uses the tunnel for batteries on PHEV and a then a complex shape battery pack on the EV. It’s not super flat as the body doesn’t seem to drop as much even though cells are not there and hence nothing like the Taycan foot garages. Not a good idea really hence the head clearance in the back for a tall car is quite poor, and the tunnel very intrusive and the battery is complicated inside- still a decent car.

Interesting article/diagram on benefits of a transmission tunnel giving structural rigidity, model S 22KN/degree versus a honda civic 35,
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-y-road-noise-rumble-primary-cause.228313/
http://youwheel.com/home/2016/06/20/car-body-torsional-rigidity-a-comprehensive-list/

2nd link is interesting showing what the rigidity is on convertibles, their driving experience having been discussed in BM thread this week.

so, who knew, polestar may have that advantage.
 
Soldato
Joined
25 May 2008
Posts
3,738
Location
North Wales
Yes the Kuga PHEV and yes I'm from the north east of England where coal is still heralded as the future of our energy supply problems.

I know technically it's the worst of both worlds but it's proving invaluable especially with the summer of stay home holidays.

Any advice of charging or is it just suck it up because this is the future?

Where in the lakes did you go? There're rapid chargers a few of the Booths stores up there

Also Edinburgh seems to have quite a lot of chargers?

chargers.png
 
Joined
4 Aug 2007
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21,386
Location
Wilds of suffolk
If petrol was such a faff to fill up the car would have died 100 years ago.

Actually 100 years ago (roughly) petrol was in fact worse, there were no fuel stations, you had to buy fuel from a chemist. Only of course open during normal chemist hours.

Imagine that, how once something has mass adoption there will be a service industry spring up to meet that demand.

It wont happen overnight but it will come, and it is a darn sight easier for more EV points that fuel stations to spring up.
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Aug 2004
Posts
6,324
Location
New Jersey, USA
Im a big advocate of PHEVs, can make a lot more PHEVs from the cells in a single BEV. Just use Zap Map, choose where you want to stop on a journey and maybe a plan B incase its not working or a queue.

Reality of a PHEV doing long journeys on mainly EV is a pretty unrewarding & draining task, where as BEV I only ever really need to stop once.

I just rented a Range Rover Evoque P300e PHEV while back in the UK for 10 days and it just reinforced my opinion that PHEVs are a stupid compromise to be honest. It seemed really inefficient when the battery was flat (sub 30mpg!) and really inefficient in EV mode (no more than about 2 miles per kWh). On some longer trips starting with a full battery the economy seemed to settle at 42-45mpg which is probably what a regular diesel Evoque would have done but without using the electricity on top.

A full EV would have been much nicer.
 
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