Electric cars.

it will be a sad old day when the only car you can buy will be a Chinese one.
Surely the western governments are not going to let that happen, but maybe its part of the plan for forcing us all off the road and only the rich will have cars.

 

If you can afford an EV and are able to charge from home, then why not. The problem is, how many people who own cars would be unable to charge at home. According to fleet news, 44% of residential homes are unsuitable for charging EV's.

Almost half of UK homes ‘unsuitable’ for electric vehicles (fleetnews.co.uk)

So they will be dependent on the charging infrastructure and this is where the issues are.
Most manufacturers and auto journalists will publish the range of the vehicle and the speed their cars can charge. Tesla reduced the estimated range of a few of their models on the 4th of January, which in all fairness is no big deal as manufactures of ICE vehicles have over estimated the MPG in the past.

The real problem is the chargers and batteries regarding how quickly they can take a charge. There is a site that shows a list of EV's currently in the UK and how many miles can be added with just a 10 minute charge. Some cars were capable of adding over 100 miles with others as little as 20 miles. The problem is, these figures are based on charging your car in the sweet spot range and that no one else is utilizing the charger at the same time, otherwise your range can be cut in half. When Tesla opened up their chargers to all EV'S it showed how the installation of rapid chargers will not always work, many cars were using their chargers but are unable to take advantage of the faster chargers which results in queues as they have to wait longer. That's why fuel stations have designated bunker sites for HGV's, it keeps traffic moving.

When we took the lease out on our current Corsa, the only available EV Corsa at the time could only take a maximum charge of 50kWh. As we have a driveway, then the vast majority of time we would charge from home, but if we had no way of charging from home then we would spend more time waiting for the car to charge than fueling up at a garage.

 

My mate said exactly that when he moved to the far east as a sales rep for Volvo. He said the Chinese are coming and that was about 5 or 6 years ago.

They reckon China has probably overtaken Japan now as the worlds top auto exporter and that BYD has also over taken Tesla in global sales of EV's.

China is ‘certain’ to have overtaken Japan as the world’s top auto exporter in 2023, industry group says | CNN Business

I wonder how many other global car manufactures the Chinese are buying shares of?

 

As the car in the video is the Porsche Taycan I was a quite surprised at how slow it was at charging.

According to What Car, the porsche is one of the fastest charging EV's they have tested and is capable of charging at 270kWh, which can add 120 miles in 10 minutes. Porsche state it is capable of charging from 5% to 80% in 22.5 minutes

The fastest charging electric cars in the UK


I didn't here him say what the kWh speed was for the first charger but he did say the second was a 350kWh charger.

So the first charge cost him £18.50 and @85p per kWh that equals 21.76kWh which took 22 minutes to add 80 miles range, well short of the published figures. Now he says Ionity was a faster charger, well not really, he add 34.96 kWh which took 34 minutes. The only problem with this video, the first charge started and ended in the sweet spot 20%-80%, where in the second charge the car was at 99% charge when finished, there will of been a big drop off in the speeding charge after 80%. The real difference was in cost, Instavolt was 85p per kWh where Ionity worked out at 30p per kWh. At both charging stations, you could probably of filled an ICE car with fuel before the Porsche actually started taking a charge.

I do believe the Porsche is capable of adding 120 miles in 10 minutes but you would need to be the only vehicle occupying the charger which is capable of delivering 270kWh plus, otherwise you will never charge it by the published figures.

 

The more I hear about EVs the more complicated it seems to get, i guess if you can charge at home most of the time none of this crap matters.
I start getting a bit worried when my phone goes below 50% so not sure what I would be like if I had an EV.

 

The guy who made the video doesn't help either. He is slagging electric cars off, yet he purchased a £100k plus electric car. He also gives Ionity the big thumbs up, which is probably down to the cheaper kWh price he is paying and is probably subsidised by Porsche. According to Ionity website, the cost per kWh is 74p and 56p per kWh when you subscribe and pay £10.99 a month, the guy is a muppet.

 

I didn't watch the video, I was referring to all that crap about different charging and speeds of charging, it just sounds like a nightmare to get your head round.

I think anyone who spends that kind of money on something, that to my mind is still experimental, has to be mental.

 

I got the feeling he was cheesed off about the depreciation of EV's, which is understandable if he paid £120k. The Porsche has not been immune to the rapid depreciation of EV's over the last 12 months. To say we need more Ionity chargers and then say "Please, don't buy an electric car", seemed a bit odd. It reminded me of Telsa owners who were not happy when Tesla opened up their chargers to every other manufacturer, it resulted in queue's were more likely which increased the length of time it was taking to get a charge. Not all of them had this opinion I must point out but there are plenty of Tesla owners who still believe that they should be the only ones allowed to use Tesla chargers.

 

Sixt to Phase Out Teslas From Rental Car Fleet on Poor Resale Value

About this time last year I posted a comment saying many customers who had taken delivery of their new Tesla cars in December 2022 felt cheated.

As Tesla were not going to meet their 2022 sales target, those would had placed orders for a Tesla for early 2023 delivery received emails in the last quarter saying if they took delivery before late December, forget the exact date, they would receive 6000 miles free charging. Then in January 2023, Tesla slashes the prices across the range. Those who had took delivery sooner would of been able to cancel their order for a full refund under the long distance sales act, problem was when the price cuts were announced the 30 day period had expired.

By slashing the prices this has caused a domino effect on the second hand market and explains why the likes of Hertz and Sixt have decided to drop Tesla.

Tesla again announced price cuts in October 2023, again to meet delivery goals.

https://www.reuters.com/business/au...ices-model-3-models-y-vehicles-us-2023-10-06/

The question is, by slashing prices is it pushing the uptake in EV's or the opposite as buyers now feel that the depreciation of second hand EV's will accelerate even more as more price cuts could be on the horizon. Maybe a good time to buy a second hand EV but holding back on purchasing new.

 

I wonder if this is the same bloke.

https://forums.m3cutters.co.uk/threads/porsche-taycans-have-bombed-in-depreciation.264311/

Looks like it is

I bought an EV and regret it - I've lost so much money... no one will insure it

I wonder if he would have made those videos if the valuation of his car hadn't tanked, probably not.