Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Electric Cars

I spotted a Tesla limping along the A2 yesterday looking like it was running out of power. I'm sure it was one of the demo vehicles from the Tesla showroom at Bluewater. The devil in me said to go ask for a test drive just to see what their reaction was!

Happy 2020 for all. This year I own my Tesla Model S for 4 years and covered 100.000 km, without problems. Drove 3 times from Holland to Austria with 4 passengers and their luggage, no problems. Very good traction and handling in snow too! Was in Munich with the Tesla en regularly drive to Frankfurt where my eldest son live. No problems, the Model S 85D covers 350-400 km, in the Netherlands we have a dense charging network and Tesla has its own supercharging network. At home I can charge at 11 kW, that's 50 km/hr, so in the morning always a charged vehicle if needed, and in this winter preheated and defrosted! The thing is that you must anticipate and charge in advance, and you must rely on a good supercharging (or any super fast) network. Tesla made their homework the best in this.
We have always our 2019 petrol Mini Cooper as a back-up, but seldom need it for unanticipated long drives. But we do love driving the Mini besides driving the Morgan of course!😉

Hi Ruut, happy new year to you!
Great to hear you are happy wt your model S and getting the reliability one would expect. My views seem biased by taxi drivers take bring me home from Schiphol. Good to hear another opinion!
BTW, I have great positive experiences of driving to Austria wt my Mercedes S, what a comfort and relaxed (high speed) driving :-).
This year planning to go to Corsica wt Morgan.
Cheers,
Bert

Hi Bert, happy new year to you too!
Yes, the Tesla doesn't disappoint me. Before the Tesla, I drove the BMW's to Austria, so I know you're feeling. Nice trip to Corsica, something to anticipate for! I think we are heading to Tuscany with the Morgan this year!
Many happy miles, Ruut

I know what you mean about the Mini Ruut. As wonderful as the Coupe and ML63 are I love borrowing the wifes Cooper S R56 to clean the brakes from her very gentle use! It's so agile and immediate that you find yourself driving around the pot-holes which is no bad thing given the firm ride.

I am starting to soften my "don't care" attitude towards general electric cars but still cannot find one I actually want.

Wishing everyone a happy, calm and prosperous new year.

As I’ve previously posted I have two EV’s both of which serve as our normal vehicles, their batteries are fine and won’t crash and burn as seems to be the popular belief, there are still 2010 Nissan leafs running around with over 90% battery efficiency.
we’ve managed all the journeys we used to do in ice vehicles before and ok sometimes the public charging system can be a bit frustrating but with a modicum of planning is relatively easy.
Charging doesn’t take forever with the right equipment, in fact Nissan provided my first home charger with the car for free, not sure if they still do that.
My solar array and smart (zappi) charger ensure that most of my driving (13k miles in a year) is done for free, in winter I use the half price electricity (8p/kWh) that my tarrif provides overnight and all weekend.
I still use and love my 4.6 plus 8, but hope that my carbon footprint is not quite so damaging now.
Mainly I bought the EV’s due to the money I’ve saved.

Having recently been taken out for a spin in a Tesla, I can honestly say that I've been converted from a complete 'nay sayer' to an 'understander'.

However, for me, the numbers/savings just don't stack up.

I do about 10,000K a year in my little secondhand Corsa. I tend to replace every three years, at a cost of around £1000. It does about 43mpg, so fuel cost are around £1,300 a year. If I factor in tax, and purchase price, then it's around £1800 a year running costs.

An equivalent sized Nissan Leaf, costs about 4.1p per mile - so I'd save about £800 a year in fuel, and possible £200 in tax. £1000 in total.

Factor in the greatly increased cost of a second hand Leaf (2014 at around £8K) and it would take me about 6 years before I started seeing any savings, and by that time I'd probably need to replace the batteries.

Ref Reg's comment I wonder how you will recharge your electric car at home in 2040. The necessary improvements on range and therefore battery capacity will simply put greater demands on your home supply. Forget using a 13 amp socket, but recharging at say a feasible max of 11kW giving 50km/hr (as suggested by Ruut) will still need minimum of 10 hours for full charge, assuming you don't get trips from usage of power shower, heating or cooker during that time. It will also require a dedicated socket or charger hook up similar to that required for power shower. A dedicated supercharger point outside your front door will solve the problem but that's simply not going to happen within 20 years.

And lets not forget those of us who want to go on holiday. Every hotel/B&B etc will require a carpark space for every room, and each space will need a hook up. Every single camp/caravan site will need an additional hook up for each pitch.

Channel ports/Eurotunnel will need mutliple hookups before/after each crossing as I imagine many will be on the limit by the time they reach them. Airports will need them too. It's going to require a massive amount of investment to support tourism.

I would think it would be a very unusual usage profile indeed that required a car to be commuted 500km every day. Surely if one was out and about for that distance on a daily basis one would stop at a supercharger?

A much more realistic usage pattern would be something like 50km per day for 200 days a year for commuting to work, with something like 150 - 250km at weekends. In those cases a 16A supply would be entirely capable of keeping one's EV topped up to maximum without causing problems with overall electricity usage in the home. The supply to a domestic house is perfectly capable of supporting a constant 70A with a max of 100A.

Even if you did need to charge for 10 hours every night then not needing to drive your car from 10PM to 8AM is hardly a big deal, surely? It's not like you have to stand next to an EV supervising it while it charges like you do with an ICE.

20 years ago we didn't have ubiquitous smartphones, autonomous vehicles, quantum computers, 3D printing or CRISPR gene editing. A couple more decades of development should easily crack the EV charging problem.