Thinking of taking the plunge....

[WannabeOwner]

For longer journeys with a Tesla you will need to be prepared for strategic stops at Superchargers and this will slow your progress down compared to an ICE car

If 10% of your charging is at Supercharger your total stop time will be the same as your Forecourt time in ICE ... and on those journeys (i.e. more than 200 miles) you would probably stop for a pee too (albeit charging takes longer than peeing - if not: see your doctor )

Plus you can plug-in-and-walk-away at Supercharger, and make use of your time ... emails? ... which is a lot better than stand-and-pump and queue-to-pay

Works for my Man Maths anyway

the argument is about plug in with generator backup ... Hybrid without plug in is just a slightly more efficient ICE - pretty much irrelevant.

I'm very pro BEV with Range Extender (generator). I am carting around a tonne of battery just for the two days a month that I use it and, whilst the industry is battery-constrained, I am preventing two smaller-battery cars having been made. Car industry seems to be ditching them though (e.g. BMW i3 REX)

Range Extender would mean zero range anxiety too. I, and every BEV driver I know, is happy with range, but it would undoubtedly help Newbies. And solve the slow rollout of Rapid Chargers, and the leap-frog of batteries being able to cope with far better chargers than currently exist ... which we might yet have a couple more iterations of in the coming years.

 

[vitesse]

@WannabeOwner My meaning was that on a longer journey with several SC top ups overall total journey time will be longer. I also doubt I'll be 'extending' the speed limit routinely driving the Tesla on long trips

Both self-charge and plug-in hybrids make no sense to me for reasons already stated. I read somewhere that PHEVs are often not charged up as the owners couldn't be bothered or they had simply bought them to avoid the Congestion Charge.

Range extender electrics with an onboard ICE generator make more sense, but I'd prefer the space and weight to be allocated to a bigger battery.

 

[WannabeOwner]

on a longer journey with several SC top ups overall total journey time will be longer

Yes, I have often said its fine for the driver, an enforced stop every 150 miles may be a bit more than necessary, but "no bad thing", but its a PITA for a passenger whose journey just got longer. Travelling with kids can be better, they may well need a decent stop every couple of hours.

"Several SC top ups" ... that doesn't really happen to me in UK, it would if I drove to South of France though ... Sure, some folk will be doing Lands End to John O'Groats type journeys, but my out-of-range journeys are typically 200-350 miles, not 400+, and as such (if lucky with position of Supercharger) mostly only a one-stop-per-day deal.

Combine that with a meal (rarely works for me, so just Man maths again ) and its time neutral.

 

[12Pack]

I
I'm very pro BEV with Range Extender (generator). I am carting around a tonne of battery just for the two days a month that I use it and, whilst the industry is battery-constrained, I am preventing two smaller-battery cars having been made.

I get your point - but would be very concerned that I'm burning fossil fuels to generate my electricity - including my overall C footprint with two motors in tow.

BTW the battery industry is NOT in any way limited by resources - just the cost/kwh that is takes to manufacture them. We are working with several Asian suppliers now on next gen lower cost options.

Several companies (Albemarle in the lead) have developed significant improvement in Li mining as well as Li renewal.

 

[vitesse]

We will be going to France in the summer, so several stops, starting in the UK even before getting on the ferry. We also have friends in Cornwall and the Yorkshire Moors, both will need a couple of stops each way.

But thanks to the SCs, the refills are zero cost and we're very relaxed about the prospect of stops. We just need to plan more carefully and not leave late (quite a challenge for us! ).

Of course there are great tools for planning a SC route. I just hope we'll be OK with the NAV as we're devoted to the excellence of Waze, currently. I expect our journeys will be longer in distance because of optimisations for SC stops.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I just hope we'll be OK with the NAV as we're devoted to the excellence of Waze

I still use Waze on phone. Traffic data, police cars / roadworks / hazards are all much better handled by Waze. I have route on SatNav, set to MUTE, and route with voice on Waze and I go wherever Waze tells me (but it has taken me long-way around M25 to avoid traffic, so beware impact on Range / Charging). If car SatNav is different it adjusts soon enough after I drive the Waze route for a bit ... and having the huge map on screen I find helpful, and in difficult final-stage navigation I can switch to Satellite View and zoom right in

But, yeah, phone sliding around the dashboard or a cheap screen-sucker-mount isn't great ...

Long journeys will be longer, for sure, best planning you can do is to combine meal with a stop to recharge from 1% to 99%

 

[Midnight Star]

BTW the battery industry is NOT in any way limited by resources - just the cost/kwh that is takes to manufacture them. We are working with several Asian suppliers now on next gen lower cost options.

Several companies (Albemarle in the lead) have developed significant improvement in Li mining as well as Li renewal.

Exactly, a choice was made by the auto majors until recently not to invest in large scale battery manufacturing (until Tesla forced their hand) and now the resulting battery scarcity is used as the excuse to keep selling ICEs in their EVs.

Toyota for example, could have done a deal with a local supplier e.g Panasonic rather than having those Tesla upstarts do it...

 

[vitesse]

Tesla's relationship with Panasonic is currently in question, isn't it?

 

[banned-66611]

Exactly, a choice was made by the auto majors until recently not to invest in large scale battery manufacturing (until Tesla forced their hand) and now the resulting battery scarcity is used as the excuse to keep selling ICEs in their EVs.

Toyota for example, could have done a deal with a local supplier e.g Panasonic rather than having those Tesla upstarts do it...

Actually Nissan was the first to really mass produce automotive batteries and ship them in quality to the public. Tesla only passed Leaf cumulative sales this year.

Nissan tried to sell off their battery manufacturing arm. They had the same basic problem as Tesla/Panasonic - they couldn't compete with the lower cost of pouch cells and were falling behind on the R&D. The new Leaf 62kWh uses LG Chem cells.

 

[Midnight Star]

Nissan are one of the pioneers in affordable EVs, but as I understand it, their battery business eventually produced far more batteries than they needed as (unlike Tesla) it's not core to what Nissan do, and it also meant less flexibility in sourcing cheaper batteries when they needed them.

So it made sense to sell the battery business and give it a much bigger market to develop in

But they are not doing a Toyota afaik, claiming that batteries are rare etc. etc. hence no EVs

Re: Panasonic/Tesla - it does look like a troubled relationship - a natural side effect of "production hell" imo and their ongoing frustrations. Tesla having to consider alternatives in China I am sure doesn't help either

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Panasonic are rocking the boat as they can see a looming impact with Tesla’s acquisition of Maxwell Did Tesla Buy Maxwell for Its Ultracapacitors or Higher-Density Batteries? - ExtremeTech

Re WAZE. If you come across map changes needed which you can’t do yourself, or road closures, let me know. I’m one of the country managers for Waze maps in the UK

 

[vitesse]

Re WAZE. If you come across map changes needed which you can’t do yourself, or road closures, let me know. I’m one of the country managers for Waze maps in the UK

Good to know!

 

[WannabeOwner]

road closures

I was in crappy VW <spit> ICE the other night (humble apologies ... although I was the chase car for the EV ) and A14 shambles North of Cambridge on A14 was closed for a junction or two.

I've never had a SatNav upgrade for VW. Not sure how old it is but at least 5 years ...

Waze had no idea that A14 was closed, even though there was zero traffic on it. Bit of a surprise ...

... more of a surprise that the radio-connect on VW Satnav did, and took me the correct diversion route, as it happens - handy as if I had missed a single diversion sign, in the dark, I would have been stuffed ... Waze was intent on taking me back to the nearest A14 junction

 

[NorfolkMustard]

Yeah, we've had problems with the live closures data feed from highways agency last week.

No closures on A14 this weekend - Work starts again Tuesday 7th, probably 9pm -> 6am