Has the electric car bubble burst?

[Costafortune]

My mate is babysiting a 2017 Model S.

The range is 200 miles. It loses 5+ miles a day without use. It will take 2.5 to 3 hours to supercharge it from 100 to 220 miles, costing about 30 quid if you don't get it free.

It costs £20 to do the same mileage in a 2015 diesel S Class (he owns one).

[rolesyboy]

Interesting. I run a 2022 Model Y every day. On the occasions where I’ve opted to use a Supercharger it takes 40 minutes from empty to give me 330 miles. I pay 9 pence per kWh at home which is under half the cost of a Supercharger.
On the basis that your mate charged the Tesla at a Supercharger station which costs double per kWh (which is the highest cost I have found for charging) then it would cost half that amount at home. That equates to £15 ie less than the indicated £20 to run the Merc. You don’t get the option of half price diesel
Based on your figures Teslas have come a long way in just a few years with a 50% increase in range and a massively reduced charging time. Imagine the progress we will see in another 5 years!!

[Costafortune]

It takes 5 minutes to fill that Merc. 20 gallon tank, range about 600 miles.

I'll leave it at Heathrow long term for two weeks in the depths of winter, and the range will be exactly the same as it was.

Progress with EV's? I hope so!

[Polarsilver]

not quite on topic but what do we know about hybrid cars .. perhaps a better alternative to full EV .. i know nothing about either.

[Richspec]

a better option i think as the engine can be very small and basically a generator for the electric side.
my works van is a mild hybrid, the engine stores juice into a small battery that's supposed to boost back into the system when required, most of the time you cant tell its there, there is some increased engine braking, noticed when new, i don't notice it now.
You cant tell its doing anything apart from high gear low rpm where you can sometimes feel a lurch as it clumsily drops torque back into the flywheel / generator system.

[Costafortune]

My uncle has a new (last year) Yaris hybrid. It's a fantastic thing capable of 70 mpg.

Toyota built the first Prius over 25 years ago now.

[Costafortune]

Interesting. I run a 2022 Model Y every day. On the occasions where I’ve opted to use a Supercharger it takes 40 minutes from empty to give me 330 miles. I pay 9 pence per kWh at home which is under half the cost of a Supercharger.
On the basis that your mate charged the Tesla at a Supercharger station which costs double per kWh (which is the highest cost I have found for charging) then it would cost half that amount at home. That equates to £15 ie less than the indicated £20 to run the Merc. You don’t get the option of half price diesel
Based on your figures Teslas have come a long way in just a few years with a 50% increase in range and a massively reduced charging time. Imagine the progress we will see in another 5 years!!

CAR magazine has an EV test this month. Model Y, BMW iX1 ands a Merc EQB.

They didn't get the official 331 miles range but 235 miles and 3.2 miles per kWh. The BMW did 200/2.7 and the Merc 195/2.7.

£52,000 though!

[rolesyboy]

Is this the same 'Car Magazine' reporting on their findings of the Model Y?

"The Long Range officially manages 315 miles, and it lives up to that billing from a full charge on a mild autumnal day. A robust range above 300 miles still feels pretty exceptional and will make charging anxiety a less frequent concern for many owners."
Comparatively similar findings to my real life ones.
Full article here
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-revie ... del-y-suv/

[Costafortune]

The very same.

Maybe it was a bad one as also they complained about the build quality.

The Merc won the test btw.

[rolesyboy]

So completely inconsistent reporting on the same car from the same magazine. I did wonder if this second article was lifted from the South Korean publication??
I would not trust the 'Car' Magazine reviews on that basis. If I did I wouldn't know which issue to believe.
Either way it shows that we can all have a different perspective on things (& gives you a measure of the quality of their editorial staff)

I am happy to go with my own findings and personal/real world experience. Which thus far have been excellent. The Tesla powertrain is remarkable.
Is the build quality on par with a modern day BMW or Mercedes? Perhaps not. I considered the BMW i4 which was lovely but when I matched the options that came as standard with the Tesla it bumped the price up to nearer £75k. The Tesla is very good and its an incredibly practical and rapid car. And its one of the few EVs that currently allows you to tow a good sized caravan.
Does it cause me range anxiety -no more than my other ICE cars. I keep an eye on the range and if it gets low I charge it.

In answer to the original question 'Has the electric car bubble burst?' its an emphatic no.
The fact that practically every motoring magazine has 'EV this' or 'EV that' on the cover is pretty telling that the only way is up.
The EV market is just going to get bigger and better. Even Mercedes are doing it.

Great debate but too much of a time sink. Much love x

[Costafortune]

The Germans are hedging their bets but the German car industry - a very powerful lobby - is now pushing back.

They are seemingly not going to sign and neither are the Italians.

https://europe.autonews.com/environment ... many-italy

In reality there is room for both EV and ICE.

Personally - I'd love a Honda E for local driving.

[Exminiman]

Personally - I'd love a Honda E for local driving. :

Thats the one I was thinking of, really like the look, range is just too small though for the odd busy day

So max of 130 miles, realistically, range anxiety at about 100, which is too low.

And £36k plus

Bit of a mini vibe, looks wise….IMHO

35E89811-395D-483C-9824-9C387D516E39.jpeg

[johnv]

not sure I'd have liked to have been stuck for 6 hours on the M62 in an electric car last night though

[Costafortune]

not sure I'd have liked to have been stuck for 6 hours on the M62 in an electric car last night though

Well, exactly.

However:

This is what I call an interior. What a fantastic bit of design. If I had to have an EV for town driving I'd buy one like a shot.

[Costafortune]

Personally - I'd love a Honda E for local driving. :

Thats the one I was thinking of, really like the look, range is just too small though for the odd busy day

So max of 130 miles, realistically, range anxiety at about 100, which is too low.

And £36k plus

Bit of a mini vibe, looks wise….IMHO

36k isn't unreasonable but it needs a solid 200 mile range.

Definitely a Mini vibe. More Mini like than the atrocities BMW have planned.

Look at this nonsense.

Mini Shiteman?

[mab01uk]

Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars....



Between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.
“We could see inside people's garages and their private properties,” said another former employee. “Let's say that a Tesla customer had something in their garage that was distinctive, you know, people would post those kinds of things.”
Tesla didn't respond to detailed questions sent to the company for this report.
Two ex-employees said they weren’t bothered by the sharing of images, saying that customers had given their consent or that people long ago had given up any reasonable expectation of keeping personal data private. Three others, however, said they were troubled by it.
“It was a breach of privacy, to be honest. And I always joked that I would never buy a Tesla after seeing how they treated some of these people,” said one former employee.
Another said: “I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don't think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected … We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”
One former employee saw nothing wrong with sharing images, but described a function that allowed data labelers to view the location of recordings on Google Maps as a “massive invasion of privacy.”
David Choffnes, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, called sharing of sensitive videos and images by Tesla employees “morally reprehensible.”
“Any normal human being would be appalled by this,” he said. He noted that circulating sensitive and personal content could be construed as a violation of Tesla’s own privacy policy — potentially resulting in intervention by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which enforces federal laws relating to consumers’ privacy.
“People who walked by these vehicles were filmed without knowing it. And the owners of the Teslas could go back and look at these images,” said DPA board member Katja Mur in a statement. “If a person parked one of these vehicles in front of someone’s window, they could spy inside and see everything the other person was doing. That is a serious violation of privacy.”
The watchdog determined it wasn’t Tesla, but the vehicles’ owners, who were legally responsible for their cars’ recordings. It said it decided not to fine the company after Tesla said it had made several changes to Sentry Mode, including having a vehicle’s headlights pulse to inform passers-by that they may be being recorded.
In interviews, two former employees said in their normal work duties they were sometimes asked to view images of customers in and around their homes, including inside garages.
“I sometimes wondered if these people know that we're seeing that,” said one.
“I saw some scandalous stuff sometimes, you know, like I did see scenes of intimacy but not nudity,” said another. “And there was just definitely a lot of stuff that like, I wouldn't want anybody to see about my life.”
As an example, this person recalled seeing “embarrassing objects,” such as “certain pieces of laundry, certain sexual wellness items … and just private scenes of life that we really were privy to because the car was charging.”
One of the perks of working for Tesla as a data labeler in San Mateo was the chance to win a prize – use of a company car for a day or two, according to two former employees.
But some of the lucky winners became paranoid when driving the electric cars.
“Knowing how much data those vehicles are capable of collecting definitely made folks nervous," one ex-employee said.
The Full Report by Reuters:-
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesl ... 023-04-06/

I think I will stick with my 'old' ICE cars with no factory fitted cameras for as long as possible...

[Polarsilver]

interesting that no one seems to understand or care that EV cars are Heavy .. i wonder how many homes with "bodge it & scarper" Block Paved Drives perhaps will show signs of subsidence under the wheels after a few years of EV Parking & Road Potholes will become just maybe worse.

Can i ask what type of Jack is provided with say a Tesla .. or do you need to call the AA/RAC/ Green Flag ?

Good informative write up on a EV MINI in April Cooper World...

[Ronnie]

On the BBC radio news this morning, some report stating that many multi story car parks will not cope well with the extra weight.

[Peter Laidler]

And battery life only guaranteed to 8 years. Any idea of replacement cost anyone.....?

[trevorhp]

I wouldn't be worried about the replacement cost ..more about where they are burying the old ones now Portugal is full