Random EV thoughts.....

AndyBoBandy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121831795#Comment_121831795

yep, stayed in a hotel just outside Galway last month, and chose to stay at the one with 8x AC chargers in the carpark, and although they cost more than the 2 Tesla Superchargers I'd pass on the way home, I still topped up to 98% at the hotel as it meant I could get all the way home without a stop...

Judging by the responses to the Facebook posts above, the hotel should be fairly busy over the next few weeks/months, and that spike in bookings alone will have probably paid a good chunk of the CapEx of installing the chargers back to the hotel... win win...

obi604

Hi

Maybe not the right thread.....

I haven’t had to do a vehicle report in about 4 years so am out of the loop a bit. What’s the best one these days- cartell, motorcheck etc

specifically looking for one that mentions Cat C or Cat D

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121832692#Comment_121832692

Youtube tells me it's carvertical in every second video despite having premium YT

KCross

Apple have bowed out of the EV space

https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/technology/arid-41341718.html

I think they poached a bunch of Tesla folk at one point. Elon is apparently happy about the development!

joe1303l

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121832692#Comment_121832692

Motorcheck would appear to be the most recommended but I wouldn’t 100% trust any of them. Maybe get a mechanic to check if you’re suspicious. https://www.backroads.ie/forum/car-related/r-roads/955509-vehicle-history-checks

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121833383#Comment_121833383

It’s almost certainly the case that they’ve decided the car market is too regulated for them, and indeed also that heavy duty software projects like level 4/5 FSD isn’t possible with current cars and hardware (this decision probably foretells the next few years of the Teslas level 2 driver assistant too, and that it won’t be possible for Tesla to accept insurance liability, which is now the L3 benchmark).

Apple have a great opportunity to own the in-car software without having to think about building a whole car - I sit into my car every day and wireless Apple CarPlay is onscreen before my ass is even on the seat, and I never ever use anything else.

i actually think I won’t buy any more cars that don’t have it.

the new versions of CarPlay can control the instrument clusters too, and they’ll go that direction now.

and finally - I think with all the Ai hype, Apple have a chance to move thousands of top engineers on to their Ai projects and push those instead.

wassie

It’s almost certainly the case that they’ve decided the car market is too regulated for them...

I would think ultimately it purely economic decision. Apple were years away from producing a car and would have accepted the simple fact that building cars at scale is very, very difficult and very, very expensive. To do so from scratch is even more challenging.

With global demand for EVs cooling, increasing cost of capital and logistic challenges, it just gets harder to justify the money required to continue development for an uncertain result.

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121836660#Comment_121836660

Well the solution to ‘difficult’ is hiring thousands of industry experts, which they did, many from Tesla.

the solution to ‘expensive’ is money, plain and simple - and they have more cash reserves than any company on the planet.

look at mobile phone or PC regulations - there’s almost nothing about the design of a mobile that’s affected by the reg’s, whereas the design and build of a car is completely dictated by regulations.

apple can control the in-car experience by becoming the manufacturer ICE for both screen and instruments.

apple CarPlay is a class leader by a considerable margin for 3rd party ICE software. I can’t imagine not having it. That’s far cheaper than having Foxconn factories building you a car, and clearly the price stickiness for EVs has completely evaporated, even those much-discussed Tesla margins are starting to drop below 15-20% and will go lower - and we know how Apple loves margin.

theres very little attractiveness to building your own EV at this point in time. Watch governments change those 2030/35 guidelines in the coming months and years

innrain

Who said Tesla makes efficient cars? 😊. My school run this morning took only 2 hours.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121839003#Comment_121839003

You didn't take a Tesla car today by the looks of it, you had a Tesla space heater on wheels. I'd love to see the breakdown of your energy consumption for that trip.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121833383#Comment_121833383

Apple can't even make their own hardware. They hadn't a hope of competing.

wassie

Fisker have outsourced their production of the Ocean to an established manufacturer, which resolved by and large the issue of initial build quality normally associated with a startup (Think Tesla!). But it has a couple of downsides. It adds margin to every car built, at a time when they are struggling to be profitable. It also makes it challenging to scale up massively if they do somehow manage to become successful.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121836717#Comment_121836717

Well the solution to ‘difficult’ is hiring thousands of industry experts, which they did, many from Tesla.

the solution to ‘expensive’ is money, plain and simple - and they have more cash reserves than any company on the planet.

Thats what Apple had and they still failed. Project Titan was a multi-billion dollar effort involving a couple thousand people over a decade and they still had was no realistic timeframe on production of a car. Ultimately they also have shareholders they have to answer to who expect a return on investment.

Regulatory requirements aside, simply building cars at scale (and being profitable) is hard

As Musk said in 2019

"It's relatively easy to make a prototype but extremely difficult to mass manufacture a vehicle reliably at scale. Even for rocket science, it's probably a factor of 10 harder to design a manufacturing system for a rocket than to design the rocket. For cars it's maybe 100 times harder to design the manufacturing system than the car itself."

"The issue is not about coming up with a car design — it's absolutely about the production system," Musk said. "You want to have a good product to build, but that's basically the easy part. The factory is the hard part."

sk8board

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121840769#Comment_121840769

That’s all absolutely correct - I think the point I was making is that their close ties with Foxconn does help much of the production headache - this wasn’t a knee jerk reaction/decision - they’ll have seen the tumbling margins on EVs and the fact that no one has level 3/4 self driving capability for the foreseeable future, capable of accepting insurance liability. It’s all the things that Apple hate - low margin, heavily regulated markets where no one in their right mind would pay much money for FSD for the coming decade.

Apple like to refine rather than innovate, so “taking a car and making it better” does suit them investigating it - but they haven’t spent a decade looking at how to build a car, they’ve spent a decade on FSD software - and FSD progress recently is genuinely going in reverse, with lots of well known trails being canned, simply because of the complexity and cost, and distinct lack of interest among buyers in paying for it.

unkel

@wassie - great post

"Fisker have outsourced their production of the Ocean to an established manufacturer, which resolved by and large the issue of initial build quality normally associated with a startup (Think Tesla!). But it has a couple of downsides. It adds margin to every car built, at a time when they are struggling to be profitable. It also makes it challenging to scale up massively if they do somehow manage to become successful."

This is very problematic in this dog eat dog disruption, which will be largely won by the Chinese. Unless you can come up with an exotic / USP / high end car. And even with sheer unlimited oil dollar funding and the best people (like Lucid), this is proving near impossible. I admire Apple for finally making this decision and throw away the billions they spent on it because they realised they couldn't do it.

sk8board

https://www.donedeal.ie/view/36164714

nothing terribly interesting about the car itself, but v interesting that the reason for sale is that they don’t have access to charging at their work anymore (and live in an apartment).

my random EV thought is - if company policies like that might become a thing in the near future - companies with lots of driving commuters who are plugging into underground car parks, bringing in a policy to stop it.

i remember a model S and a golf E appeared in our underground car park in maybe 2016, and it only took a few months for the company to tell them to charge their cars at home. That policy hasn’t changed.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121853783#Comment_121853783

I wonder about that ad. Would someone really buy a €50k brand new car only because they have free work charging? And the same car wouldn't be suitable without the work charging? That sounds fairly dodgy to me. Or at least reckless. And I wonder after the loss of that work charging, did they investigate at all if they could charge elsewhere? Selling a car and buying another one is for most people something that sets them back thousands in transaction costs alone...

Based in Tipp and car used for commuting on motorway to work. Not that many motorways in Tipp and there are several fast chargers around there too, incl a big Tesla Supercharger...

wassie

Sells EV as no longer has charging at work......buys an ICE to purchase fuel at service station.

🤔

MightyMunster

If he sells at that price he'd almost break even on upgrading to a brand new Model 3 just on the savings he made on fuel alone (~€12,000)

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121854033#Comment_121854033

Does say that he lives in an apartment. With public charging rates, ICE is likely cheaper/easier unfortunately.

Also needs a NCT but that shouldnt be an issue,My Niro just needed tyres.

wassie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121854627#Comment_121854627

Maybe not. He/She is the 2nd owner......might be having buyers remorse!

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121854673#Comment_121854673

Not quite cheaper, not by a long stretch. Presuming he would use a Tesla supercharger at about 35c (last time I looked), his 30k km per would cost him €1600. In diesel it would cost €2000 more per year

graememk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121854782#Comment_121854782

Seems to be in Clonmel, Tipp. I dont know that end of the country, (and where the superchargers are) Ecars like like 65 c PAYG for a fast charge. That would nearly double the charge cost.

listermint

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121836717#Comment_121836717

Controversial opinion. To some.. android auto is better.

Saying apples is a class leader is frankly marketing stuff. It's not

sk8board

My point wasnt at all specific to this M3 driver, and more related to Company policies being introduced to stop employees leeching off the plugs in the company car park - that’s certainly what happened at our place, and it was 8 years ago.

drivers are always quick to say “I can charge at work”, but I’m guessing in almost all cases their employers would prefer they wouldn’t.

as EVs become more prevalent, especially for commuting workers, that’s likely to change imho

MightyMunster

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855500#Comment_121855500

All the companies I've worked in the last few years are installing more and more chargers. I wouldn't recommend using ordinary sockets day in day out for charging.

Some places it's free others it's not. 21c in the current place which is around 25% of the running cost of my wife's BMW.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121854782#Comment_121854782

For 400 quid per year in his situation I'd take the diesel too.

CoBo55

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855756#Comment_121855756

2400 it's 2000 extra, that's how I interpreted the post.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855706#Comment_121855706

There seems to be a split between large businesses installing multiple free chargers, and smaller businesses installing one or two which may or may not be paid

I imagine a big site with several hundred employees isn't going to notice the increase in consumption as much as a shop in Dublin with an employee who charges up by 50kWh every day on the day rate

Having said that, in the past I worked for a large multinational company which has no shortage of money and who decided to install paid chargers. They got a CPO to set up the payment system, and since it was generally more expensive than the night rate they rarely got used

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855785#Comment_121855785

Even so, to avoid relying on public charging I'd probably still pay the extra.

unkel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121857487#Comment_121857487

You probably wouldn't if you'd pass a SuC on your commute where you would need to stop twice a week? Remember the €2000 fuel difference is only part of the savings. At 30k km per year the maintenance on a diesel would be pretty brutal and never mind if something goes wrong