Random EV thoughts.....

www.warpnews.org/transportation/new-test-81-miles-increased-range-for-electric-cars/

UFO Drive is a good one for rental if available in the location. I don't think there's any min and charging is all included. You pre-book for a block of kms and if over then per km.

thats still a pain in practical terms.

With a petrol car you can fill it at any number of stations within a few km of the airport in a couple of minutes. You can pay for the fuel with your card or cash, to a human at a till. The only complication is for americans who arent used to pumping their own petrol!!

With a rental EV, and you a tourist with no clue of the charging infrastructure or charging speeds or possible little to no experience of EVs (at this stage, probably the latter), and all the info you need hidden in a myriad of apps, which require data packages abroad (and for most tourists, you rent abroad) - its a headwrecker.

I can very much imagine using the UFO model where they take the pain out of the charging procedure, but until the other companies cop themselves on I'll be renting only petrol or diesel from them.

I have witnessed a painful EV rental experience this year at Hertz Manchester. A colleague of mine arrived one day ahead so he was in charge of renting. I didn't know what he got but not little was the surprise when he pointed us to "my" car. A blue 2021 Tesla 3LR with only 9k miles. It turned out it was the only reasonable availability. Hertz staff didn't explain one little thing, there was a QR code on the dash but "who has the time". The car started popping errors and at some point it was lit as a xmas tree. Even the headlights were flashing. I kid you not. I have never seen a rental in such a bad shape, and I rented from some dodgy places in my life. Again the guy didn't want to sped a minute looking into this. For example we visited a business campus where I counted at least 40 AC chargers. He could have plugged in but no. I have no time for this. On the way back we charged at a BP close to the airport which turned out very slow. about 35kW which took us plenty of time. So the guy was not really impressed by the whole EV experience and swears "never ever".

My own experience in Zurich was that they charged me a petrol tank just to see how clueless the desk staff were. They gave me a Leaf but didn't know what battery size.

Ref Dublin airport there is Radisson with its chargers which should alleviate the charging issue. I got steady 60kW from the DC. If travel from afar one could plan to arrive earlier and have a bite to eat there instead of whatever it is served at the airport's food outlets (reluctant to call them restaurants). If only a top up needed, parking is free for 20 mins that about 20kWh or about 30% of battery.

very Interesting technology - let’s see if/when it trickles down

see the info in the post in the link below

https://www.instagram.com/p/CtgXN6HNbzc/?igshid=YmM0MjE2YWMzOA==

Trabant, you've just become cool and trendy 💕💕

Wonder when it breaks, will you need a new "gearbox"?

Trying to stay relevant, they need a rethink.

To be fair that is fairly crap

I'm in France at the moment and passed some random Total motorway service station outside Paris which had around 8-12 150kW Delta chargers

The station across the motorway had another bunch of HPCs

Despite that I've seen a fraction of the number of EVs here as in Ireland

Don't insult my Bluey 😉

To be fair, I've spotted a few and EVs are selling well enough in France, I just feel like they're probably selling well in cities and not suburbs (I'm outside Paris at the moment)

I've seen a few Tesla's so far, a Citroen eC4 and I think I spotted an ID.4 and a C40 recharge

Out of the probably couple of thousand cars I spotted yesterday, that's not the best statistics

What boggles my mind is that this is despite electricity being dirt cheap in France and petrol being as expensive as Ireland from what I've seen. You'd think an EV would be an absolute no brainer here

I've been in French cities and the amount of old cars is staggering, stuff we don't have any more. I know they have a car industry there but still.

Old Renault with the numbering system they used to have are still a sight there, Renault 5, Renault 18, 11 etc...as well as pre 2000 Clios and Peugeot 205, 309 etc

Great to see actually. They aren't everywhere but walk around a city and you'll see a few

Really?

You took the Model 3 dimensions with mirrors but ID.4 without 😜

ID.4 is 2.108m with mirrors and Model 3 is 1.85m without mirrors

Model 3 is longer though so it does actually have the bigger footprint

ID.4 is surprisingly compact considering it's a CUV, pretty sure it'll fit into a Tiguan footprint

Think the problem is more the tank-sized range rovers and large SUV's rather than sedans and crossovers.

Yes I would, I only used the ID4 as an example. I much prefer the M3 to the MY and consider it a pity that Tesla didn't release a hatchback version of the M3 rather than the much larger MY. Listen I've no interest in SUVs but I've nothing against SUVs per se, but I think it unfortunate that both the car industry and Govt incentives are incentiviising the sale of larger EVs at the expense of smaller cars especially for urban settings.