Random EV thoughts.....

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.

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."

@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.

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...

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)

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

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

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

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

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

Agreed. First thing I ask if someone is looking for my opinion if they should buy an EV is: "do you have home or work charging?"

If no, then I would tell them not to buy an EV...

Meanwhile in Limerick…

Brave, very brave, Three all-new electric vehicles will spearhead Jaguar’s rebirth as an EV-only carmaker.

@the_amazing_raisin - "Worth remembering Jaguar is one part of JLR so there'll still be plenty of petrol or diesel Range Rovers to keep the money flowing in"

Didn't car snob Harry Metcalfe recently give up his EV and bought a £150k RR diesel because it made more financial sense? LOL according to him, conveniently he didn't show any of the math behind that. Some people and their money 😂 His depreciation will be off the scale on that yoke.

A cynical person may be inclined to think it makes financial sense when you include the YouTube sponsorship deal

"This video was brought to you by BP corporation, bringing you life changing experiences like Deepwater Horizon" 😏

Speaking of depreciation and having heads buried in sand, spotted Bright Ford selling a used 221 ID.3 for €37k! I honestly did a double take thinking I'd misread it

Some dreamer there, you can get a new one for that price. Reckon some salesman gave a trade in price well over market thinking he could get a quick sale and turn a profit. Now he has to deal with this annoying thing called reality

I was tempted to go in and offer €20k just to see the look of annoyance on their faces 😂