Random EV thoughts.....

MJohnston · 28-07-2020 12:06am

I despise all SUVs but the Outlander has to be one of the worst of them. Saw one at the charging spots in Dundrum once and it could barely fit into two spaces. American market designed utter ****e.

unkel · 28-07-2020 12:09am

Outlander is not that big. Are you sure it wasn't a Tesla Model X you spotted?

MJohnston · 28-07-2020 12:22am

unkel wrote: »

Outlander is not that big. Are you sure it wasn't a Tesla Model X you spotted?

Oh I’m sure there are bigger tanks out there for those who...well I can’t say anything charitable about the owners of these things, but the Outlander is maybe the one I see the most. Detestable thing.

unkel · 28-07-2020 1:00am

The Outlander is smaller in foot print than a Skoda Octavia

You must have got your cars mixed up. Outlander is tiny!

liamog · 28-07-2020 2:43am

Kramer wrote: »

Apart from the aged interior & a few other things I didn't like, I liked the Outlander PHEV & considered it in 2018. I drove Mitsubishi commercial 4x4s for years & found them very reliable too.

It had great space, could tow 1,500Kg & was affordable. Nothing much else had that, in either full BEV or PHEV.

If they had implented 22kW AC charging instead of CHAdeMO then I wouldn't call them a scourge. You are not wrong though, it's still unrivaled in the affordable end of electrified cars that can tow. I wonder if the Enyaq will be the natural successor.

MJohnston · 28-07-2020 8:42am

unkel wrote: »

The Outlander is smaller in foot print than a Skoda Octavia

You must have got your cars mixed up. Outlander is tiny!

Ugh, please, never describe an SUV as tiny.

unkel · 28-07-2020 10:00am

Look the dimensions up for yourself if you don't trust me! Outlander is tall, as it is an SUV, but the footprint is small (smaller than Octavia), and that was what you were complaining about. Of course you are right that the car barely fitted in a car parking space. That's because those are designed for small cars from the 60s and cars have grown a bit since then

McGiver · 28-07-2020 10:02am

liamog wrote: »

If they had implented 22kW AC charging instead of CHAdeMO then I wouldn't call them a scourge. You are not wrong though, it's still unrivaled in the affordable end of electrified cars that can tow. I wonder if the Enyaq will be the natural successor.

Enyaq is going to be good. Looking forward. The specs seem good. Not a fan of SUVs but this one is going to be so much better than Kona etc

unkel · 28-07-2020 10:05am

My thoughts too. We have already seen ample evidence of what happens when a car giant wakes up and seriously starts investing and then producing some quality EVs. VW is wide awake and gave us the eTron, the Taycan and now the ID.3. The Enyaq should be a proper Tesla Model Y competitor.

Hope the other car giants will follow, or they will die.

Cyrus · 28-07-2020 10:18am

unkel wrote: »

My thoughts too. We have already seen ample evidence of what happens when a car giant wakes up and seriously starts investing and then producing some quality EVs. VW is wide awake and gave us the eTron, the Taycan and now the ID.3. The Enyaq should be a proper Tesla Model Y competitor.

Hope the other car giants will follow, or they will die.

you would imagine that in 5 years time VW will have taken a proper foothold in the market, they are quite a bit ahead of mercedes, bmw et al

28-07-2020 10:24am

unkel wrote: »

Hope the other car giants will follow, or they will die.

Especially when you consider that there are several Chines car makers out there who are starting to produce quality EV's.
The Polestar II being one of many coming our way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cwD50F_RWw

Cyrus · 28-07-2020 10:26am

Deleted User wrote: »

Especially when you consider that there are several Chines car makers out there who are starting to produce quality EV's.
The Polestar II being one of many coming our way.

polestar is a volvo though its not really representative of a chinese company or am i being unfair?

McGiver · 28-07-2020 10:29am

unkel wrote: »

My thoughts too. We have already seen ample evidence of what happens when a car giant wakes up and seriously starts investing and then producing some quality EVs. VW is wide awake and gave us the eTron, the Taycan and now the ID.3. The Enyaq should be a proper Tesla Model Y competitor.

Hope the other car giants will follow, or they will die.

Well you bundle the whole VW together but Skoda has its own R&D, design independent of VW Deutschland etc in Czechia. Of course it's part of the VW but it doesn't equal the VW. Of course VW made a good move with the MEB platform, that will create efficiencies and synergies.

Happy to see Skoda Enyaq, Vision iV, plus PHEV models ramping up.

I see Enyaq as Kona competiror and Vision as Model Y competitor though.

ELM327 · 28-07-2020 10:50am

Cyrus wrote: »

polestar is a volvo though its not really representative of a chinese company or am i being unfair?

Volvo is a chinese company now afaik

Like JLR are owned by TATA

Cyrus · 28-07-2020 10:54am

ELM327 wrote: »

Volvo is a chinese company now afaik

Like JLR are owned by TATA

yes i know that, but i wouldnt call them chinese cars personally, i dont think any of the chinese domestic co's have produced anything nearly as good.

ELM327 · 28-07-2020 11:13am

Cyrus wrote: »

yes i know that, but i wouldnt call them chinese cars personally, i dont think any of the chinese domestic co's have produced anything nearly as good.

MG ZS is an actual chinese car and seems ok in EV form.
Bjorn has been testing some "I can't believe it's not Tesla" Chinese copies too.

I mean, I'd never under any circumstances drive a chinese car, too unsafe, but they seem to be doing ok.

McGiver · 28-07-2020 1:15pm

ELM327 wrote: »

MG ZS is an actual chinese car and seems ok in EV form.
Bjorn has been testing some "I can't believe it's not Tesla" Chinese copies too.

I mean, I'd never under any circumstances drive a chinese car, too unsafe, but they seem to be doing ok.

Given the EV penetration in China, their tech and industrial advances in last decade or so, I think the Chinese are on track to be the next Koreans very soon. They'll compete by price first.

Exactly the same happened with the Japanese and then the Koreans. Look where the Koreans are now. Back in the day nobody would touch a Japanese or Korean car when they were the newcomers to the market - they all had "Asian crap" rep.

JPA · 28-07-2020 1:18pm

10 years ago Huawei and xiaomi were tat you'd be embarrassed to use, now they are mainstream, it will happen to cars too.

28-07-2020 2:02pm

ELM327 wrote: »

MG ZS is an actual chinese car and seems ok in EV form.
Bjorn has been testing some "I can't believe it's not Tesla" Chinese copies too.

I mean, I'd never under any circumstances drive a chinese car, too unsafe, but they seem to be doing ok.

It's only a matter of time before they start producing cars that have comparable safety ratings with the best of what the Euro car makers produce, that's assuming they don't already. Having said that, there's no denying just how bad their early cars were!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ULm6QrC428

Edit: if you can trust them here is a website of Chinese car crash tests, some "no star cars" https://www.chinesecars.net/free-information/crash-tests

liamog · 31-07-2020 1:59pm

Some people will be amazed to find that the eGolf, etron and e208 are outselling the Leaf in Europe https://pushevs.com/2020/07/30/european-bev-sales-in-h1-2020/

ELM327 · 31-07-2020 2:13pm

McGiver wrote: »

Given the EV penetration in China, their tech and industrial advances in last decade or so, I think the Chinese are on track to be the next Koreans very soon. They'll compete by price first.

Exactly the same happened with the Japanese and then the Koreans. Look where the Koreans are now. Back in the day nobody would touch a Japanese or Korean car when they were the newcomers to the market - they all had "Asian crap" rep.

We had a mitsubishi Galant in the late 80s. This is not the asian crap, this is specific to the Chinese market.

If I could live my life without buying anything from China again I'd be delighted. But that's not possible.

McGiver · 31-07-2020 8:59pm

ELM327 wrote:

We had a mitsubishi Galant in the late 80s. This is not the asian crap, this is specific to the Chinese market.

For Japs you have to go back to 50 years for the "Asian crap" to apply, for Koreans go back 30 years. The Chinese wave is the next one, it's inevitable. They will sell cars, many of them. They have battery factories, car factories, industrial base, catching up on know-how, it will happen. They may hide behind other legacy brands (MG, Volvo etc) first....

01-08-2020 1:46pm

liamog wrote: »

Some people will be amazed to find that the eGolf, etron and e208 are outselling the Leaf in Europe https://pushevs.com/2020/07/30/european-bev-sales-in-h1-2020/

Dealer Network access to large company fleets explain this..

KCross · 02-08-2020 8:46pm

An interesting take on car reliability from Carwow

The Germans dont do so well and the Asians are well up there... hence their 7yr warranties I guess!

ELM327 · 04-08-2020 1:49pm

So... a confession.

Using a plugsurfing RFID, the ecars fast chargers have been free until now. Meaning I've not had to pay for fast charging since I discovered this in January 2020. I also was able to use Ionity for free with the easygo RFID.

I think something has changed over the weekend. Neither of these options are now available, meaning I'll now have to pay for fast charging!! Argh :P

I was topping my car up every friday in Navan for the weekend, and with Covid that was getting me through the week. So no electric costs.

DrPhilG · 04-08-2020 1:53pm

Are you confessing your guilt at getting free charging, or your guilt at not telling us all while it was happening?

ELM327 · 04-08-2020 2:04pm

I wasnt going to tell people as it would get outted.
I knew it would get fixed eventually but , if they are gonna give it for free, that's not my problem!

Black_Knight · 04-08-2020 2:16pm

There's a plug surfing RFID? Well now I know

ELM327 · 04-08-2020 2:21pm

Yes, you pay a one off cost of 10€ for the rfid.
It's very handy to have for travelling in the EU. Probably more expensive than the native cards etc but will get you out of a hole.

whippet · 04-08-2020 4:05pm

just wondering what are people's opinions are on public charging of PHEVs ... I took mine down the country for the weekend and was able to charge on the granny cable where I was staying. But I'll heading out west next week for 10 days and while I won't be doing any mad mileage I will be out and about a bit. I can generally get between 40-48km on EV off a full charge but i've never really considered charging at public charge points as i'm not sure it's worth it.

I do like being able to do urban / semi urban driving on EV and if I did take advantage of public charge points it would be nice. On the home charger it takes about 3h15m to get a full charge .. it's a G20 BMW 330e so has no fast charge capability.

is it worth it .. or is the prevailing sentiment of BEVs that PHEVs are persona non grata when it comes to public charging?

Random EV thoughts.....

Comments