Cheaper Teslas.....

[Former Member]

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[Andrew767]

Percy

Are you sure this isn't just down to Tesla moving to direct sales only..i.e miss out the dealer.

Andrew

[Former Member]

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[Rich too]

Tesla have reduced prices to sell to the mass market - not many can afford £80k for a car.

They have closed a lot of/most dealerships to fund it. Where do you go for maintenance ?

it doesn’t sound too promising for the brand.

ps although I thought it was a new model at £30k not £50k off existing model prices.

 

Edited By Rich too on 06/03/2019 18:21:27

Edited By Rich too on 06/03/2019 18:21:44

[Frank Skilbeck]

Possibly, but a test of Tesla vs the new Jag E Pace and Audi electric showed that the Tesla traveled significantly further per kwh, so maybe they do have some advantages.

[Former Member]

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[Don Fry]

Is Musk still there, I thought he got shifted about illegal rigging of share prices or somsuch bizarre law oppperable in Trumpland.

edit, in post as CEO, not physically in Trumpland.

Edited By Don Fry on 06/03/2019 18:53:47

[Former Member]

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[Steve Hargreaves - Moderator]

Nikola Tesla was also an absolute genius who was so far ahead of his time it was difficult to comprehend. One reason he went bankrupt was his decision to release Westinghouse from the patents/contracts agreement he had with them as they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Had he pursued them & had Westinghouse been around to pay him I read he would be worth around $43 billion in today's money.....

He was an amazingly clever man & we owe much of today's electrical infrastructure to his ideas.

[Don Fry]

Percy, 350 Kw is IRO 1400 Amps from the charger, at 250 volts. Is that right? That's the standard input cable to a dozen houses. Even on 3 phase, that 700 amps. That's a right big cable.

[Former Member]

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[Don Fry]

Percy, you have studied the Websites.

Installed capability, or being built capability, or budgeted capability, or other on paper plans, or rear od a fag packet dreams.

Edited By Don Fry on 06/03/2019 20:17:13

[Former Member]

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[Colin Leighfield]

Interested to see that American Consumer Reports has removed the Tesla Model 3 from their recommended list because of “declining quality”. Equally interesting to see that they have also removed the BMW 5 series for the same reasons.

Edited By Colin Leighfield on 06/03/2019 20:45:22

[Former Member]

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[Former Member]

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[IDD15]

Don

The 350 Kw charging is based on cars with 800V systems, the first of which will be the Porsche Macan which is due later this year. So yes it’s a bit of a paper tiger at the moment, but the numbers are moving in the right direction.

Must admit when fast charging I try not to think too much about the 90 plus amps going into the battery underneath my derrière! 350K is going to be very toasty....

IDD

[Colin Leighfield]

I had never resolved reliability issues with a BMW 5 series back in the nineties. The most disappointing car I ever owned. That is a long time ago though, although from the cars going through the company over the years BMWs have never been the most reliable.

Real viability with electric vehicles will come when cars have a practical range in excess of 300 miles in all conditions of use and can be recharged at universally available roadside charging points in ten minutes. I don’t doubt it will happen. However I was recently present at a regional transport committee meeting I chair where FTA/RHS representatives said that conversion of freight transport to electric power was still 20/30 years away and the current move elsewhere in the world is to gas for HGVs. Surprisingly unpublicised is that the world’s largest HGV producer, Scania, will this year deliver 30% of their output powered by gas. Iveco are expected to be similar.

Surprisingly also was the decision by the UK government last year to cancel the rail electrification programme, very important to UK manufacturing, and replace it with the introduction of “Bi-Mode” locos powered by both diesel and electric motors, so they can operate equally on both electrified and non-electrified lines. These will be manufactured in Japan and assembled in the North East of England in a new operation employing just 350 people. So we will have diesel engines running on our lines for decades to come while our confused transport minister tells us not to buy diesel cars. The whole thing is contradictory, confusing and misdirected. However it is also inevitable although uncertainties remain.

[Gary Murphy 1]

My mate is a Chauffeur and his box bought a Tesla. My mate had to drive it to the bosses other house in Scotland.

The story of the time it took and the problems with charging was hilarious , electric cars, yeah right.

By the way, the Tesla he bought was to save the planet. its in Scotland ,used only at some weekends. His daily driven drive is a 5 + litre petrol long wheel base range rover!

[Former Member]

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[Piers Bowlan]

350W charging? Everything I have read about charging, irrespective of the battery technology involved, links fast charging to reduced battery life. Used on a daily basis many electric car's battery performance reduces considerably after four years, resulting in not only a reduction in range but also performance. Battery replacement is a significant part of the cost of the car.

Batteries not only have problems with low temperatures but also with high temperatures too, when it comes to battery life. Teslas have cooling fans for the batteries whereas some cars, notibly the Nissen Leaf does not. The Tesla also has larger batteries and does not charge to 100%, both designed to stress the batteries less, hence improving their longevity. A £30k or £50k reduction in price would still not make me buy one however- it couldn't pull my caravan (very far). As a second car a two seat (+2 dogs) uber-basic urban runabout with a decent performance (no lead acid batteries, thank you) if short range, might be a different matter - if it was v-cheap! Nobody builds one

Roll on Lithium/Air and Aluminium/Air batteries, which if they could 'only' sort out the technology all our electric car dreams would come true!

Edited By Piers Bowlan on 07/03/2019 05:45:35

[Former Member]

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[Frank Skilbeck]

Posted by Tom Sharp 2 on 07/03/2019 02:05:57:

They have had a rude awakening in the USA in the recent very low temperatures. Pure electric cars were giving only half the claimed range and using seat/window heating reduced the range to one third of claimed figures. The ultimate recommendation from official sources was to keep the car in a heated garage. !!!!!!!!

Edited By Tom Sharp 2 on 07/03/2019 02:07:42

Or do as the do in Canada with IC cars, which is preheat them electrically.

[Peter Christy]

Posted by Percy Verance on 07/03/2019 07:01:44:How then would you explain the huge take-up of electric vehicles in Norway? After all, Norway isn't exactly famed for it's tropical climate. And let's not overlook the fact that thousands of us happily enjoy electric flight, even in the depths of winter.

Edited By Percy Verance on 07/03/2019 07:04:16

Aren't electric vehicles heavily subsidised in Norway? Also Norway has abundant hydro-electric power - no need for coal, gas or nuclear power stations.

In the UK, the problem remains the almost complete absence of charging points out in the sticks. I'm sure there must be at least one in Devon, but I've never seen it.....!

With my present 24 year old family car, I can drive to see my son in Hastings and most of the way back on one tankful of petrol (over 200 miles each way). There are a few charging points on the M3 / M25, but that's about it.

Electric is still not practical for my purposes, I'm afraid. Maybe when someone comes out with a turbine hybrid....

--

Pete

[Nigel R]

We all know electric cars have limitations. Let's not repost the same old same old again and again.

Also, this is the chit chat area, if you don't want to read about electric car topics, don't open the thread. The purpose of this section is "off topic".

Back to the Tesla price drop; the original aim of Tesla was, I believe, to precipitate a change in the car industry and to establish Tesla as a battery manufacturer, push the installation of charging infrastructure, etc.The cars were the way of achieving it, not necessarily the end goal in and of themselves.

As I understand it, Musk was always going to divest himself of the car business, as the existing car businesses are pretty good at making cars, and as soon as their electric lines came to mass market Tesla would be pushed out.

I guess this price drop signifies that we are leaving the first phase of Tesla, i.e. giving the existing big boys a kick up the rear, and now the car side of Tesla will try to coexist for a while. I'm guessing the life of the "mass market" model. Then IP will be moved to another car producer. Probably a "smaller" one looking for a leg up.