Peter wrote:
A proper big charger needs 3 phase … £5k for a 5m run, which by regs has to be underground now. I have pre-wired the house for that but don’t need it right now.
Is three-phase unusual for houses in the UK?
Peter wrote:
Little electric cars have basically no useful range
Fiat 500 electric = 300km range
VW ID3 (hatch the size of a Golf) = 550km range
Nissan Leaf (also Golf size) = 385 km range
Peugeot e-208 = 360km range
etc etc
I’ve driven all of the above (plus many others) while looking to replace our 2015 Leaf, which only has about 120km range but is in practice plenty for the vast majority of our daily use cases. Also, considering I’m still able to use the home charger that was installed 7 years ago, the amortized cost of a ~€1000 home charger is not really a significant cost.
Is three-phase unusual for houses in the UK?
For private houses, very unusual, although most have a 3 phase cable (or overhead) within 5-10m. Nowadays I see some new builds (upmarket private ones) get 3 phase at the start because it is only a bit more than what you have to pay anyway. Most people are aware of the EV dimension; you don’t need 3 phase for domestic use, unless you are doing unusual stuff like multiple 10kW electric showers, electric heating, large heat pumps, etc. It’s good for heat pumps which would be my main reason.
my colleagues Model S Tesla has apparently lost 4% battery capacity in 7 (?) years since new and 105K miles.
I think that is not feasible literally (chemically). It is virtually certain that the makers are depressing the displayed capacity, so you don’t see much (or any) loss for a few years – for obvious marketing / social media reasons.
VW ID3 (hatch the size of a Golf) = 550km range
It’s not comparable.
265 UK miles on full charge. A diesel golf (no range advertised by VW that I can find) would be 700-800 miles.
I don’t know whether 4% loss of battery capacity over that period of use is feasible, not my technical area, but the couple who owns the car and told me that on Sunday are both degreed EEs specializing in high power and electric drive, one at PhD level. It could be as is so often the case that experts lose the plot easily when it involves engineering or social reality and commercial practices 
What you say in relation to Tesla practice makes sense, with software they can define the battery capacity however they want to make make the product seem more durable to their original buyer over a given defined lifespan. If by Tesla’s definition it then falls off a cliff at some point, likely after their original buyer no longer has the car, an element of planned obsolescence has worked.
Square/Cube scaling for sure means that if you want range, a bigger EV will make is easier than a small one, even while it uses more energy per mile. Now you just have to recharge bigger batteries with more energy in a sensible amount of time.
I paid $22K for my last new car, tax included, in 2017. It’s a very nice car that takes me anywhere I want to go with range per day limited only by my willingness to drive. The chance of me spending approximately double that amount on a VW Golf equivalent (of all things) would be zero.
Well it is what I would do, for obvious “customer acceptance” reasons. Many years ago I designed a custom product on which the customer told me to do exactly that. I spent more time doing it in a non obvious way than I spent on the rest of it 
I doubt it will fall off a cliff; there will be a curve which will be shaped appropriately to user expectations over time. But showing minimal degradation during the standard 3 year financing period.
Psycho-Value ‘Engineering’
This is a perfect example of why I moved to planes, away from modern cars and motorcycles, as a place to play. I don’t want to play in somebody else’s matrix unless the somebody is God
@dutch_flyer I don’t know where you get those numbers.
On their website for the ID3 VW claim ‘up to’ 248 miles (399km) at motorway speeds, i.e. constant cruising at close to best-range speed. Apart from a long trip that’s not how people drive and you won’t achieve it anyway because it’s an ‘up to’ figure achieved in ideal conditions with a brand new car. In the real world plan for 200 miles max on the motorway, 170 in normal driving, 140 to leave a margin for screw-ups. Just as you don’t land with 10 minutes fuel in the tanks, you don’t reach your destination or a fill-up point with 5 miles showing on the range computer.
And it costs a minimum of £36k.
It is obvious that Tesla (and others) will manipulate the displayed battery data to minimise the issue. The only way to know for sure is to conduct your own experiments, driving it to battery exhaustion. They bank (probably correctly) on people not doing that. The motoring press may do it, or alternatively they may (after the Top Gear Tesla issue) find themselves signing agreements promising not to drive them to exhaustion as a condition of getting access to test cars.
Peter wrote:
you don’t need 3 phase for domestic use, unless you are doing unusual stuff like multiple 10kW electric showers, electric heating, large heat pumps, etc.
What you need for domestic use very much depends on local practise. Here power companies don’t offer anything less than three-phase 16A (total of 11 kW) for houses. My house has 20A three-phase. Flats may have one-phase but even that is becoming less common as many electric stoves need two or three phases.
Silvaire wrote:
@alioth, the reason my direct report drives his (electric) car to work every week day is because he needs to be here to do his job and earn a living, in his case meaning $700 per day gross.
Indeed, but throwing away 1.5 to 2 hours of your life sitting in a car every working day doesn’t seem healthy or smart (you’re probably actually throwing away about a factor of 1.2 in healthy life by doing that). If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t be more than cycling distance from anywhere I had to be every day. Being absolutely car dependent sounds like my idea of a bad time.
