Peter wrote:
It worked very well.
My neighbor had one of those for a few months. He replaced it with a Tesla 
Well, 10-15 years later, things change I think even Tesla got their famous windscreen wipers working now… But that’s not the point, which is that a Tesla needs home charging (or equivalent) to be viable.
Peter wrote:
I think even Tesla got their famous windscreen wipers working now
Nope. Still crap. Trying to use $$$$$ AI to look through the camera and figure out how much it rains simply does not work very well, the cheap laser sensors everybody else uses are much better but are not fitted. Also, their so-called “Autopilot” got worse over time (more phantom braking) and still does not have a “speed limiter” mode found in almost every other car.
Peter wrote:
But that’s not the point, which is that a Tesla needs home charging (or equivalent) to be viable.
And so does a series hybrid. The only way to achieve high efficiency is to start fully charged. Then it runs 40-50 km on the battery and starts the ICE when you are almost back home again. It hardly obtains working temperature. For longer stretches, say 300+ km, any hybrid is not particularly efficient compared with a modern ICE car anyway. They both run at best efficiency more or less, only the ordinary car does not lose lots of energy by converting mechanical to electric (battery) and back to mechanical again. Then you have to listen to a tiny engine running (out of sync) at high speed all those 300+ km. A battery electric is unbeatable in that respect.
The problem is that the battery is too small for everyday use, and the car offers no real benefit for longer drives compared with ICE only. The only thing it’s good at is as a stepping stone for people towards pure battery electric. The conclusion everyone gets to in the end is that this car would be so much more practical with a larger battery
People are like monkeys. They won’t leave one branch before they got one hand on each branch first.
LeSving wrote:
any hybrid is not particularly efficient compared with a modern ICE car anyway.
So the whole “regenerative braking” thing (store the energy removed from the kinetic energy into the battery to reconvert it to kinetic energy again later, rather than dumping it into heat and making metal powder from the brakes that is dumped on the street) does not improve efficiency?
I had my first proper drive in an EV this week.
Two days in Munich with work, and Hertz gave me a Polestar.
It was a really nice drive. Different, but nice. It had been limited to 165km/h top speed – I don’t know if that is standard or a Hertz modification.
When I first got in it required five minutes or so of figuring out how everything worked before pulling away. Mirrors, climate control, navigation, seat adjustment etc. But much of that is probably just a property of new cars, rather than the drivetrain.
I was unsurprised to see that the transmission is just P, N D and R like an automatic, but I was unsure whether or not it would creep in D. Turns out it can do or not depending on the option you select.
The various ‘driving aids’ like lane assist and so forth (again not a property of an EV, just a modern car) were not too intrusive but if it were mine I would probably turn them off.
Beautifully quiet at speed. But again not EV- specific, since you can’t (usually) hear an ICE at speed – the predominant noise is road and airflow.
Overall I really liked driving it. It won’t work for me because it was pristine and luxurious inside, and I’m a bit more muddy boots, dog, loads which may be heavy, awkward, dirty etc. I wonder how much it costs? I’m sure it would result in a sharp intake of breath.
Hertz has meanwhile sold off 1/3 of its US EV fleet due to high depreciation and repair costs. The article mentions Teslas specially but I notice they have a lot of others types for sale too link I would judge their used car prices as OK, pushed down by the depressed EV market, although certainty no bargain.
Other than cost and capacity to carry enough people and luggage, my main interest in cars looking forward is keeping what I have in terms of range. They’re all OK to drive although some are better than others, and my standards in this regard are dropping under pressure. Cost of ownership is also an issue but it’s the range issue that looks to be a dire situation in say 10 years with government dictates in full bloom and not yet reversed. No electric vehicle or partially electric vehicle would be of any interest to me unless it charges itself with liquid fuel that I can top up in 2 minutes. I’m not going to plug in and wait on a trip, ever. Obviously I’d rather keep driving exactly the kind of car I’m driving, the current one having 115K miles, increasing at 18K/year: a gasoline powered car with manual shift, minimized doo-dads and no designed-in manufacturer, insurance or government snooping features. But it’s a good to know which option in EVs and hybrids would be less deficient in utility, even if they cost more and have nothing I need.
lionel wrote:
So the whole “regenerative braking” thing (store the energy removed from the kinetic energy into the battery to reconvert it to kinetic energy again later, rather than dumping it into heat and making metal powder from the brakes that is dumped on the street) does not improve efficiency?
In the city, certainly to some extent, but driving on the highway at fairly constant speed, that effect is negligible. Even in the city, what makes the Prius (and other hybrids) efficient is first and foremost they operate the engine at high efficiency compared with a normal ICE car.
lionel wrote:
So the whole “regenerative braking” thing does not improve efficiency?
It’s important to stretch the range for sure, but it’s subject to its own losses (optimistic estimates are around 15% gains) and is heavily scenario-dependent. For example, from experience, if you do heavy accelerations, you never regain as much as you burnt.
It’s especially useless on open roads and the highway since >99% of the drivetrain energy is lost in friction. And that’s exactly where range is important.
I think its most useful perk is to keep brake wear to a minimum : you can reduce brake wear by something like 80% if you only using brakes at very low speeds (i.e. when regenerative braking becomes ineffective).
Hertz has meanwhile sold off 1/3 of its US EV fleet due to high depreciation and repair costs.
Great opportunity for those who are interested if Hertz took the depreciation hit then.
Repair cost? What can that be?
