After a chance encounter in a car park a few weeks ago - Waitrose I hasten to add, at the EV chargers, nothing untoward :p - today a Tesla P85D arrived at our office late morning for me to try.
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It's got two electric motors, 691 horsepower and gets to 60 in 3.2 seconds... It's got a claimed range of 295 miles, and arrived at our office with 220 miles showing. After 60 hard driven miles on a variety of roads, with probably 8 or 10 full throttle bursts of acceleration (on dual carriageways, within the speed limit of course!!) the range had gone down to 165 miles.
It was really very impressive indeed...not just because of the relentless acceleration and impressive refinement, but because it really didn't feel like a big car. This one didn't have air suspension (optional) but even so it handled far better than I expected a 2.2 tonne car to, though of course with motors and battery all under the passenger cell it has a low centre of gravity I guess.
It it rode well too, with a long wheelbase and standard 19" wheels. 21" wheels are a £3,900 option!! The heatsed (all 5 of them) leather seats were supportive and offered plenty of adjustments (all powers) so finding a comfortable driving position was easy.
Amusingly the indicator and wiper stalks were borrowed from Mercedes, as was the column gear shift and cruise control stalk. So that was nice and easy. Except in this car the cruise stalk (adaptive cruise of course) also controlled the autopilot. That was a surreal, and unnerving experience when engaged. It uses cameras and radar to keep the car in the lane and at the right speed. For those that know West Sussex I drove from the Fontwell roundabout on the A27 to the Tangmere roundabout without touching the acclwrator, brake or steering wheel! It's a fairly bendy bit of dual carriageway. But the car coped...though my hands were hovering near the wheel!!
All in all a mind blowing experience really. I definitely can't buy a diesel car ever again; the vibration, the rattles, the general lack refinement, never mind the smell of diesel fumes, are all starkly apparent after driving a fully electric car.
Was it perfect, no. The technology, while impressively implemented, is all controlled through a huge screen in the middle of the dash. It's a touch screen. It gets covered in finger prints. That would annoy me. The dash looked impressive, with its Alcantara trimmed top surface as some grey would (effect?) trim. But touch it and it's much less substantial than a Merc. But, because there's no vibration in the car you can't tell when you're driving...so does it need to be more solid?
Interestingly this particular car hadn't been built with the autopilot feature, but it had been pushed to the car as a software update remotely by Tesla. Apparently lots of tweaks are made and features adds this way.
It did occur do me also, that while the batteries are expensive, actually it's a much simpler car to make than an internal combustion engine one. No gearbox, no fuel tank or pump. And an electric motor is just a few bits of copper wire and magnets isn't it? Money one moving part. Compare to the complexity of a fuel injured, turbocharged 4/6/8 cylinder engine that must have thousands of moving parts!
Just a few unstructured thoughts... Let me know if there's anything I've missed!
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I want one even more now.
How about space, visibility (outward), ease of parking, dodgy autocorrect...?
};---)
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Well I blame the software :p
Space wise it's a large car, and because everything's under the floor drivetrain and battery wise there is a lot of interior space. No transmission tunnel, so there's genuinely room for three people across the rear. I sat in the middle rear seat just to try it, and legroom, headroom and width were ample. Now I'm not particularly tall, but the Tesla guy was 6' 5" and he had plenty of room in the front, and when sitting behind himself (if that makes sense...) in the back. Not sure if I've mentioned it, but it's a big car. Larger than an E and smaller than an S class I reckon. There's boot space in the front (probably big enough for a 2 or 3 soft bags), and then in the rear, under the hatchback a very deep and wide, but slightly shallow, boot. However there's room under the boot floor as wel - rear facing child seats are an option. The rear seats fold, and though I didn't try, I'd imagine that gives you a huge amount of space. Loads of room for shoes ;)
Visibility wise it's got a large glass area, and was fine. Opening the panoramic roof did throw significant glare on the central screen though... No issues with placing the car on the road or navigating narrow lanes. Rear camera and all round radar, displayed either on the huge screen or in front of the driver, meant manoeuvring was easy. The cameras / radar monitor the area round the car constantly, and you can have that shown on the dash. It 'sees' cars in adjacent lanes and tracks them, so it can warn you, or engage the collison avoidance systems, if they enter what it sees as your cars safe space.
I only parked it in our car park, and in the field shown in the pictures, and dint take it into town. But I don't see parking being an issue other than the sheer size of the thing. It does have the 'summon' feature which lets you drive the car in and out of spaces using your phone, so if the space in the car park was a little narrow simply get out and park the car remotely.. Reverse procure on your return and spaces that you'd discard as too narrow are now suitable :)
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...but the Tesla guy was 6' 5" ...
Now you've got my attention. I can just about do that in an Audi A7 (closest competitor I can think of for size and demeanour) but it's soon going to become a serious requirement, now that Beestling Minor has begun his spurt towards his projected 2.02m / 6'8".
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A Tesla team had a car on display in the market square yesterday morning - sadly in a red-and-white colour scheme that made their flags look like part of the Outies' stall further down - and I got answers to some of my own questions about it.
This was also a P85D, and not all the answers were good. The glass roof looks nice but makes headroom marginal in the front and simply inadequate in the back. I could just squeeze my knees in behind my own driver's seat but it wouldn't do for long, so - with Sugaresque regret - we won't be having one as a family wagon.
A pity, because it looks fantastic, has a deep and well-shaped boot (with rear-facing child seats in this one) and - I imagine - would be tremendous fun to drive. Maybe think of a Model 3 as an eventual replacement for the chariot instead. I still like the idea.
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Interesting!
>> ... as was the column gear shift
So obviously I was wrong in thinking electric motors don't need gears. How many? 'Normal' or something weird?
EDIT: ah but I see 'no gearbox'?
Last edited by: Focusless on Wed 13 Apr 16 at 21:33
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Column shift was simply for forwards (down) backwards (up) and park (press the button on the end). Exactly the same as my E class, except I have paddle shifters to change gears up and down if I want to. I shouldn't really have called it a gear shift, but not sure what else to call it!!
Last edited by: PeterS on Wed 13 Apr 16 at 21:40
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Yes I guessed that's what it did after posting. No I don't know what else you could call it either :)
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They do seem very attractive, there's a bit of Jaguar XF visible. It's a shame there is no straight six engine though, it would appeal to me then. Maybe we will get the option soon?
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I am really hoping these appear on company lease scheme in time for me to replace my Outlander PHEV. Don't need the P85d, a lesser version but with the decent range would do me. (I recall the cheaper one only has 200 miles range).
Hey ho, we can dream.
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The Tesla 3 will be cheaper (and smaller). But if the inside is as I've seen I'm not sure I'd want it. Looks like an Apple iMac stuck to the dash!
Apparently (since we like to stray from topic).... ignoring the Lotus Elise based Roadster....
- First Tesla was Model S, then
- Model X
- Model 3 was meant to be the E...
Well so I read somewhere. But in terms of model size that would be 3XS or EXS and not SEX.
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Saw another S yesterday, and another one today. Red yesterday, blue today. They're all over the place now. Saw an MG6 alongside the blue one today, they're a much rarer sight than a Tezzy these days.
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What I find most telling is OP's remark:
"I definitely can't buy a diesel car ever again; the vibration, the rattles, the general lack refinement, never mind the smell of diesel fumes, are all starkly apparent after driving a fully electric car"
I said this a few months back; isn't the internal combustion engine starting to look dirty, smelly, and just so mechanical in the 21st Century? As technology progresses, it's starting to look very old in the world of computers, wifi, flat screens, and gadgetry!
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>> What I find most telling is OP's remark:
>>
>> "I definitely can't buy a diesel car ever again; the vibration, the rattles, the general
>> lack refinement, never mind the smell of diesel fumes, are all starkly apparent after driving
>> a fully electric car"
>>
>> I said this a few months back; isn't the internal combustion engine starting to look
>> dirty, smelly, and just so mechanical in the 21st Century? As technology progresses, it's starting
>> to look very old in the world of computers, wifi, flat screens, and gadgetry!
>>
I am enjoying a petrol turbo. I opted for fuel efficient and yet flexible petrol turbos from 1999 for company car purposes. And I recall thinking 190g/km for CO2 was okay! Diesels since were lower but my current petrol car is 109g/km for CO2... well officially.
Keep the quoted text. At least that's legal unlike some people's HID conversions.
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Having both a comfy diesel and a nothing like so well specced electric, I find I'll always pick the electric when there's a choice. Serene.
Drove the diesel the other day and was almost apologising to pedestrians. It does feel like a backwards step.
Incidentally, Robert Llewellyn has just popped up his latest electric car video, this one being the Tesla P90D, which is over 100k and awfully quick.
youtu.be/j5LQ6YPGzro
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The P90D is the latest version of the car I drove. 'Mine' had 'insane' mode, 'his' had the 'ludicrous' mode option which is what knocks half a second off the 0 to 60 time, taking it down to 2.7 seconds!! A bargain at an optional £8.5k ;)
The instant availability of torque makes turbo diesel power delivery feel positively lethargic, and even though I thought the petrol engine in th A3 was refined (which compared to a diesel it is) the Tesla made me realise that the internal combustion engine doesn't really have that long to go as a mode of propulsion I don't think.
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Yes, RTJ, but have you tried an electric yet? I haven't, and suspect it would leave me feeling the same as Peter about my reciprocating engines, especially the four-cylinder diesel I'll be driving today.
Reciprocating engines have always been a compromise, producing motion in an inconvenient form and requiring heavy, complex and fallible mechanisms to convert it into something useful. If you think of other areas that have gone over to 'direct rotary' power - steam turbines in ships and power stations, gas turbines in aircraft - how many have reverted to pistons?
Resistance to change is natural and human, but the change is coming anyway; it's just a question of time. Two questions of time, in fact, the other being what to do when there's no more oil to change, points to fettle or truss flanges to chamfer.
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After almost a year and 20K of driving a hybrid I would need a really big incentive to go back to diesel.
When I jump into Mrs B's Viano (perhaps not a good example) its like night and day. I get through a few hire cars each year and although there are times when I miss the torque of diesel I think the next car will probably be petrol / hybrid
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Unless or until electric vehicles can be recharged as quickly and conveniently as conventional ones can be refuelled I can't see how I could live with one. Three days this week I had 300 mile + round trips to do and was up against a schedule which would have precluded the car from being at rest for more than half an hour at a time and required it to be accessible for loading and unloading outside my various destinations.
Just wouldn't work for me yet. A hybrid maybe a possibility of course but a full electric wouldn't suit in their ( sorry ) current format.
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Sat 16 Apr 16 at 09:51
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The P90 has a 90kwh battery with a range of around 350 miles, and will charge to approx 80% after half an hour on a Tesla supercharger. We're really not that far away from them becoming useable as direct substitutes for internal combustion engines, they just need to get cheaper! But that's technology...it will happen :)
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>> Just wouldn't work for me yet. A hybrid maybe a possibility of course but a
>> full electric wouldn't suit in their ( sorry ) current format.
>>
I'm not covering your mileage, but even at 20K a year I think its not quite viable for me yet unless I went for a tesla with a 200+ range, and even then I wouldn't feel comfortable. 300 mile range would cover all my needs though
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And you'd need to be sure there was somewhere convenient to plug it in wherever you were. Too much faff at this stage.
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Leccy cars are getting there aren't they. Not quite there cost wise but certainly useable for more and more people though. Of course there are other issues around charging them. For example people living in flats and those with on street parking. no surprise they are getting popular.
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Nice car, but not sure I could live with the Renault-esque build quality.
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>> not sure I could live with the Renault-esque build quality.
I could still be tempted, very tempted.
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I think it's fascinating just how quickly the technology is evolving. The Tesla Model S launched in 2012 with a c. 200 mile range. 3 years later it had a 300 mile range, and today it is a 350 mile range. Yet it weighs roughly the same - so battery technology is charging (groan) ahead :)
Imagine how fast progress would be if all the major players didn't have billions tied up in factories making internal combustion engines ;)
Consider also how much of the added value in cars is soon going to be the IP around batteries, motors and energy management...
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When they reach mass production levels electric cars will surely be a lot cheaper than diesel and petrol vehicles.
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To put together, almost certainly. In terms of licensing technology, probably not though...
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That's at the present. In future that won't be an issue and battery costs will plummet as they become longer lasting and more efficient. Remember how much a PC cost in the nineties, and no one would touch anything with such a low performance now.
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I have said it before, I am a real fan of electric cars!
Would love to get one for the Mrs but she is not a fan- doesn't trust the range but only drives 6k miles a year and never more than 50 miles in a day!
I would get one at the drop of a hat if they had the same range profile as my current combustion based car - but it is just not practical - for example - I set off from the south coast last week for Harrowgate only for the trip to be cancelled on arrival - so I rested for a short while, refueled and set off for home. An electric car would likely have needed me to stay overnight to recharge it.
When they can do 500 miles reliably in all conditions on one charge then I will go for one!
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I doubt it very much at the moment. Too many unknowns at this stage to predict re-sale values. For example the longevity of the batteries.
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Why don't they have gearboxes? I would have thought that they would have been more efficient if they were making less revolutions?
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Don't need one, max torque from 1 rpm.
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>> Why don't they have gearboxes? I would have thought that they would have been more
>> efficient if they were making less revolutions?
>>
>>
>>
They don't need variable gears. They produce enough torque to propel you off the line and rev fast enough to take you comfortably above the speed limit without them.
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The only reason we haven't ditched the diesel yet is because of range. We are away on holiday a couple of times this year and it just seems fairer on those we are taking not to stop and charge, although I expect they wouldn't really mind half an hour or so a couple of times there and back.
However, my pcp ends at the beginning of 2018 and the new double range Zoe is being touted for 2017. If that is actually available at the time we would go for that or whatever similar is about at the time in a heartbeat and lose the Volvo.
So far for my driving pattern, the 90 miles odd range hasn't been an issue at all. Saw 98 miles offered the other day, as temperatures rise. Fully expecting well over 100 real miles when the temperature actually increases properly, but since January the absolute highest I've seen so far is 12 degrees C. Down to 2 degrees again this morning, and range offered was only 86.
I think actually though there's 5 or 10 extra miles in there hidden away after it shows nothing left, if you're brave.
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For me, the 300/350 mile range of the Tesla is more than adequate. Pre diesel that's all you'd see out of a petrol car anyway. The £100k price tag of it on the other hand...
As a company car for a couple of years, the BIK rate of 7% rising to 9% still means it's competitive with diesel cars half its price or less...
But, it is £100k... :O
Last edited by: PeterS on Sat 16 Apr 16 at 15:10
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Not fancied putting down your £1000 for the 300 mile Tesla model 3, then Peter, at under 30k purchase?
Won't be a snorter in performance terms. but will certainly shake up that end of the market. I'll bet it will out-perform most ICE cars in that price range.
It's a bit too speculative and far away for me (bet it's 2019 before the UK see it), but clearly approximately 350 thousand people don't agree and have stumped up their deposits.
Nice little earner, that.
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>> 350 thousand?
>>
Yes, 350,000 pre-orders. At £1000/€1000$1000 each. Probably approaching 400 million dollars in cash stumped up. To put that volume in context, BMW produce 500k 3 series a year. And it's taken them 40 years to get to that volume...
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>> Yes, 350,000 pre-orders.
Interesting. Thanks, Peter.
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I agree it won't hit our shores until 2019 at the earliest, and I fully expect a moderately specced mid range one to cost nearer £50k than £30k. And yes, following my test drive of the P90D I have put a holding deposit down for the Model 3... :)
If the current (:p) rate of progress continues, then the range could easily be 4 or 500 miles in the higher specced ones!
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Hopefully not a silly question...
I guess all the heating and AC are driven off the electric motor or direct from the battery?
Also we seem to be concentrating on small vehicles, what's the future for vans and HGVs?
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Now I do realise that this is an apples and oranges comparison so be gentle with me please, but one of my home telephones which has rechargeable batteries had suddenly decided to lose its charge from full in a matter of minutes rather than hours of use. Sure of course all it needed were some new batteries and it was back to full performance. But if an electric car did that at an inconvenient time or location it would be a royal pain.
And if you're using a conventional car and suspect that you might run out of fuel due to the lack of an available filling station, or simply find that you have run out for any reason, you can always carry a spare can of fuel in the boot.
What do you do if you find yourself on the top of Dartmoor late at night in an electric car with no charge left? Do you mug a Duracell bunny or what?
;-)
Last edited by: Runfer D'Hills on Sat 16 Apr 16 at 15:59
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There's already an equivalent to the petrol can for smartphones in the form of the portable charge pack. Doesn't take a great imaginative leap to envisage something similar scaled up to inject a get-you-out-of-trouble charge into an electric car's battery.
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Or you could have a little trap door in the floor and sort of Fred Flintstone it the rest of the way home...
;-)
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I think the simple answer is that the battery is made up of a large number of cells, and the car manages its power useage (and charging) so that all cells get used equally. The likelihood of all of them failing at the same time is infintessimaly small I'd have thought. An internal combustion engine driven car is a more complex piece of kit, albeit refined over the last 30 years to be very reliable, but there's far more bits to go working.
Though all the battery management software in the world won't prevent another electrical issue leaving the car stranded. In reality, if you do run out of power in the middle of nowhere then you'll just be rescued on a flat bed and taken to a charger. If it's a Tesla an there's a supercharger near then you'll be back up to 80% charge pretty quickly. Or a normal charger will give you around 24 miles per hour of charge.
But nowadays you'll be rescued on a flat bed if you get a puncture in many cases, with fewer and few cars having a spare tyre...
I fully accept they are not suitable for everyone, but I think the rate of change of technology is such that they'll become a lot more prevalent very quickly. Especially if the tax regime drives it that way. Until the mid nineties almost no one chose a diesel company car - why would you? Slower, noisier, less powerful, cheapskate image. Change company car taxation to reflect CO2 emissions and by the end of the 90s the majority of company cars were diesel. Change road tax to reflect emissions and private buyers moved that way too...
Last edited by: PeterS on Sat 16 Apr 16 at 16:17
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>> Now I do realise that this is an apples and oranges comparison so be gentle
>> with me please, but one of my home telephones which has rechargeable batteries had suddenly
>> decided to lose its charge from full in a matter of minutes rather than hours
>> of use. Sure of course all it needed were some new batteries and it was
>> back to full performance. But if an electric car did that at an inconvenient time
>> or location it would be a royal pain.
>>
>> >>
That's true enough Runfer, but cam belts brake, ECU's throw in the towel, alternators can die without warning (Like mine last week), various bits of fast moving metal can commit suicide at any time.
Everything is capable of failing, the question to be answered with electric cars is will they do it more or less often? We'll see.
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Aye, but you have a Vauxhall right? You'd be more used to those things than most I'd imagine!
;-)
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I fear there may be a few years coming soon when electric cars are more popular, but the charging infrastructure is yet to catch up.
I don't much like queuing at petrol stations, but at least if all the pumps are occupied, things move in a few minutes (and would be faster if they had the imagination to have one or more of the cash desks for fuel only). If all the charge points are full, it could be half an hour before anything moves.
And we still haven't resolved the issue that electric cars are at their best in town - yet if you live in a town or city you probably have to park in the street. What happens if your flat is upstairs? Or even if not, you run the cable from the house to the car, and an old lady trips over it and sues you.... or the lads on the way back from the pub think it a jolly jape to unplug it.
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Infrastructure is indeed a puzzle at the minute. The rapid chargers at service stations are now often blocked, so the potential is there for lots of waiting about. The way they are talking about solving this is to introduce payments for them (so freeloaders don't sit there for hours, as the motorway ones are free electricity at the minute) and put more in of course.
However, on the other end of the seesaw, range is increasing as new cars come out. That probably means fewer people need to charge at service stations, as they can get to their destination in one go, where there are usually other options.
For me, I've not used a rapid at all. All the charging has been at my own personal filling station, which is on my drive, my personal filling station at work (socket in the car park) or the personal filling stations in parents' garages they didn't even know they had. Not an issue.
I did drop it onto a slow charge point in the street in Bedford the other day when we were at the dentist, just because it was there, not being used, and I could. Free to use. The hour we were there shoved 30 miles on, so it got me back to Cambridge for nowt.
But for those with no access to home driveway charging, big problem, agreed.
One of the London authorities is making noises about effectively combining lampposts with car charging sockets, which will be interesting if they can make that happen in some manner.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Sat 16 Apr 16 at 16:21
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...combining lampposts with car charging sockets, which will be interesting...
...and might surprise a few dogs.
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I'm sure I remember several donkey generations ago that some enterprising chap on an Edinburgh council estate managed to harvest electricity from a street light which was bolted to the wall outside his flat. Apparently it caused the bulb to flicker and the council took a ( sorry about this ) dim view of it.
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I wish Tesla would stop making their model names sound like income tax forms.
Last edited by: Avant on Sat 16 Apr 16 at 16:41
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If they've really taken 350,000 deposits it doesn't seem to be putting people off.
Got my new P60 this week. Should I take it for a spin later? See if anyone's impressed?
};---)
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Vast improvement over the old P45 I gather...
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>> Vast improvement over the old P45 I gather...
>>
That could be a very disappointing meeting; expecting a shiny new Tesla P45 for a job well done, and leaving with nothing ;)
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Nudging 400,000 now I see from a Google. All refundable too. Get it wrong and bye bye Tesla.
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>> Nudging 400,000 now I see from a Google. All refundable too. Get it wrong and
>> bye bye Tesla.
>>
I'm not sure it'll be bye bye Tesla. Isn't Elon a multi billionaire? I thought he was worth around $10 billion and has a vision to change the world and humanity!! I'm certain MB use a tesla drivetrain in the electric B class as well. I thought Teslas ultimate aim was to tie up battery and motor technology worldwide, hence the huge investment in R&D and factories
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>> Nudging 400,000 now I see from a Google. All refundable too. Get it wrong and
>> bye bye Tesla.
Assuming that at some point they go into production...they would start at the beginning of the list and say "do you want to confirm your order now, or will you have your deposit back?"
I can't believe the contract specifies a delivery window; or unless Tesla are stupid, a guaranteed price.
So no problem, unless you mean reputational - but if there's a heavy demand, your place in the queue will have a value.
People used to buy Morgans and sell them on, when there was a long waiting list.
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The holding deposit doesn't fix the price. It 'guarantees' your place in the queue when it is launched. The queue are territory specific - the UK is lumped in with Europe as I understand it. So we'll see what happens on June 23rd. Maybe there'll be a new territory and I'll move up the list ;)
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I think I will wait for the diesel version.
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Even if battery technology can be developed to the point where you can recharge the things in minutes, the bit nobody seems to be talking about is the effect any meaningful switch from fossil fulled to plug-in electric cars will have on the national grid.
Our electricity infrastructure is reportedly operating with the narrowest margin between capacity and demand in a generation. The P85 has an 85 kW/H battery, which is coincidentally almost exactly the same amount of electricity as the average British household uses in a week.
Don't get me wrong, the Tesla is an amazing bit of kit, and I would love one, but if people switch to electric cars in any meaningful numbers, and there is no significant addition of generating capacity, the lights will go out. Physics 101- energy cannot be created or destroyed.
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Fully electric cars ( as opposed to hybrids ) strike me as a temporary solution. Surely hydrogen is the real future of alternative fuels?
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>>if people switch to electric cars in any meaningful numbers, and there is no significant addition of generating capacity, the lights will go out
Maybe they should be restricted to daytime use only.
:}
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}:---) (Dog)
ON, have you hacked Humph's account?
Hydrogen requires electricity to produce it - and takes far more effort to distribute and store, whereas the grid is already in place.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Fri 22 Apr 16 at 11:32
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Yeah but, no but, yeah but...
Stands to reason dunnit?
Bleh!
;-)
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www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a20454/in-cold-fusion-20-whos-scamming-whom/
to whet your appetite......
The name "cold fusion" is so toxic the researchers who work on it nowadays don't even call it that. After years of being rejected by the scientific mainstream over false claims and outsized hype, they've taking to calling their field low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR). But whatever you call this field, something strange has been happening in the last few years, with reputable companies like Toyota and Nissan openly sponsoring LENR research and other big players have taken an interest
but more interestingly
animpossibleinvention.com/2016/03/07/finally-this-is-possibly-how-the-e-cat-works/
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So my smart new electric kettle is obsolete before I've even got it out of the box?
}:---(
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>> ...the effect any meaningful switch from fossil fulled to plug-in electric cars will have on the national grid.
Here's a copy/paste from Crankcase's original "I've got an electric car" thread, with some fagpacket figures wot I done:
>>"if you have 20,000 electric vehicles plugged into 50kW fast chargers, that's the output of an entire nuclear power station."
But then they are all charged in 20 minutes - what to do for the other 23h 40m?
Home charging at 3-6kW is likely to happen overnight when grid demand is low.
Issues are perhaps more likely when there are 1,000,000 or more daily drivers of electric vehicles, requiring an extra 10GWh of electricity from the grid (say 0.33kWh per mile, and 30 miles per day average). Total daily electricy output in the UK is around 700-750GWh per day, so it's not a huge slice.
Of course that 10GWh is instead of ICE vehicles burning 1,000,000 gallons of fuel assuming 30mpg (which contains about 36GWh of chemical energy so could just shove the petrol straight into a power station and make the 10GWh of electricty that goes into the EVs...)
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www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37171455
P100D, will be the world's fastest accelerating car in production. t will do 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds
Mr Musk said that in cool weather, a driver could travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles - a nearly 400 mile drive - without recharging.
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I saw my first electric car in use yesterday, an Auris Hybrid. Seemed very strange to see the car reversing into a parking space without any noise apart from a barely noticeable whir from the motor. TBH I wouldn't fancy walking or cycling in front of one as it crept up behind me.
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Tesla P85D - WillDeBeest
