https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eQz4aQjtY0&feature=youtu.be
Maybe not too surprising on this one. I hear the range on these are not great especially if you drive them spiritedly. And given it’s a first gen product on a new tech, no one really knows what these will be worth 5 - 10 years from now.
All of this generation of EVs will depreciate like crazy as battery technologies will improve a lot over the next few years and become somewhat more affordable.
Most EVs are also undesirable eyesores - the Taycan looks great, but it is a rare exceptions. It is like they have been all designed by 4-years old who think their flashing shoes are the pinnacle of design.
Why do people believe this? The time vs. $/kWh curve has been flattening out exponentially the last few years. Battery companies are pouring billions into R&D, and we’re only seeing slight incremental improvements in the capability of the technology as every facet of production is optimized.
There is nothing to support this blind faith that some new battery chemistry will be the savior of the BEVs.
The new silicon oxide batteries are claimed to double energy density to over 500 Wh/kg. They have been developed and will start entering the market in the next few years. Solid state batteries exist but are too expensive at the moment. Toyota is hoping to build a cheaper version with fewer rare earth metals to bring the price down towards the end of the decade. That remains to be seen and hopefully SSB will not become another nuclear fusion situation where it is perpetually just beyond the horizon.
First developed over 20 years ago. Not exactly new.
Yea, in a laboratory setting. Replacing graphite anodes with silicon is problematic for consumer products due to the massive volumetric changes when lithiated and its high reactivity. So let’s say they found a way to mitigate these drawbacks and applied this to an EV. It may look better of paper, but it won’t match the cycle lifespan of an NCM based cell. Lifespan is already a massive concern for EVs considering their price and unknown depreciation curves.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
SSB just means the liquid or gel electrolyte between the anode and cathode has been replaced with a solid conductor. It’s not some magical thing that’s super hard to achieve like fusion. The point is to address the issue of thermal instability in over current situations when your electrolyte would tend to vaporize and burn when the cell ruptures. It does that nicely but brings its own set of headaches to the table, like grain boundary resistances and low charge instability. There’s no free lunch and any “new” thing is going to have its own set of drawbacks.
I have a VW E-Golf. Most people have no idea it’s electric
I was really interested in getting an e-Golf. How is the real world range of the car? Can you actually get around 125 miles in it?
I love mine. 125-140 is realistic. Might be a little optimistic if you’re doing 80 on the freeway. Handles great, very comfortable. I plug mine in at night on a regular 110 (slow) charger and it keeps me topped off enough that I haven’t bothered to get a faster charger. (It’d be expensive for me because I’d have to trechnto.my garage)
On the rare occasion I have multiple long driving days in a row, then I take it to the public charger a block away and top it off faster.
It is nearly perfect for my day to day needs.
Downsides: it’s a little small for say a beach trip with the family, starts to feel pretty stuffed once you add boogie boards and a small cooler.
Not for road trips. The slow charging time and limited range means you don’t want to be road tripping regularly. But my wife and I have another car (and we are actually hopefully replacing that car with a hybrid this week). We basically share both cars (my wife is WFH so she doesn’t drive much) and prioritize using the EV as much as possible depending on who is doing what. I think for a 2 car family one EV and one hybrid will be a pretty optimal blend of efficiency and convenience.
The third car is the fun car. :)
That’s a good choice. We need more EVs that looks like regular cars.
BMW i4 and Audi Q8 e—tron are also good examples of this
Yeah. I don’t like the grill on the i4, but it does look like a normal car. It is the one I would buy if I was forced to buy an EV for some reason.
The Q8 will never be desirable, it is a potato on wheels. But it does look normal.
I agree on all counts. And I think it’s just a phase. EVs are here to stay in one capacity or another, and they’re going to go back to looking like normal cars once the novelty wears off.
I think the exact opposite. EVs will allow completely new types of vehicles and as battery and motor tech flattens competitive advantage, automakers will lean in to unique vehicles.
Canoo, Aptera, Citroen Ami, to a lesser extent the VW Buzz (bus) and Cybertruck.
As for the Canoo, Buzz and Microlino (which you didn’t mention but I think fits) there’s a trend towards going back to older style car designs because they’re now feasible. So I totally agree that it’s going to change, but I think there’s going to be a pretty big exploration of retro ideas.
As for the Aptera… Man. I would love for them to get off the ground and I actually really want one, but at this point I’m a little skeptical. And the cyber truck is a mess.
I guess I’m sort of hoping Fisker has a good run. That Ocean model looks quite practical, but still having some really nice features. Price is reasonable for what it is.
Not sure though. If global economy tightens up more, the first ones out the door will be the made to order, startup EV companies.
Regardless if those specific examples succeed, we’re just at the beginning of EVs and we can already see the unique ideas floating.
20 years from now when Kia, Buick, and BMW could all offer the same 500hp and 100 “mpg”? The competitive pressure will push harder.
I want Aptera to get off the ground badly as well.
A car that is efficient enough charging in the sun is workable? That’s some shit if society collapses would be told as legends of the ancients.
For normal day to day commutes to work and the grocery store they are great because you don’t need a huge battery pack but for longer distance driving there needs to be a better alternative imo
Not every car needs to do everything. If you’re driving across the country on a regular basis then don’t buy an EV. If you need to haul mulch all the time then maybe Miata isn’t actually the answer.
If it doesn’t fit your usecase then I wouldn’t wait on EVs to cater to it, at least until electric infrastructure is ubiquitous. I think gas cars will be around for a long time yet.
SUVs are so popular and sell so well because they can do “everything” or are marketed that way.
You take that back right now, light up shoes ARE peak design
Mr. Musk is that you?
Whenever anyone mentions light up shoes you gotta make sure to drop the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feq6MOg3qpA
That’s your opinion that the Taycan looks bad. Not everyone shares your opinion lol.
I literally said that the Taycan looks great,
I saw a gently used 2018 E-tron going for the same as a Kia Sorrento. The reason is the tech may be there for driver support and the luxury side of things - but getting 100-150 miles per charge is not sufficient for a lot of people and that’s what you can expect from these batteries if you use them regularly, especially in a cold climate.
EVs today will be like PCs in the early to mid 90s, with the exception that those computers were essentially mandatory purchases and EVs are not.
Not really. An electric car with 0-60 in 4 seconds and 300 miles range isn’t going to be obsolete any time soon. Pc technology and progression made old PCs practically useless. An ev with those specs, assuming it’s reliable, would never be obsolete.
EV’s don’t have a real world 300 mile range on the highway.
Even the base Taycan with the big battery (so the longest range version) only does 280 miles on the highway. And that’s 100% to 0 range, which obviously isn’t realistic. Take the 70% range (draining down to around 10%, charging up to 80% between stops) and it dips under 200 miles.
And with the adoption of NACS and the impact of calendar aging… no EV on the road today will be anything but a fully depreciated, obsolete relic in 10 years.
The base Taycan has a 79 kWh battery. There are many models with the larger 93 kWh battery pack like the performance battery plus models and the GTS model which is the range king. The GTS does get 300 miles of range.
See also:
So this base RWD (IIRC) with the smallest wheels and this upgraded battery is the one with the most range. And that range gets you less than 200 miles between charges on a road-trip (the 70% range).
Your friend is not seeing 300 real-world highway miles:
Keep in mind that’s a worse result for the 4S than the one I posted at only 146 miles between charges for the 70% range.
I’m not knocking the Taycan specifically. It generally performs close-ish to its rated range. But no one drives till empty, or only fills their gas tank up to 80% in an ICE either. BEVs are just different. And very few BEVs hit even close to 300 real world miles on the highway even ignoring the 70% rule of thumb.
Realistically, when you’re road-tripping in a BEV you’re not skipping chargers anyway typically. You pick a bottom SoC you’re comfortable with (for me that’s 30+ miles of remaining range to leave range to get to a hotel with charging if necessary or something), and then you charge enough at each stop to maintain that buffer. So that could well be 10 to 65% for a Taycan 4S since Electrify America generally aims for locations about 120 miles apart.
Your friend is claiming almost twice the real world range tested by Car&Driver. With pretty sedate driving, within town (so you’re not following the 70% guideline) sure, that might be possible with lower average speed city miles.
But then again, that doesn’t matter since no one has range anxiety in the city unless your car is only rated for ~150 miles or less.
The bigger problem is all the DRM and inability to do basic repairs.
Once it’s spent, it’s spent. Traditionally cars were quite fixable.
You should be able to drop in after market batteries with improvements halfway through its life. But manufacturers don’t like that idea.
They want us to lease forever…
Buying expensive high end EVs right now are like buying early large plasma TVs. Remember when those were 15k+? If you want to pay to be on the cutting edge then by all means, but it may not make sense looking back 5-10 years later.
Not really good for consumers though. Why would someone want an EV when it’s going to depreciate so badly? I bet this slows EV buying even more so.
They are too expensive to buy new for most people and so many are waiting for them to hit the secondhand market. The mass market is buying them at lower prices hence the depreciation. Luxury german cars have been depreciating like this for decades yet they still sell well new. There are plenty of people with money to buy these luxury vehicles new and upgrade quickly to the newest version while eating the depreciation after a few years.
Exactly. I don’t plan to buy one anytime soon. They are terrible value, even with the gas saving.
My Kia Stinger is rapidly approaching 90k miles, depending on what pans out I may soar past 130k in the next year and a bit. If so I’ll be on the hunt for a new car & my driving pattern will likely have changed radically by then (dropped by a factor of 10 or more, lol).
I’m eagerly awaiting the next gen of VAG EV battery tech to be announced to influence prices on current gen Taycans and ETron GTs - they’d absolutely have more than enough range for me & if prices drop, all the better!
Even the Taycan has some weird proportions.
It is very dependent on what color you get it in.
Black = Batmobile
Frozen Berry = super awkward
The problem with this is that, for over 100 years, car design has followed function, and that function has included a stonking motor in the front. That shape has defined how we think a car should look like for generations. Along come EVs, which have a completely different set of functional requirements, and suddenly there’s no need for things like a long hood. Car designers now have to marry the form of a car that only needs to account a large plate of batteries near the bottom with the expectations of customers who have a crystallized vision of what a normal car’s proportions should look like. The end result are EVs that many think look odd.
I get it, but there are shapes that are simply more attractive than others. Cars that are muscular or feminine are more pleasing to the eyes as try reminds us of what make some people attractive. A crossover looks like a potato. Nobody lust for a potato.
And talking about form following function, there is no need for all that busy cladding and lines that goes nowhere.
Rich Rebuilds just addressed this in a video. Tesla wants ~$20k to replace the batteries in a 10 year old Tesla with 100k miles on it. With the current prices of used Teslas it’s literally cheaper to just buy a new one than to buy a used one and replace the batteries. They are quickly becoming disposable.
They are indeed terrible value.
That’s not far off an engine replacement from the dealer on an ICE vehicle, the price isn’t the issue it’s how many of them do need a new battery every 10 years
Also EV’s have a lot of tech on the interior that ages poorly. Any car with a big computer/tablet in the dash is going to seem super dated in ten years. It’s like having iPhones out and you’re still using a palm pilot.
Ev cars are on the way like all other tech items and I believe the trend will be here to stay. A 1700 cell phone, a 4000 graphics card, or a 10000 dollar 77 inch oled a few years ago for example.
As EVs become cheaper to make, and technology for it accelerates at a rapid pace, people will be replacing their cars more often.
You’re right. I’m just explaining why they are depreciating like crazy.
There’s nothing wrong with used EVs except their batteries. We need the supply to catch up to demand, get aftermarket battery manufacturers rolling, and be able to put new batteries into old Nissan Leafs for $1-2k.
The taycan and lucid air are really the only two EVs that I think actually look good
I agree. Unfortunately, they are also way too expensive and therefore lack mass market appeal.
The Mercedes black faceplate 🤮. It really is crazy how awful some of the new designs are, electrification is a great excuse to mix up car design but that doesn’t mean ignore the fundamentals.
Hey I’ll have you find my i3 is gorge……
Oh never mind
I do find the i3 pretty cool because how quirky it is. Sexy? no, Attractive? Absolutely.
The Taycan gets 260 miles at 75mph in summer and recharges in just over 20 minutes, it’s not obsolete, that’s still one of the best available on the market.
According to the AA, the average car doing 10k miles a year loses 60% of its value after 3 years, battery improvements do not happen quickly enough to make a big difference, and even if the battery halved in cost, it’s not as if the price of a Porsche is suddenly going to be cheap, the new price might drop from £85k to £75k, that is not enough to make a big impact on used car prices.
It’s just the same as always, new cars lose value quickly.