haf63 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 17, 2019 9:49 am
johnd makes a fair point in that there is always a betetr car 'coming soon' but I am likley to only pay 30-40k once for a car (nearing retirement) and there does seem to be momentum behind full electric. 250 mile range is enough for me and saloon car wise this will be possible this year but I just fancy a SUV as all perevious cars have been 3 series and equivalent germans.
I think that's fair enough if there's some specific reason for waiting for a particular new model that you know is pending to actually arrive. What I was thinking of was the more general situation which, like the way that summit of a hill is always just over the next visible rise, there is always one or more new models with an enticing spec just around the corner.
I do wonder though how well your ambitions for a full EV will be realised in the near future. Having done quite a lot of homework on EVs recently (prior to pulling out of an I-Pace purchase) I've started to understand that there's a whole new EV landscape to become familiar with - it's not just moving on to a new model that happens to be an EV, it's getting used to the whole EV way of thinking about things.
Just to take one example on range (and one of the reasons for my pulling out of the I-Pace) the max range figure was initially quoted by JLR as around 293 miles from memory on the NEDC test, which sounded fine - I could absolutely live with that. But then it was revised down to 243 miles WLTP and then the US EPA (I think widely regarded as the most meaningful EV testing standard) quoted a figure of 234 miles. However, that's not the whole story. While an average user might well be able to achieve 234 miles max range under favourable conditions, there are at least two reasons why that's not the complete picture:
One is that EVs seem to be more sensitive to driving conditions than fossil cars. So while 234 miles might well be doable in summer with careful driving on journeys where the maximum cruise speed doesn't exceed eg 55mph, it's a different story on motorways at 80mph especially in winter with wet roads (significantly increased tyre drag) and potentially head wind, when you might be lucky to get 180 miles range.
The second reason is that these range figures are what you can get by using 100% of the battery capacity. But in practice the maximum battery depletion that you might routinely use is 70-80%. Most drivers won't feel comfortable running the battery down below eg 10% in case the next charger isn't working. And then it's not generally recommended to charge the batteries routinely beyond 80-90% partly because it prolongs battery life and partly because the last 10-20% of charge takes much longer to achieve than the going from eg 10-80%. So for a fast wintertime motorway journey you might be looking to recharge every 140-150 miles, corresponding to an 80% to 10% battery depletion.
I'm sure battery technology is going to improve further though it's likely to be fairly slow going from here on - despite all the newspaper stories about breakthroughs in battery chemistry (eg solid state lithium batteries) there really doesn't seem to be anything much that's close to commercialisation on the necessary scale.
Personally I'm looking forwards to the XC40 full EV, but the one aspect I'm worried about is the tall blunt shape of the XC40, which can't do much for its aerodynamics. Full EVs need to slip through the air as cleanly as possible so as to maximise efficiency and range and I suspect that the XC40 will be rather compromised on that score. The Tesla Model Y (SUV version of the Model 3), as and when it appears, will probably be a good benchmark