Wow, I wonder if anything happened in March, 2020 that dramatically changed traffic levels.

If it’s any consolation, Electrify Canada (EA’s even shittier Canadian cousin) clearly labels its chargers, but both my 800v EVs have never seen even half the claimed speeds. At one point the 350 kW charger was charging so slowly (like under 80 kW), I cancelled the session and moved to the 150 kW charger, which…

I think they already scrapped the congestion charge discount for PHEVs (in 2021). Central London will be zero emission only by 2025, but perhaps there will be a taxi / car service exemption that allows PHEVs to be on the road.

I know that batteries are very heavy (motors not so much), but a large battery pack would “only” be about 25% of the original weight of the Bentley, so it’s just not believable that the other components would double the weight, particularly not after the removal of a large, heavy V8.

Am I missing something? Where do you see that the weight has almost doubled? I think a 100 kWh battery weighs about 1,000 lbs, so it seems wildly unlikely that the removal of the ICE, addition of battery and motors, and suspension upgrades, would add an additional 3,000 lbs on top of the battery.

It’s not really an off road vehicle, much more than is the iX. The iX gets almost 8x the range from 4x the battery size. Some of that is simple aerodynamics, but the X5 still seems very inefficient.

40 miles seems like very low range from a 26 kWh battery. Particularly when on longer journeys you’ll be driving around with hundreds of pounds of depleted battery.

That really is the billion dollar question, and I think it’s because many of Elon’s ideas are just a knee jerk reaction to needing some insane news to keep the hype going and boost the stock. Anything to avoid the markets concluding that Tesla is becoming a “normal” car company, and shouldn’t be valued at such a crazy…

Porsche charges extra for the callipers to be black instead of red for non-carbon brakes, and more for black instead of yellow on the PCCBs; Audi gives you a discount if you take the ceramic brakes in black instead of red. Makes sense.

A much bigger factor than the tax cuts was the cratering of interest rates and the massive increase in the money supply during covid. Income-producing assets (generally owned by the rich) soared in value, and the poor were given a few dollars to stop them from rioting in protest at the destruction of their livelihoods.

It’s completely consistent with the Musk reality distortion field. Evidence from the outside world further hardens the belief system of the zealots.

Yes, the economy is very different than even a few months ago. We have suppliers coming to us with aggressive price cuts who were too busy to take our orders last year.

Not only is the public whining ridiculous, so is the lack of critical analysis from the writers of these pieces. So many makes and models had various dealer add-ons that often resulted in five figure price increases above MSRP over the last couple of years. All of those buyers are already seeing or about to see buyers…

That was not my experience yesterday in a heat pump-equipped Ioniq 5. It was very cold with blowing snow (wind definitely a factor here), and on a highway drive I was knocked down from my typical winter 350+ km of range to more like 260 km. In mild weather, I’d easily exceed 400 km. Also, the underlying data from the…

$1,000 deviated stitching option.

Yea, the math seems wildly off. My ChargePoint app keeps track of my home charging costs. We have two EVs and pretty much exclusively charge at home. In summer I average about 16 kWh per 100 km in the Ioniq, and more like 21 in the winter. Let’s call that 420 km of range on average, and to be generous let’s take that…

GM delivered fewer than 900 Hummer EVs in 2022. Admittedly they could have delivered more if they’d produced more, because they have a big backlog of orders. But those orders are underpinned by a $100 refundable deposit, so who knows how many people could actually ever have afforded one, and will go ahead with the…

Or even simpler, just keep his existing Volvo.

5th Gear: I wonder if the margins are any better / worse on Rolls’s EV vs ICE cars. I believe the Spectre uses a Rolls-only platform, not an i7 platform, so it’s not accurate to say it’s a reskinned i7.

I guess people are just investing on the greater fool principle, both with pre-revenue software and tech companies, and essentially pre-revenue car companies.