Not necessarily of interest to all, but for those that are:
www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-3/2018/exclusive-tesla-model-3-first-drive-review/
Not unexpectedly, it's, as it were, a positive current review.
Last edited by: Crankcase on Sun 30 Jul 17 at 14:09
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Not too bad, a bit clumsily styled at the front. It almost looks as if a different designer penned the front.
I think I'll wait for the straight-six petrol.
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They seem to be plugging it.
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Interior design team: "We've come up with this beautiful, elegant dash with clean and simple lines, and a wonderful sense of minimalism."
Electronics team (clutching massive touch screen): "Did you remember this bit?"
Interior design team: "Ah, crap. Pass the no more nails."
Joking aside, looks promising subject to the ongoing infrastructure and real world practicality questions.
Last edited by: DP on Sun 30 Jul 17 at 18:38
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...there seems to be some resistance to the styling, but I'd give it an ohm.......
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Judging by the surge of interest, it's not facing much resistance from the market...
Still no firm idea of what they'll be charging for one though...
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Front end looks bland. A false radiator grill would have been nice.
Do the motors not need cooling?
Last edited by: movilogo on Sun 30 Jul 17 at 21:34
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>> ... A false radiator grill would have been nice....Do the motors not need cooling?
Where do you think the motors are? On the Model 3 (before we have the dual motor variant) the motor drives the rear wheels.... so a false radiator grill is pointless because (a) there is no radiator and (b) the motor is at the back anyway.
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>> >> ... A false radiator grill would have been nice....Do the motors not need cooling?
>>
>> Where do you think the motors are? On the Model 3 (before we have the
>> dual motor variant) the motor drives the rear wheels.... so a false radiator grill is
>> pointless because (a) there is no radiator and (b) the motor is at the back
>> anyway.
>>
It looks like a lip at the front and is need of something there. You are probably right, a grill is superfluous.
www.ebay.com/itm/knightrider-knight-rider-kitt-kit-led-alarm-neon-strobe-red-scanner-car-lights-/110776530057
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The Model S initially had a blacked out area in the front (not a grille) and then they revised it. I think the original design looked better.
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Porsche has engine at rear yet its front does not look that bland.
While beauty is in the eyes of beholders, for me Model S look better with false radiator.
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Looks like it's supposed to have an Aston style Focus / Mondeo type rad thoiugh someone forgot to cut a hole for it ...
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It's nice that they made the effort to integrate it though.....
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If many people would prefer it to a 320d/C220d then I think it's fair to say it will sell by the truckload.
One of the local Taxi companies is now almost entirely LEAFs unless you need 7 seats in which case it's an eNV200. I believe they still have a couple of wheelchair compatible ICE MPVs - from talking to the owner the savings are £10-20 per day per vehicle over running the previous TDs (Octavias and SEATs mostly).
If you're a 60k miles pa sales rep then obviously it's probably not the best option...
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>> One of the local Taxi companies is now almost entirely LEAFs
>>
Problem for many taxi companies is that their vehicles are 24 hour use, switching drivers as their shifts end. Finding time to charge these might be an issue.
But otherwise ideal for many city taxis I would think.
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>>Problem for many taxi companies is that their vehicles are 24 hour use, switching drivers as their shifts end
30kW LEAF can recharge to 80% (~110 miles of range) in 30 minutes at a rapid charger.
Also not many taxi firms have the same number of drivers out at 5am as they do at 5pm.
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>> If many people would prefer it to a 320d/C220d then I th
>> If you're a 60k miles pa sales rep then obviously it's probably not the best
>> option...
>>
Not just that, if you occasionally need to do a 300 mile plus round trip it's useless unless you can charge it at your destination ...
Last edited by: Hard Cheese on Tue 1 Aug 17 at 16:00
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If it gave me a genuine 300 mile range, I could actually get away with one of these probably 28 days of the month. The other 2-3 days I would need an alternative vehicle.
We've just replaced both cars so that's it for a while, but next time around, I'd certainly consider one electric, and one IC.
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If I had one then when visiting my mother in south Wales I'd need to recharge it to get back home. Except you couldn't leave an extension cable across the pavement and parking there means I often park down the road.
So you'd have to stop off somewhere and if that was not a Tesla supercharger then that's going to take time.
I see the lower capacity battery Model 3 will charge at home at a rate of 30 miles/hour from a 32A charger. The larger capacity one charges at a rate of 37 miles/hour from a 40A charger. I wonder how long off a 10A or 16A connection!??! More than double of course.
There is one Tesla supercharger location in south Wales BTW.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Tue 1 Aug 17 at 17:10
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You can also rapid-charge Teslas from Chademo points with an adaptor (up to around 50kW or 200miles/hour) or 11-16.5kW from a type 2 connector (45-70 miles/hr).
It's not all Supercharger or granny cables.
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>>
>> There is one Tesla supercharger location in south Wales BTW.
>>
I stayed at a hotel in St Davids in January and it had four elec car charging points, two of which were Tesla branded so I assume supercharging*.
* It's really an inappropriate term that as it already has a clear meaning in the automotive realm.
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Twr Y Felin hotel has 2 'destination chargers'
These are 7kW chargers meant for overnight recharges, mostly at hotels.
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>> If it gave me a genuine 300 mile range, I could actually get away with one of these probably 28 days of the month. The other 2-3 days I would need an alternative vehicle.
Same with me, which translates to the fact that electric cars are good option for rich people as 2nd car :-)
Technology has to take a giant leap (affordability, range, time to recharge etc.) for electric cars to become only car in the family.
While electric cars are supposed to be lower maintenance, I am not sure if this will be indeed the case. The Thameslink trains (all electric) are notoriously unreliable compared to East Midland trains (all diesel) plying on same route. May be not a good comparison, but I wonder why electric trains are so unreliable. There have been many cases my train got broken down midway in journey. The only difference between these 2 trains are that Thameslink stops in many stations where as Midland trains stop only at few stations.
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>> While electric cars are supposed to be lower maintenance, I am not sure if this
>> will be indeed the case. The Thameslink trains (all electric) are notoriously unreliable compared
>> to East Midland trains (all diesel) plying on same route. May be not a good comparison,
>
Possibly not, part of the challenge with electric trains is that they are picking up their electric supply from the track or overhead wires. While these are proven, reliable technology in general, they can be damaged by weather etc and occasionally the contact between the train and the electricity fails.
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>> >> will be indeed the case. The Thameslink trains (all electric) are notoriously unreliable compared
>>
>> >> to East Midland trains (all diesel) plying on same route. May be not a
>> good comparison,
Generally speaking, using passenger miles as a measure, Electric Trains are more reliable, cheaper to run and require less maintenance. They are considerably faster as well.
You also have to accept that nearly all current diesel trains on the uk network are in effect, Hybrids, using an electric traction motor as drive, and have been for decades.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 2 Aug 17 at 12:51
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>> You also have to accept that nearly all current diesel trains on the uk network
>> are in effect, Hybrids, using an electric traction motor as drive, and have been for
>> decades.
>>
Electric transmission doesn't make them hybrids as they don't have any way of storing the electrical energy that they generate to subsequently supplement the diesel power.
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>>Not just that, if you occasionally need to do a 300 mile plus round trip it's useless unless you can charge it at your destination ...
Many people never need to do that, or if they do there is not much time pressure so they can hook up for an hour at a rapid to fill the battery.
Not going to suit everyone, but for those it doesn't I am delighted for them to continue to subsidise my driving.
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My experience of electric cars is confined to slot racing. Do these cars suffer from the same problem as their miniatures, namely, excessive sensitivity of the accelerator, meaning the slightest touch gives a huge and immediate surge of power?
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Mine doesn't, but if you stomp on the gas it does feel really quick off the line, in sport mode. It probably isn't "stop watch" fast, but it feels certainly fast as there are no gear changes and it is so smooth and quiet. The performance tails off quite early though. And that isn't the way to drive an electric car all the time as it guzzles the power. In Normal mode it is just really smooth. Even when it switched to the engine on the motorway (due to electricity running out) there was no noticeable anything.
I guess because there is something to accurately measure it, I am now often seeking "goals" when driving, like maxing the range of electric by driving (mine does up to about 45 miles on electricity before the engine kicks in) and as a spin-off trying to improve the lifetime mpg from 66.7 mpg - which will come with more miles (currently a bit over 150 miles covered with 0.08 gallon used).
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The Merc has 3 drving modes which affect 'throttle' response
- Eco is default and is progressive with the throttle - probably slightly less jumpy than a torque converter auto, but if you floor it there is immediate poke - at 100% accelerator travel you get around 136hp, pushing further and hitting the kickdown switch gives it the full 180hp.
- Sport is much more immediate and is probably pushing 100% output at around 80% throttle depression, and kickdown adds nothing.
- Eco+ is very sluggish to accelerate maxing at 95hp at full throttle travel, again jumping to 180hp on kickdown.
Eco+ is amusing for the "VTEC just kicked in, yo" effect on kickdown but in town isn't nippy enough for my liking in normal driving - better suited for cruising on the M-way as it turns the wick right down on heating/air con etc for max efficiency.
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>> My experience of electric cars is confined to slot racing. Do these cars suffer from
>> the same problem as their miniatures, namely, excessive sensitivity of the accelerator, meaning the slightest
>> touch gives a huge and immediate surge of power?
I dont think you can take a cheap nasty crude potentiometer on a lump of a cheap nasty piece of plastic trigger, using little in the way of electronic control, driving a powerful electric motor that has to carry little or no weight, and apply that to nearly a ton of car.
Think train. You dont see them sliding and snaking away from the platform.
Last edited by: Zero on Sun 6 Aug 17 at 11:18
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I have an electric bike. The power comes in at about 2-3 mph. The push from the electric motor is really very noticeable.
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>> Think train. You dont see them sliding and snaking away from the platform.
>>
Unless there's 'leaves on the line' or 'the wrong type of snow', etc.
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>> Unless there's 'leaves on the line' or 'the wrong type of snow', etc.
Consequence of steel wheels on the iron road.
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The Scalextrix analogy is ridiculous really. They only spin off the track is you are too heavy with you right(left) forefinger.
It's only like saying that it would be impossible to keep a powerful car on the road, it would be if you put you foot to the floor the instance you start it and switch all of the electronics off though of course you don't do that.
And Teslas etc surely have an accelerator that can be modulated as easily as an ICE car's accelerator and have TC and DSC etc to keep you out of trouble.
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Seems to be a some (understandable) marketing hype behind this. I'm not so sure Tesla will make it in the longer term. They just burnt the most cash ever at over $1B last quarter - apparently to ramp up production.
Talking of which the model 3 will only ship a few hundred a month for the first few months to Tesla employees. Presumably to do their own in house beta testing first.
They hope for 20K / month by the end of the year - but that's a huge ramp up and with 450K on order will take a long time to clear the backlog. Good luck getting one in the UK by 2019.
They made a feature of minimalistic dash display because, you know, it will mainly rely on driverless features, but you only get these with another $9K of spend. The low price they advertise won't have any of these features, so by the time you've added another third on the price for them it isn't such a great deal.
It's much easier to start with a premium car because the market will pay mega bucks for it. However, mass producing a low-cost high-value car is a much harder proposition.
So by the time we lose all the hype over performance which we can't use here in the UK anyway, my hunch is that cars more like the Hyundai ioniq will be more likely to make it; decent range, reasonable acceleration, good quality and lots of features standard etc. and all at a much lower cost.
As for the self driving part, expect to see the likes of Apple and Google licensing their tech out to car manufacturers to build into their systems. Apple especially now has the great combination of being able to provide a whole ecosystem combining the best of hardware and software which I think car makers will find hard to beat.
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>As for the self driving part, expect to see the likes of Apple and Google licensing their tech out to >car manufacturers to build into their systems. Apple especially now has the great combination of >being able to provide a whole ecosystem combining the best of hardware and software which I ?>think car makers will find hard to beat.
BMW has said they will only offer integration with Apple because of its more closed architecture and will not be offering the same with Android because its too user configurable in look and feel and would interfere with the ergonomics and usability that BMW is trying to create. (and as soon as you start introducing gesture control that becomes a real problem)
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>> and as soon as you start introducing gesture control that becomes a real problem)
Especially for those people who have to "talk with their hands", and who make me nervous when they are driving anyway.
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Son's NAVDY has some gesture control already.
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>> more closed architecture
Also Apple's approach has been to have more power on the device and AI built into that rather than relying on cloud services like Google. This is because they value anonymity and privacy more than Google. As a result we have AI in the form of Siri which is completely inferior to Alexa and Google who can rely on building a profile of the user.
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>>Alexa.
Amazon products are surprisingly good.
I have several Apple devices (there are 3 Ipad airs in the house, 4 iPhones being used etc) and they all needed setting up.
The Fire TV stick, Fire Tablet (amazing value for money in their sales) and Alexa all came set up with account details etc and now even know your Wi-Fi password on arrival. I guess much of the account detail is downloaded from Amazon services when the device first switches on.
I got the Fire HD 8 inch tablet for SWM in lieu of an overdue bunch of flowers and it arrived whilst I was away on business. It just switched on, said hello Mrs Zippy and connected to the Wi-Fi.
It's fast, the screen is bright and it was about the 5th of the price of the Apple iPad mini!
Last edited by: zippy on Tue 15 Aug 17 at 10:40
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>> This is because they value
>> anonymity and privacy more than Google.
They were pretty quick to give both up in China (to be be fair most have been) I suspect its more to do with the fact that Apple dont have the cloud infrastructure to do it like like google, and the clouds available are all direct competitors.
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We've come across quite a few busy carparks here in Italy though usually the elec car spaces with charge points (from which you can get towed if you park a proper, er, ICE car there) are empty. There was a Tesla plugged in in Pienza and it occured to me that it could have been towards the limits of its range due to the winding mountain roads if transitting from Rome, Florence, Pisa etc. I guess the driver was relieved to find a vacant charge point though what will happen in the future when there are more cars arriving at such locations than there are charge points available, give me an ICE any day, for the forseeable future at least ...
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Tesla - model 3 review - The Melting Snowman
