Would you have an electric car if you had the money for a new car and were in the market for one?

[KungFooBob]

Mine makes 540bhp in Sports Boost. But it spends 99% of the time in Eco Pro, where it only makes 460bhp.

[Pirahna]

A young chap with a dodgy haircut makes a decent effort at what's coming this year. What he doesn't mention is stuff like Geely are starting production of solid state batteries this year. Geely own Volvo and solid state batteries offer over 600 miles in range.

[mangocrazy]

My wife bitches like hell when she's a passenger in my i4 M50, she claims I'm deliberately trying to make her ill/give her whiplash.

I guess as a driver holding on the the wheel and expecting the acceleration you become a bit blind to how instant the power comes in.

I was behind a Tesla yesterday in fairly slow moving traffic. All of a sudden the traffic cleared and the Tesla driver booted it. The acceleration it displayed would make a 1000cc sportsbike look green with envy, just an instant hit. I'm sure this is not news to you, as an EV owner, but it certainly opened my eyes.

[KungFooBob]

My car has very similar performance to the 'Performance' version of the Tesla Model 3. 0-60 in about three and a half seconds and the quarter mile in 11.5.

It also weighs 2.2 tons.

[Dodgy69]

How's tyre wear. ?

[KungFooBob]

How's tyre wear. ?

Fine.

Cos I mostly drive like a nun. It's only when the wife is in the car that I try to race everyone.

[Horse]

Cos I mostly drive like a nun.

[IccyV2]

FFS, I just typed a long review and deleted it by accident.

Basically we bought a Tesla as a family pool car, we needed something that we could all use and swap about in when the other cars were being used.
We got a loaner and tried it out and to be fair it ticked absolutely all our boxes and even some we didn't know we had, it's very fast and actually turns your stomach when you accelerate and although it's exceptionally boring and totally soulless it does rival my Lamborghini for acceleration in a straight line.
It's got seats that are as good as any supercar and it's fast from A to B - but that's really where it stops, it's got zero character and I get no pleasure at all from driving it, it's literally a tool for a job just like my refrigerator.

A great feature for us is that each user can set it up exactly how you want it, seat/steering wheel position, driving mode, temperature, chilled or heated seats on/off, music, literally hundreds of set points, then save it in your phone app and then ten minutes before you want to drive it you activate it and it'll adjust everything and get the temperature just perfect for when you get into it, no messing about adjusting the mirror or seats or finding your radio station, etc.

If we have an Amazon delivery when we're out I tell the man (via the doorbell thing) to put it in the boot of the car, even if we're in the UK, I can open the boot and lock it from anywhere in the world. Another cool feature is you can stand inside the office door if it's raining and tell it to come to me and it will drive over to me, I don't know if this is enabled everywhere in the world, you'd have to check.

I didn't think it would be my thing and it's not really, I never use it just for fun like I do the other cars, but as a tool to move around in I can't think of anything better. It's fully set up for driverless use but it's not allowed just yet, we can see cars out being tested, but it probably won't actually be allowed until later this year. At that point I can set the map and just sit back, in fact the new ones coming out don't even have pedals or steering wheels, but they're not for sale yet, they're waiting for the authorities to sign them off.

Happy to give anyone an honest review, it's genuinely a very good tool for the job, absolutely and utterly soulless and you'd be unhappy if you bought one to drive and enjoy, but to move from A to B in as least fuss as possible then it's great.

It's this exact car....

[IccyV2]

Oh and 100% if you get one then get the Performance Edition with the better seats, this does make a big difference because they're massively more comfortable than the basic ones and they are cooled/heated and it actually works, in the heat of summer your bum is cold as ice

You get a lot more than seats as extras in the Performance Edition but the seats are certainly a big bonus.

[KungFooBob]

Apparently the only EV that comes close to being a 'drivers car' is the Taycan.

I don't think I'll ever get bored of the performance of my M50, but you can certainly feel the weight on direction changes.

I had to drive the wife's auto diesel X2 yesterday, man that thing is noisy, you could feel every gear change and it was soo slow.

I guess you just get used to the smoothness and performance of an EV, but don't realise until you go back to ICE.

[Taipan]

Thats pretty much how i feel about my old milk float! It's sort of won me over as its stupid cheap to own and its lovely and smooth to drive and everything does what it says on the tin. I like the car a lot, but I don't love it. TBH, I want another convertible, probably an F-type, but after Tesla ownership its hard to go back to high insurance and VED and of course fuel and servicing costs!

[IccyV2]

Apparently the only EV that comes close to being a 'drivers car' is the Taycan.

It's better than the Tesla, but then I'm bound to compare it to my GT3RS and it's a very poor substitute, so that took the edge off it for me, plus I found that Porsche don't seem to have the tech app functionality that Tesla has, my Porsche app isn't great for the ICE cars so I was a bit concerned for any EV.

Then there is the depreciation, I don't know about the UK but there is such a fast turnover for Teslas that they seem to sell quickly and that really is a revelation over here where it's usually a nightmare to sell a car.

So when we even halfheartedly weighed it up it seemed that nothing came close to the Tesla in terms of ticking every box.
I also think we're likely to be one the of the first cities to allow driverless mobility, so that will be a huge blessing in traffic, I can sit back and do a bit of work on the journey and it's as good as working from home.

[Taipan]

The thing with Teslas is they are a purpose built EV and not a conversion of another model. I think the other manufacturers are catching up now though. The other thing was the charger network when it was exclusive for Teslas, it was brilliant and no one else could match it, and why so many Teslas were sold as company cars as they were actually viable as a long range EV, but again the charger infrastructure has grown massively now and Teslas have lost that edge.

One criticism I get from people is the Tesla screen, but it's intuitive and just like using a smart phone and most manufacturers are switching to TFT type screens now. Its certainly a hell of a lot easier to adjust anything than it was scrolling across the dash on my Rangey!

Overall, I like the quirkiness of a Tesla and because it is what it is and not a conversion-type EV. But, as I said, I don't love it. There is something soulless about EVs, but that's probably due to a lifetime of driving and riding ICE vehicles. That said, like KFB said, when I get in the wife's Mini Cooper now, its starting to feel odd! Gear changes feel like its cutting out and i'm conscious of drive train noise etc. So maybe the EV thing is working its magic on me. Still got the popcorn for a V6/8 with a switchable exhaust though!

[IccyV2]

I sometimes get a bit of a shock jumping off my 1936 motorbike and riding a modern one, it feels astoundingly more modern, but then you have to enjoy them for what they are, I can't see a time when I don't enjoy starting my old 80's 911 up, listening that flat six growl into life and then smell the oil cooling doing it's thing and the clunk as it goes into gear.

I can see a time when a modern ICE doesn't really do much for me, because they don't much anyway, and modern bikes leave me flat cold, there isn't a motorcycle at all made in the last few years that would make me even be bothered to put a helmet and jacket on to ride it, even if I was gifted one for free.

I was rather hoping that Porsche were going to genuinely turn the Cayman and Boxster Spyder into proper little EVs, hopefully lightweight and very zippy, that would be the perfect combo. But it looks now that they've abandoned it because it was never going to work anyway, the oil/petrol distribution network will take twenty years to replace at it's fastest, so EVs will be an alternative because of choice, not because of necessity.

The Tesla suits the job we wanted it for, city driving, I rarely go over 50mph except in short bursts and my 30 minute commute (shortly to turn into a 45 minute one) is 80% sitting still at traffic lights or in traffic jams, so I can put a podcast on, watch the news, etc, in perfect comfort.
Hopefully driverless options come in soon and then I'll sit in the back and do my end of the working day authorisations, sign-offs and admin on the way home.

[Taipan]

I agree, a Cayman and Boxster Spyder EVs would have been brilliant! The Taycan is financial suicide for outright buyers. They make my Velar look like an investment car!

My old Neighbour is a car dealer/repairer and he reckons the mood in the trade is that EVs are peaking and reckons in 27/8 the sales figures will show the slump? I can't see it myself as I see more and more of them and more and more charging stations popping up too? Has the bubble burst?

[IccyV2]

Don't know if you have it enabled Taipan but the "come to me" feature is cool, if it's hot/cold/raining outside then you go to your office door and press the "come to me" button on your app and as long as you hold the button down continuously the car will drive to you on it's own where you're standing.
It's some proper James Bond stuff.
I can start it up from my office five minutes before I set off so it's nicely at my chosen temperature, then I head downstairs and as I'm chatting to the security man on our front office doors I press the button and the car will drive from my parking space up to the door.

Or at the country club where you always have that five minute conversation as you're leaving and you're stood at the entrance, I just call the car to me like Roy Rogers calling his horse

There is way more to EVs than just driving.

[MrLongbeard]

The UK (and maybe the EU as it's a UNECE apparently ) limits 'come to me' to 6 meters, is it worth it for that?

[KungFooBob]

The UK (and maybe the EU as it's a UNECE apparently ) limits 'come to me' to 6 meters, is it worth it for that?

That still useful for getting it out of a really tight parking spot so you can open the doors to get in.

[IccyV2]

Over here it's 200ft.
I suspect it's actually a metric number but the email the salesman showed me from their tech dept in the USA says 200ft as long as it's line of sight.

I've only ever done it over about ten metres or so, my car park space is close to the office doors.
But it's handy if it's over a puddle or as KFB says in a tight spot.

[IccyV2]

I haven't really been looking at this thread much, how many EVs owners are on here now?