Only on the hardware, if I remember correctly.
Given how much they cost that’s probably not going to matter.
If people can fight over black Monday or the opening of a new Ikea anything is possible. Fortunately very rare events.
Don’t worry. I had similar concerns when I bought a used eNV-200 van last year from a private seller. I’d had the old “prime a la casse” back in 2018 when scrapping our old car against a new Leaf & the new “prime à la conversion” site clearly states that you can only claim it once up until 2023, but the two primes are not the same thing.
The worst moment was scrapping my old diesel van (77€ scrap value…!) in order to get the official certificate of destruction that you absolutely must have to claim the prime i.e. I was risking losing the secondhand value of the van (about 2K€) if it all went wrong.
Without the certificate I couldn’t “test” the claim on the site; I had to do it for real. Fortunately the two primes are deemed to be different & it all went through; I had a confirming email immediatly & the 5K€ turned up in the bank a few weeks later.
Whatever you do you must get that certificate of destruction if you are applying yourself. Get assurance from the garage that they will give it to you. If you have any doubts take it to an approved destruction centre yourself, which also means you’ll get the scrap metal value too.
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EV’s generally fall about 270-330Wh per mile so a 7kW (32A) charger will top that up at about 2.5 minutes per mile travelled.
By comparison a diesel doing 50mpg clocks in at 931Wh per mile - about right given the typical 30-35% thermal efficiency of a diesel engine. Even modern ultra efficient diesels which do about 80mpg are still using about 600Wh per mile.
Obviously EV’s, if run on electricity generated from fossil fuels, just push the CO2 generation to the power station but modern combined cycle natural gas power stations can achieve 60% thermal efficiency - so EV’s win over ICE cars even if there are no renewable/low CO2 sources used to supply their electricity.
The logic is inescapable - we should ditch fossil fuel powered cars as soon as possible - I need to change the motor and the next one will almost certainly be an EV, not a Tesla as Musk is a jerk but the BMW i4 looks nice on paper (I just need to get my head around the price).
A visionary, may say some stupid things but without his input we would still be driving ICE cars for a considerably longer period. He proved it again with the supercharger network.
I agree that Tesla were just about the first to produce EVs that rivalled petrol in range so were a realistic, practical option and that has been a good thing.
However, they are beset by problems due to poor production standards, Musk’s attitude to this and to workers who point it out sucks and most of the rest of his projects have been vapourware and/or expensive failures. Even Space-X while it works does not do as well or as profitably as Musk would like you to think.
I’ll give him Tesla, doesn’t stop him being a jerk, and he’s not that much of a visionary when you look at his stuff critically.
As they, Tesla are still a new kid on the block compared to the huge legacy auto makers who have a very vested interest in discrediting him at every turn. None of us can ever claim to be perfect all the time.
Production issues do get improved. Whenever a Tesla has a problem its news, other especially legacy car makers their PR depts make sure its hushed. Pushing the envelope always comes with risks and partial failure.
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I don’t buy it.
Major bits of car falling off (eg doors, glass roofs) are not “teething problems” - the basics of manufacturing cars should not be a black art in the 21st century. It does however point to a company willing to cut safety and production checks just to get product out of the doors - which is actually not that great for an auto manufacturer.
Being the new kid on the block doesn’t excuse being shitty to your employees either.
That attack by Musk on Vern Unsworth, for instance, seems to have been entirely in character.
I’ve never been a BMW type of person, though my wife has one, I’m more a docile Merc man (albeit I like a generous amount of BHP on tap). Though I’ve driven them I probably wouldn’t buy a Tesla because I’m unsure of the build quality, not the technology but the fit and finish. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable spending €100K on a single car either, I prefer to have several with different characters. I think batteries are still developing at such a pace maybe I’ll wait a couple of years before going fully electric, though I have been browsing the Merc EQC website quite often. I also need to keep size in mind, the roads around where I live are quite narrow and there are many lunatics that don’t believe in the concept of keeping to their side of the road so I don’t want anything too wide. When I get a chance I’ll pop into a showroom and try a EQC for size.
That was totally unforgivable.
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Longer term I think that this will really bite Tesla once the more established makers fully come on board - if the idea gets into the public’s head that quality is low it can be difficult to get it back out again - it took Skoda, what?, 20 years and even now I don’t think that stigma has completely gone.
No, me neither - the i4 M50 comes in a £68k (with the options I’d choose) which is 80k€ rather than 100k€ but it’s certainly in that ball park.
But all EV’s are expensive - a Nissan Leaf is £30-£32k with the 62kWh battery, plus any extras that you want to throw on (though to be fair the base car comes with most things you’d need).
I’m not sure about that - not so much that they are not being developed but that waiting for them to be perfected could be a very long one - solid state has promise but even Toyota is only at the prototype stage.
New technology often starts at the high end of the car market and then filters down - given that not even the most cutting edge production cars feature a solid state battery I would not expect the average EV to have one for 5-10 years.
My current car is 15 years old and showing it so I would prefer to change sooner than later - which means I’m kinda stuck with today’s battery technology if I go EV.
I was pottering around the garden reflecting on your comments about young Elon (who IMO despite being a bright kid, obviously has a slate loose, or a spliff loose anyway) when I remembered the Quandt family’s history. I think on ethical grounds that BMW i4 should be off the list too 
Another good article…
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Point taken but is there a German car manufacturer that can trace its history back to the early years of the 20th century which is not so tainted?
Ahh, isn’t that whataboutery😂 But a good question anyway. Porsche maybe? I know Ferdinand had a spell in jug but I don’t think he actually didn’t anything wrong, and he’d been designing cars for decades.
If you look back you’ll find something on everyone who’s achieved something, seems to be the difference between the driven and the employees
Yes they are, CATL the largest manufacturer is pushing its tech and several different chemistries.
BYD in China has the much safer Blade battery less charge dense but more charge cycles and faster charging but most of all much lower cost.
Porsche, splutter, full blown paid up member of not only the Nazi party but the SS as well.
To a point perhaps, but if you go far enough back in Germany you will probably find a Nazi connection. These people are no longer alive. In most cases their direct descendents are not alive – is it not time to stop tainting people with the sins of their grandparents?
Sadly I agree, there is a strong correlation between being a billionaire and being a jerk.
The thing is that none of these are *quite* production ready, they’re always tantalisingly “near”. Now I have no doubt that one or two at least will enter the mainstream but I’ll stick to my prediction of 5-10 years before we see significant numbers of manufacturers shift from batteries made from excruciatingly large numbers of 18650 Li-Ion cells.
Absolutely!!