The pace of development in battery technology is impressive but it does worry me that no sooner than I’d make a choice and buy an electric car, it’d be obsolete, or at least have a very poor residual. Tricky.
I’m still favouring hybrid rather than total electric - belt and braces…
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You’re right. This is the new ProLogium modular battery, which can be repaired by replacing only the damaged parts.
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I think you’re v. wise to be more than worried - deeply suspicious, more like.
A pal is the C.E.O. of a London QuANGO. She has a pretty decent allowance for purchase of a car. The last one was a big, fat Toyota 4x4.
Decided to get something deluxe s/h rather than less deluxe, new … a Porsche Cayenne hybrid. When she got it the battery was good for 25 miles. After a couple of years this is now down to 9 miles and falling. It won’t be long before the EV aspect of this thing is, for practical purposes, zero. All that will remain is its ‘compliance’ with London’s ULEZ, in which she lives.
But maybe the MoT test has/will feature a test of the battery and when that gets down to some piffling figure it’s a fail.
Residual? What residual?
Think about that for a second - 600mils at (at best) 250Wh/mile is 150kWh, to add that much charge to a battery in 5 minutes needs a 1.8MW (yes mega watt) charger - at 400V it’s 4500A and it’s 12x more power than the fastest chargers today can manage (and, let’s face it, the current charging infrastructure is a long way from having 150kW chargers available everywhere).
Edit: - OK, I see there are 350kW chargers available these days. Albeit in very small numbers. It’s still 5-6x what they can provide and we’re even further from them being ubiquitous in the charging network than 150kW chargers.
Somewhat like plugging your can directly into the national grid!
I’m not convinced, to be honest.
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Nail hit firmly on the head, however who would actually needs to add 1000kms in 5 mins?
More data extrapolation
It’s “ICE equivalent” top-up I expect.
My old diesel Mondeo would do 600 miles on a tank (50+mpg if I did not go above 70 on the motorway and a 13 gallon tank). I could fill it in, well about five minutes 
But I don’t need a car that will do 650 miles - I manage perfectly well with the S3 which will do ~450 on a tank on a steady journey. Heck I managed with the Celica which was lucky to get 350 even on long constant speed stuff. I wouldn’t want to take it to France but mostly because you need a skeleton that is younger than 50 years old to survive that long a journey in a Celica.
EV’s are close to what I want range-wise. Once they have a real world range of 400 miles I’ll be happy (whether I buy one though … )
I have nothing love and fond memories of mine 
Skeleton or Celica?
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A bit of both 
back in the days of rallying my mini coopers, I think my skeleton left several times 
I recently watched a report on a Chinese/Spanish 500 cc motorcycle that has two petrol tanks with at total of almost 40 litres giving it a range of about 1000km. People were going mad over it saying it was just what the needed. I disagree. Nobody in Europe needs a motorcycle with that fuel capacity or range. Anyone who has ridden even 500km in a day on non motorway roads knows that it’s a long way and a long day in the saddle. I agree I wouldn’t want a car with a range of less than 400 miles but for a motorcycle 250 would be enough for most people.
New Renault 5 E Tech arriving Monday to take over from the Zoe.
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There was a point that I had a 130 mile round-trip daily commute. The Celica would do two and a half runs, so I filled up twice a week, sometimes three times. The Mondeo just nicely did five trips a week (but sometimes I got to the petrol station at home at the end of the week with zero miles range showing).
So, 600, can be useful sometimes but most people won’t need that much range. 250 is a bit low unless you want to be on first name terms with the staff at the local filling station.
The Celica is still on the drive, I haven’t quite decided what to do with it - it runs, is taxed and insured but needs a little TLC (just minor bodywork mostly) but ultimately just sitting outside in British weather is not good for cars.
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There are many EVs that will happily do that distance, even my now 6 year old Leaf 2.0 with it’s 40kWh battery.
You then charge overnight every night (which costs you no time) & never need to darken the forecourt of your local petrol vendor again.
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Not in 2008 there weren’t
These days my commute could probably be done on an AA battery but it’s the trips to France which can’t.
Indeed so, but I like to make a point wherever I can.
My wife & I recently spent two weeks doing a 2000km round trip from home in Normandie to various places in the UK with my 40kWh Leaf, which I would rarely want to stretch to more than 200kms between charges on a road trip, just to be be safe (the guessometer can read as high as 278kms). We never had to wait for charging to reach a sufficient level for our next stage, as all breaks served another purpose (bladder &/or eating, or a visit/overnight stop to a destination).
In general charging on the UK motorways is now trouble free. I also now own an adaptor so that my Chademo charging Leaf can also charge from the much more common CCS chargers if needs be.
Charger problems are a lot more common in public car parks, usually those that are managed by the local council 
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That’s not the impression I get from various reviews.
And at ~ 66p a kWh basically the same as petrol
~66p to travel 3-4 miles = ~£6.60 to travel 35
The S3 gets at least 35mpg on a motorway run and £1.32/l (the price currently at my local Tesco) is as near as makes no difference £6/gallon
Yes, I know, home charging is cheaper - for now.
I’m picking ours up on Tuesday. We went for a green one, it seemed appropriate 
I’m going to take it to Dublin for Christmas instead of the i4. It’ll be interesting to see the difference between a 55 kWh battery and 100 kW charging vs a 84 kWh and 207 kW on a long trip. My wife has decided to fly 
Have you seen the “handbook” videos on Youtube?
For eco, Irish, or Eirish reasons?
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We went for the blue one
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