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The New All electric California due in Autumn 2019. What are you thoughts?

Erbster said:
The concept of hydrogen fuel cells has been around for a while, but has never taken off because hydrogen is difficult to store safely in fuel tanks. Unlikely to catch on imo.

Like many technologies, the commercial or political dimension decides whether a technology attains mass adoption, so unless some big players get behind an idea it doesn’t take off. EV’s despite their limitations seem to be gaining momentum (pun intended) and have a nice green label, despite their currently questionable overall environmental credentials.


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Hydrogen uses quite a lot of energy to crack the water, some of the scottish islands have such a surplus of wind energy from their wind turbines that all their cars are already electric and they can't use all the power. Hence they're using the untapped electricity to create the hyrdrogen and selling it on.

There are also tests of a hydrogen gas network in the North West of England (HyNet) and there is talk of using it to reduce the use of natural gas.
 
MattBW said:
I think this would be great for a daily driver locally, I am personally ready for an electric vehicle. I can see an electric Beach being a potential goer but an Ocean for me wouldn't be practical.

Charging a tesla with its 300 mile range on a 10amp connection takes 4 days, yes you read that right, 4 days! So a 300mile range on a van is likely to take even longer than that... A special charger is 32amps so much faster but thats unlikely to be available on campsites for a long time. That's assuming that campsites could take even 10amps for a pre-longed high throughput, I wager not.

So for me it's probably be OK for a week long holiday in the same spot but you couldn't tour in that could you? Even with the proper chargers it would be 20-30hours to get it full from what I've heard.

I have a dream one day to convert my T25 to Electric, I'm waiting patiently for the tech to advance and these products are only bringing that date ever closer. Exciting times.

One thing will be certain, it will be a lot faster than todays vans.
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A neighbour drove his Tesla from South Lincs to French Med. coast with an overnight stop mid France plus meal breaks with rapid charges, so had no issue as he'd previously done the same trip a few years ago with a mid France overnight stop etc.

Bit more route planing with no 500+ mile dashes. Cali is a leisure vehicle after all. No plans to get one personally.
 
I'd love a tesla or maybe even a new Nissan leaf, year left on the cali then I may think about something electric as a daily driver. :)
 
MarkVw2017 said:
So VW are releasing an all electric powered version of the T6.1 including a California version in Autumn 2019.

It states a range of upto 300 miles, but how do you all feel about a 300 mile range? Is that enough? Its the charging that worries me?
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Quote from Top Gear
"Alongside a bunch of 2.0 TDI diesels (topping out at 196bhp) there’s now a fully electric version, developed with the help of tuning and motorsport specialists ABT and possessing 110bhp. With the option of a humongous 77.6kWh battery, it can travel almost 300 miles on a charge. Though we suspect that’ll fall depending on how you drive it and how heavily you load it"
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Clearly early days yet, and probably a while before we'd be looking to upgrade, but an undeniably interesting direction to take. Might be a while before they have charging points at music festivals though, but you never know :)
 
motacyclist said:
I’ve heard a story about someone in a Tesla who had to wait 4 hours to get a charging bay, having been just pipped to the post for the last one. Maybe there was some exaggeration, maybe not.
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Maybe some exaggeration? Not one Tesla takes anywhere near 4 hours to charge at a Supercharger.

A Tesla can recharge to 50% in 20 mins.

Maximum time it would take would be 75 mins (from 0-100%), but that's not how these chargers are generally used though, you arrive with some battery and you charge to a level to get you to your destination / home or another super charger.
 
One aspect of electric cars that is quoted is how cheap the electricity costs will be but as a huge proportion of fossil fuel pump prices is actually taxation this loss of government revenue will have to be compensated for.
I can't see income tax taking that big a hit or any other tax source. 'E' cars will have to pay in some form making them expensive to run and ultimately to recycle.
 
Out of curiosity, how much does it actually cost to charge an e vehicle at motorway services, in price per kw?
 
I think that Hybrid would be the best if both worlds. I travel 10 miles to work so a range of 30 minutes would be ok for me. At the weekends I travel a lot and a 300 mile range would not be good for me.
A friend at work has a hybrid car but has said that he won’t get another one. To charge it it is like boiling a kettle for 3 hours plus the company car tax is rising so cutting down the savings.
Regards
Pete
 
The latest diesels are much better than expected so I am not concerned except for the attitude of politicians ( a breed I dislike). Anyway who has costed the price and replacement cost of these large batteries. One thing is certain they will not go down in price due to numerous factors.
 
PeteS said:
I think that Hybrid would be the best if both worlds. I travel 10 miles to work so a range of 30 minutes would be ok for me. At the weekends I travel a lot and a 300 mile range would not be good for me.
A friend at work has a hybrid car but has said that he won’t get another one. To charge it it is like boiling a kettle for 3 hours plus the company car tax is rising so cutting down the savings.
Regards
Pete
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I agree. Because the Cali is an all rounder, the combination would well for short trips and then leisure runs. However anything that burns carbon has now fallen foul of the politicians (*) so hybrids must die too.

(*) except the carbons and nuclear used to generate the electricity for EVs.
 
Digger said:
The latest diesels are much better than expected so I am not concerned except for the attitude of politicians ( a breed I dislike). Anyway who has costed the price and replacement cost of these large batteries. One thing is certain they will not go down in price due to numerous factors.
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I’m sure I read somewhere the cost of replacement batteries in an i8 was like £30k...
 
I think most people miss the fact that in some e cars you lease the batteries and never own them. They are actually worth more than the RRP of the vehicle technically so if you read the Ts and Cs carefully then this is where it generally lands - think Leaf and another did this. Although i've now checked and it's an 'option'. FWIW I work for Tesla.

EDIT: Security 'stuff'
 
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HI NZCol - Tesla owner here; happy to say I am not . leasing :) I note that Finnish guy has taken his Model S over 500,000 miles now (and as low as -30C) which is encouraging.

I look forward to replacing both the Cali and the Tesla with a viable alternative, with the added advantage that I can brew up whilst recharging - I am spending more on Coffee than electricity!
 
NZCol said:
I think most people miss the fact that in most (all?) e cars you lease the batteries and never own them. They are actually worth more than the RRP of the vehicle so if you read the Ts and Cs carefully then this is where it generally lands. FWIW I work for Tesla.
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Interesting, what do you do for Tesla?
 
I had a Golf GTE too which I loved. Fitted our use profile perfectly with weekday running around and commuting purely electric. Weekend long runs on the petrol engine. Averaged about 100mpg over its time (36000 miles) with us. Didn’t bother with a charging point in the end, 3 pin was fine as battery relatively small.

Our next replacement will be purely electric as even emergency trips to see relatives would need less than 150 miles but I think the Cali needs an estimated range of 500 miles first to fit its use profile and allow for cold weather, fridge full of wine, van full of people and 4 bikes hanging off the back.
It then might manage 250-300 miles at a go which is about the size of my bladder.
 
Think my next purchase will be a 500cc 2 stroke.:pinkbanana
 
Our Cali was out of action last weekend so we took a car club Renault Zoe from Bristol to Cornwall instead.

This journey was an absolute pleasure, we travelled to the new Exeter Ikea just by the Services, popped it on charge for 40mins whilst we had a meal with our little ones in the restaurant. We then hit the road again 40mins later making it to our destination with plenty in the batteries.

The whole journey of 420 miles used 110kw/h's so at 15p/kwh it cost us £16.50 saving us about £60 as we usually spend about £80 to do a similar trip. Furthermore, if I drive for 200+ miles in one go my neck really suffers, I arrived feeling great having taken a stop half way.

Having driven our Cali again today for the first time since renting the Zoe, it feels so slow, noisy and uncomfortable. I would swap our Cali for an all electric T6.1 Cali tomorrow if it was available. Furthermore, if the Cali is not made in EV format, I would happily swap it for an EV Caravelle or Transporter shuttle and have a Beach or Ocean roof fitted instead just so we can clean up our emissions and do most of our driving on solar produced energy from our roof at home.

If anyone doubts the stated range based on the weight of a Cali, just checkout the weight of the Audi ETron and its proven range.

Looking forward to Geneva motor show in March for more info from VW & ABT.
 
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Pricing makes sense then - at my nearest VW dealer the other week they had an eGolf with a big banner saying 4p per mile, matches the above.
 
hirsty said:
Pricing makes sense then - at my nearest VW dealer the other week they had an eGolf with a big banner saying 4p per mile, matches the above.
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Dont forget the Gov will have a close eye on diesel sales falling so diesel tax falling, so we'll be driving ev cars and then boom, the gov will start adding more taxes on electricity and will hit us all and it will go from 4p per mioe to 14p. No way the gov will not want their slice of the cake soon.
 
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