Quote:
Originally Posted by spool twice
I just find it odd to shop for a vehicle based on rare occasions vs what you truly use it for daily.
I understand the person who commutes 300 miles daily for work, but I don't understand the person who commutes 300 miles twice a year.
For me, I can charge each night if I need to on my garage, I drive 95% city, and I drive literally 2 days out of the week at less than 15 miles total since I work at home. My range will likely be closer to 350-400 miles because its 95% city driving.
Having a low maintanence vehicle with the luxury of having a "full tank of fuel each time I press the start button from home," this car works for me.
I can still take road trips, rare, but the range is sufficient to DC fast charge every 150 or 200 miles if needed on EA networks which is free for 2 years @ 30 mins/session.
But yes, the weight of this thing is rather high. My M4cs is about 3,650 lbs, so adjusting to 4,883lbs (DIN weight) will be different once mine arrives, but I rarely use my current car for what it was intended for. 95% of the time I'm doing a grocery store/liquior store run with it, so the M50 makes sense for me as Florida has crazy rain storms between May-Oct so I do need AWD, with the added bonus of acceleration that I likely won't use much.
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So do i for my self i would not base my purchase of a car on those rare occasions most people don't but for some people that is an another excuse to look the other way and not buy a EV yet. Frankly i am not even sure that the current iterations of EVs will ever be able to pull that off maybe not with lithium ion tech battery's.
For me who makes regular trips around 4-5 times years during all seasons to our vacation home witch is around 202 miles away from home or 326 km in metric distance. I care quite a lot about the range but have chosen the the m50 over the 40 and will have to make a stop on the way down and home and usually one of those stops is around 15 min to buy some food go to the rest room etc. And that little rest stop will give me in 15 min from 34% battery to 70% sense that place where i stop has a couple of 350 kw charger. But here is also another reason for some people to not make the jump and i can feel this a bit to even though i have driven i3 for quite some time, it is that when i arrive to that specific charger if it will be occupied i have no other alternatives on the road down there so that 15 min rest could become an 30-50 min if not more depending how many more people is there and charging. So suddenly my 4 hour road trips turns to a 5 hour trip, And that is where regular fuels has the advantage still, being in so many places and topping up a car goes fast. So this for EVs will be an obstacle for some time more until more of the petrol companies also starts investing in chargers then they can offer both and earn money on both.
Quote:
Originally Posted by techwhiz1
You don't purchase based on "maybe I want to take a road trip" and they don't design for 400 miles when the typical car rarely travels 100 miles a day let alone 300.
If you always plug in you will have a full tank days.
100 miles a day during the week every day amounts to 25k miles a year.
When I was going to Silicon Valley everyday O would do about 80 miles round trip. Add weekends and I could hit 24k miles in a year. But none of that was a 300 mile trip.
Adding the extra battery or more lightweight material to get more range will only increase cost for the 95% to benefit the 5%. That is a horrible tradeoff.
200+/- works for me. As long as I can get to Laguna Seca and back I'm golden.
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As i mention earlier most people don't buy on that term but for some people that is a reason not to make the jump to EV even if it ticks all the other boxes it dosn't tick that certain one and it makes them refuse the jump. Again i find this weird also, but Humans ain't always logical in our decision making witch at times can cause issues.
I always charge my car at home it is easy and i have never ever had range anxiety in my day to day life. Car is always topped up in the morning and pre heated same with work i have all the possibility to charge their also free of charge.
But yes the solution isn't always adding more battery cells that tends to increase weight for very little range gain as with air planes there is a certain amount if weight an air plane should have and how much fuel it should take on based on the current weight of it witch can cause a negative spiral where adding more weight causes more fuel consumption and more emissions so yeah weight is a factor in this also.
So same goes with cars adding more weight isn't good. But as with the i3 where BMW worked a lot with carbon tech and also gained the money back on the R&D around the car witch they also said they did. Then it shouldn't have been to hard maybe making roof, trunk, hood in carbon-fibre parts reducing more weight or adding more components in carbon-fibre, considering the amount they have invested in this, that should not have been an issue but then again the i4 was probably never meant to have those parts or is reserved for some GT version up ahead witch is more track focused who knows. But if we are to go by the numbers on the configuration site, where adding the carbon package for 31-33k gives you a but more range not much but a bit, and with that they could have made the carbon package more in line with adding stuff like lightweight alloys, roof, trunk etc... i am sure more people would have chosen that package both because of range gain but also helping to reduce the cars weight 2.2 tonnes is heavy.