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Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

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Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#571

Post by berkes »

Foivos wrote: post #562
rsync wrote: post #142

Is it their electric car or is it their car, electric ? I don't want your electric car. I don't want your e-initiative i-mobile green-tech tron-car. I want one of your actual cars, just electric . I don't want an ID.4 - I just want a Passat. I don't want the polestar e-initiative i-concept - I just want a V90 wagon. I don't want a future space truck, I just want a Silverado - but electric. God. Dammit.

It is way better to buy a car that is designed from zero to be electric, rather than a car that used to be ICE and now they have tried to fit electric vehicle components to it.

My brother in law has an eSomething for his building business.

The most hilarious is that this van still has the fuel-tank hatch. Complete with springs, locks, rubber etc. Just that there's no hole to put fuel in, when you open it.

Probably one of the most literal interpretations of 'I want my Foo to be electric. Give me an eFoo'.

I presume this tank-hatch is there because changing the factory lines that deliver the plate work, is too costly.

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#572

Post by mgbmtl »

Baeocystin wrote: post #436
mgbmtl wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My less than $40k Leaf has a 350km range. I charge at home, drive in the city, and use it in the weekends to drive long distances. The only issue is when going to a city more than 300 km away, then yes, a 30 mins coffee. Charging stations are everywhere here (eastern Canada).

Genuine question- have you found winter temps to be much of an issue in terms of range loss?

There is loss, around 10%. One way to reduce it is to pre-heat the car while charging. Heat pumps in EVs are efficient/fast, and less annoying than waiting forever for a gas car to defrost.

There is also the additional friction from winter tires, and in summer drag from a bike rack. A bit similar to gas consumption, but does require planning stops on long trips.

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#573

Post by TulliusCicero »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #525
TulliusCicero wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad statement. California isn't even bike friendly. The Netherlands or Denmark, or hell, Germany are all VASTLY more bike friendly than California.

Not to mention those places tend to be much flatter. In the west Bay Area you have to ride next to 101 unless you don’t mind hills.

Most of the heavily populated places in the bay area are fairly flat, so that's not really a problem. Plus, with ebikes these days, hills just aren't the barrier they used to be.

The problem is mostly just infrastructure. Almost no California cities have more than a piddling amount of safe transportation biking support.

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#574

Post by flyinglizard »

cranekam wrote: post #502
hashkb wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very light truck. Especially these days. Seems like a vanity vehicle mostly. If you're hauling you have a bigger truck, and if you're offroading you have a jeep or something. Nobody is using electric for anything that we'd relate to as "critical" or "high availability". In fact, there are trucks that just bring gasoline to bigger trucks. Source: I live at 8300ft in Colorado.

The difference in what’s called “light” in the US and Europe is huge. The F-150 is, to me (a European), a very substantial vehicle. Its front end is the height of a medium-sized family car!

In Israel there are no F-150s, but their larger siblings like the F-350 and the Silverado are very popular (admittedly with contractors, you don't see white collar people buying them). Reason is, they are classified as proper trucks for tax calculation, so you get all kind of write offs and don't pay VAT (17%) on them.

The same people used to drive the smaller Japanese pickups (like Toyota Hilux) before, it just stopped making sense buying these when F-350 costs less due to the tax reasons above.

So it's funny like that when among the regular hatchback and compact car mix you see in any European country you encounter more F-350 monsters than you see in the USA (relatively speaking).

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#575

Post by deanak »

mavhc wrote: post #530
deanak wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're keeping your car for 20 years, there are at least three or four timing belt/chain replacements and a ton of maintenance if you are putting typical miles on. Plus you're always one bad part away from blowing the engine, and there's no way to stop the inevitable long term decline of engine compression and replacing your transmission/clutch. Electric vehicles outperform ICE powered vehicles on every metric, in…

What do you mean about Tesla's battery chemistry?

> Tesla also uses a different battery chemistry — aluminum, in addition to the standard nickel and cobalt — than other major automakers. The battery researchers said that choice has led to maximum range because of a higher-capacity battery chemistry, though downsides included a higher fire risk and shorter cycle life, or life span over hundreds of charges.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/10/tesla-b...

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#576

Post by m4x »

woeirua wrote: post #415
lttlrck wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking about an ID.Buzz until I took my Golf to a dealer for a 20K service. Then they tried to sell me tires for 4 x the price of Discount Tire - the tires on the car are absolutely fine - almost 1/4". Then they decided not to rotate my tires due to "tire condition" - to spite me? - and nickel and dimed me on a pair of wipers. I don't want to renew my relationship with a dealer. Especially not with an electri…

Yeah, but electric cars have so many fewer moving parts that they just don’t need much maintenance at all. As someone who has an EV now, I’m never going back because EVs are just so much better overall.

This isn't really true in my experience. I have an Outlander PHEV and the costs associated with maintaining the electrical system have dwarved the ICE maintenance costs. The other major expense has been tires, which electric cars also have.

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#577

Post by gala8y »

jfim wrote: post #393
kleiba wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

range, availability, or charging which are solved enough But are they really? Especially for charging, I'm still not convinced. The articles makes a case that you can go and grab a coffee while your ID.4 charges in 30 minutes at a high-speed charging stations. Sorry, but "30 minutes" and "high-speed" in one sentence seems somewhat misplaced. Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis? I c…

> Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis? The idea is that charging is done at home overnight, so that the high speed charging stations are only used whenever one is doing longer drives on a single day. As you point out though, not everyone has access to charging at home. Some employers do have charging stations, which can help since many cars do stay several hours at the office every…

Total off topic, as comments on older posts are off.

As per your comment from 19 days ago [0], is it possible for you to write down something about your air quality sensors project? That would be awesome.

(0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26690347

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#578

Post by TulliusCicero »

RamRodification wrote: post #213
Koshkin wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, California is one of the very few places on Earth where you can do that.

I think you are being a bit overly negative but you do have a point. Where I live (northern Europe) I could never get by with any kind of "open" vehicle (i need a roof and heating) and snow tyres.

Seriously? You know the Netherlands and Denmark are both in northern Europe, right?

Hell, Oulu has high biking rates and is one of the northernmost cities on the planet.

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#579

Post by jeffrallen »

kleiba wrote: post #385
Someone1234 wrote: post #62

I feel like the prices on electric vehicles are starting to become their biggest hurdle (instead of range, availability, or charging which are solved enough). If you're from California or New York, I'm sure $40K starting for this or a Model Y seems complexly within your means, but there's a large chunk of the US (by population AND land) where People love to spam $40K US "average" while entirely ignoring that the aver…

range, availability, or charging which are solved enough But are they really? Especially for charging, I'm still not convinced. The articles makes a case that you can go and grab a coffee while your ID.4 charges in 30 minutes at a high-speed charging stations. Sorry, but "30 minutes" and "high-speed" in one sentence seems somewhat misplaced. Who can afford to just waste 30 minutes for charging on a regular basis? I c…

I live in Europe, with no possibility of home charging. My closest charger is 20 minutes away. My wife charges when she goes to work, rarely these days. Otherwise, we combine a shopping trip and charging, or a walk and charging. The first 50-80% of the charge goes fast, so you can easily pick up 100 km of range in the time it takes to go to the garden center.

If you want an electric car, get it. Charging is not the problem with them: affordability, availability, and matching the range to your lifestyle are.

Re: Volkswagen launches its first all-electric SUV, the ID.4

#580

Post by shafyy »

lemming wrote: post #561
shafyy wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important that cities build great biking infrastructure to alleviate this problem. At the same time, this is used by a lot of people as an excuse to not get a bike. In fact, it's not that dangerous as you make it out to be as is proven by statistics I guess (didn't look them up)

Here are the stats for New Zealand: https://ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/transport/road-traffic-injury... Bikes are definitely far more dangerous than cars. Not as much as motorcycles, but that’s scant comfort.

This is a bit misleading. With bikes, you usually only do a couple of km per day, whereas with your car you probably do 10x that.

If you look at the absolute number of deaths, biking is reasonably safe. As I said before, cities can do a lot to make it even safer, such as good bikelanes, better traffic lights for turns, better driver's education and so on.

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