> That includes fully electric cars, as well as electrified vehicles like its plug-in electric Active Tourer 2-Series, Reuters reports.
is the euphemism for that. It's good news that the cars are selling well but it's basically so misleading as to be a flat out lie that those cars are electric.
Edit: Also, the Reuters 'source' for that is actually an article about US congress tax overhaul and has no number to back up the article.
Don't get me wrong it would be great if it had a proper battery but and it's a big but it's still a £34,000 car which is 1/2 of the starting price for a new Tesla model S in the UK and in all honesty after having the pleasure of driving both on more than one occasion the BMW is a much nicer car to drive, the car feels premium, the interior design is far superior and if I'll ever decide to actually buy a car to own rather than rent or use zip car on the weekends I would go for the iPerformance vs a Tesla in it's current state in a heartbeat.
I had a few short drives in an i3 and it's also a pretty good car, but I don't have enough time behind the wheel to form a good opinion and to me it's just too damn ugly. I really wish they would've dresses the i3 like a series 3 or 2 car.
The drive takes me on some of the best roads in West Sussex, with some truly amazing cars (think Lamborghinis from the 70s and 80s, Porsche Carrera GTs and old 911s) and as such you can imagine we're too busy having fun to worry about economy.
I can do the trip there and back in 3/4 of a tank (11l/100km, or 25MPG). However, I genuinely worry that if I bought a Model S I would not be able to make the same trip on a single charge. There is a video on YouTube of someone driving their 85D on the Nurburgring and in 10 minutes the car has gone from 90% to 60% charge. Given that these roads allow for a lot of throttle use I expect I'd run out after 100 miles at best.
Sure, you could argue that we should drive slower, more economically, with less throttle. However, if electric cars are going to be fun and appealing to enthusiasts I think electric cars need to start matching ICE cars when it comes to range under high load, and I think the leading cause of such poor range when driving the car in a more demanding style is the extra weight electric cars have to carry over their ICE counterparts (a P100D is almost 40% heavier than its ICE equivalent, such as a BMW F80 M3).
Finish, comfort handling and in many other ways it’s much lower than the high end series 3/5 yet alone 7.
BMW just like Benz has a big overlap between its series.
The model S is an amazing car but it’s handling is subpar mostly due to its weight and it’s furnishing is a joke compared to even entry level luxury sedans.
I saw a talk from the data guy at Progressive car insurance, he said that the only signal from their "black box" monitoring of drivers (opt-in) which predicted accidents was extreme braking. Not strong acceleration, not anything else.
That said, my driving instructor said "if you use your brakes on the autobahn in normal driving, you are doing it wrong". That is because you can see far and air resistance slows you down quickly enough.
High performance sedans, such as the Model S and F10 M5 don’t just need big brakes because of their speed, but also their weight.
2 piston calipers up front on either of those cars would be dangerous. What happens if the driver has to make a sudden stop? For this reason sedans and SUVs tend to have at least 4 piston calipers up front, 6 for performance models.
Never have I thought for a second, on road or on track, “Gosh.. I wish I had crappier brakes”.
You could compare a P100D to an F10 M5, which is 4,288lb - almost 600lb lighter than the Model S.
I didn’t realize the 7 had grown so much (126” wheelbase is nuts)
I really don’t see that many problems with comparing the Model S to either tbh.
Don't you mean above?
From an electric miles driven perspective they are worse only if not used in their ideal drive cycle, which is mostly short local electric powered trips and occasional longer gas powered trips.
And if taken as an indication of consumer sentiment toward plug-in vehicles, including PHEVs definitely makes sense, especially since people pay a premium for them over similar ICE cars.
If you've looked at sales, you might notice that Chevy Bolt (pure EV) sales tripled in the last year to pass Chevy Volt (PHEV) sales, which are flat.
I'd guess that for a lot of car buyers, practicality of a car (capacity, safety, comfort, convenience) are more important than high performance. All the PHEVs on the market meet the basic requirements for all of those criteria as good as or better than equivalent ICEs, and many can even beat equivalent ICEs in acceleration due to their electric drivetrain, if that's important to you.
And the Bolt is indeed great, and clearly pure EVs are the future, and PHEVs will be relegated to particular niches.
What? This doesn't make any sense. From wikipedia PHEVs have
> an on-board internal combustion engine and generator.
If the factory that makes these cars is building ICE engines and putting them in cars, and consumers have cars with ICE engines in them, then "from the technology perspective" there is a massive difference! A car manufactured to burn gas sometimes is not an electric car. The patents on the car have gasoline engines. The people who make it are investing in and building gas engines. The people buying the cars are assisting in development of gas engines. From a technology perspective there are huge, huge differences.
I'm not against the bridge technology. I get that it has uses. But it's not an electric car.
Right, that's why they are called PHEVs (Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles).
What matters is how they are used. If PHEVs are used in their plugin-electric mode most of the time (why would someone pay a premium for one if that weren't the case?), then they are operating essentially as electric vehicles.
> The people who make it are investing in and building gas engines. The people buying the cars are assisting in development of gas engines.
Unless one takes an oath not to ever be ferried in an ICE powered vehicle, I don't know how you can avoid indirectly financing the development of ICEs. Also, it's not like ICE technology itself is 'bad' anyways, just that its time powering mass market vehicles is coming to an end with the rise of battery electric propulsion.
ICEs aren't going to disappear as a technology, but will likely be focused on specific niches where they have utility, rather than in mass market vehicles.
It makes more sense if you drive one. The EV range lets you drive as a full EV for 99% of your drives, and a very efficient hybrid for long ones (since the battery can reserve enough energy to let the engine only work at it's most efficient range). I went almost 3,000 miles before needing to put gas in mine, and only needed that because of a 200 mile trip I took.
Once you exceed something like 25 miles of EV-only range, a PHEV is closer to an EV than a Hybrid.
I'm sure the driving experience of these cars is similar. That's not the point. The cars themselves are extremely different in their technology and manufacture. Calling a hybrid an electric car is misleading and wrong. It's a hybrid.
Edit: I'm no longer allowed to post, HN is telling me to "slow down". So here is my response to the comment below.
I am not misunderstanding how these cars work. I am aware of how they work. They are manufactured with a gasoline engine. Whether or not it is used by the end consumer is irrelevant to the point I am making.
A car that is manufactured with a gasoline engine is not an electric car.
The amount of investment needed to facilitate EVs on a grand scale involves orders of magnitude more money and manufacturing (which generates pollution itself) than PHEVs.
PHEVs will be able to reduce a huge portion of the conditions that we burn gas which create the most pollution.
The problem with calling a PHEV with 50 miles of range a plain "hybrid" is the public has a clear idea of what a hybrid is, EV range measured in feet instead of miles.
High range PHEVs are EVs that become hybrids when the battery dies. I don't have a problem with calling them electric cars as long as we also have the BEV designation when it comes down to specifications, because the net benefit of PHEVs become mainstream will be massive, and only serves to open the way for BEVs.
If plug in hybrids count but non plug in hybrids do not, then I disagree with you.