Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

We have a Volkswagen e-Up, and I'm convinced it's the perfect EV. It's small and light(about 1000kg total), but not so small to be impractical - it fits a full size baby seat and a full size pram, I've done Costco and DIY store runs with it, it carried planks of wood and bags of soil....like any normal car would. Yes the 150 mile range is not going to win any contests, but you know what - I've literally never been close to running out. I can do the school run in the morning, commute to work, go shopping, go see friends, and still only need to charge it every few days at most - and when I do i just plug it in at home and it charges overnight, ready and fully charged by the morning. And it does 5-6 miles per kWh which is insane, it beats even the most optimistic numbers on a Tesla. And full charge costs me £2.5 at home - about the same as two litres of petrol.

Would I do a cross country trip in one of these? Obviously not(although you could, it does support CCS rapid charging), but if I had to....I'd just rent a different car to do that in for few days? Seriously the need for that comes up maybe twice a year for me - so why would I need a massive 2.5 tonne EV with a 100kWh battery , like every other manufacturer seems to be so keen on delivering as their EV solution?

Obviously, before someone replies "well this wouldn't work for me" - yes I know. But I'd wager that for an awful lot of people this exact kind of car would work perfectly fine.

That is still a normal car, although very compact. Plus at 1000kg it is still more heavy than most of the petrol city cars we have in Europe. The article is about smaller cars, that are sometimes not even 'cars' when it comes to regulation. We are speaking of Citroen Ami, Renault Twizzy, Microlino ... EVs around 500kg.

Yeah I'm aware, sorry - I just meant to say that it presents a compelling EV alternative to 2 tonne+ EVs that seem to be the predominant option now, because everyone expects 300 miles of range from their car even if they practically never need it.

(Also yes, petrol city cars are lighter, but not that much lighter - a Citroen C1 clocks in at 815kg for example)

And this LUV is less than half of that at 400kg, or 2.5x lighter than the VW Up!, while costing only about half of the latter. And at 10miles per KwH, it is way more efficient too, as efficient as the Aptera (despite having a vastly larger aerodynamic drag coefficient from the look of it).

Very true - I really don't have anything else to say other than agree.

> That is still a normal car, although very compact

We have a VW Up, but it's the ICE (petrol) version. It's a great car for up to four people. EDIT: (just been out and checked the paperwork, it weighs in at ~900kg)

It's around four years old and we've done around 36k miles. It cost just under $11k new, everything included (although they're now $15k and you'd better be quick, VW are discontinuing them this year). The e-Up has already been discontinued.

It's a fantastic car, it's easy to park, easy to drive, really economical. We looked at the e-Up, but it was significantly more than twice as expensive compared to the petrol version, with a massively reduced range.

I'd love to have had enough "spare money" to have picked the e-Up instead of the ICE version, but spending an additional $25k to get a mostly inferior vehicle just wasn't an option.

Where do we go from here?

>>The e-Up has already been discontinued.

I don't think it has, at least here in UK the dealers were told to stop taking new orders because they have enough to see them until the end of 2023, but Volkswagen has confirmed they will continue making the e-Up at least until the ID.1 arrives and replaces it.

>>but spending an additional $25k to get a mostly inferior vehicle just wasn't an option.

So maybe we just lucked out, but we got ours on a lease deal, £199/month with no upfront cost. The petrol version was marginally cheaper at £149/month or something like that - the difference is easily made up in the savings on petrol and maintenance. Of course it means we will never fully own it, but at that cost it beat pretty much any other option available on the market.

> I don't think it has, at least here in UK the dealers were told to stop taking new orders because they have enough to see them until the end of 2023, but Volkswagen has confirmed they will continue making the e-Up at least until the ID.1 arrives and replaces it

Ah, I've just done more research and you're right, it seems the e-Up has made a comeback, although the list price has jumped to EUR30k/GBP26.5k/USD32.5k. Back when I first saw it the list price was EUR23k

> we got ours on a lease deal, £199/month with no upfront cost. The petrol version was marginally cheaper at £149/month or something like that - the difference is easily made up in the savings on petrol and maintenance

If we'd had that option I'd have chosen the e-Up in a heartbeat! Well done :)

> I'd love to have had enough "spare money" to have picked the e-Up instead of the ICE version, but spending an additional $25k to get a mostly inferior vehicle just wasn't an option.

I didn't think that the difference would be that large. Is it just a function of supply and demand (charging what the market will bear, and not cost+profit)?

Apparently(and this is just hearsay so treat it with a grain of salt) the replacement battery for one of these is about 10k euro, so that alone explains a big chunk of difference in price between the e-Up and its petrol brother. Batteries are just expensive and there's no good way around it.

(on the plus side, the battery capacity of the e-Up has literally DOUBLED few years back, from 18kWh to 36kWh, and yet the price remained the same - so the market is producing cheaper - per kWh - batteries)

> Batteries are just expensive and there's no good way around it

Yup, which means EVs in turn are also just expensive, and there's no way around it. Yet.

It's relatively easy for today's politicians to make policy such as effectively banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2035, as the EU has done.

Will that policy actually stick if EV prices don't fall significantly over the next 12 years? Even when the politicians of 2030-something start worrying about getting re-elected?

Wow, has it gone down that much in Europe? My BMW 120d was still 1,400kg.

The emergence of decent car sharing networks makes it even more cost-effective.

Why would I own a 100kWh car, when I only need that range 2x per year, and I could rent that bigger car with my smartphone in 30 secs, for 1/20th of the annual cost?

Why indeed?

Other people, and a lot more of them than you might think, need that range many times a year. People with elderly parents in a town 400 miles away, for instance. People with children, ditto. People who travel for work in their own vehicle.

I very much doubt the 30 seconds. Maybe booking it, but 30 seconds to driving away? Never.

The question was why would they who only need this range twice a year, own a 100kWh vehicle. If you need this range "many times a year" then obviously this comment(and this car) wasn't aimed at you.

> Why would I own a 100kWh car, when I only need that range 2x per year, and I could rent that bigger car with my smartphone in 30 secs, for 1/20th of the annual cost?

I just rented a vehicle today (for next week, flying somewhere and need a car while I am there).

The cost to rent the cheapest car on offer is less than half the cost to rent a stationwagon.

A 3 day rental (after I shopped around at 5 different providers at the airport) with limited mileage is about the same as the monthly repayment of that same vehicle, and the insurance excess is not borne by the rental company if I get into an accident or the car is stolen.

It most definitely is not 1/20th the annual cost of the vehicle[1], if you need to go away for the weekend.

[1] The cost is much greater if you want to travel a large distance, because unlimited miles almost doubles the cost.

I live and work in the same town. I have a 5 minute drive. Our town has basically everything we need. I'd drive the shit out of a car like this. It wouldn't matter if it has range. We'll probably have 2 cars until the kids are out of the house, so even if one of them is electric that's better than nothing.

A 5 minute drive is a 10 minute e-bike commute.

in my case (also commuting within the city) a 14minute no traffic car drive is a 8minute (cycle expressways) ebike commute, it can also be the other way around :) heck, even with no traffic i'm often faster by bike nearly everywhere in the city

Yes, it usually turns into 2x by car in a high traffic scenario here as well. My commute is 7 minutes by car or 15 minutes by bike (the regular type, not an e-bike). It includes a hill with about 100 meters of climbing but then you get to go downhill during the return trip. One of my colleagues doesn't own a car, has a longer commute and does it entirely by bicycle for most of the year.

> A 5 minute drive is a 10 minute e-bike commute.

But 5 minutes in the dry is not the same as 10 minutes in the rain.

The get lots of rain in the Nederlands and somehow they seem to manage just fine. Mudguards fix 60% of the rain issue, the rest is done by a raincoat.

You do get wet, raincoat or not. The solution is to simply accept that getting from A to B involves interacting with whatever the weather has to throw at you, realising that this won't do you any harm and just getting on with life. Once you're there life becomes so much easier. Get some deodorant [1] if you think you'll smell at the end of your trip. Yes, you might end up a bit sweaty but as long as you're reasonably clean that won't be a problem.

Source: personal experience (I'm Dutch although I live in rural Sweden now)

[1] make it yourself: half baking soda, half potato starch, add liquefied coconut fat and mix, use enough fat to get the consistency of peanut butter. Either dump it in a used deodorant stick (of the screw-up type, first screw it down of course) or just in a glass jar. It'll solidify into a semi-hard mass which can be easily scraped off for use, it is far more effective than the stuff sold in stores and works for a few days.

> The get lots of rain in the Nederlands and somehow they seem to manage just fine. Mudguards fix 60% of the rain issue, the rest is done by a raincoat.

I didn't say it isn't doable, I was pointing out wrong the poster who claimed that 5m in the car is the same as 10m on a bike.

Because even if you are okay with 10m in the rain, it is most certainly NOT equivalent to 5m in the dry.

Even with the rain the amount of days in the Netherlands that the weather is unbearable is extremely low.

Climate is much more extreme in large parts of the USA. Going from extremely cold with snow and windchill, all the way up to extremely warm & dry, or warm and humid, which means you need to take a shower after 2 minutes outside.

1000 kg is still too heavy. Think of body frame for Smart Fourtwo vehicle but with 4 seats and made from bonded aluminium. Add plastic panels and you get a lighter vehicle.

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