I live in North Yorkshire in the UK and have booked a test drive for the MS on Sat 9th August with every intention of signing up straight away! The money is in the bank ready and waiting!!
My friend Peter NOW has me worried as he has also been considering a purchase of an MS.
He has just sent me the following email, with questions that I hope can bring forum answers to alleviate my worries:
My friend Peter NOW has me worried as he has also been considering a purchase of an MS.
He has just sent me the following email, with questions that I hope can bring forum answers to alleviate my worries:
There are still some questions their salesmen do gloss over.
As speed rises the range drops, they won't publish more than 70 mph figures but with big battery you get 225 miles range with a new battery (range will deteriorate as the battery wears out, this is never mentioned).
So after about 200 miles you have to pull up and charge, with the most powerful public 22kW 440volt chargers and you having 2 chargers fitted in the car the charging rate is stated as 68 miles per hour (no doubt 68 miles range is not at 70 mph) so being optimistic you have at least a 3 hour time to wait before you can do the next 200 miles, that's a long long lunch ! On another web page they actually quote 4 hours 23 minutes as the charge time on the highest power 22 kW home and public station, ouch, can't tour Scotland with 4.5 hours stops.
From a normal 13 amp socket (3.7 kW) in your hotel room dangling out of the window you need 6 times as long so is that nearly 28 hours charge time !
They mention Chademo chargers rated at 50 kW which would be twice as fast and Tesla's Supercharge chargers that are rated at 120 kW so 5 times faster so around 1 hour, now that's more like it BUT there is only one down near London, how long before they are all over the UK including the wilds of Scotland ?
120kW at say 500 volts to the car is 240 amps ! So you might think they want cable 18 times thicker than home mains wire, I suppose the cable to the car is so short that thinner cable won't cause too much power to be lost in the cable.
Assuming they put 10 Supercharging stations into a motorway services to cope with peak demand, you certainly don't want to queue for an hour before being able to do your hour charge !
10 x 120 Kw = 1.2 Mw for each side of the motorway = 2.4 Mw total that sounds like too much for the cabling and the transformer that feeds the service station so who is going to put in all the extra cabling and transformers required to support all these charging stations, have Tesla got the cash to do it ? Will the government subside it ? As most of our petrol money goes to the government as taxes what is the incentive for the government to want electric vehicles that don't pay fuel tax ?
Have fun playing with the salesman who will be trying to ignore quite a few of these calculations.
If you can't do long trips then it becomes an expensive commuter / local car.
As speed rises the range drops, they won't publish more than 70 mph figures but with big battery you get 225 miles range with a new battery (range will deteriorate as the battery wears out, this is never mentioned).
So after about 200 miles you have to pull up and charge, with the most powerful public 22kW 440volt chargers and you having 2 chargers fitted in the car the charging rate is stated as 68 miles per hour (no doubt 68 miles range is not at 70 mph) so being optimistic you have at least a 3 hour time to wait before you can do the next 200 miles, that's a long long lunch ! On another web page they actually quote 4 hours 23 minutes as the charge time on the highest power 22 kW home and public station, ouch, can't tour Scotland with 4.5 hours stops.
From a normal 13 amp socket (3.7 kW) in your hotel room dangling out of the window you need 6 times as long so is that nearly 28 hours charge time !
They mention Chademo chargers rated at 50 kW which would be twice as fast and Tesla's Supercharge chargers that are rated at 120 kW so 5 times faster so around 1 hour, now that's more like it BUT there is only one down near London, how long before they are all over the UK including the wilds of Scotland ?
120kW at say 500 volts to the car is 240 amps ! So you might think they want cable 18 times thicker than home mains wire, I suppose the cable to the car is so short that thinner cable won't cause too much power to be lost in the cable.
Assuming they put 10 Supercharging stations into a motorway services to cope with peak demand, you certainly don't want to queue for an hour before being able to do your hour charge !
10 x 120 Kw = 1.2 Mw for each side of the motorway = 2.4 Mw total that sounds like too much for the cabling and the transformer that feeds the service station so who is going to put in all the extra cabling and transformers required to support all these charging stations, have Tesla got the cash to do it ? Will the government subside it ? As most of our petrol money goes to the government as taxes what is the incentive for the government to want electric vehicles that don't pay fuel tax ?
Have fun playing with the salesman who will be trying to ignore quite a few of these calculations.
If you can't do long trips then it becomes an expensive commuter / local car.