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An Anonymous Coward writes:
Until now, electric cars could be broken down nicely -- at the high end there is Tesla S & X, and then there is everything else (possibly including Tesla 3). A few possible competitors either quit early (Fisker) or haven't made it to production yet (Lucid, Faraday Future). This split covered price, luxury and range. Now there is a serious competitor from Jaguar and Motor Trend tested the I-Pace in Europe. While they report trouble finding charging points (it's a new car after all), they generally seemed to be impressed.
As BEV platforms go, the I-Pace’s skateboard layout is conventional. There’s a motor at each end, one driving the front wheels, the other the rear, and in between is a liquid-cooled 90-kW-hr battery pack with 432 lithium-ion cells that also provides structural integrity for the chassis. The Jaguar-developed motors are synchronous permanent magnet units with concentric transmissions that align the motors with the axles. Total output is 394 hp and 512 lb-ft.
[...] Much of Germany’s autobahn is subject to speed limits, so we spend a lot of time at 75–80 mph. There’s not much wind today, but the higher speed boosts consumption to 43 kW-hr per 100 miles. On one derestricted stretch I wind the I-Pace up near its 124-mph Vmax. It gets there easily, but I burn 6 miles of range in the process (and yes, a gasoline version would also burn fuel with such a surge). Feeling guilty at the extravagance, I back off and settle down to 75–80 mph again.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Saturday June 09 2018, @02:30PM (8 children)
Electric cars are nothing special either.
For most of the 60's/70's/80's, any British child would be woken in the morning by the whine of the electrically-powered "milk float" with its cargo of bottles tinkling down the road at 4am.
Entire towns, short stop, single-purpose (morning delivery, afternoon charging) electric vehicles. A bank of lead-acid under the hood, no transmission, almost dodgem-like controls (an "on/off" foot pedal that was more like a button), road-legal. Not huge great hulking things, not fast (famed for not being fast, but could do 30mph easily because that's all you want on an open-back vehicle carrying milk and eggs), but there.
Suddenly, 50 years later, there's a fuss about electric vehicles, almost appearing out of the blue 20+ years after they died out on the roads as a reliable and iconic symbol of good electric vehicle use. No better usage of a electric vehicle that takes hours to charge, doesn't have to do long journeys, and doesn't need to be complicated.
The fact that NOBODY bothered to anything with the technology between the 60's and 90's, and nothing for almost 20 years after that when they basically disappeared, tells you that we really have little interest in them. It's not that the technology wasn't there. It's that nobody cared. Suddenly, we care - despite the fact that the reason we care is supposedly "environmental" nowadays. It's not, it's to do with being different.
To be honest, to British eyes, the Tesla is nothing more than a glorified milk float, technology wise, with some ridiculous self-driving shite tacked on. Maybe a proper electric Jag could change that.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday June 09 2018, @03:15PM (2 children)
Heck, electric cars predate the internal combustion engine. *All* early cars were electric, though the much greater range of ICE vehicles helped them swiftly dominate the market. And by the time Ford's Model T started bringing cars to the masses, electric had become nothing more than a footnote. (actually... there were a few steam-powered cars early on, not sure how they fit in though)
What has changed about electric is the details - the invention of AC motors dramatically improved efficiency while lowering maintenance, while modern electronic control systems make it possible to vary their speed (or use brushless DC motors), and much lighter, higher capacity batteries gave them the range to be "good enough" for many modern drivers acclimated to ICEs. And of course the falling prices of those batteries has started making the whole shebang economically viable in a world that has developed around the range of ICE vehicles. As someone said decades ago "There's nothing wrong with electric cars that a battery with twice the capacity for half the price wouldn't solve". We're still not there yet, but it's improved to the point that they're at least becoming viable as luxury novelties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)
> *All* early cars were electric
Citation needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen [wikipedia.org]
> The Benz Patent-Motorwagen ("patent motorcar"), built in 1885, is sometimes regarded as the world's first 'production' automobile,[1] that is, a vehicle designed to be propelled by an internal combustion engine. The original cost of the vehicle in 1885 was 600 imperial German marks,[2] approximately 150 US dollars (equivalent to $4,086 in 2017).
>...
> Benz unveiled his invention to the public on 3 July 1886, on the Ringstrasse in Mannheim.
>
> About 25 Patent-Motorwagens were built between 1886 and 1893.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday June 09 2018, @07:59PM
First (model) electric car: 1828. They didn't start becoming practical until the invention of the lead-acid battery in 1859
"English inventor Thomas Parker, ... , built the first production electric car in London in 1884"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:25PM (3 children)
I would presume that Jaguar will have some expertise in the applications of magic smoke. US companies never really got it right, IMO.
http://www3.telus.net/bc_triumph_registry/smoke.htm [telus.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @05:44PM
Maybe once they knew about the prince of darkness (Lucas)...but it is a new day at Jaguar Land Rover. Now owned by Tata Motors, part of the giant Indian Tata Group.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 09 2018, @09:00PM (1 child)
Jaguar is owned by Mumbai-based Tata Motors. Any edge in technology or quality that they ever had was lost when it was sold to Ford, who then pawned it off on Tata after ruining the brand and raping it of intellectual property.
I'm not sure Tata has the moxie to make this work on any grand scale. While they did restore some of the quality in Jaguar that Ford had ruined, the future is not that clear. [fool.com]
For many years, Tata manufactured cars that could not be sold anywhere on earth except India because they were simply dangerous. Jaguar was intended to be their quality play. But they are years behind the other big players in EVs.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 09 2018, @09:12PM
> Any edge in technology or quality that they ever had was lost when it was sold to Ford, ...
Beg to differ on this part of your rant -- before Ford and its corporate quality edicts, Jaguar quality was terrible.
imo, the one dumb thing that Ford did was to make a lower cost Jag that was based on a Ford platform. It might have made some money, but didn't help the Jaguar image at all.
The sale to Tata was under the gun of the recession,
https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/business/business-news/jlr-would-ruined-ford-says-7398872 [birminghampost.co.uk]
Jaguar was bleeding badly and Ford didn't have the cash to keep it going, along with the main Ford operations. Remember that Ford didn't take US Gov't bail out money, but they did sell off a lot of assets to survive.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday June 10 2018, @01:25PM
That portrayal is quite distant from the experience of driving modern EVs. I've driven Teslas, the Nissan Leaf, and BMW i3's. All of them deliver a superior driving experience to gas cars. First, the acceleration is instant, linear, and precise. That makes changing lanes, merging, and generally maneuvering on the road so much easier. Second, they're quiet. You can have a conversation or listen to your music at less than deafening levels.
Washington DC delenda est.