[spud]

I may have been tempted if it was the right price but looking at this the figures are a bit naff at only 99 miles on prefect road conditions

my dad has a Nissan Leaf quoted 109 miles but in reality 85 - 90

http://insideevs.com/volkswagen-e-up-priced-from-e26900-34500-usd-et-le-ouch/

 

[Allybasher]

Good grief! Just think how much petrol you could buy with the 10 grand over a High Up!

 

[UPANDATEM]

they must be joking for electric UP!!!!!
Everyone goes on about how cheap the UP! is, but in reality I paid over £11,000 for my High UP!. Still a lot of money. Don't get me wrong it is a brill little car, but every time someone says no elec window switch on passanger side or no string for rear parcel shelf etc etc - the majority on the forum say its to keep the price down? - at + £11,000 iam glad they did lol. Hate to think if it had the string added

 

[Rickenbacker]

You'd have to care very much about the environment to pay that sort of money, I could fill my move up with fuel about 310 times for that money! Plus charging it up isn't exactly free is it?

 

[_1S_]

Everyone goes on about how cheap the UP! is, but in reality I paid over £11,000 for my High UP!

A Take up would have been a lot cheaper

VW has pulled a brilliant sales trick here, IMHO.
Lure them in with low (for VW anyway) prices, then sell the up-market models instead of the cheap basic car

 

[Leif]

You'd have to care very much about the environment to pay that sort of money, I could fill my move up with fuel about 310 times for that money! Plus charging it up isn't exactly free is it?

Don't be so sure. The batteries are much heavier than a tank of petrol, and they are made of expensive materials. Even worse, they wear out. So after a few years you will only get 60% of the original capacity. And where does the electricity come from? Eco friendly? Naah, not unless you get electricity from a windmill or a dam.

 

[GPVG26]

I think is a very stupid excuse to bring down electric cars to a simple question, where does electricity come from? The fact is that one electric vehicle out there is one less polluting car out there. Get real! Where does petrol or diesel come from? Does it grow on freaking trees now? Anyways, yes the car is expensive, but like any new tech, the first consumers tend to pay for the cost of development, and the lack of refinement in the technology. Some people are more willing than others to do this, but if it wasn't for those people, we would not get anything. Remember the first cell phones? Expensive, heavy, big, terrible signal, but people bought them, and technology got better and cheaper. Etc etc etc.

 

[spud]

I think is a very stupid excuse to bring down electric cars to a simple question, where does electricity come from? The fact is that one electric vehicle out there is one less polluting car out there. Get real! Where does petrol or diesel come from? Does it grow on freaking trees now? Anyways, yes the car is expensive, but like any new tech, the first consumers tend to pay for the cost of development, and the lack of refinement in the technology. Some people are more willing than others to do this, but if it wasn't for those people, we would not get anything. Remember the first cell phones? Expensive, heavy, big, terrible signal, but people bought them, and technology got better and cheaper. Etc etc etc.

but when you compare the e up to the leaf a 5 seat, 109 mile range (not 99 mile) the figures do not match up, £3k more for less car

 

[spud]

You'd have to care very much about the environment to pay that sort of money, I could fill my move up with fuel about 310 times for that money! Plus charging it up isn't exactly free is it?

Don't be so sure. The batteries are much heavier than a tank of petrol, and they are made of expensive materials. Even worse, they wear out. So after a few years you will only get 60% of the original capacity. And where does the electricity come from? Eco friendly? Naah, not unless you get electricity from a windmill or a dam.

my dad gets his electric free of charge from the solar panels on his roof, granted not many have this ability but for and more of us are making the change, are are also many quick charge points around i think we have 3 here in durham

 

[Heartagram]

Gonna be fun when your batteries screw up. That will be a cheap repair. Think about laptops, phones and tablets and how quickly the battery lifes goes down on them?

 

[UPANDATEM]

Must be a first for Durham .....

 

[Ecksile]

VW has pulled a brilliant sales trick here, IMHO.
Lure them in with low (for VW anyway) prices, then sell the up-market models instead of the cheap basic car

... just the same as every manufacturer does with pretty much every model. No news here.

 

[shakotanVIP]

Fully electric cars just aren't a viable option at the moment. Even hybrids don't give the results offered on paper.

 

[spud]

Fully electric cars just aren't a viable option at the moment. Even hybrids don't give the results offered on paper.

neather do petrol or diesel cars, so whats your point?

 

[shakotanVIP]

Fully electric cars just aren't a viable option at the moment. Even hybrids don't give the results offered on paper.

neather do petrol or diesel cars, so whats your point?

The point is that Electric/Hybrid cars are priced much higher than their petrol/diesel counterparts, and in real-world terms don't offer the 'improvement' over using other technology that they claim.

So, in short, they are not worth the additional expenditure.

Even the XL-1, touted to break 300MPG, has been independently tested and found to 'only' give around 150MPG in real-world conditions.

 

[Leif]

I think is a very stupid excuse to bring down electric cars to a simple question, where does electricity come from? The fact is that one electric vehicle out there is one less polluting car out there. Get real! Where does petrol or diesel come from? Does it grow on freaking trees now? Anyways, yes the car is expensive, but like any new tech, the first consumers tend to pay for the cost of development, and the lack of refinement in the technology. Some people are more willing than others to do this, but if it wasn't for those people, we would not get anything. Remember the first cell phones? Expensive, heavy, big, terrible signal, but people bought them, and technology got better and cheaper. Etc etc etc.

In practice the vast majority of electricity comes from polluting sources including coal which is very ungreen. So what an electric car does is carry around heavy batteries (which wastes energy), and move pollution from posh areas such as the London Congestion Charging Zone to poor areas, where electricity generating stations are situated. Really it is a way for rich people to move their pollution onto the poor. And the batteries soon wear down and cost a fortune to replace. So electric cars are barely greener than petrol cars, and given that an Up can do 60mpg, it might even be greener. And electric cars have limited range, usually nowhere near the quoted value, and they cost a fortune. Maybe the next generation will be worth buying, but the current ones aren't, except for a few specialist uses e.g. avoiding the London congestion charge, and that is an artificial tax anyway. For them to be cheaper and better will require huge improvements in technology which may come, who knows.

Research should go into making petrol cars more fuel efficient.

 

[Allybasher]

I think is a very stupid excuse to bring down electric cars to a simple question, where does electricity come from? The fact is that one electric vehicle out there is one less polluting car out there. Get real! Where does petrol or diesel come from? Does it grow on freaking trees now? Anyways, yes the car is expensive, but like any new tech, the first consumers tend to pay for the cost of development, and the lack of refinement in the technology. Some people are more willing than others to do this, but if it wasn't for those people, we would not get anything. Remember the first cell phones? Expensive, heavy, big, terrible signal, but people bought them, and technology got better and cheaper. Etc etc etc.

Electricity doesn't grow on freaking trees either, unless you count the ancient ones compressed into coal that produce the majority of the UK's electricity. I still believe that pure electric cars are more like a betamax video than a mobile phone in that the range/recharging issues render them useless for 90% of motorists and until some kind of on-board generator (eg Fuel cell??) is included they will never be more than niche vehicles.

Looking at the opposition, the fact remains that even for that niche, the e-Up is too expensive.

 

[Heartagram]

Up selling happens with everything. Not just cars.

 

[_1S_]

my dad gets his electric free of charge from the solar panels on his roof, granted not many have this ability but for and more of us are making the change, are are also many quick charge points around i think we have 3 here in durham

The PV panels weren't exactly free either

Though prices have come down (thru Chinese dumping ...)

Very, very few people have enough PV panels to power both their car and their home - it'd mean having a lot of excess generating capacity installed when one doesn't have an electric car yet.

@ this kind of pricing, I honestly don't see VW selling many of them.

The eco up on CNG is far better value, with very similar fuel costs - and that's excluding future battery replacement costs.
If you can drive it on biogas instead of fossil gas, it gets even better.

But then, the UK is even worse a wasteland than Belgium , regarding CNG ...

 

[Leif]

You'd have to care very much about the environment to pay that sort of money, I could fill my move up with fuel about 310 times for that money! Plus charging it up isn't exactly free is it?

Don't be so sure. The batteries are much heavier than a tank of petrol, and they are made of expensive materials. Even worse, they wear out. So after a few years you will only get 60% of the original capacity. And where does the electricity come from? Eco friendly? Naah, not unless you get electricity from a windmill or a dam.

my dad gets his electric free of charge from the solar panels on his roof, granted not many have this ability but for and more of us are making the change, are are also many quick charge points around i think we have 3 here in durham

What do you do in Winter when it is overcast? Walk?

Solar panels are not free of charge. They cost a fortune to install. If you sell the electricity back to suppliers via the Feed In Tariff, you pay off the cost in 8 or more years. If you use the electricity yourself, you pay them off in much more than 8 years, because the FIT gives you much more than the electricity is worth. Worse, you can charge overnight from the mains using off peak electricity. So solar PV is not good for charging cars.

And what do you think will happen if we all use electric cars? What would happen to petrol and diesel duty? Do you think the government will just carry on with less tax coming in? No, the government will transfer it onto electric cars, somehow or other. If you remove duty from fuel, then petrol cars are MUCH cheaper than electric cars.