Joining the electric car club

MrCoop

Junior Member
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410
Took delivery of my Polestar 2 yesterday and early impressions are it's really good. It's a great looking car IMO, it's got a beefy american muscle car stance about it.

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Felonious Crud

Administrator
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21,011
Looks good! Polestar itself estimates that a leccy car needs to have covered 48.5k miles to offset the environment damage / cost / pollution from its manufacture compared to a petrol car. In Norway, where electricity generation is highly sustainable, it takes 10k miles before you ‘break even’. In Romania, it’s 100k miles.

I think the Polestar is a good-looking car, but for me they’re too heavy, too expensive and utterly fail to solve a problem. Unless the problem is ‘I don’t way to pay BiK tax on a company car.’
 

Lozzer

Member
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2,280
Don't know what they're like as an EV, this was parked on charge next to the Masser this morning, looked great, very mean looking. 88432

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mjheathcote

Centenary Club
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9,033
I think the Polestar is a good-looking car, but for me they’re too heavy, too expensive and utterly fail to solve a problem. Unless the problem is ‘I don’t way to pay BiK tax on a company car.’

The BIK issue is a biggie, and the rise of plug in hybrids for sure.
Crazy thing is especially with a hybrid, and when used as a company car properly, not just a perk to the office and back, the battery pack is dead, you are carrying then excess weight, with a poor fuel efficient petrol engine with poor mpg.
As an opted out company car driver, it makes no sense to go EV or hybrid. Cars simply too expensive for a start.
 

Felonious Crud

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The BIK issue is a biggie, and the rise of plug in hybrids for sure.
Crazy thing is especially with a hybrid, and when used as a company car properly, not just a perk to the office and back, the battery pack is dead, you are carrying then excess weight, with a poor fuel efficient petrol engine with poor mpg.
As an opted out company car driver, it makes no sense to go EV or hybrid. Cars simply too expensive for a start.
100% agreed, Mike. The whole thing is a badly thought-out knee-jerk reaction to a problem. With petrol cars able to do far more mpg than ever before* - and improving all the time - this is a choke on ICE efficiency innovation in the car industry and a steer in the wrong direction.

Now, if electricity generation can become more sustainable AND leccy car production can be more efficient AND leccy cars made lighter (anyone fancy a head-on with a 2.5t slab of battery-powered car..?) then I see the point. We're a way off that.

Still, I'm intrigued by the idea but I can't bring myself to agree that it's a good idea.

*maybe not so much the ones we enjoy the most, I'll admit.
 

Zep

Moderator
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9,110
There are lots of pros and cons. I have been doing mostly short journeys with one trip to central London in the last week or so. With a mixture of charging when out or at home, I’ve done 350 miles on quarter of a tank of fuel, averaging 89mpg. Probably twice that of an equivalent petrol car. In development terms, the petrol engine is fantastic but very much in the shallow end of its development curve. The fundamentals of the 4 stroke cycle mean it will never match other methods of power conversion.

But, I do agree, there are some key points that need addressing:

1. Battery tech must and is improving. No rare earth metals, efficient and rapid charging.

2. Generation must become more efficient, both in embodied carbon and in use.

Plus I strongly believe that there isn’t one solution for all applications. If I was doing 350 miles a day, everyday, the hybrid and a BEV would be the wrong car with current tech. But one day, disappointingly for us, it will be.
 

Felonious Crud

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One day. But for me, not today.

I do keep looking at them and I'm sure at some point I'll have one (willingly, I might add!) as a daily. They have much to recommend them, but more against for the time being unless you're doing a lot of miles. But at the mileage that makes these things worthwhile, they become too impractical due to range, charging, infrastructure.
 

MrCoop

Junior Member
Messages
410
The Polestar works for me as a company vehicle and I’m happy to embrace EV’s going forwards but I’ll also have a weekend car at some point. My heart wants a V12 Vantage but my head is saying V8 for now.
 

Felonious Crud

Administrator
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The Polestar works for me as a company vehicle and I’m happy to embrace EV’s going forwards but I’ll also have a weekend car at some point. My heart wants a V12 Vantage but my head is saying V8 for now.
Actually, that's a thing EVs are excellent at: allowing owners to feel like they're making a token effort which justifies the V8/10/12 parked next to them.

If they facilitate a guilt-offset that lets more of us keep real cars, bring 'em on!

SportsMaserati: helping our members to offset guilt.
 

Ewan

Member
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6,756
A few, but they were generally all pretty similar. We chose the Pod Point in the end (as recommended by Audi and several other marques) and have been perfectly happy with it.
 

Oneball

Member
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11,071
A few, but they were generally all pretty similar. We chose the Pod Point in the end (as recommended by Audi and several other marques) and have been perfectly happy with it.

Thanks. My sister and I were talking about it as the brother in law is getting a new car, he does 8 miles to work and back and goes to the odd rugby match in it, just seemed a sensible option.
 

Jezbraker

Junior Member
Messages
38
just ordered a little vw id3 through a work salary sacrifice thing... no doubt the wife will call dibs on it but with the tax savings and with it including all maintenance and insurance its a bit of no brainer... be interesting to see how practical it is to live with based on the scarcity of charge point here in soggy north Devon!
 

Gazcw

Member
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7,696
Now, if electricity generation can become more sustainable AND leccy car production can be more efficient AND leccy cars made lighter (anyone fancy a head-on with a 2.5t slab of battery-powered car..?) then I see the point. We're a way off that.
And they all use the same battery pack and you can drop and swap at a battery station