domhnall

Beta testing is whatit feels like. They're on a mission to deliver autonomous driving and the customers are (willing) guinea pigs in many ways. When VAG get their backsides in gear they will give them a real run for their money. I had a pre booking for the ID 3 but had to cancel when they started to say I might not be gauranteed a car despite giving them money a year in advance. They cited Brexit as the reason for price uncertainty and lack of clarity over how many cars they would allocate to the UK. I baled out in Febriary and gave the money to Tesla. Now I'm not sure that was the wrong decision, if I had approached it with more scepticism and not swallowed the hype then I might have been less disappointed. It is by far the most expensive car I have ever bought so perhaps I was expecting too much? I dunno. Eagerly awaiting the Enyaq and its stable mates though. I would definitely not go back to petrol or diesel though, no way.

cash on 0% loan. I left it because we were in lock down, wasn't driving anywhere and they were struggling bacause they were shifting so many cars out the door - they were trying to get 50 ish out the door on the day I collected it. In fairness when I flagged it last week they got it fixed very quickly. And remotely diagnosing the car was very impressive. The fact that they hadn't noticed the cr was shipped with insufficient coolant was less impressive.

I think all brands inspire some loyalty, Skoda owners are the same but yeah I have heard Zoe owners are pretty fanatical. A Nissan leaf owning friend criticised a dealer on a zoe page the other day and got totally flamed! Tesla seems to be attracting a lot of ex BMW drivers, some vRS too though. It seems a bit Apple-esque like, the same sort of "it has to be an iphone or it's not a real phone" attitude can creep in. I'm more nuanced, it is an amazing machine, but it has flaws. I still love to wipe the smile off fast fossil drivers faces though. But I did that in the leaf too ;-)

never been to Skye so can't comment on that route and since I only got it in March it's not really been dark very often to test - I tend to be in bed by 10.30 pm 🙂 I think they're on a par with the bi xenons I had in the Octavia though.

ah maybe I didn't explain that well enough...the stanav does work but produces some eye wateringly bizarre routing. I have used google maps to force it to replicate the tesla sat nav routing. I asked it for a route from Livingston to South QUeensferry (the two locations shown on the right of this map), it routed me via Kilmarnock (on the left hand side of this map). I suspect you may be right about my non use of the Tesla network, it came with 1000 free charging miles, but I have only used 300 of them, but that's due to the scarcity of Tesla chargers here which in turn is down to the excellent availability of the Scottish Government coordinated network). I certianly never had any charging availability issue with either a leaf or a zoe. The leaf issue was that it didn't thermally manage the battery, the zoe was that it was only designed to do 100 miles. The new zoe is a hugely impressive wee car.

aha the earth is flat etc etc etc OK. The reality is the vast majority of people don't drive very far. You are clearly a very angy man about that but it doesn't change the reality. People really do die from air pollution though whether you care to admit it or not. If you like we'll compare our cars. Let's park our cars in garages, sit in them and start them up. Leave it a few hours and then we can meet up to compare notes. See how clean your lungs are compared with mine. [Faux safety adviser notice: please don't try this at home viewers]

not anything that ever prevents google understanding me. I was told on an army course that I had "a very strong accent which renders him unintelligible at times". I pointed out to the Colonel interviewing me that his accent was so plummy I struggled to follow him and he shouted "don't be ridiculous man, I don't have an accent I'm English". 🙂 I have an Edinburgh accent and work regularly with colleagues from across the UK as well as Government officials across the UK - no one has ever failed to grasp what I am saying. Going by Tesla forums the voice recognition is an issue right across the UK. The suggested remedy is usually to adopt an American accent which seems to have more success. THe lack of hatchback really hasn't bean an issue yet. THe boot is Octavia estate sized. I would struggle to load bikes in there but suitcases and bags are fine.

just about 3,000

I am no fan of PHEVs but 32 miles will cover the daily drive of a huge number of the UK driving population. If it helps clean up the air and save lives then I can accept it.

If I were going to adopt your tone suggesting thsat people who work in offices aren't really "working", I'd suggest that sitting on your bum "driving" a train isn't hard work either, you don't even steer. But I wouldn't stoop that low.

I go with the time limits the army impose on us, after 2 hours you must take a break. Tesla is not great - see my thread now posted on that

you do realise that refining petrol uses far more of those minerals like cobalt than the EVs do? refining and pumping all that petrol also uses vast quantities of electricity

The range of the car is not the limiting factor, it is your bladder range. The idea that you can safely drive non stop for 350 miles without endangering yourself and others is laughable

have a read at my newly posted review of 6 months in a Tesla - might chsange your tune

Forth Bridge has been off since last DCecember George wouldn't bother. How are you finding the corsa? I just uploaded my loing proimised review of the Model 3

Back in March when I got the Tesla I was asked if I would do a post about how it was going. Obviously events have meant I have yet to get much driving done, though we did manage to fit in a trip over to Belfast so I do have somethign on which to report. First up, having driven a Leaf for the last two years I am used to the instant torque and crazy accelaration, though the model 3 takes this to a level where I have yet to have the nerve to fully floor it. It is that powerful, mine is the base version so it only has 245 bhp. Handover was in the first week of lockdown, so it was totally touchless. I had to wait outside at a distance, they brought the car out, and then went back inside before I could approach the car and drive away (having paid the night before). Firstly, you'll have heard of issues with build quality. Right now it seems that Tesla haven't a clue about quality control and it is a lottery whether you get one that's perfect or a nightmare. In fairness most of the issues are related to the bodywork and the cars are driveable. It's not like a mechanical failure on an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. Mine had:- 1) a scratch across the boot 2) a mis aligned bonnet (frunk) 3) the nose of the car hadn't had dirt removed before they painted it so it needed a new front end 4) driver's door misaligned 5) driver's door window wouldn'tclose properly 6) a rear quarter panel mis aligned 7) and it later emerged there was insufficient coolant in the battery cooling system (more of which below) These were all reported at handover - something you do via the app, and then attach photos. Tesla then allocate a repair appointment. The repair process is actually very slick though it was not great to have so much chance to witness it. Having had 10 Skodas starting with an Estelle and finishing with a 2015 Octavia I have never been accustomed to this level of defects. It was also filthy inside, covered in dust and grime from transit. I put this down to the fact that they were trying to minimise exposure to covid. The first appointment available due to COVID was 2 months later. 8 weeks passed and at the end of May they took the car in (touchless again) . They fixed the door and the window but the rest would have to await parts. More weeks, and then months, passed and since the defects were by now just cosmetic I didn't chase them. Last week, at the end of August, the car started whining and buzzing really loudly. It sounded like there were fans running and there was a lot of liquid gurgling sounds. I asked on a Tesla forum and was told off by Tesla fanboys - "all normal", "stop moaning". Basically don't question the sacred Tesla, if there's a fault I was told, the car will tell you via the screen. Except it didn't and there really was a fault. I logged it with a video. Within 12 hours an engineer phoned, they had connected to the car, run tests and established that the coolant level was very low. Seriously impressive. So a service appointment was booked, and I asked about all the other faults. "Faults? We've got no record of any faults?" Turns out they had forgotten totally. The merits of dealing with a new company that is selling cars as fast as it can make them. They then fixed everything within a week. So this week I have had my car fully repaired, everything looks like it should and they have filled the coolant to the level it shoud have had when it left the factory. So what to make of it? Well it is phenomenally efficient. EVs measure economy in miles per kWh (Tesla use Wh per mile but they just have to be different it seems). My leaf was pretty good and in the Summer would get around 4.5 miles per kWh, in the winter 3.8 was normal. So far since March I have been getting around 7 miles per kWh in the tesla. The equivalent in MPG terms is somewhere in excess of 200 MPG - Impressive. I can't comment on the supercharger network as they are few and far between in Scotand and I have been using the standrad Scottish Government chargers instead. Not all of them though because again Tesla haven't complied 100% with standards because quite a few of the older chargers simpoly do not detect that the car is connected. Driving it is different from any other car I have driven due to the large central screen, but you quickly get used to it. It's not though as good in many respects as Android Auto which I had in the leaf and the Octavia. Yiou ahve to pay £120 extra per year for data connectivity to use spotify or Tune in, no other apps are available. I used to use waze and pocket casts but those are not available to me. Elon says there's no need. Spotify is available but it si not as good as normal spotify, your music is in an entirely random order, nothing as boring as being in alphabetical order. You can of course use voice commands exceot they don't work anything like as reliably as google's version.One example, today I said "play Radio Scotland" to get the radio retuned. It played something called Hooked on a Feeling by a Swedish folk band. Don't even try asking it to navigate "command not understood". I aksed it to navigate to Drumnadrochit (ok that's a tough one but google can do it) - it thought I was trying to say something about a drunken doorkit and said it didn't understand. The excuse given to justify the 15 inch screen instead of buttons is that yuou'r esupposed to use voice commands, but in my experience they work only around 20% of the time. I can turn the heating up and down but pretty much nothing else works. ANother issue is that the sat nav is, well, pretty random. Not all the time but a heck of a lot of it. I asked it for a route from my house to my parents, around 12 miles. It suggested a 70 mile detour to the other side of Scotland. Like I say, random. When we went to Northern Ireland, the obviosu route is via the M77 and A77 - not for Tesla, It suggested a variety of B roads. Often re planning the route produces a more sensibke route but the point is if it is doing this on routes I do know how can I trust it when I am in strange territory? Answer is I can't. So i have gone back to mounting my phone in a cradle and using that as my sat nav. speaking of phones, like many people I have 2, one for work and a personal phone. In Skoda and Nissan I could connect both to bluetooth at the same time. WHichever one rang it was OK I could answer hands free. In the tech marvel that is the Tesla?? Sorry, only one connection at a time. Baffling. Speaking of Northern Ireland, that was somethign of a nightmare. We have done the trip in a leaf without issue, but the leaf uses the much older chademo charge port, rather then the eurpen standard CCS which is in the tesla. For unknown reasons Northern Ireland has only 14 rapid chargers, that's bad, but only half of them have CCS, the other half afre CCS and chademo. To make matters worse many of them are in shop car parks and these are locked shut when the shops close. In a SUnday you can only charge from 1pm to 5pm. More of a criticism of NI than Tesla but coming from Scotland where we have a very pro EV governmen and charging hubs springing up around the country it was a shock to the system. So how would I sum it up? It is an amazing car, probably the most advanced car I have ever owned, and yet lacking in every day tech like a sat nav that works or smart phone integration. Telsa want you to use their system and pay £120 per year extra for it. It is also badly let down by the abysmal quality control. Quite how they can send cars out of the factory with dirt underneath the paintwor is beyond me. Taking 5 months to fix it? Well it was cosmetic so didn't stop me using the car but it is hardly ideal. I had been due to buy a VW ID3 but they messed me around no end and couldn't guarantee I would get a car so I jumped ship. Now that the ID3 is arriving I am feelign a touch of regret. The model 3 is bigger than I really need and the VW would probably be a better fit with my needs. And yet 0-60 in 5 seconds is fun when you have a BMW M3 trying to ride your back bumper. Bottom line though is that with the SKoda Enyaq coming in December and more models likely in 2021 they are going to face a lot more competition. Even now cars like the e niro have a 7 year warranty and on a 50 kW charger it wil actually charge faster than the Tesla (don't tell the fanboys but this is true I have seen it with my own eyes).. Actually that last part may change on my car now that Tesla have actually filled it with the collant fluid it should have had from day 1, as I understand it that is used to both warm and cool the battery to keep it at the optimum charnign temperature. SO it's a mixed bag, it is impressive, and frustrating. I'm in a £40k+ car where I have to use my phone to navigate and a bluetooth headset to ensure I can answer both phones. I had to wait 5 months to get the car in a state which it would have been had there been a proper PDI carried out. But the way you can ghet a diagnosis remotely from a Tesla engineer is very impressive. But competition is growing and Tesla won't have it all their own way for long. Polestar 2 is starting to arrive in numbers and VW will be delivering at scale by the end of 2020. Would I buy another one? On balance, probably not. PS I forgot to add, not only does Spotify cost you an extra £120 a year, the car comes with no spare wheel, no tyre repair kit and you're advised to take out separate recovery as Tesla recovery will only recover you within 50 miles of a Tesla service centre (there's none on Norhtern Ireland and only one in Scotland (ie 33% of the UK land mass)

I've tried speaking to them aboiut that, they claim they need to get to 100%. Selfish morons. As a tesla driver if I was at Perth and a leaf or corsa needed to charge I would move. But I have paid my £20 a year same as they have so I am entitled to use the chargers

I drove the 1.2 from 2011 until 2015 and it was great. I was sure I would need bigger engine but after a test drive I was convinced. It was fabulous! struggled a bit when fully loaded on a hill but realistically you just dropped into 5th gear and it was fine

must have hit him harder than he realised, he had a mini stroke last week!!

@Roottoot you got yournew corsa yet?Saw a post in an EV group earliertonight of one being delovered here in Livingston today

my word but that is one FUGLY car 🙂

I'm not sure that an economy thread is really possible when I am doing so little mileage. However, I can tell you it is significantly more efficient than the Nissan Leaf which I had before. Today I drove from Livingston to Perth and back, then did a couple of local trips (supermarket run) a total distance of 110 miles. I used a total of 26 kW of electricity. Now this was all free as I charged it from my solar panels but if I had paid for it at 5p per kWh then that's £1.30 for 110 miles. When you consider that a gallon of petrol contains 44 kW of energy, you can see I did 110 miles with a little more than half a gallon of petrol. Energy efficiency at 70 mph on the motorway plus 10 miles at 50mph on the dual carriageway here at home, showed on the car screen as averaged at 4.23 miles per kWh. On a run to North Berwick and back the other day (106 miles) I managed 5.7 miles per kWh because I cruised at a steady 62 mph. That enough @ZacDaMan72 ?

even better then. Drive for virtually nothing, with little or no servicing and no tax, the longer you keep the car the greater the savings.

So far I've driven 3 EVs since I ditched petrol. In none of them have I ever made much use of the brake pedal. Regeneration is used for pretty much everything other than emergency stops.

You've never heard of regenerative braking? 🤔