Never. Again.
I own a 2009 rabbit and have no faced any issues beyond routine maintenance. Guess I should knock on wood.
I had a MK4 Golf with the 1.8T that I raced every month for a few years and also drove to work. It broke a couple times, but wasn't unreliable. I think this was partly because I did preventative maintenance.
I think - the motors were fine for the MK4s, but everything around them had one problem or another.
The motor is going into my next car... :)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/29/vw-condemne...
I have a 2015 Jetta TDI and opted to keep it and get the payout and modifications. I had no issues at all, I got paid the specified amount at the specified milestones and got a rental paid for by VW for the days the car was at the dealer. I've currently got ~110,000 miles on the car and other than a few minor cosmetic interior issues its been good car.
I expect to keep it for another 100K at least and my next car I expect will be electric.
For context my previous car was 2002 Subaru WRX that I put 340,000 miles on, with a top end engine rebuild at ~180k, after a "friend" who borrowed it continued to drive it after the radiator return hose burst and it overheated.
First, they offered to pay half before the modification, then half after the modification. After I got the final final approved offer, it was only all after the modification.
The modification wasn't possible right away, because they hadn't decided what to do yet. Eventually they decided to offer a fix for these engines, and the EPA eventually agreed to allow that fix for my engine. But that was the better part of a year. When the fixes were begun to be rolled out, the initial reports were dismal, with reports of engines running rough and bad performance. The message began to be "don't let them touch your car." I decided to wait until at least the second half of the window for modifications to be performed so that the bugs could get thoroughly worked out.
Meanwhile, life got more complicated. I started moving from one state to another, and that meant three homes in two years. Since I couldn't register the car in the new state until after the repair was done, I needed to extend my registration in the old state.
After the second move, I was able to complete the process, and the approved modification was available. I went to complete the process, but due to moving to the new state I needed to re-do all of the original paperwork, and I needed to send a letter stating what I had done.
They restarted my application process twice.
There was a fault in their system that left my application in an inconsistent state, resulting in errors in the court settlement web site. I spent time on the phone working through that, with multiple people.
At one point I needed to print out a dozen sheets and mail them in. While not a big deal, I don't normally print stuff, so getting a printer located and working is just another hurdle.
After another set of failures in getting the system sorted, they actually requested that I fax in documents.
FAX.
And after all that, I missed the deadline for the dealer work by 2 days.
My appeal to their 3-member appeal review board was filed within the 15-day window, but it was denied.
It's hard to be objective with all of the strongly pro- and anti-Tesla nonsense flying around, but I've had a sneaking suspicion for a while that once the market matures a little (with eg Audi, VW, Porsche all offering their first-gen EVs) Tesla's offerings will be seen as more revolutionary (or at least, taken less for granted) than they currently are...
They plan to reach 300K annual production capacity by 2021, IIRC. This is less than Tesla' _current_ run rate for the Model 3.
I don't feel that this is a problem because of California laws regarding EVs, forcing every manufacturer to sell more EVs every year.
https://i2i.org/california-ev-mandates-fail/
i agree the comptetion between established players is required and hopefully leads to solutions to the main problem keeping many people in ICE over EV: range
But when we were finally given a hard date, it showed up on that date, and we've been happy with it since. The only reason I don't jump in line for the ID is because my wife and I are really hoping they build that concept van to replace the '81 VW Westfalia we've got now. They announce that for pre-order, and it's "shut and take my money" time.
http://newsroom.vw.com/vehicles/future-cars/official-the-vw-...
A car you can at least get a bit sooner by taking the gamble of preordering.
Just switching to electric will not solve our mobility problems. Cars need to get smaller and lighter and we need fewer of them, not more.
I'm looking forward to what's on the horizon in the european L7e category (up to 450kg w/out battery), for example the Microlino. DLR is also doing some interesting research in this area with their NGC Safe Light Regional Vehicle (SLRV). They recently did some crash tests with promising results: https://www.dlr.de/dlr/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-10122/333_r...
That, and this not the only planned vehicle based on this platform, so "eGolf" would be a bit restrictive.
Wow how very uncreative, I would be too embarrassed by such blatant copying
model => Id 3 => 3
New name ID3
That's about £250 worth of electricity - if you charge solely at home. From fast chargers, that's about £750 - £1,000.
Not a bad incentive if you do lots of long journeys and need to charge at a motorway service station. But perhaps not as generous as it sounds for more typical use.
From my understanding, this is a big step for VW. However, short term, they will likely have range and production capacity issues, just like Tesla did not exactly hit the ground running. I would not be surprised if this is merely a stop gap solution until they get cheaper/better models out. Short term, Tesla could really make VW hurt by ramping up production and dropping price and competing with both their ICE and non ICE offerings.
The basic Golf costs about 17,000 while the ID.3 starts at 30,000 Euro's.
Not sure what the best move is, until giving it more thought I'm avoiding purchasing another vehicle.
Good luck finding a car manufacturer that can deliver and isn't on that list.
Granted, you had to wade your way to the third paragraph to find it:
"VW didn’t announce exact pricing for the higher-range models, or any further specs (hence the light blue and pink camouflage). "
Plus it looks cool as, when you spot the most jarring car on the road!
What's really embarrassing is that German authorities and engineering bodies did not nail to the wall the VW execs that pushed the 'Dieselgate' fraud.
The reputation of German engineering was worth billions - those crooks took some millions to the bank uncontested, and now "cheats and liars" is the word.
Good going.
They literally investigated and brought criminal charges. Those people are likely to get punished to the full extend of the law, which in a lot of those cases will mean prison time. What more do you want? Death penalty without a court case?
I will never buy a VW, Porsche, or Audi if my life depended on it.
Plus, you probably get a better interior. Certainly a better built one…
Model 3 comes at around 45k for the 550km and includes autopilot and an amazing interior.
Think I think the made-in-America customers will come around.
I think the Asian car fans will be a little trickier because of the price/quality proposition. Although it seems like the Prius fans are already coming over.
Seems to be an area that never gets properly talked about and we've seen examples posted of people waiting up to a year for repairs. That's completely unacceptable.
I've seen tesla model s cars with 300,000 miles on the odometer.
You have to think in terms of range * cycles.
You should take into consideration the (sustained) top speed, and acceleration (for electrics, that tends to range from great to decent for 0...60, but fall off rather quickly beyond that). Those two are limited by on-board power electronics, by battery & engine cooling capacity (which is the main limiting factor in all electrics I've seen so far), and by the motor power rating.
Unlike the typical ICEs, for a short while you can over-load electric motors by quite a bit beyond the continuous rated power - say, for quick & safe over-taking - but the sustained top speed of electric vehicles isn't all that great.
The other important factors are: how quickly you can re-charge the vehicle, and how long will the battery pack last (or conversely, how quickly will it degrade), including the manufaturer's warranty, if any.
As the electric motors are also used for regenerative braking, the efficiency of energy recovery is a moderately important consideration, especially for start-stop city style traffic. Sadly I haven't yet seen that information published for any car.
Charging plug compatibility and charging station availability - for fastest charging you want to be able to use the car's native standard.
Lastly, as with any car, safety ratings (battery pack protection is a big item here) and towing capacity.
From my view weight is the big limiting factor in EV efficiency at lower speeds and Cd becomes more important as you increase your speed to highway numbers and higher.
Engines are important as the company Munro pointed out during their tear downs. They stated that Tesla had by far the most impressive EV motor they have seen based around how they implemented the magnets and their inverter work finally coupled to a battery solution that proved naysayers wrong.
That out of the way, I would not fret over motor differences. It all comes down to, if it passes the initial three features I listed about then concern yourself with, do you like how it looks, how it drives, and does it fit in your lifestyle. In no shape or form think you will save money parting with your current vehicle for a new one however if you already were decided to change cars and EV may fit your lifestyle.
There is a good possibility many EVs will be rear drive which will greatly improve driving dynamics, the ease of packaging opens up many options
https://www.teslarati.com/teslas-model-3-electric-motor-is-a...
And he isn't gentle on his opinion where they got it wrong, so it doesn't seem to be a puff piece.
By far the best PMM's worldwide are made by Kessler, Germany. They are way ahead of everyone else, but they can only manifacture about 200 units per year. Hand-made, like a Ferrari. Many of these PMM's for Formula 1. All the good german carmakers know about these very well, the prices, principles and tricks. They are far ahead of most others, including Tesla.
What Tesla did well was bringing parts of this technology to market. In record time.
That's a very big could. Tesla have an advantage in terms of battery availability, but they simply don't have the expertise and the experience to build cars at real scale. Tesla are literally building cars as fast as they can, but they've still got a multi-year backlog of orders. Their defect rate is the worst in the industry by some margin and they have a huge amount of catching up to do.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-hit-model-3-target-by-...
VW have been planning this for years, they have decades of experience in auto manufacturing, they have a proven record of quality and efficiency, and they can scale up very quickly. If they can get a reliable supply of batteries, they aren't bottlenecked by production capacity in any meaningful way. The real challenge for VW is almost certainly marketing - they have a very large dealer base that needs to be retrained in how to sell EVs and they don't have the viral cachet of Tesla.
Their distribution network is a source of extra cost. Tesla eliminated that from the equation. There are no third party dealers. Dealers take a margin cut. With VW, that margin comes out of VWs pocket. Tesla doesn't have this.
The drive train VW has developed has to now prove itself in the real world. Early indications are that it is a combination of more expensive to make and not as performant as what Tesla has. Tesla has done well here and VW is catching up.
https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/23/audi-revises-production...
I don't think that's realistic.
>@elonmusk
>Looks like we can reach 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in Dec
>11:12 PM - 2 Jul 2017
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832
The reality:
In terms of miles per hour of charging or adding gas, gas is still massively faster. Tesla says the new charging stations are 1000 miles per hour.
A gasoline car that gets 25 miles/gallon, at a gas station with pumps that go at 10 gallons per minutes, "charges" at 15000 miles per hour. (10 gallons per minute is the maximum allowed in the US due to EPA rules).
A lot of real world pumps don't achieve that maximum, but usually achieve at least at least 1/3 of that, which would be 5000 miles per hour, still 5 times faster than the upcoming faster Tesla charging option.
One advantage for the EV, though, is that it might be safer to step away from the vehicle while charging? When filling up at a gas station I want to stay with the car because a gas spill can be dangerous. That means any trips to the station's convenience store or bathroom cannot be overlapped with fueling.
I'm guessing that there isn't much that can go dangerously wrong if you step away from a charging EV, and so you can overlap your convenience store and bathroom visits with the charging time. That might be enough to make the total stop time comparable or less for the EV in many cases, even though the actual charging is 5 to 15 times slower on the EV.
You can fill my car up to 100% from empty in 100 seconds. The entire process, including payment, takes less than 2.5 minutes, and usually (I rarely let it run to empty) more like 2 minutes, from switching off the engine at the pump to switching it back on and driving off.
My car's fuel tank is 60 litres (15.8 US gallons). 35 miles per Imperial gallon in miles per 60 litres = ~460 miles. 6060/90460 = 18,400 miles'-worth of charge per hour (in principle).
You can get more fuel-efficient cars than mine, and you can also get cars with larger fuel tanks.
But that's just for road tripping. For an everyday car, nearly everyone can use a 200+ mile EV without ever charging anywhere but home. Assuming they can charge at home. If you have to use a supercharger for everything, you could still do it with the LR but it would take more coordination and commitment.
Two coil packs A/C evaporator unit packed up Some vacuum pipe broke
The worst probably was the 1.4 Twincharger engine (one with a turbo supercharger) and wisely they discontinued it after one generation.
Total engine replacements before 30,000 km was not uncommon.
The 1.8Ts in the Passats gave the transverse 1.8T a bad name. The one in the Passat is mounted lontudinally, like your classic American v8. To do that with the Passat (for the AWD system) they had to move the engine down and a crossmember was in the way.
So they wisely made the oil pan smaller. On a turbocharged engine. Doh! To add insult to injury lots of dealers used cheap oil. So engine failures happened.
Fun fact - you can take the engine from the Passat - turn it 90 degress - and bolt it in pretty much any VW from 1979-~1999. Even the waterpump housing was unchanged for like 20 years. These engines are commonly used as power upgrades for older cars (which is what I am doing with mine).
The 1.8T that was in the GTIs was a complete redesign and had less problems. Forged internals etc. But VW decided to use a timing belt instead of a chain and when owners forgot to replace the belt at 80k miles and the engines went kablooey it didn't exactly help customer relations. A great engine destroyed by one consumable component. Luckily VW isn't using belts anymore.
I’m not saying the number 3 is owned by tesla
They were caught again this April, with the same defeat device hidden in the GLK models.
>The country's vehicle regulator has begun a formal investigation after discovering a new device in the company's Mercedes-Benz model GLK 220 CDI, the Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported.
https://www.dw.com/en/daimler-new-emissions-cheating-softwar...
How criminal…
Does that mean we should discount Tesla'a manufacturing ability as well ? Or maybe this like the diesel issue has nothing to do with manufacturing.
Maybe they'll get it. But they stacked the deck against themselves, and I wager they haven't worked out the kinks in their suppliers.
It will be interesting to see.
On long drives there is a diminishing return on the speed of charging since stops generally include a lot more than simply filling up the tank. There are trips to the bathroom, snack refills, and often a little walking around to stretch out. If you have more then a couple passengers these stops can drag out (or even need to occur more frequently than empty tank). I've been thinking about this a lot and decided for me the diminish point is 250-300 miles in 15 minutes. Anything beyond that is really just gravy and it's likely the stop is longer than the charge time required.
I travel around 1000 miles round trip to visit family a few times a year and the only really viable option is by car since it's so rural. If I can make progress 250-300 miles at a time with a 15-20 minute break I'm pretty comfortable with that. With a 35 mpg ICE car I can stop a little less if it's just me, but when I make this journey with passengers (or part of a convoy) stopping every 2-3 hours for 15-20 minutes is the best I can expect.
There is a fire risk to charging, but there's nothing you can do about it, so it's better to exit your car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal#Manuf...
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/14/mercedes-diesel-emission...
I've since bought newer cars and gave this one to a relative. It's still on the original clutch/transmission, so I guess I didn't do too bad.
> Plus, you probably get a better interior. Certainly a better built one…
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/seat/100354/new-seat-el-born-c...
According to Wiki they sold 30k vehicles at minimum before 2018. Nowhere near Tesla 3 numbers, but claiming that it only sold 1400 vehicles is just wrong.
Anyway, the point of my comparison is not so much that you should care, or not, because that's up to you - but rather, to be vaguely data-driven about comparing Tesla charge times with how long it takes to fill a petrol or diesel car. Because we're often breezily assured that the two times are comparable, and it takes 15 minutes to charge a Tesla, and that this is "near enough" (or similar handwavy term) to how long it takes to fill up a petrol car, but people never provide hard figures for the petrol case. So here's me, doing my bit.
I'll take laggy infotainment over a system where you have to use touchscreen to adjust temperature any day, though. Nothing says "a responsible car maker" like having autopilot drive you into a firetruck while you're fiddling with the touchscreen.
A $50,000 C class or A4 has a far nicer cabin than anything Tesla has produced, and when you start moving up into E or F segment vehicles the difference is even more pronounced. My 2010 B8 wagon with 115k on it has fewer creaks and rattles than a coworker's 2016 S with a third of that.
Infotainment wise, I find Audi's Virtual Cockpit to be incredibly well done and quite like MMI as a whole. I've not used the latest BMW or MB product that's just been released recently, but both seem to be garnering quite good reviews.
I know exactly what you mean.
Driving without the lights of the instrument cluster shining at your from behind the steering wheel is amazing.
Just you and the road.
The handling and acceleration on the Tesla is supreme, a nice night drive on a curvy road is like a dream.
Very much similar to what you would get in a Hyundai or Mazda.
Go spend some time in a new Audi, Mercedes, Range Rover and you will see the difference.
Unless your goal is getting an EV for the sake of getting an EV (Tesla's are certainly best here so far), thew only thing that spending more than a day in a Tesla changes is that I want to go kick Elon's behind even harder.
[1]: https://www.tek.no/artikler/i-fjor-hadde-vw-ett-ars-levering...