The EV thread

Award for the cutest police car :oncoming_police_car:


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My partner’s VW id3 has HUD. The proper one where details are projected to appear beyond the front of the car. Problem is I like to drive with sunglasses (when it’s sunny obv). With Polaroids the HUD is invisible, unless you turn your head 90° to the side…

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One thing I have to give Kia credit for is attention to detail. The HUD in their EV6 is designed to be polarized at ~70 degrees off of the horizontal axis, which eliminates the problem.
So either you have to use non-polarized lenses or circular ones that can be rotated :grinning:

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Until teenagers have fun with electrical tape :slight_smile:

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That is interesting. I never heard or thought about this. I recently bought new sunglasses that are polarized, and there is no issue whatsoever with the BMW head up display.

Anyway, not EV specific.

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Can confirm. Cabrio open on a sunny day and wearing polarized sunglasses, HUD is visible without a problem.

There might be an issue with HUD brightness, I joke to my wife that the car should have simple on/off switch to choose to drive the car with sunglasses or not. So far, the only possibility is having a shortcut button to access the menu to adjust HUD brightness, it’s possible but extremely distracting while driving.

Lucid looks nice, it’s the price that doesn’t look…nice. Rivian is not even available (yet) here.

This looks modest and nimble.

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The Toyota Camry became a large and comfy Prius for 2025 models. Only the hybrid version will be produced, fuel consumption around 5.5 l/100km. The hybrid system relies on a yuuuuuge 0.6-kWh lithium-ion battery pack that weighs under 40 kg. Roughly, 90-100 Camry can be made with the battery of a single Tesla Model 3 (57 kWh).

Empty weight of the FWD version is around 1’600 kg. I just looked at the weight of the most recent BMW 3 series and cried a bit (1’800 kg).

The only sad thing about this efficient Camry is that it brings the fleet average consumption down, so it allows Toyota to sell thousands of heavy and thirsty SUVs and pick-ups as personal cars.

https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a60499379/2025-toyota-camry-drive/

The antidote to modest and nimble design being frightening and oversized? :joy:
I guess they too have a market, however small sized. Very niche.

Is this the official figure? Sounds almost realistic whereas I mostly see absurdly low consumptions. Recently saw a review of the BMW XM - an ugly 2.7 ton SUV monster with a 650 hp hybrid. The official consumption - that is used for the BMW fleet numbers - is a laughable 1.8 liters per 100 km.

In my view, PHEV are 90% scam. They are used to (1) artificially lower fleet consumptions, (2) skim off subsidies and (3) make consumers buy a clear conscience when driving oversized cars.

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The other scam is pure electric large SUVs with every conceivable luxury e.g. massaging leather seats, air suspension, motorised everything. The only way to give a 3 ton monstrosity an acceptable range is by having a huge battery (the capacity of which is hidden from the consumer) and they only realise how big it is when they charge at public charges for CHF 0.80 a KW or at slower AC chargers.

There is no magic, weight = less efficiency.

Yes, it’s a rounded conversion of 51 mpg for the Camry.

No way the XM consumes 1.8 l/100 km. Unless…it’s the first 100 km, thus the first 80 are purely driven with the battery and only 20 km are driven as hybrid. But, that’s basically cheating.

Big ass PHEVs are indeed a scam. But, there are small ones with real 4-4.5 l/100 km consumption.

Still try to make that oil in your back garden.

Not exactly that way, but in a similar way PHEV get “unrealistically” low consumption/emmission ratings. GM started it I think with the original Volt. They basically say that for a typical week/month, most trips will happen on electic alone, so 0lt/100Km, and then in the one trip you will burn fuel, and the total average is whatever low number below 5 or 4lt/100Km.

If you charge daily, and if you have most commuting done like that, then it’s a representative number. If you never charge, then congrats on carrying a very heavy battery for no practical benefit. I don’t see PHEV as scams- I would happily own one for our use case. My wife’s usage would be electric only, and the occasional family trip would require a refuel. We have friends and family that operate like that and it works great. But if you don’t charge it clearly doesn’t work.

A colleague of mine has a PHEV Volvo XC60 which he hardly ever charges. I once asked him why not and he said that in the beginning he would charge at home religiously, but later realised that the 30 km EV range was not worth the bother for his use case i.e. more highway than city driving.

And if you don’t even have the benefit of home charging (as in my case with my Tesla) then it makes even less sense to stop to refuel and once again to charge.

The PHEV thing is really perverted in Germany. There is a strong tradition of company cars already (successful lobbying of the car manufacturers for friendly tax treatment so giving company cars as part of comp makes sense for employers and employees). Then on top there is (or was at least) a subsidy for electric that for obvious reasons included PHEV. I know several people who now drive a tax-subsidized large PHEV SUV (Mercedes GLE types) and never charge the battery because they also have a company fuel card. It is insane.

THe

Clearly bought the wrong car - underestimated the usual mileage? Obviously if you’re road tripping there is no sense in plug-in. For me the whole point is you plug in for the small stuff, and then don’t need to worry about charging for the longer runs and you run on fuel. Best of both world if the usecase allows it.

There’s always going to be gaming of any system, doesn’t cancel the whole point of PHEVs.

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The BMW i8 was a good example of a PHEV that worked well as a low mileage sports car. Here you had a 1.5 three-cyl petrol engine (from a Mini) supplemented by motors which could power it to a 0 - 100 km/h of only 4.2 seconds.

It had supercar styling but with the efficiency of a family sedan, in part due to its extensive use of carbon-fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) which kept the weight down to 1,535 kg. Sadly this wouldn’t be possible for mass produced vehicles due to cost.

Yeah, these are actually not bad commuters if one wants to drive something interesting, and they’re probably already close to their “floor” price, i.e. I wouldn’t expect them to get much lower than where they currently trade.