On 02/04/2016 11:02, Brian Gaff wrote:
Rather worryingly, a guy over the road had a relative with a Tesla staying
over the Christmas break. Apparently he says the problem his relative has
had thus far is one cell going down needing the whole battery to be replaced
under the warranty. I don't know what technology these batteries use, but
it does beg the question that could they fail and catch fire as laptop
batteries used to? Anyone know?

Obviously it is early days, and the people using these expensive vehicles
now are first adopters and pay dearly for that privilege.
The other issue is what about heating the car in the winter. Its fine if our
live in California, but not here or Scandinavia. this no doubt would push
the mileage down quite a lot.

I have a friend with a Nissan Leaf - heating it does indeed make quite
an impact on the range. You can mitigate it a bit by having it preheat
while still connected to the mains (there is a remote control app for
your phone). His model seems a bit daft in that it uses an electrical
resistance heater to heat water, which is then circulated through a
conventional car style heating system. In fact it seems to pre heat the
water even during the summer when its not needed. Later models
apparently now include a heat pump style heater which takes less power.


--
Cheers,

John.

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