7 ms·

Small, cheap electric cars are the best! Fun to drive, easy to maintain. I own an VW eUP 2015 model which costed me €4000 used. I do not know if they where for

by rsolva 1y ago

Small, cheap electric cars are the best! Fun to drive, easy to maintain. I own an VW eUP 2015 model which costed me €4000 used. I do not know if they where for sale outside of Norway (I only see them here!), but it is the perfect car for 95% of our mobility needs. I drive it to work every day (where I can charge it for free). I drive it to Oslo and can park/charge almost anywhere around town for really cheap, about €3/h, which is nothing compared to regular parking, which is usually ~€16/h. I drive it to the Netherlands, about ~950km in two days, without a hint of range anxiety, thanks to abetterrouteplanner.com. Sure, I'm averaging 85km/h, and have to take a ~10min stop every ~2 hours to charge, but that is a welcome pause to visit the toilet or grab a bite. I had to change a bearing that was getting noisy after 10 years of use, and it cost me €50 in parts and half an hour changing it. I was worried it was going to be a complicated affair, not having done it before, but it was as easy as changing a tire. Oh, and there is physical buttons for everything! There is a little display that controls the music and shows consumption stats, but it is entirely optional and can be removed completely. The battery has hardly degraded at all. I'm keeping this thing for as long as I possibly can, it is the perfect car!

boredpudding 1y ago
What range are you getting in winter at 85km/h? Currently trying to get rid of our petrol car but knowing realistic range up front is rough. I'm fine with driving slower.
- rsolva 1y ago
  It really depends on just how cold it is outside and how much (or little) heat you are comfortable with inside. For mild winter weather (+5 to -5°C) and 18°C in the cabin, the range drops to around 80km or so. On a sunny summer day, I can easily get about 130km on Norwegian country roads, probably more. When driving to the Netherlands in the months between March and October, the consumption has been around 8.3kW/100km. The car is light and has little tech that consumes power. Since the car has no heat pump, heating the cabin has a noticable impact on range during cold winter days. That said, it is a really good car to drive in the winter as the cabin gets warm in no-time and the windows in the front and back are heated and melts away thick ice in about a minute, even in really cold weahter! When doing normal commutes, the shorter range does not matter at all. But I would probably not drive to the Netherlands in -10°C during the winter!
  - jopsen 1y ago
    Most EV buyers would probably stay far away from cars with 80-130km range. Going 900km with that is pretty bold. I wouldn't want to.. But driving around town, this is perfect.
    - rsolva 1y ago
      Yeah, me included, until we where going to NL and suddenly was left with no other option becuase our diesel car broke down. I expected a nerve wreaking trip with the eUP, but got slightly more confident after some planning. Using abetterrouteplanner.com and a charging card from elli.eco, I could drop by almost any charging station and avoid apps or paying with a credit card. Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands is flush with chargers, so a range of ~130 is actually more than enough. After the first trip was a success, we have repeated the trip up and down several times, and will take the same trip this October. And by success, I mean a very respectable Wife Approval Factor and a pleasant trip all-around. The only real downside I have found is that after the 7th or 8th charge, the battery start to get hot, and since there is no cooling the charging time drops from ~10 minutes to more like 18 minutes. But that usually only happens at the last one or two stops. I know this is far outside the norm and I plan to get another used electric car with some more range at some point, but I'm in no hurry. Having tried what I thought to be almost impossible, I was surprised to find how painfree it actually was.
    - philjohn 1y ago
      The e-UP is most definitely a "city" car - which for most european commuters is more than enough range-wise.
- watersb 1y ago
  We get 190 miles of range in winter at highway speeds if we are careful. 2019 Chevy Bolt EV with a factory-new battery from 2021. It was $20k used. We also have a 2014 BMW i3 with a worn-out battery. This was designed for ~50 miles between charging, or you could get the one with a little petrol engine as a "range extender". Mine can only do about 40 miles in winter. Later models doubled that, and most i3 cars on the road do 1.5x what I'm getting. But I got it used for $5000...
- pornel 1y ago
  The absolutely worst efficiency I've experienced was 2.7km/kWh at 120km/h in DS3 e-tense. That was a v1 Stellantis drivetrain, without a heat pump. Peugeot e208, Corsa-e, etc. are the same thing. Stellantis sucks at EVs, especially their first gen, so that's probably really the worst case scenario (apart from EV's nemesis: towing non-aerodynamic trailers at high speeds). So if you take an EV's battery size in kWh and multiply it by 2.7, that's the worst range you will get in km. In normal weather EVs get 5-7km per kWh.
octo888 1y ago
> is usually ~€16/h Holy HELL that is crazy. I thought £5/hr in London was crazy.
- ww520 1y ago
  I paid over $50 USD for parking a bit over two hours in Cambridge Massachusetts when visiting MIT. Parking in the Boston area is atrocious.
  - Zambyte 1y ago
    Luckily the Boston area is relatively (very, by US standards) easy to get around without a car :)
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    Why should parking be easy or cheap in urban Cambridge? (For those unaware, MIT is just a short bridge across a river from Boston.) You should take the subway (metro) or bus. There are many non-driving options for the able-bodied.
    - ww520 1y ago
      I was driving from outside of Boston. Parking near subway was atrocious as well.
      - inciampati 1y ago
        Alewife parking and the T in?
  - motorest 1y ago
    > I paid over $50 USD for parking a bit over two hours in Cambridge Massachusetts when visiting MIT. Parking in the Boston area is atrocious. The two are related. The whole point of charging for parking is to leverage scarcity to convince people to not make the problem worse and just find alternatives to driving to the doorstop that work well for them.
nemo44x 1y ago
Why is it so cheap to park your car and not others?
- danielheath 1y ago
  When you use a charging station, you pay for the power you consume, but not for "parking". This usually means you can't stay for a particularly long time.
  - rsolva 1y ago
    Correct, but the time you can stay is surprisingly generous in Oslo, between 3 and 24 hours, depending on location. I used to dread driving to Oslo, but after I discovered that the municipality had repurposed an old bunker to fit hundreads of chargers/parking spost dead in the middle of town, I visit with gleeful joy :P Here is a map of all charging points provided by the municipality around Oslo: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/2053e5d9f24c48c487e52e0963e988b4/page/Elbil https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/2053e5d9f24c48c487e...
    - apelapan 1y ago
      I see on that map, that on my last visit to Oslo I could have parked 20m from my hotel entrance for €10 over night, instead of parking in the garage 50m further away for €120. Didn't really need to charge, so just went for a normal spot.
    - arresin 1y ago
      I wish we had the brains to do this in Aussie cities
  - Broken_Hippo 1y ago
    Not in Trondheim. You pay one fee for the parking and another for the charging.
- Broken_Hippo 1y ago
  Part of it is likely because Norway has done a lot to encourage the use of EVs. I wouldn't be surprised if this were part of this system. There have been things like tax breaks, not paying for tolls, and allowing people to drive in taxi/bus lanes. I'm not entirely sure about the extent: I haven't driven since I moved to Norway. This is all in addition to building out infrastructure - it is far easier to get around with an electric car now than it was when I moved 10 years ago. This program isn't the same throughout Norway, though. In Trondheim, it looks like you pay for parking and then you pay for the charging separately so you really aren't parking for free. (Private parking might vary, and sometimes city parking is free).
01100011 1y ago
I miss my 2019 Chevy Bolt. Zippy and nimble. Didn't feel heavy like the Tesla I rented. Plenty of range for the city.
- ggreer 1y ago
  What Tesla did you rent? The base Model 3's curb weight is 3,552lbs. The first generation Bolt's curb weight is slightly heavier, at 3,563lbs. The long range Model 3 is 3,817lbs and the Performance model is 4,048lbs, but those tend not to be rentals. And the cheapest Model 3 will have significantly more acceleration than the Bolt. Maybe the rental's acceleration was set to comfort mode. That reduces pedal responsiveness. I didn't own a Bolt, but I did drive one and found it underwhelming. It had bad software, charged slowly, and then all of them were recalled due to battery fires. I don't seem to be alone in this opinion, as their depreciation has been pretty rough compared to other EVs from the same time period.
  - 01100011 1y ago
    Model Y. The battery perf was also terrible, requiring a lot of time spent at the supercharger for less than 150 miles of driving. That could have been due to battery abuse as it was a rental car. I'm not saying the bolt out-accelerates a tesla. That's silly. I'm saying the bolt was fast and nimble. Software on mine was fine. Battery charging sucked but that wasn't a problem for me having had subsidized charging at work. Battery fires caused my bolt to receive a free, brand new battery so also not a problem.
anovikov 1y ago
Funny! Here in Cyprus in spite of totally car-centric culture, parking is free almost everywhere or at the very worst, 4 EUR per DAY in a few spots, but even there it's usually possible to find a spot for free. Sometimes i wonder how our nation works. Low taxes, effectively no poverty among locals (and a foreigner can only be poor if they are an illegal immigrant, otherwise they lose their rights of residence and kicked out), almost no crime, and a budget surplus! And nothing seems to be a ridiculous overcharge: even healthcare is dirt cheap, funded by a really low tax of 2.4-4% if income. All issues we have seem to be a product of culture/poor education, rather than economical - such as some trash in the streets or very poor quality of building and car maintenance. Also no Schengen but again, only foreigners care about it.
- tossandthrow 1y ago
  It is called the tax haven premium. Just like Luxemburg or caymen island also works well as nations. I don't think it is something to be proud of though, as the riches are not earned.
  - dash2 1y ago
    If you can offer companies a lower tax than other jurisdictions with the same level of service, why isn't it earned?
    - anovikov 1y ago
      Exactly my thought. It is not based on 'ability to hide money from taxation' or anything like that. Just in lower corporate tax rate (even then, it's lower still in Bulgaria and Hungary and yet those countries don't have much to show for that). Also we have tax exemption on dividend income for individuals, but again, plenty of countries have that, it's more of a norm than an exception (no country could hope to attract any high middle class or rich immigrants unless it provides that, it's a baseline expectation).
      - LunaSea 1y ago
philjohn 1y ago
I got my son a 2022 e-UP! as his first car when he passed his test - it's a RIDICULOUSLY fun car to drive, feels much faster than it is and is very direct handling wise. It's a fantastic city car, and he's even done some longer trips in it. I've also got an EV6 AWD which is obviously more powerful, and bigger, but nowhere near as fun to drive.
- andrepd 1y ago
  Side note: "City car" should be an oxymoron from the get go, but here we are.
graeber_28927 1y ago
I thought I was crazy. Every other month I drive 800km with my Opel Corsa-e, it takes me 10-12 hours and 4 charging stops. This is 2 hours more than what my friends and relatives manage with their ICE car. And since I have a child, I've been doing it in 2 days. Allows me to spend half a day packing, spend the other half in the car on the way to a hotel, and the next day I can be with the family for lunch. Kid is also not sitting tied to the seat a full day this way. But I admit it is getting a bit much, and since I can't charge at home, I'm not getting the financial advantage either, so it's lots of travel time + hotel, and all the gain I get is that I love my car and don't want to switch back :D Driving 950km with an e-up: I totally believe you that it's fine, but I'm sure I would be eyeing for a slight upgrade. 10% mora range isn't worth double the car price, probably. My personal benchmark is a 200km stretch on my way where I cannot reliably charge, and my current car is about the cheapest fully electric, that can do that. Even if I'm driving 90km/h behind trucks in the winter. But good in you, nevertheless! Ice car drivers love to make us feel miserable for the extra time and inconvenience, but it's a package deal, and overall the inconvenience is relatively easy to mitigate by smart planning, thinking outside the box. And now I want an e-up for my wife :D
sandworm101 1y ago
> which is nothing compared to regular parking Such advantages will disappear as EVs become more common. Lots of stuff, like super-fast home charging stations or EV using HOV lanes, cannot scale as EVs become a majority. Enjoy the special treatment while it lasts.
- germinalphrase 1y ago
  Why wouldn’t fast home charging scale? Presumably, homeowners are doing their own installations.
  - eloisant 1y ago
    It's about cheaper parking for EV. It exists now as an incentive to buy EVs, but as EV become more popular it's bound to disappear.
    - germinalphrase 1y ago
      Yes - I misread the parent comment. Didn’t realize they were referring to subsidized installation of home chargers.
  - sandworm101 1y ago
    > Why wouldn’t fast home charging scale? Because current grids are not setup for 10,000-watt chargers in every home and/or parking spot. Just think of trying to provide chargers in an apartment complex, one to each apartment. The power requirements become crazy very quickly. This parallels the issues with rental car companies trying to charge dozens of cars at once, such as at airports. Our grid standards never conceived of such loads becoming commonplace. Whereas today when every EV owner just expects their home charger to be available 24/7, if everyone had an EV some sort of rationing/scheduling would be necessary Some parts of Canada have already seen this with heat pumps. People were encouraged to switch from natural gas to electric heat pumps. But incentives have been withdrawn as power spikes during cold weather challenge local grids, especially when there is no wind/solar power available locally (think cold winter mornings in the midwest/prairies.)
incanus77 1y ago
Agree! We got a used 2015 Fiat 500e for $8k 2.5 years ago and it’s been great as an around-town car. Don’t have kids, but can take a passenger or two in the back if need be (it’s tight) but for two people and errands, it’s been a fantastic value.
- upcoming-sesame 1y ago
  waiting for an electric Fiat Panda to be old enough. need a mini electric car with high clearance and surprisingly there aren't that many. (need a tall car as I live in rural area and am driving on many dirt roads )
  - fragmede 1y ago
    How many do you intend to drive at the same time?
  - Nux 1y ago
    Dacia Spring has a higher clearance. I think it's also the cheapest EV currently (new).
    - upcoming-sesame 1y ago
      didn't know it had a high clearance. I'll look into it thanks!
  - incanus77 1y ago
    Oh hell yeah! I'd love one of these. My other vehicle is a 4WD VW Vanagon Syncro, for fun & hauling.
- smoovb 1y ago
  Just got a 2014 500e for $5k - 50k miles. What a great city car! We also have Model Y, and so the Fiat's 2 pedal driving, lack of good regen, multi-step lock/unlock process can all be forgiven for the price.
boulos 1y ago
spark.bg uses recent eUPs heavily! It's the first car listed at https://spark.bg/en/electric-cars/ https://spark.bg/en/electric-cars/ .
zeristor 1y ago
eUp sounds like the ideal name for a car built in Yorkshire. No doubt running on milky tea.
aacid 1y ago
Currently in the process of obtaining vw eup, I'm little bit nervous if I'm not doing a mistake but this thread gave me some comfidence. Thanks

by rsolva 1y ago

boredpudding 1y ago

What range are you getting in winter at 85km/h? Currently trying to get rid of our petrol car but knowing realistic range up front is rough. I'm fine with driving slower.

rsolva 1y ago
It really depends on just how cold it is outside and how much (or little) heat you are comfortable with inside. For mild winter weather (+5 to -5°C) and 18°C in the cabin, the range drops to around 80km or so. On a sunny summer day, I can easily get about 130km on Norwegian country roads, probably more. When driving to the Netherlands in the months between March and October, the consumption has been around 8.3kW/100km. The car is light and has little tech that consumes power. Since the car has no heat pump, heating the cabin has a noticable impact on range during cold winter days. That said, it is a really good car to drive in the winter as the cabin gets warm in no-time and the windows in the front and back are heated and melts away thick ice in about a minute, even in really cold weahter! When doing normal commutes, the shorter range does not matter at all. But I would probably not drive to the Netherlands in -10°C during the winter!
- jopsen 1y ago
  Most EV buyers would probably stay far away from cars with 80-130km range. Going 900km with that is pretty bold. I wouldn't want to.. But driving around town, this is perfect.
  - rsolva 1y ago
    Yeah, me included, until we where going to NL and suddenly was left with no other option becuase our diesel car broke down. I expected a nerve wreaking trip with the eUP, but got slightly more confident after some planning. Using abetterrouteplanner.com and a charging card from elli.eco, I could drop by almost any charging station and avoid apps or paying with a credit card. Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands is flush with chargers, so a range of ~130 is actually more than enough. After the first trip was a success, we have repeated the trip up and down several times, and will take the same trip this October. And by success, I mean a very respectable Wife Approval Factor and a pleasant trip all-around. The only real downside I have found is that after the 7th or 8th charge, the battery start to get hot, and since there is no cooling the charging time drops from ~10 minutes to more like 18 minutes. But that usually only happens at the last one or two stops. I know this is far outside the norm and I plan to get another used electric car with some more range at some point, but I'm in no hurry. Having tried what I thought to be almost impossible, I was surprised to find how painfree it actually was.
  - philjohn 1y ago
    The e-UP is most definitely a "city" car - which for most european commuters is more than enough range-wise.
watersb 1y ago
We get 190 miles of range in winter at highway speeds if we are careful. 2019 Chevy Bolt EV with a factory-new battery from 2021. It was $20k used. We also have a 2014 BMW i3 with a worn-out battery. This was designed for ~50 miles between charging, or you could get the one with a little petrol engine as a "range extender". Mine can only do about 40 miles in winter. Later models doubled that, and most i3 cars on the road do 1.5x what I'm getting. But I got it used for $5000...
pornel 1y ago
The absolutely worst efficiency I've experienced was 2.7km/kWh at 120km/h in DS3 e-tense. That was a v1 Stellantis drivetrain, without a heat pump. Peugeot e208, Corsa-e, etc. are the same thing. Stellantis sucks at EVs, especially their first gen, so that's probably really the worst case scenario (apart from EV's nemesis: towing non-aerodynamic trailers at high speeds). So if you take an EV's battery size in kWh and multiply it by 2.7, that's the worst range you will get in km. In normal weather EVs get 5-7km per kWh.

octo888 1y ago

> is usually ~€16/h Holy HELL that is crazy. I thought £5/hr in London was crazy.

ww520 1y ago
I paid over $50 USD for parking a bit over two hours in Cambridge Massachusetts when visiting MIT. Parking in the Boston area is atrocious.
- Zambyte 1y ago
  Luckily the Boston area is relatively (very, by US standards) easy to get around without a car :)
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  Why should parking be easy or cheap in urban Cambridge? (For those unaware, MIT is just a short bridge across a river from Boston.) You should take the subway (metro) or bus. There are many non-driving options for the able-bodied.
  - ww520 1y ago
    I was driving from outside of Boston. Parking near subway was atrocious as well.
    - inciampati 1y ago
      Alewife parking and the T in?
- motorest 1y ago
  > I paid over $50 USD for parking a bit over two hours in Cambridge Massachusetts when visiting MIT. Parking in the Boston area is atrocious. The two are related. The whole point of charging for parking is to leverage scarcity to convince people to not make the problem worse and just find alternatives to driving to the doorstop that work well for them.

nemo44x 1y ago

Why is it so cheap to park your car and not others?

danielheath 1y ago
When you use a charging station, you pay for the power you consume, but not for "parking". This usually means you can't stay for a particularly long time.
- rsolva 1y ago
  Correct, but the time you can stay is surprisingly generous in Oslo, between 3 and 24 hours, depending on location. I used to dread driving to Oslo, but after I discovered that the municipality had repurposed an old bunker to fit hundreads of chargers/parking spost dead in the middle of town, I visit with gleeful joy :P Here is a map of all charging points provided by the municipality around Oslo: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/2053e5d9f24c48c487e52e0963e988b4/page/Elbil https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/2053e5d9f24c48c487e...
  - apelapan 1y ago
    I see on that map, that on my last visit to Oslo I could have parked 20m from my hotel entrance for €10 over night, instead of parking in the garage 50m further away for €120. Didn't really need to charge, so just went for a normal spot.
  - arresin 1y ago
    I wish we had the brains to do this in Aussie cities
- Broken_Hippo 1y ago
  Not in Trondheim. You pay one fee for the parking and another for the charging.
Broken_Hippo 1y ago
Part of it is likely because Norway has done a lot to encourage the use of EVs. I wouldn't be surprised if this were part of this system. There have been things like tax breaks, not paying for tolls, and allowing people to drive in taxi/bus lanes. I'm not entirely sure about the extent: I haven't driven since I moved to Norway. This is all in addition to building out infrastructure - it is far easier to get around with an electric car now than it was when I moved 10 years ago. This program isn't the same throughout Norway, though. In Trondheim, it looks like you pay for parking and then you pay for the charging separately so you really aren't parking for free. (Private parking might vary, and sometimes city parking is free).

01100011 1y ago

I miss my 2019 Chevy Bolt. Zippy and nimble. Didn't feel heavy like the Tesla I rented. Plenty of range for the city.

ggreer 1y ago
What Tesla did you rent? The base Model 3's curb weight is 3,552lbs. The first generation Bolt's curb weight is slightly heavier, at 3,563lbs. The long range Model 3 is 3,817lbs and the Performance model is 4,048lbs, but those tend not to be rentals. And the cheapest Model 3 will have significantly more acceleration than the Bolt. Maybe the rental's acceleration was set to comfort mode. That reduces pedal responsiveness. I didn't own a Bolt, but I did drive one and found it underwhelming. It had bad software, charged slowly, and then all of them were recalled due to battery fires. I don't seem to be alone in this opinion, as their depreciation has been pretty rough compared to other EVs from the same time period.
- 01100011 1y ago
  Model Y. The battery perf was also terrible, requiring a lot of time spent at the supercharger for less than 150 miles of driving. That could have been due to battery abuse as it was a rental car. I'm not saying the bolt out-accelerates a tesla. That's silly. I'm saying the bolt was fast and nimble. Software on mine was fine. Battery charging sucked but that wasn't a problem for me having had subsidized charging at work. Battery fires caused my bolt to receive a free, brand new battery so also not a problem.

anovikov 1y ago

Funny! Here in Cyprus in spite of totally car-centric culture, parking is free almost everywhere or at the very worst, 4 EUR per DAY in a few spots, but even there it's usually possible to find a spot for free. Sometimes i wonder how our nation works. Low taxes, effectively no poverty among locals (and a foreigner can only be poor if they are an illegal immigrant, otherwise they lose their rights of residence and kicked out), almost no crime, and a budget surplus! And nothing seems to be a ridiculous overcharge: even healthcare is dirt cheap, funded by a really low tax of 2.4-4% if income. All issues we have seem to be a product of culture/poor education, rather than economical - such as some trash in the streets or very poor quality of building and car maintenance. Also no Schengen but again, only foreigners care about it.

tossandthrow 1y ago
It is called the tax haven premium. Just like Luxemburg or caymen island also works well as nations. I don't think it is something to be proud of though, as the riches are not earned.
- dash2 1y ago
  If you can offer companies a lower tax than other jurisdictions with the same level of service, why isn't it earned?
  - anovikov 1y ago
    Exactly my thought. It is not based on 'ability to hide money from taxation' or anything like that. Just in lower corporate tax rate (even then, it's lower still in Bulgaria and Hungary and yet those countries don't have much to show for that). Also we have tax exemption on dividend income for individuals, but again, plenty of countries have that, it's more of a norm than an exception (no country could hope to attract any high middle class or rich immigrants unless it provides that, it's a baseline expectation).
    - LunaSea 1y ago

philjohn 1y ago

I got my son a 2022 e-UP! as his first car when he passed his test - it's a RIDICULOUSLY fun car to drive, feels much faster than it is and is very direct handling wise. It's a fantastic city car, and he's even done some longer trips in it. I've also got an EV6 AWD which is obviously more powerful, and bigger, but nowhere near as fun to drive.

andrepd 1y ago
Side note: "City car" should be an oxymoron from the get go, but here we are.

graeber_28927 1y ago

I thought I was crazy. Every other month I drive 800km with my Opel Corsa-e, it takes me 10-12 hours and 4 charging stops. This is 2 hours more than what my friends and relatives manage with their ICE car. And since I have a child, I've been doing it in 2 days. Allows me to spend half a day packing, spend the other half in the car on the way to a hotel, and the next day I can be with the family for lunch. Kid is also not sitting tied to the seat a full day this way. But I admit it is getting a bit much, and since I can't charge at home, I'm not getting the financial advantage either, so it's lots of travel time + hotel, and all the gain I get is that I love my car and don't want to switch back :D Driving 950km with an e-up: I totally believe you that it's fine, but I'm sure I would be eyeing for a slight upgrade. 10% mora range isn't worth double the car price, probably. My personal benchmark is a 200km stretch on my way where I cannot reliably charge, and my current car is about the cheapest fully electric, that can do that. Even if I'm driving 90km/h behind trucks in the winter. But good in you, nevertheless! Ice car drivers love to make us feel miserable for the extra time and inconvenience, but it's a package deal, and overall the inconvenience is relatively easy to mitigate by smart planning, thinking outside the box. And now I want an e-up for my wife :D

sandworm101 1y ago

> which is nothing compared to regular parking Such advantages will disappear as EVs become more common. Lots of stuff, like super-fast home charging stations or EV using HOV lanes, cannot scale as EVs become a majority. Enjoy the special treatment while it lasts.

germinalphrase 1y ago
Why wouldn’t fast home charging scale? Presumably, homeowners are doing their own installations.
- eloisant 1y ago
  It's about cheaper parking for EV. It exists now as an incentive to buy EVs, but as EV become more popular it's bound to disappear.
  - germinalphrase 1y ago
    Yes - I misread the parent comment. Didn’t realize they were referring to subsidized installation of home chargers.
- sandworm101 1y ago
  > Why wouldn’t fast home charging scale? Because current grids are not setup for 10,000-watt chargers in every home and/or parking spot. Just think of trying to provide chargers in an apartment complex, one to each apartment. The power requirements become crazy very quickly. This parallels the issues with rental car companies trying to charge dozens of cars at once, such as at airports. Our grid standards never conceived of such loads becoming commonplace. Whereas today when every EV owner just expects their home charger to be available 24/7, if everyone had an EV some sort of rationing/scheduling would be necessary Some parts of Canada have already seen this with heat pumps. People were encouraged to switch from natural gas to electric heat pumps. But incentives have been withdrawn as power spikes during cold weather challenge local grids, especially when there is no wind/solar power available locally (think cold winter mornings in the midwest/prairies.)

incanus77 1y ago

Agree! We got a used 2015 Fiat 500e for $8k 2.5 years ago and it’s been great as an around-town car. Don’t have kids, but can take a passenger or two in the back if need be (it’s tight) but for two people and errands, it’s been a fantastic value.

upcoming-sesame 1y ago
waiting for an electric Fiat Panda to be old enough. need a mini electric car with high clearance and surprisingly there aren't that many. (need a tall car as I live in rural area and am driving on many dirt roads )
- fragmede 1y ago
  How many do you intend to drive at the same time?
- Nux 1y ago
  Dacia Spring has a higher clearance. I think it's also the cheapest EV currently (new).
  - upcoming-sesame 1y ago
    didn't know it had a high clearance. I'll look into it thanks!
- incanus77 1y ago
  Oh hell yeah! I'd love one of these. My other vehicle is a 4WD VW Vanagon Syncro, for fun & hauling.
smoovb 1y ago
Just got a 2014 500e for $5k - 50k miles. What a great city car! We also have Model Y, and so the Fiat's 2 pedal driving, lack of good regen, multi-step lock/unlock process can all be forgiven for the price.

boulos 1y ago

spark.bg uses recent eUPs heavily! It's the first car listed at https://spark.bg/en/electric-cars/ https://spark.bg/en/electric-cars/ .

zeristor 1y ago

eUp sounds like the ideal name for a car built in Yorkshire. No doubt running on milky tea.

aacid 1y ago

Currently in the process of obtaining vw eup, I'm little bit nervous if I'm not doing a mistake but this thread gave me some comfidence. Thanks