VW ID.4 - Electrified CUV - $40k starting.

[wemay]

Sold out 1st in one day

InsideEVs : Volkswagen Sells Out Of ID.4 1ST For U.S. Within One Day.

https://insideevs.com/news/445691/volkswagen-outsold-all-id4-1st-us/amp/

 

[UncleDave]

ehhhh not quite..

Lets look at this the same way we all looked at teslas info.

What was the number of cars available in this run?

They didn't "sell" anything they took 100.00 deposits and made reservations.
There will be drop offs especially of the timeframe is missed.
As we all know VW isnt allowed to sell anything here in the US they are forced through a franchise- no one knows what the dealers will mark these up by. Its "STARTING MSRP" isnt indicative of what you'll be paying.

No word on what theoretical demand actually is like with the model 3 reservations. ??
Must be lousy or they would tout it.

No analysis yet on weather the car is theoretically profitable or just subsidized by the ICE lineup.

Eager for Sandy Munro to take this apart and see what it really costs.

As a VAG investor (I still laugh when I type that) I have no interest in them selling unprofitable cars.

 

[JeffKeryk]

The 10 cars with the highest depreciation (Road & Track):

#2 Chevy Bolt
#1 Nissan Leaf

"The Nissan Leaf, the only purely electric vehicle in this group, stands at the top of the list with a staggering 71.7-percent deprecation rate, or a $21,503 loss of value, after five years."

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/buying-maintenance/g23723032/cars-with-high-depreciation/

The Bolt is a pure EV. Maybe they meant Volt?
The 1st gen Leaf went like 75 miles, at best. And they suffered from battery degredation; after a few years owners told me 50 miles was more like it.
Not to mention they are as ugly as the upcoming Cybertruck...
So yeah, they are pretty worthless used. Or new, AFAIC.

The Volt is generally loved by the owners I have talked to, but their situation was a good fit for it.

 

[UncleDave]

Jeff - Doesnt the model 3 hold its price better than anything in class?
The first gen leaf was laughable - the latest one not too bad kinda cool.

My Ridgeline does surprisingly well here.

 

[dareo]

Non-Tesla electrics have abysmal resale values. Relative purchased a 2012 Volt brand new, was fully loaded, in the mid 40k range. This same person traded it in on one of the last 2019 brand new volts. It had some hard use but only like 80k miles and was only worth 6k towards the new volt.

A Tesla however somehow ends up being offered for more in the used market and makes no sense.

Non-EV VWs depreciate pretty fast. I can only imagine how weak this ID.4 will be in 4-6 years from now. I don't think there will be any MSRP+ sales pricing. If anything they will be discounted very quickly after launch. The Chevy Bolt for example has had a lot of incentives piled ontop. I don't look at Nissan Leaf prices but i assume they discount it as well.

Let me know when i can get the $35k Model 3 for $5k off and i'l buy it.

 

[pezzy84]

What was the number of cars available in this run?

According to the link it was 2,000 cars for the US - not high volume (yet?). I can't find the article but I recall a 500,000/annually across 4 plants for the entire globe to start, figure once Tennessee comes online tack another 100k on top of that.

Im curious to see how well the id.4 does in relation to Tiguan, I imagine it will probably cannibalize some Tiguan sales.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Jeff - Doesnt the model 3 hold its price better than anything in class?
The first gen leaf was laughable - the latest one not too bad kinda cool.

My Ridgeline does surprisingly well here.

The Model 3 holds it value for several reasons: demand, COVID shut down, overseas build delays.
In March (?) I was in the Sunnyvale Service Center asking about a the Y. They told me Fremont was switching to European deliveries; it would be about a 4 month lead time if I ordered that day. I know the 3 has similar issues.
It all adds up to the old demand vs supply curve.

When Berlin and Austin come up, things should be different. There will also be a lotta used Model 3s as well.

 

[JeffKeryk]

I think if we were interested in going "more green", this would be my first step. But taking into account how fast things are moving, who knows. Might just dive right in.

A word of caution... Popular hybrids like the RAV4 and CR-V are hard to discount. I was shopping for a RAV4 hybrid a year ago; $500 off MSRP was it. An ICE version was easy to discount. You will probably pay to go green.
That's my experience. Shop around! Best of luck.

 

[supton]

Haven't seen an app like that.

I have seen how the tesla supercharger routing (pretty slick) works as well as its time of charge settings,

The bolt and volt have the same time of charge features built in. On all these you can select the level of charge you want to pull based on what your plug can deliver.

Trickle on a BEV using a 110V outlet means something different than most think - with a nearly 100 KWH to fill a trickle is 1KW for an hour. like running a hair dryer on medium all night.

When you are running tight against a timeframe this is when all the efficiencies start to become meaningful, as in how many miles you actually get to drive per KW hour you pull. The charger, battery, motors, and inverter, aero, all contribute here to make a meaningful difference in what you actually get out of a KWH of energy measured at the meter.

This makes something like "charging rate" less meaningful as the correlation between charge consumed and miles you can drive are disassociated because of all the variables.

When VW says the ID 4 can charge " up to" 125 KWH that number (nor any max charge rate number) isnt as meaningful as it sounds, for a bunch of reasons just one being the question of how long does it take to ramp up to that number and how long can it sustain 120.

Model 3 and y can absorb twice that for limited period slamming twice the mile into the pack in the same mount of time - incredibly meaningful on a real world trip.

Given EA can charge up to 350KWH the car cannot charge at the rate the system can deliver.

Weve heard for years " just wait till the big guys come" and after a decade everyone is realizing that it isnt going to be as easy for them as everyone thought.

Missed my point--if people are staying home and not driving, then charging in the shortest period of time is not critical. If you know you aren't going out for 2-3 days, then why not trickle charge? or grab 2-3 hours at a high charge rate if the utility offers a slice of time at low cost? I don't think anyone is interested in buying a car that only has trickle charge but if you can dial the "up to" level, then perhaps one can spread out a recharge over the period of expected downtime. Maybe it'd save a buck, dunno.

That is assuming that one has variable electric rates. Me, I don't think I have that, so I'd just charge at the max rate and have the car "back on line" all the faster.

 

[71Chevyguy]

I read that it has drum brakes in the rear. Didn't get a chance to read the article that explained why.

 

[RooflessVW]

I read that it has drum brakes in the rear. Didn't get a chance to read the article that explained why.

Regenerative braking combined with standard brake bias and rear drums will probably last the life of the car.

 

[JeffKeryk]

That is assuming that one has variable electric rates. Me, I don't think I have that, so I'd just charge at the max rate and have the car "back on line" all the faster.

As I recall, the charge screen has settings for target level to charge up to (we use 80%), AMP level and start time.

 

[UncleDave]

According to the link it was 2,000 cars for the US - not high volume (yet?). I can't find the article but I recall a 500,000/annually across 4 plants for the entire globe to start, figure once Tennessee comes online tack another 100k on top of that.

Im curious to see how well the id.4 does in relation to Tiguan, I imagine it will probably cannibalize some Tiguan sales.

It seemed little fuzzy to me " only about 2,000 1ST were envisioned for the U.S. market."

When you buy from Tesla online you know the final price.

It doesnt seem to me you actually know the price of what you are reserving to buy.

 

[UncleDave]

Missed my point--if people are staying home and not driving, then charging in the shortest period of time is not critical. If you know you aren't going out for 2-3 days, then why not trickle charge? or grab 2-3 hours at a high charge rate if the utility offers a slice of time at low cost? I don't think anyone is interested in buying a car that only has trickle charge but if you can dial the "up to" level, then perhaps one can spread out a recharge over the period of expected downtime. Maybe it'd save a buck, dunno.

That is assuming that one has variable electric rates. Me, I don't think I have that, so I'd just charge at the max rate and have the car "back on line" all the faster.

You can do that schedule wise, not sure about any saving as delivery rate isn't usually tiered.

a common use is a 12-7 3 nights in a row (fri-sun) to start out Monday AM with a full "tank".

Lots of electric companies will give you a charging rate off peak.

Id imagine you can throttle down quite a bit I've seen guys charging off honda 2K's.

 

[PimTac]

I was unsure about charging. When we got the Model 3, we drove around checking out charging options.
Silicon Valley is an EV (and tech) bubble, so this is not a fair representation of most of our country.
There is a Kaiser hospital clinic close; there are chargers in various spots of the huge parking lot.
You can charge for free in downtown Los Gatos (very limited) near the library.
There is a Super Charger location downtown in a back parking lot with 30 some chargers.
That was 2 years ago... It's growing.

Fueling these cars is different. You learn.

The chargers in the hospital parking lot are for public use or for Kaiser employee use?

 

[JeffKeryk]

The chargers in the hospital parking lot are for public use or for Kaiser employee use?

Public. They were in small groups of like 4, in mumerous places around the campus.
Kaiser EVGO

A big issue is, can a given EV charge at a given public charger?
There are adapters but if you have to buy one they can be expensive.
And beware those idle fees, which can be like 40 cents per minute.

I see all this EV stuff as a huge buisness opportunity ripe for the picking.

 

[pezzy84]

Public. They were in small groups of like 4, in mumerous places around the campus.
Kaiser EVGO

A big issue is, can a given EV charge at a given public charger?
There are adapters but if you have to buy one they can be expensive.
And beware those idle fees, which can be like 40 cents per minute.

I see all this EV stuff as a huge buisness opportunity ripe for the picking.

I think pretty much every EV (except Tesla) takes the standard J1772 L2 plug without adapater. DC fast charging pretty much everyone uses the combo (CCS), even Nissan is moving away from CHAdeMO so CCS and J1772 are pretty much the standard now. I really think its only Tesla requiring adapters.

I think anyone will be ok at any charging station unless they pull up to an old dusty GM EV1 charger with its big old paddle.

 

[OVERKILL]

It going to be hard.

Ive never come across a station with a genset on the West coast, although Im sure there are.

Weve had one week this year of on and off rolling blackouts in certain areas, I think those affected (not all were) were a few hours - it stinks, but thats what it was.

WORSE than rolling blackouts are PSPS which go on for days paralyzing mountain and near mountain communities. These get really hard without a whole house whole business genset (which Im working on for both)

From an economic and grid standpoint - EV home charging is set up to charge at the lowest load period which coincides with the cheapest price. There really isnt a problem around home charging because of this.

UD

Until the load shifts and that period is no longer low demand, that's what's inevitable if things get back to normal and people want to charge at home. Not an issue if you've got a fleet of nukes, much more of an issue if you want to try and depend on solar.

 

[pezzy84]

I think there is a false assumption that every EV driver is plugging in every single night which is most likely not the case - there may be some exceptions where some commuters will max out their range every single day (the 1st owners of my E-Golf apparently did so based on the mileage when they returned the lease) but most likely its like having to visit the gas/diesel pump in a regular car, just plug in when needed. Even if everyone plugged in every single night the car will stop drawing power (or draw miniscule amounts to maintain) once its full.

Even with my 90% predictable commute and driving patterns the days that I charge are very sporadic and vary wildly. This month I charged on Wed 9/2, Friday 9/4, Thur 9/10, Wed 9/16, then Thur 9/24.

 

[OVERKILL]

I think there is a false assumption that every EV driver is plugging in every single night which is most likely not the case - there may be some exceptions where some commuters will max out their range every single day (the 1st owners of my E-Golf apparently did so based on the mileage when they returned the lease) but most likely its like having to visit the gas/diesel pump in a regular car, just plug in when needed. Even if everyone plugged in every single night the car will stop drawing power (or draw miniscule amounts to maintain) once its full.

Even with my 90% predictable commute and driving patterns the days that I charge are very sporadic and vary wildly. This month I charged on Wed 9/2, Friday 9/4, Thur 9/10, Wed 9/16, then Thur 9/24.

When I had the Audi, I plugged in every night. I wanted a full battery the next day.