2017 e-Golf may have 30% battery increase
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JoulesThief
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preilly44 said:NeilBlanchard said:
Just in time for me to pick up my new 2016 SEL today
Did you lease or buy?
JoulesThief said:preilly44 said:NeilBlanchard said:
Just in time for me to pick up my new 2016 SEL today
Did you lease or buy?
It was a replacement car for the 2015 e-Golf that I had a lot of issues with. VW came through and took care of me really well.
They replaced the car and continued the lease from the 2015.
JoulesThief
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preilly44 said:
Good to hear they took care of you. My 2015 SEL keeps right on ticking along. Bought on October 6th, and 5505 miles it it today.
So how many more months left on your lease? Does this mean that when the lease is up on this one, you'll have an opportunity at a 2018?
2018s should be out well before December of 2017. But if for some reason they are not, generally leases can be extended for some period of time. I very much doubt VW is going to stop people from continuing to lease their 2015/2016 at whatever monthly payment is already established. It's better for them the longer the vehicle is leased.
JoulesThief
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It's not known yet at this point in time what VW will do, but if it's like most of their stuff, technology marches on, they want you buying new cars, and don't care too much about maintaining what they sell, their goal is to get the car out of warranty, then have parts start failing left and right. VW's business model is about making money on recurring costs to fix, selling spare parts... and the dealerships making bank charging hourly rates bolting on and unbolting parts, then having to "adapt" the new part via a computer, to the existing car.douglas88 said:
Service on all german cars is a huge profit center, it pays for them to build stuff that breaks.
Highly probable the new higher capacity battery will have a different type of DIN connector for the brains, or something, making it exceedingly difficult to retrofit larger capacity battery in an older e-Golf. Some folks say these are nothing but compliance cars. Make of it what you will.
I agree with JT on this. If you do some research on the BMW i3 battery swap cost, you'll see it is extremely expensive (and not currently going to be offered in the USA). I suspect VW would prefer to sell more cars than swap batteries. I'm pretty sure that for the Leaf, the 30 kWh battery pack is not compatible with the 24kWh car electronics, and it's possible VW may have the same incompatibility. I think that the technology is changing so fast that manufacturers are more concerned about improving the next product than with making it backwards compatible with the existing product.
Thanks y'all. I love my E-Golf but sure glad I leased it. I can't imagine how they are going to sell the thing once I turn it back in at the end of 2018. By then, my car is sure not to be worth a whole lot. It's been 8 months since I have been to a gas station. And I still can't figure out why more people don't go electric.
I get what you are saying but I think there is a market for these cars after the lease is over. A colleague of mine just purchased his 24kWh Leaf after his lease ended because Nissan chopped thousands of dollars off the residual value and he felt comfortable using it just for commuting, even though it has lost some range. There will always be a buyer at the right price.
johnnylingo
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Yep, was just going to say there are factors to consider other than range. California's white stickers are one that should boost the market for used EVs, and there's also the chance that gas prices go up again, making commuting via electric a more cost effective option.
miimura
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I didn't see it mentioned in this thread, but VW USA established the 2017 model year lineup back in June.
http://media.vw.com/release/1212/
The relevant part for this thread:
In addition, there was a new user in the Facebook group who already took delivery of a 2017 on the east coast. He insisted on a 2017 over a 2016 that was sitting on the lot, so they must be available for order from VW USA and they must be sitting in the port. I think the recent surge of inventory we're seeing in California is from VW USA pushing out all the 2016 port inventory to the dealers. The funny thing to me is that there are still at least 15 new 2015 model year e-Golf cars sitting on dealer lots on the east coast. I cannot fathom a good reason for that to still be the case.
http://media.vw.com/release/1212/
The relevant part for this thread:
So, we won't be getting the larger battery during the 2016 calendar year. Automakers can start selling a new model year in January of the year prior to the numbered model year. So, we could see the 2018 e-Golf with the larger battery any time in 2017.
In addition, there was a new user in the Facebook group who already took delivery of a 2017 on the east coast. He insisted on a 2017 over a 2016 that was sitting on the lot, so they must be available for order from VW USA and they must be sitting in the port. I think the recent surge of inventory we're seeing in California is from VW USA pushing out all the 2016 port inventory to the dealers. The funny thing to me is that there are still at least 15 new 2015 model year e-Golf cars sitting on dealer lots on the east coast. I cannot fathom a good reason for that to still be the case.
JoulesThief
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miimura said:
Price... for reasons unknown, the dealerships won't budge to get them to move, or the demand is just not there, or the 2015 is undesirable for features, or lack of features. Basic economics states as the price goes down, demand goes up. Or there are better options of electric cars in different brand lineups. How are inventory on BMW, and Leafs in the northeast, for previous year models, I wonder?
What my situation is is this: I will possibly never get an electric car again for the price I did on my 2015 SEL. I have a couple of TDI's to cover all my out of city driving needs or longer distance trips. Unless something changes drastically, I am of the opinion now that I can and should hold on to my 2015 e-Golf SEL for as long as possible. I like everything about it except being tethered what feels like all the time. I prefer to keep the Touaregs in the garage, not the e-Golf. The HOA in the townhouse complex here is miserable to deal with, and won't be putting in chargers in the public driveway any time soon. So for me, it's musical cars in the garage to recharge, not ideal with glow plugs on diesels being fired up all the time just to move a car. Excessive wear and tear on them.
I believe if VW could get more people in to test drive e-Golfs at the dealerships, they would sell considerably more of them. They do drive exceptional in the twisties, and we do have a lot of mountain ranges and canyons to drive where I live, between myself and the desert or myself and the ocean.
miimura
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It costs the dealer money to keep any car on the lot. Why not cut their losses and dump it by selling to a customer at a low price or trade to another dealer? I would even understand if they didn't order any more e-Golfs at all, that's their choice. If they can't move them, why order more?
JoulesThief
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miimura said:
VW dealerships defy logic or conventional wisdom, for some reason we'll never know. Or else there are some incentive programs for dealerships from VWoA that make it worthwhile for dealerships to order newer e-golfs in the product purchase mix. We'll never know.
As a side line curiosity, how is battery capacity holding up on your 2012 RAV after 4 years? Range then versus now? 40kwh then what's it at now, currently? Odometer reading?
miimura
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The odo is approaching 35,000 miles and I purchased the car about 3 years and 3 months ago. I have not noticed any degradation but I also haven't done the test to see what the degradation might be. There is a company that makes an OBD connected data collection system for EVs. They claim that the RAV4 EV has the lowest degradation percentage that they have measured on any EV, Tesla Model S included. The battery cells in the Tesla Roadster, RAV4 EV, and Model S are all different from each other.JoulesThief said:
The effective range is much more now that I have the Jdemo installed. The battery is big enough that it can take 125 amps DC for more than the 30 minutes that NRG eVgo stations will run. With one more fast charger on I-80 around Colfax and one more on 101 around King City, I will be able to easily take the RAV on all the road trips my family is likely to want to do.
That's enough off topic rambling...
miimura
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https://www.facebook.com/groups/vwegolf/marc1 said:
You just ask to be added. It's called a "Closed Group" because the posts there stay in the group and are not seen by the rest of Facebook.
Did not see anything on that topic in Belgium. My dealer does not know about that range increasing. However, they said (not officially) that a manufacturing plant is being created in germany just to produce battery - instead of buying from third-party - and should be a joint-venture with Tesla?