7mo ago

One of the best EVs 10 years ago

Looking back over the past decade, it's fascinating to see how much technology has evolved.

In 2015, the Volkswagen e-Golf was one of the top EVs available, offering optional fast charging and a range of just 125 km.

Did anyone here drive an EV 10 years ago? What was your experience like?

Screenshot source

10 comments

The GM EV1 from 1997 had a longer range than this, and it didn’t even have lithium batteries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
I still feel like, at least for urban use, that a smaller battery with faster charge times are better than a long range battery
- Battery sizes and charging speeds correlate, I think this is one of the main reasons we see cars with almost 100kwh of battery nowadays.
- You can always just charge 20 kwh on your 70 kwh car. That'd be very fast
- A larger battery is easier to get to charge at higher rates. So charging for a 50 km drive, can generally be done faster on a bigger battery.
  And it will last longer, because the wear is per "full" recharge, where obviously for the same amount of distance, a bigger battery will require fewer percent of a full recharge.
  That said, of course a smaller battery could in theory be of higher quality. But that's usually not how it works.
How was the eGolf one of the "top EVs" ? The Leaf was cheaper in the same range/battery size and Nazi man's Model S was literally superior in every way (albeit double the cost but triple the range etc). Hell the Zoe was better bangs for bucks with (iirc) a larger battery for the same price and an equal fitout.
Have a look at Norway's sales stats for that year to get an objective view of what were good EVs in that timeframe (because that was what people actually bought in a market where EVs were competitive)
I had a 2015 Nissan Leaf that I bought new. Range was optimistically 115 miles when fully charged. I loved it. I have also owned a 2022 Nissan Leaf and now I drive 2023 Audi E-tron. Range was never an issue with the 2015, but I was only driving 60 miles per day. We have also owned various ICE cars for longer trips. We put many more miles on our EVs than our ICE, favoring them for errands and the like. My favorite thing is having my car charged and ready to go and not having to ever stop at gas stations. The much lower operating cost is definitely nice as well.
I disagree, this was an example of the mindset, that caused electric cars to be unpopular before the Tesla S.
Because the batteries were expensive, everybody made small cars that were basically useless for anything but very short trips, and sales of them were almost non existent for good reason.
This car came out even AFTER it IMO was shown to be a bad model to make such short range cars.
Luckily today VW-group makes many attractive models, that have good range and competitive prices. With the high quality throughout all components of the car many love here in Europe.
I still see these in the Pacific Northwest, they're classy looking!
- I like its boring look, I think it fits the car

10 comments