Blackseries said:
pebell said:
All fully automatic, neat and tidy and ready for tax declaration. I can even use their web interface to specify who else is allowed to use my charger with their own card, and what price per kWh (if any) to charge them. I can ever declare it a public charger, have it appear on a huge number of charge maps and apps, etc. it's pretty sweet.
This is part of why I'm so bummed that the I-Pace doesn't support three phase chargers and I'll have to install an additional DC charger to give me the 11kW charge speed I know I need to avoid having to use road side charging for my daily driving needs.
pebell - was that integrated billing system available before Shell took over or was that something they introduced? It does sound very seamless.
It really does seem that JLR dropped the ball on the 3 phase charger front - seems odd when probably half way through the developement of the car it would have been clear Norway and the Netherlands were going to be big initial markets - but I suppose the main focus in the very early stages of development were the US & UK so it probably wasn't seen as a priority - I think Germanys incentives were probably introduced after the I-Pace was signed off.
I seem to remember the i3 was only single phase charging to start with - and that was obviously developed in Germany, so JLR aren't the only ones but that doesn't make it any more palatable.
What are the implications of waiting until the 2020 model year, April 2019 - when I think the 3 phase charger will be introduced?
This system was already in place 5 years ago when I got the Model S, long before they were taken over by Shell. I have to admit, to this date Shell has kept a very low profile, NewMotion still uses their own branding and not much has changed at all from a consumer perspective.
I do think Jaguar dropped the ball, not just on the three phase thing, but on the entire issue of home charging. On the one hand they do know and communicate that fast road side charging isn't nearly as important as people think it is, because you will only need it a few times per year - that's why you buy an BEV with a large and very expensive battery in the first place. But on the other hand they build a 7kW charger into the car. That is perfectly suitable for hybrids, and small to (maybe) mid-size BEVs, but when the battery gets bigger you need bigger chargers too. When I buy an iPhone, I get a little charger with it that charges it from empty to full within a few hours - perfectly matched. When I buy an iPad, I get a beefier charger so that, again, it can be charged within a few hours. And a Macbook Pro ships with a very serious power supply, so that.. well you get my point. The I-Pace has one of the largest batteries around, but it is like a Macbook Pro shipped with an iPad charger - that due to 16A constraints in most European homes (not to mention tens of thousands of public chargers) is effectively reduced to an iPhone charger.
The implications of waiting for the 2020 model are severe in my country. As you mentioned, The Netherlands and Norway were front runners in the EV revolution, fuelled by their governments with significant tax benefits. This resulted in a (by comparison) very solid public charging infrastructure (three phase, of course, DC charging capabilities are still very limited). and a relatively large number of hybrids and BEVs on our roads. But unlike Norway, the dutch government feels the time is right to go into the next phase, and finetune their incentives somewhat.
Until now, the tax benefits have made it relatively cheap to drive very expensive BEVs and plug-in hybrids, like Tesla's. As of 2019, our government will aim their tax incentives primarily at cheaper cars, forcing manufacturers to drive down the costs for compelling long range BEVs, rather than focussing on the high end luxury market like they are all doing now.
They found a rather clever way to do that, too. In the Netherlands, the tax you pay on driving a (business) car is expressed as a percentage of the car's showroom price that needs to be added to your yearly income, and gets taxed as such. So for instance, if you drive a car that costs €40.000, 22% of that amount will be added to your income, and then taxed with 52% income tax. So in addition to the costs of the car, you'ld pay about €380 per month for the car in taxes. Now, the 22% is the percentage for normal gas and diesel cars. When I got my Model S, for electric cars, this percentage was 0% - no taxes at all! Because of that, the monthly costs (including tax) of leasing my Model S were about the same as they were for the BMW 318i I leased before that - while the Tesla was twice as expensive. You can understand why Tesla took off so big around here.
So where many other countries have EV incentives in the form of a fixed amount refund, our government uses a percentage of the car's price. A year or so later, they increased the percentage to 4% for plug-in hybrids and BEVs - still very little. But like I said, as of 2019 they don't want their incentives to sponsor high end luxury cars as much any more. So what they did is put a price cap on it. Only the first €50.000 of the vehicle's price will benefit from a 4% tax rate - anything above that will be taxed the full 22%. On a car like the I-Pace, the net difference between getting it on 31-12-2018 and getting it on 1-1-2019 is over €300 per month. That is why, for most dutch customers, waiting for next year's model is usually not really an option.
