Building the Perfect EV: A Comprehensive Guide
Welcome! In this comprehensive guide, we'll be looking at EVs from various angles and building the perfect one together. We have access to a wide range of vehicles, including the Polestar, F-150 Lightning, and Model Y, so it's time to break down what works and what doesn't.
When it comes to EVs, there are several factors that need to be considered. For starters, they're often more expensive than their gasoline/diesel counterparts. This is due in part to higher production costs and longer-term maintenance requirements. Secondly, their range needs to be improved; while they've come a long way in recent years, there's still room for improvement. Thirdly, charging networks should be better developed; Tesla has done an admirable job creating their own network but other manufacturers may not have made as much progress in this area.
So what would make up a "perfect" EV? Let's start with charging capability: look for a car that can charge from zero to 80% in around 18 minutes or less - this means faster trips and less time wasted waiting for your vehicle to charge up. Additionally, the vehicle should have an efficient network that can move large amounts of electricity quickly - this is critical if you plan on using public chargers. Tesla is also doing great work with their Over-the-Air (OTA) updates for everything from performance tweaks to recall notices; however, not having an official dealer network can put a wrinkle in service/maintenance plans down the line.
Fortunately, Jim Gilbert’s Wheels & Deals dealership in Fredericton, New Brunswick offers excellent customer service and a full lineup of all types of vehicles - including EVs! They employ certified technicians who are specially trained on all types of electric vehicles so you can rest assured knowing your car will receive proper care if any issues arise down the line.
Now let’s get started creating our perfect EV! We'll examine different models and see which ones fit our checklist best - stay tuned!But this is a polestar. Polestar is made by Volvo, right behind the cameras a Volvo dealer and they can't service this car. That's something to keep in mind is that when you have a dealer network, you don't necessarily have that dealer network and it's something that has to be taken care of. If you're gonna have a perfect ev, you need to be able to take it to a service, you know, all over the place.
And you might think, oh, my local dealer services it, so that's fine. But what if you move? Or what if you are traveling and an engine light or engine light? If a warning light comes on, then it's important to be able to take it to a dealer or have it self-diagnosed online and be able to have it taken care of. So dealer networks I think are important and Ford is doing a pretty good job. They've got a massive dealer network, they're including their dealer network. So they've got a combination of over the air updates in a lot of their vehicles and a dealer network that can help you. And I think that's an important thing to EV ownership. One other thing that I think you need to see in EVs is innovation in physical design. Not just software design, but physical design. And I'm not talking about the shape of the vehicle because that's always been a part of car culture.
What I'm talking about is when you take out something like an engine, you should make use of that space. And here you go, in Tesla they have a massive funk. Now some vehicles don't have a shrunk at all. Even if they aren't EVs, there's no storage space there at all. The Volvo has much less, which you know, I think they could do more with it. And then you have the Ford F-150, which is really interesting because there, on a typical F-150, you have no lockable outside storage other than in the cab. And here no engine, massive funk. And Ford actually wins this competition for a whole bunch of reasons. On the Tesla, you have to open it with the key fob or with the uh, screen inside. But all it does is release it and then you still have to open it on Volvo. You can release it just like a regular hood, but you still have to pull the safety tab right here.
Again, Volvo Safety pull star. Um, and you know, that's to me is an molder design, but here on the F-150 you can press a button from inside or outside the vehicle and it opens completely. Not just releases, but actually opens. So innovation in in design is important, but you also have to remember that um, if you're gonna innovate with that space, you have to think about how people use a trunk or a shrunk. And having it open just like a regular trunk makes a whole lot more sense. So innovation is really important in design and some are gonna be better than others. The F-150 could do a lot more, but they want to try to keep things looking the same for the regular customer base. I think that might be a strong initial sales pitch for an F-150, but I do think they have to continue to innovate and design, but innovation can go too far.
And in that case, let's talk about the Tesla. All right, so we have a wide angle view here. We're gonna hop inside the Tesla and if you've never been inside a Tesla, this is a model Y, there's a model three and a model Y, which looked very similar to this. Then there's a model S and A model X, which have a screen in here. I'd like to see a screen in here. I think this is Tesla's lack of innovation. Uh, they started with a center screen and on the model S and Y S and X, they have a uh, screen in here, which I think is nice. But let's talk about the innovation where it can go wrong. First of all, Tesla doesn't have a key. You're gonna use your phone for the most part, but when you don't have a key, you have to use this card.
Now this card is in an actual rubber holder. It's just basically a regular credit card. Uh, but when I slide it over here, you can sort of see then the vehicle comes to life and starts. You can kind of hear that beeping there. So there's no start button or stop button. Volvo copies that with their pole star Ford still has traditional start and stop button. I don't mind that. I think that makes some sense. But when I get in the car for the very first time, what do I do to move the seat? Well, the seat moves normally, but what about the steering wheel? The steering wheel can go up and down or in and out, but how do I do that? How do I even use the door handle? My guests may not know that this is the door handle and to adjust the mirrors.
How do I adjust them? These are all things that you need a lesson on before you get in. I would like to see more buttons. I think a perfect EV can have buttons. Now you can make them redundant buttons, but I don't think it's smart to make a driver drive with a steering wheel in an unsafe position or an uncomfortable position or the mirrors in an unsafe position. And again, Tesla fans will jump in and say, oh, this is easy to use. But if I don't know what to do here on this screen, if you've never seen a Tesla before, you may not know what to do. You can go over here, you can hit all sorts of things over here. Pedals and steering is helpful up there, but pedals and steering still doesn't allow me to adjust the steering wheel over here, which is something that is kind of interesting, right?
So you have some interesting titles in here, uh, that make it a little bit difficult to figure out exactly what you're doing. You go back to controls over here you can fold your mirrors, you can do all that kind of stuff. So you can find all this stuff and steering wheel is right here and you can see I can move up down in or out. So this is kind of cool up down, it's very innovative. So now we're gonna move it down by rolling the wheel. We're gonna go in now it's coming out all the way and it goes in all the way. Again, all of this is easy to figure out, but if you're driving down the road and realize the steering's not in a great spot, or if you want to adjust your mirrors and you realize they're not in a great spot, it is a little bit tougher to do some of these things in a Tesla.
So it's innovation maybe gone too far. So now we're in the F-150 Lightning and this one is intentionally designed to feel like a regular Ford vehicle, like a regular Ford pickup truck. So getting in without turning it on, you can see I've got my, uh, various things. Now again, the range of this one's 305 kilometers or so. I didn't do anything other than open the door and those screens were already alive. It does have a start button, which makes it a lot more familiar to work. But again, you've got sort of the same thing here. All your controls down there, uh, you can move everything the way you would normally move it. Cruise control buttons. So you've got buttons and if everywhere and there is a little bit of a lack of design difference in here. Now that's an intentional thing. You've got the same trailer brake controller, you've got the same stuff, uh, same everything, even this is actually pretty innovative.
Uh, you can fold the gear, shift lever down and you can fold this out. And you have a workspace here, which is pretty cool. It's traditional F-150 stuff. However, the reason you had such a huge console in here is cuz you used to have a massive transmission on the regular trucks coming down here and you really don't have any need to have as big of a section in here because you could have a flat floor. There's no transmission running through. So again, little bit different with a lack of innovation in here. Although what I do like is on something like this, you have, uh, the screen here. There's no reason that Tesla can't continue to innovate and put a screen over here. Now when you're charging at a charge network, Tesla has things like games. You can play video games right in the car. Ford keeps it pretty standard stuff with their software.
So again, innovation, lack of innovation, you can talk about that. Let's go look at the Volvo, which kind of bridges the gap between these two. So sitting inside the Volvo, you've got some interesting things going on. You have a screen in here, which is very nice. And again it's uh, sort of Volvo's polestar style. I keep saying Volvo, but it's Polestar. And then over here you have this bridging of the gap between Tesla and traditional automakers. So you've got Apple CarPlay, which you can't get in the Tesla, uh, you can't get in the Ford. Uh, then you've got this Google type system in here. And uh, just to show you, I can say something like, okay Google, what's the weather outside? What's the weather outside today?
Today in Fredericton there'll be scattered showers with a forecasted high of 42 and a low of 36. Right now it's 42 degrees and cloudy. By the way, if you wanna listen to the news while you drive, just say, Hey Google, play the new.
So there you go, cancel Google. So there you go. You can use features in here that auto update on their own. However, a lot of that Google stuff wasn't started with the car. So it's familiar but still unfamiliar. So cool things in here. Again, no start button over here. Um, you know, there's no start button at all in the car. You just tap your foot on the brake and put it in gear. You can do various things there. You've got some familiar looking buttons over here which can control some of your menus, cruise control buttons, that kind of thing. So really bridging the gap and a nice familiar feel in here. So if we're gonna design the perfect ev, one thing that's starting to happen now that hasn't happened in the past is there's a variety of designs. You have a small crossover here. You have a larger mid-size, mid-size larger sedan over here and a pickup truck over there.
For the longest time I've been involved with EVs and people who wanted an EV would be forced to buy a class of vehicle that they weren't used to buying in the past. So one of the key things to making the perfect EV is having a variety of classes. That's a really important thing. And now the final really crucial piece of an EV subscription services or extra add-on. So what am I talking about? Well, first of all, we know that Teslas have what they used to call or what they still call autopilot, which has evolved into what they call full self-drive. It wasn't autopilot before. It's not full self-drive now, uh, but it is something that is capable in some of these cars when you buy them new. So you can have this full self-driving suite built into the car, but on Tesla it can cost as much as $20,000 Canadian to just unlock the features that are already there.
That's an interesting thing. Ford's not exempt from this on some of their EVs, they have their blue crews and you have in uh, gm, they have the super cruises and all kinds of things where it has this self-driving type software and it will be a subscription service, things that you have to pay for to use. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? Do we, you know, if we're buying the vehicle and not buying all the software, is that something we want? That's a piece of the puzzle that we have to decide when we're buying an ev because if you don't buy, for instance, the full self-drive up front with Tesla, it's going to cost you more down the line unless Tesla lowers the prices, which this year on their vehicle they've been doing, but not so much on their software. And that's the whole other game which we have to figure out as well.
So let's wrap up this video with my summary, but I want you to fill the comment section with what you think EVs need to have. So as a full wrap up, first of all, I think a vehicle and electric vehicle should have multiple classes, multiple sizes, and I think it should have over the air updates and be able to do almost all of its servicing type things that we can do over the air, over the air. I also think that it should have a good network and not just some dealers that can service it, but every dealer in that network should be able to service these vehicles. I think that's important. I'm not sure how I feel about subscription services. I'm not sure if that's good because it'll make the vehicle cheaper for me to buy, but bad because I have a vehicle that has everything it needs to add in later.
I do think charging networks are important. I think chargers need to be installed in the vehicles that are very capable of very fast speeds. But one final thing is really important. A lot of EV buyers will come to take a look at the EVs and all the EVs across the classes that are here available at Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals. And one thing that's important is they may have to decide that an EV isn't right for them right now. And that is a really big piece of it. For some people, an EV just doesn't make sense right now. Whether it's the charge network, the cost of the vehicle for the features, the type of vehicle that may have the features you want, but maybe not the class you want. There's all kinds of those decisions. And that's one of the great things about being here at Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals.
Whether it's a full ev, whether it's a hybrid, whether it's a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle or just a regular gasoline or diesel vehicle, they are all available here and you can compare them from one to the next to the next, whether it's ev plug-in hybrid, e hybrid or gasoline vehicle. You can compare them. And that I think is the most important thing today. So let me know what you think, what do we need to do to make great EVs of the future? And hopefully you found this VI video helpful. Maybe slightly entertaining, I'm not sure. But I wanna thank everyone for watching. And if you're looking for a vehicle and you're in Fredericton, make sure you swing by Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals. We'll talk to you in the next one.
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