A first drive in the wonderful electric version of the VW UP! It's the very nicely put together VW e-UP! Also includes some pondering on the 'Yorkshire connection' as regards the time honoured phrase 'aye -up.'
The one-foot driving revelation. Followed by "oh fuck I've put it in neutral" This is why I love this show, natural and authentic EV driving experiences.
Mr. Lllewellyn ( having a go at trashing my welsh heritage) is so engaging, and down right funny, plus he presents yet another very useful introduction to a new electric car. Thanks ! and now I will go back an learn how to spell your name properly...or as they say in Maine Eh-yup..( I think.. but what do I know I live in California ) !
I don't think it will be too much longer before electric cars become a reasonable option for the average person. Some interesting new battery tec on it's way over the next few years. Exciting times!
motors delivers the power perfectly, engines are unreliable, costly to rub and maintain. I can't wait to put my hands on a nice ev van and charge it with solar!
I've been leasing the e-up for 4 months now and I still like it. Its range does go a lot down when it's less than 40°F outside though. The worst I've tried was about 50 mile range on the highway when it was 30°F. I could still make my trip due to fast chargers along the highway, but my gps was mad with alarms about how I couldn't make it and for the first time it actually gave me range anxiety the first time I tried to make the trip. Now I don't really trust its judgement anymore, but fortunately I know the figures myself. So I'd say it definitely is a compromise on range, since you have to stop for more than just comfort breaks. I'm happy with the e-up, but I'd prefer a 25kWh battery or better. Another thing - you say the acceleration is smooth, and yeah, it really is. But only up to around 60mi/hr. And like most small and proportionally tall cars, its heavily affected by wind gusts when driving above 70mi/hr, which I don't particularly enjoy. Lastly, I don't know if you know, but it also uses regenerative breaking when you use the brake petal. I actually like that they have the option of doing it that way, since I hear the brakes need to be used as much as possible in EVs to not get stuck. So this way it fades from regenerative braking into normal braking at around 10mi/hr. And I'm curious to see if that's enough.
Quando o up veio pro Brasil, a primeira coisa que eu pensei sobre seu design, foi em colocar as drls exatamente onde estão posicionadas neste up elétrico!!!
@Sion: Gives you UP TO 30 km solar range a day. Under ideal conditions. The daily average over the year is stated about 10 km. In Central Europe. And if the car stands free in the open air. You won't get much solar range, if the car stands in urban canyons with hardly any sunlight.
Nissan should make a two-person mini car (mini Leaf, perhaps) that is half the car (compared to Leaf), half the price (of the Leaf), and ALL of the Leaf's batteries!
I am very much looking forward to electric cars hitting the roads in big numbers, an hopefully me owning one, one day, and I think Volkswagen would have a damn good shot at it and produce some excellent electric vehicles. If this e-up! is anything to go by, as well as the e-Golf. They are getting positive review everywhere. I drive a mk7 golf TDI blumotion and I love it. My dad has been buying VW's since the 70's and like you, said that there is something about them you cant put your finger on. They just have a real sense of quality and engineering few cars can match. In theory electric car could be immensely powerful, indeed some are already. The up! is a charming car, I am guessing the refinement level in this model are like none other in its class.
Even assuming that electricity was free and there was zero maintenance cost the £8,000 price differential is an absolutely insane deal breaker, my gas guzzler could go for well over 10 more years for that! On a lighter note, I’m very pleased you have a ‘Good Ear” Robert, that’s preferable to a Firestone!
I've actually had Seat Mii (which is VW Up! with a slightly different headlights) for 3 years. And it is amazing how spacious it is for it's size! And there is reasonable size boot with full-size spare wheel under the floor. And it would make perfect EV for me. But it's price is well above my car budget at the moment
Were you aware that you could adjust the intensity of the regenerative braking by putting the lever on D and pushing it to the left (level up from 1 to 3) or right (level down from 3 to 1) while pushing it back to "B" instantly sets the braking level to maximum (4)?
So any word on the thermal management? Since I've been seriously considering a electric for my next vehicle perhaps some time in the next few years, and the bitter cold we've been having here in the North-Eastern US has been reminding me to consider cold weather's impact on range, both in battery performance and cabin heating...
Great review - and as a proud Yorkshireman I applaud your accent skills. Technically, I suspect 'Aye-Up' is more 'Northern' than specifically 'Yorkshire' as I believe them folk in Lancashire are also partial to its use. (you're probably regretting even starting this discussion now.....)
Getting better! I've heard you can't rapid charge this in the uk though? When it gets to 14k and 200 mile range i will seriously consider an electric car. Until then though I'm stuck with horrible Eco diesels
Nice film and review !!! I think VW missed a trick and should rotate the filler-cap ninety degrees anti/counter-clockwise, then the flap would protect the connector from rain etc ?? !! So is the petrol version now gonna be called a P-Up ?? !! or for the Americans the G-Up ha ha
Looking at the difference in price between the High-Up and the Take-Up, I notice that there is a lot of equipment that is standard on the e-up that's also on the High-Up, along with some that isn't. E-Up with Take-Up spec could be much cheaper. In short, they should offer the e-up without all the gubbins! It could bring the e-up price down by £2,735 or maybe even more.
Nice video Robert, its not a very pretty car but I guess it gets the job done though. Any chance you coming over the pound & doing some videos on US sold EVs & our infrastructure outside California to support EV cars. I would love to see your take on the Fiat 500e even though it is sold only in California ATM. Keep up the great work on your end of the pound I look forward to your next video.
Thank you for the translation (gubbins). You can do a combination electric vehicle/get to know the UK show. I don't know if any of these vehicles will make it our shores, but it would be nice if you included more conventional details, such as the size of the back seats, trunk space, etc.
Thanks for the video, nice. What really strikes me about electric car reviews is how much concern there is about the details such as running cost, range, acceleration, trim level etc. Sure it`s to be considered but for me the MAIN reason I want an E car is the emissions. I live in Bristol UK. By far not the most polluted city but it still exceeds EU safety levels by over 200%. The amount of toxins we and our children filter through the lungs, the amount of soot from diesel drivers who never change their particle filters, disgusting. I dream of sitting in traffic, in dead quiet and relishing clean fresh air. We should`ve all bought electric cars yesterday :)
Driven every sort of VW Golf?ever tried a 'Golf Country', A Mk2 Golf body with 4x4 underpinning and bull bars front and back. Here in Bosnia i see a couple of them locally but they never made many, the Puch factory at Graz constructed them.
??? If I ran out of battery power in my car and I got a friend that can tow me around his farm whit his trackter can my batteries be charged whit regenerative braking to get home or a changing station.Please I want to know.Frank.
Lovely review. I own a Skoda Citigo and was thinking of buying one of these to replace it (if it was cheaper in the long run). But I just had to point out that your mental maths seems a bit flawed. The normal 75hp Up! in reality gets around an average of 60mpg so to drive 30,000 miles would be about 5000 gallons of fuel, which would be about 22,700 litres. At around £1.30 per litre that would cost the average person about just short of £3,000. This only makes up for less than half the cost difference between the Up! and the e-Up! so really you would need to drive more than 60,000miles before you caught up with the cost difference of the e-Up! That's not factoring in the cost of the electricity though that it would cost you to drive 60+ thousand miles in the e-Up. At an average of 12,000 miles per year which seems the going rate for most people, you'd need to own the e-Up! for around 6 years before you actually even came close to having paid the extra for the e-Up!
Hello, thanks for pointing out the mistake. The error was that 30,000 divided by 60 is 500 and not 5000 of course. I actually made a spreadsheet that calculated the costs correctly between the two over a period of years and the figures were more staggering than you'd imagine. The conclusion was the same though. You'd need to own an electric car for a long time before it made financial sense. More time than most people would keep a car these days.
Robert Kriz But by the time all the oil is gone, these electric cars will be better developed (and hopefully less expensive to buy) so we'll just have to bear with it, I'm afraid.
Lee Oliver Also a Citigo owner and did think about the e-up! But at neatly twice the price and the fact the 60bhp or 75 bhp is brilliant on fuel it would take a long time to cover the cost. Even if around town short journeys mine averages 36-42 it would still take more than the lifetime ownership of the car to pay for it's self.
The e-up's biggest problem is that a high-spec Nissan Leaf is about the same price, and it's more car for the money. And you could get a base-spec Leaf for €5000 less if price was an important factor.
E-up is one of the cars I'm considering when I start driving again, but it's a shame VW have priced it so high. As it stands it's essentially the same price as the entry level Leaf. I MUCH prefer the E-up size and layout, but at the end of the day the Leaf gives much more range, and for a few thousand more, you can go for 30kw. If VW offered different battery sizes, and offered the 18kw version for £16-£17k and a 25kw version for £19k, then they would have a "shut up and take my money!" situation. A 25kw E-up should give similar range to the Leaf, especially if they use heat pump heating/ac, LED lamps etc.
Are the VW Group gonna make this available in Skoda and Seat form, as it's built in the same place and basically cosmetic difference ?? !! I only ask as i think the Skoda CitiGo is much better looking !!!
Have you done something different with the audio recording? Because there's a lot more background noise than any of your other recordings... unless it IS that noisy...
Sounds really good!... But what if you don't have a garage to charge it in overnight?... You can't have extention leads going halfway down the street! Love the show bye the way!
You don't have to have a garage but you do need somewhere 'off street' to park the car overnight. According to Govt figures that's around 60% of UK households, but if you can only park on the street it is currently a serious setback. I have seen cars in London charging outside a house with a cable running across the pavement under one of those 'no trip' cable guards but it's a very shonky arrangement. The real change will be when induction charging becomes more widespread, I have done an episode about it, essentially when every parking space has an induction plate under the concrete the days of wires and plugs will be a distant memory.
fullychargedshow I reckon charging posts will be more likely as they`re cheaper to install and don't require digging up the roads and all that entails. They could possibly attach them to streetlamps as they're everywhere already, and run a short cable under the pavement to a special kerb post that has the sockets, therefore avoiding cables running across pavements etc. Say 4 sockets per post, then just have 1 payment terminal at the end of the row which handles the lot. Could even allow remote payment via mobile/internet/incar etc.
German here: Most Germans realize that "e-up!" is an English name and thus pronounce it in English. Some may pronounce the "e" as if it was German, but no one pronounce "up" as a German word.
+Friek555 The entire North of England (above the Humber) pronounces "up" as German pronunciation. Pity that standard English is so different - if Germans learnt Northern English, they'd be able to pronounce it perfectly... we'd never hear "e-app" again.
leaf on ebay £10K 30000 miles - cost new I think was £32K Only way to get your money back is never sale the car. 100K miles would cost £4500 at todays prices 24KW at 15p = £3.60
Crash UK Cost new was £25k. Currently they are much cheaper now unless you go for the very top spec, however almost everyone rents the Leaf as it's much cheaper.
Crash UK Interesting calculations there. For a start, when the battery is reading 'empty it's not. You actually put about 18 kWh in to fill it. That is one of the reasons the battery will outlast the car, it's very carefully looked after by the battery management system. So actually it uses around 19 kWh to cover 100 miles. However, you are right about selling the car, I have no intention of selling mine, there's nothing wrong with it. I've done 36,928 miles as of today. Todays 120 mile drive cost me 97p because I charged it overnight, drove it, rapid charged it for 'free' and drove home. I've spent under £800 driving 36,000 miles, a saving of, let's say conservatively £3,500 over fuel costs for a similar sized petrol car. In another 36,000 miles I will have saved £7,000. Plus, no oil change, no new filters, timing belts, fan belts, catalytic converters, mufflers/silencer replacement, the list goes on and on. Average service costs me £50 and it's once every 20,000 miles. Other than that, spot on.
craigix You say most rent the Leaf in the UK... well, many do, I agree, but not most. Most people I know have bought and not on Flex either so they are not even renting the battery! I agree that if it is a business then leasing is the only sensible way but as a private owner the best way still IMO is to buy outright and to keep for 3-5 years. If you want to change your car inside 3 years then leasing (or PCP) may be appropriate depending on your circumstances (high mileage is still expensive on a lease compared to outright purchase AFAIK).
fullychargedshow so you could own a classic car with out guilt aswell, as it's been around for many years and paid it's dues etc, like a nice old Land Rover ?? !!
Forgot to add the price of batteries at the end of 8 years or so... to find the miles you have to do. Although the car is fantastic. I drove one for 2 days in city and I love it! Down sides: range, charging time. Strong points: acceleration, easy to use and the practicality of the UP! and at last the price when compared with BMW i3, Opel Ampera, Nissan Leaf, etc... But the battery life time and his price is a big down side for electric cars...
Alexandre Fernandes There's no reason the battery wouldn't last twenty years. I've looked at the diagnostics from a pair of Nissan Leafs that are in use as taxis. The worst of the two was on 212,000km and had lost only 10.9% of battery capacity. Nissan's official statistics for Leaf battery replacements show that less than three cars out of every 10,000 required replacement of the battery in the first four years (and that was usually down to adverse climate or abuse). Plus you have to also take into account that the batteries have a resale value for grid energy storage even when below 70% (the usual warrantied level). That resale value is usually at least half the cost of a new battery. Charging time is not a problem if your country has CCS rapid chargers. 0-80% in 20-30 minutes. And always remember that if you are charging at home you start every day with 100% battery. I'm on my second EV. First was a Mark 2 Leaf, second is a BMW i3. I'm never going back to an ICE.
Space corps directive 19284392? All Scandinavian ballet dancers must wear a pink tutu on Wednesdays. I hardly see how that's relevant in the circumstances! ;)
The rapid charging on this car uses a format which is not supported anywhere. There isn't a single place I know of in the UK where you can rapid charge this car and CYC for example have said they have no intention of supporting it.
***** Yes he charged... but it was not rapid charging. There is no rapid charging that is compatible with the e-up! yet in the UK. It uses CCS... the same as the BMW i3.
+Dim Van Sera toujours fiable, la voiture en elle meme. Mais les batteries peuvent lâcher au bout de 10 ans, mais ce n'est pas 100% sure vu que en general seulement une cellule de la batterie lache quand l'ordinateur de bord nous informe que les batteries sont mortes.
It's actually 3 seconds slower to 60 than the most powerful petrol Up! (9.6s). And while it doesn't do much to my masculinity, it makes overtaking a sluggish caravan on a B road much, much safer.
I think the leaf is ugly so I would prefer to have the UP. looking at the VW website it's about 26K for this less rebates, so it's nearly double the price after rebates, unfortunately it would take you years to see a saving.
The main wear components that would overtake a conventional ICE counterpart car, is the suspension I think - as a Volvo owner, it's acknowledged big heavy cars can eat suspension components relative to smaller vehicles. E-vehicles having their 4-persons weight worth of batteries, are going to do this more. But, that's predictable, and is about it. Brakes wear less. And the 'risk' or chance of mechanical breakdown is less. AND there is not the thing I got once, where the lady forgot to check the oil (it needs filling? I thought you were servicing it for us?!). No more big-ends getting changed in the street, and so on. Biggest thing is - you need to take up a hobby to use up that spare time You are going to have!
At 4:30 or so you are working out the BEP or Break-even Point for an electric UP! Compared to a petrol Or ICE UP!. Servicing is quite big, but let's just focus on FUEL alone. Easy to say, essentially, at domestic electricity rates, any given e-version of a car, is a fifth the cost per mile for motive energy ie battery kWh versus petrol or diesel. Say you fill up a little more than once a month with liquid fuel, so a small car maybe takes £600 a year and a big car £1200 a year. Call it a thousand GBP. At that rate, for fuel ONLY, it's about 6 years for the e-UP! To break even with the cost of the conventional UP!, the fuel cost difference to weigh sufficiently against the purchase price difference? But of course, the servicing package is about £200 to £300 per annum, for conventional cars, and brakes wear faster, and later on, clutches or whatever, just taking major maintenance components. That brings the BEP down to 5 years or less. Of course, could buy USED e-vehicles now!
I am german and I think most of us would pronounce the e like a german e, and the Up! like the english up. We pronounce Golf like the german word Golf but we do not have an "up" so it is obviously an english word. We tend to pronounce foreign names in their original language nowadays, but an english e would be to much.
Would love to own one of these and charge it off solar to help the environment but 19 grand AFTER a 5k government grant! Simply cannot afford it. Not much point in producing green alternatives that no one can afford.
+slipnpitch Sorry to be sound rich (which I am definitely not) but 19k isn't much to pay for a brand new car. A prius is 21k, a brand new BMW series 3 is around 25 to 30k a tesla is 70k, a fiesta is 10k (but you do 55 mpg and end up paying more insurance maintenance and road taxe!)
