Tesla powered Audi
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOYY_AlRWQA

This is the (now) quite famous Rich rebuilds. he started re-building teslas in the cold on his own and started putting them up of Youtube. He has gained a load of traction now and has a lot of EV people around him. One guy he met has powered his A5 with a tesla set-up. I've always wanted to do it to an A8. I know a couple have been done. I cannot think of a better vehicle than a D2. Problem comes with all the ancillaries, huge amount of work.

That's the plan - it's in the UN's white papers. Rationing, tariff shaping, geofencing etc... I think I will stick with an offline off the grid IC car as long as possible rather than one of these new ones where google/apple/amazon/facebook can stop you even opening the door if your views don't align with their company values.

Hm, yes, Big brother of all flavors is present in deep integration between systems, car manufacturer and tech companies. That said, the same integration oversight as always been there in the form of petrol rationing, tax+politics. (remember the fragility of the infrastructure during the 2001 fuel blockades?Same issues, different spots. One of each would seem sensible. I've played my hand and the D4 A8 4.2TD I've had for 6 months, I'm planning on 10 years, by which times I suspect it will reach social pariah status or taxed to the point of being un drive able. Electric cars in their current form still do not work for large parts of the UK. (have the same chat with a mate of mine who lives on Lewis or the one in a 4th floor flat in Leeds). Their overall full life cycle energy and environmental cost is still not well documented. In addition the political/social issues of the battery main ingredients (lithium/cadmium and rare earths for the electronics). They come from places where the human and environmental cost of extraction and transport twice round the world to end up in the boot of a nissan leaf off the line in sunderland are very high indeed.Not to mention the electrical generation cost. I'm very much for the electric car. If you lift the lid/boot there is a battery, controller, cooling and a couple of motors. The component count is a fraction of an ICE. That means more reliability and cheaper cars. It also means MUCH more radical designs as the front of the car doesn't have to fit an engine in it. The first few to market are concentrating on making things that look like cars. Two things I see, 1) much more radical designs and 2) the return to the days of the coach builder where you buy your electric sled with all the systems/safety and structure and have it coach built in any style you want. One off unique using 3D printing, hydroforming and other low batch techniques. If the electric car had won 110 years ago when it was equal status with the ICE I wonder what an extra 110 years of development would have brought us? It has a long way to catch up in lost dev man hours. The final nail in the bringing forward the ban on the sale of ICE is the infrastructure mess. We still can't put broadband across the country despite it being a promise for years and that is only a single, small cable that people are willing to pay a fortune for. What about the local install charging station, home packs, infrastructure cable of replacing the local electricity substations etc. Who pays?? If you replace the entire local electricity infrastructure across the UK who pays for that? There are 35M registered vehicles in the UK, that's a lot of 3 pin plugs. oh my goodness, that was a bit ranty. sorry.

Just in response to funkmiester, he raises some interesting questions. Did you know that the ancestor of the Nissan Leaf was the Tama Senior EMS. It was first produced in 1949 and had a range of 200km, running on 40 2v batteries. That was just shy of 70 years ago. Imagine what could have been achieved by now if they had continued development of it.