EV general discussion

m4rmite · 27 Dec 2022 at 19:30

I watched a fully charged YouTube video today with their guy in China.
Tesla have reduced the price of the model 3, equivalent to 23k :eek:

.
If only those prices came this way then the western companies would muck their pants.
I know import taxes get added and shipping costs, but 20k worth?

DanTheMan · 27 Dec 2022 at 21:17

Anybody have any experience with alfa power chargers?

I stopped to charge today, selected CCS and connected to the car. It started charging without me having to tap my credit card or provide any information.

I thought it was strange but I presumed it would ask me for details before the charge ended, when I tried to disconnect. It didn't.
At no point did it ask me for any payment details and I've never used alfa power before from what I can recall. I certainly don't have an app or account with them.

I'm not sure if it was faulty or I've completely missed something obvious. There's nothing pending on any of my accounts. Shame I only topped up 5kw!

pcfarrar · 27 Dec 2022 at 21:54

TheOracle said:
Yeah the MG4 looks good, but have you seen the BYD Atto 4? I think it looks amazing.

It looks like a decent car but the MG4 has a lot of software bugs and glitches currently. it probably needs 6+months of updates. Unfortunately I don’t think it has OTA updating So updating would involve trips to the dealer. it had bug with people getting locked inside and needing the spare key to get out.

Locked in my MG4 & unable to escape - Serious Safety Issue

I had a test drive yesterday in MG4 SE. The salesman drove initially and when we stopped to change driver, he said the car was showing a key error. At this point all the doors were locked and the alarm sounder started. We couldn’t open the doors and he was unable to get the car to recognise the...

www.mgevs.com

b0rn2sk8 · 28 Dec 2022 at 01:55

m4rmite said:
I watched a fully charged YouTube video today with their guy in China.
Tesla have reduced the price of the model 3, equivalent to 23k.
If only those prices came this way then the western companies would muck their pants.
I know import taxes get added and shipping costs, but 20k worth?

Basically, yes. It’s very hard to compare prices from outside Europe to inside Europe for lots of reasons.

Yes it’s RRP is cheaper over there but I don’t think it’s significantly cheaper. You have to also consider China has massive incentives for EVs, we have none. We also have a 10% import tariff and 20% VAT included in the sticker price, not sure how that works in China (for example the USA does not include taxes in any quoted prices, they vary by county). That’s the price of freedom unfortunately.

DanTheMan said:
Anybody have any experience with alfa power chargers?

I stopped to charge today, selected CCS and connected to the car. It started charging without me having to tap my credit card or provide any information.

I thought it was strange but I presumed it would ask me for details before the charge ended, when I tried to disconnect. It didn't.
At no point did it ask me for any payment details and I've never used alfa power before from what I can recall. I certainly don't have an app or account with them.

I'm not sure if it was faulty or I've completely missed something obvious. There's nothing pending on any of my accounts. Shame I only topped up 5kw!

I could be on free vent because it lost connection to the mothership. It may just be a rare free charger, well someone is paying somewhere.

steve45 · 28 Dec 2022 at 13:23

So... yesterday highlighted why I'm not yet prepared to go electric. Travelling back down from Scotland to Dorset after Christmas with family. Horrendous journey may I add... Stopped off at a services for a quick pee, only to be confronted by a full car park about quarter of the vehicles in the car park were teslas/other EV's but majority of them were tesla. They were all waiting for chargers to free up, teslas were stacked on the roadways around the car park waiting to just get a parking space to wait... I literally just had to abandon my car in a reasonable safe place run in and go to the toilet.
Until the charging network seriously improves, or 600+mile range becomes a genuine option. Its just not a viable option for me.

Honestly I genuinely couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of what I was seeing. With the amount of cars stacked up waiting, some people could conceivably have been waiting till the early hours to just get access to one of the chargers.
Yeah no thanks... Granted that is not the norm, the sheer volume of traffic on the road and at services yesterday was horrendous.

gailjon · 28 Dec 2022 at 13:28

steve45 said:
Honestly I genuinely couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of what I was seeing. With the amount of cars stacked up waiting, some people could conceivably have been waiting till the early hours to just get access to one of the chargers.
Yeah no thanks... Granted that is not the norm, the sheer volume of traffic on the road and at services yesterday was horrendous.

Why wouldn't you just go to another set of chargers at another location? There are many different charging locations., at Starbucks/McDonalds/petrol stations across the road network that can be seen on various apps. A 600 miles ev range is not needed when there are literally thousands of chargers across the country. We have changed at large service stations but the majority of the time we would try to stop at a smaller site such as a standalone coffee shop like Starbucks and have never had an issue. There will, of course, be queues at major service areas but we just avoid them if we need to charge and look for stops that have free chargers.

Jonnycoupe · 28 Dec 2022 at 13:34

Christmas. Peak long distance travel. Cold so the range and charger speed suffers. It’s very much the fringe case for the EV experience.

It’s the bad side of that tempting BIK coin people don’t seem to factor in

throwaway4372 · 28 Dec 2022 at 13:38

just go on the train :cry:

steve45 · 28 Dec 2022 at 13:42

gailjon said:
Why wouldn't you just go to another set of chargers at another location? There are many different charging locations., at Starbucks/McDonalds/petrol stations across the road network that can be seen on various apps. A 600 miles ev range is not needed when there are literally thousands of chargers across the country. We have changed at large service stations but the majority of the time we would try to stop at a smaller site such as a standalone coffee shop like Starbucks and have never had an issue. There will, of course, be queues at major service areas but we just avoid them if we need to charge and look for stops that have free chargers.

I can only guess they didn't have the range to push on to another services or they were just stubborn. Mind that wasn't an isolated case, every services we stopped at on the way were just as packed.

600mile range is very much needed. Until an EV has comparable range to my diesel I'm just not interested. I don't want to have to factor in a lengthy stop in my journey regardless of where I'm travelling in the UK. I don't mind a lengthy charge at the end of the journey. I was very much considering a change to EV recently but I think I'll wait. Until range is comparable or technology allows charge to be much quicker, I'd settle for 10-15min max, yeah I know, not asking for much... :cry:

But yeah what I saw yesterday completely put me off EV for the foreseeable future.

Journey · 28 Dec 2022 at 13:55

steve45 said:
Stopped off at a services for a quick pee, only to be confronted by a full car park about quarter of the vehicles in the car park were teslas/other EV's but majority of them were tesla. They were all waiting for chargers to free up, teslas were stacked on the roadways around the car park waiting to just get a parking space to wait... I literally just had to abandon my car in a reasonable safe place run in and go to the toilet.

Which services was this where cars were 'stacked' waiting?

sandys · 28 Dec 2022 at 13:55

Might have just been a packed station after an accident or congestion and had people parking everywhere for a rest, services stations did get like that long before EV in peak times and you've just noticed the increased number of EVs on the road, lest face it if I am driving in to a service station to have a break in an EV for an hour or so to let thing subside, I'm putting it in an EV charge spot to top just in case other issues down the road, whether I need to or not, often these spots are not the first things you hit, so you've bypassed loads of car places to only to discover EV slots are full and often you can't go back to normal spots as a lot of service stations aren't designed that way so just chuck the car somewhere 'safe'

I've been similarly stuck towing my van when its spots are full, and end up having to go in HGV spots much to the annoyance of HGV drivers.

b0rn2sk8 · 28 Dec 2022 at 14:02

Reading the Facebook groups, it appears every Tesla owner in the U.K. turned up at Tebay and Gretna green services yesterday. There was a 2.5 hour wait at Tebay and 2 hours at Gretna Green.

I saw a video with 30 cars waiting at Tebay…

steve45 · 28 Dec 2022 at 14:30

Journey said:
Which services was this where cars were 'stacked' waiting?

b0rn2sk8 said:
Reading the Facebook groups, it appears every Tesla owner in the U.K. turned up at Tebay and Gretna green services yesterday. There was a 2.5 hour wait at Tebay and 2 hours at Gretna Green.

I saw a video with 30 cars waiting at Tebay…

Yeah Tebay was where I stopped, easily a lot more than 30 EV's when I was there but yeah vast majority were Teslas.

Not my video but you get the gist

That was just the ones stacked on the road there were much more parked up in bays waiting for charger to free up.

Jonnycoupe · 28 Dec 2022 at 14:38

It’s the proverbial black hole for those
Christmas jaunts across the UK.

Plus Tesla will navigate to those and only those.

sandys · 28 Dec 2022 at 14:38

That's funny, Tesla are the range champs too, surely they couldn't all need it.

Mekrel · 28 Dec 2022 at 14:43

This is a good example of EV range and charging coverage being 'good enough' until it isn't. I assume peak travelling time and colder weather contributed to this and drivers didn't simply drive to the next charger due to range anxiety in regards to not having the range, or assuming it would be no better at the next station.

b0rn2sk8 · 28 Dec 2022 at 15:50

as @Journey said, the Tesla car will just take you to the Tesla chargers unless you tell it otherwise. There are not a lot of options around that area of the M6, there are some gridserve 350kw chargers at Kendal.

That said from what I read, the Ionity chargers at Gretna were just as problematic but also for non-tesla.

There are a lot of new owners who probably haven’t don’t many long journeys with theirs car and probably hadn’t thought about it in any great deal as it isn’t normally a problem.

That said, I avoid south miss like the plague, I’ve seen queues there back in 2020 before models 3s arrived in any significant volume.

FerretBoy · 29 Dec 2022 at 00:56

To be fair I'd avoid the 300+ mile journeys at peak holiday times. I'd try to avoid in an ICE car too.

chanjy · 29 Dec 2022 at 12:40

That section of m6 up to Scotland isn’t great for charging as there’s not many off motorway options. Further south there’s more like MFG Crow Orchard

If I had to do that journey I’d just cruise at 60 and get towards Manchester before charging

SDK^ · 29 Dec 2022 at 13:14

Jonnycoupe said:
It’s the proverbial black hole for those
Christmas jaunts across the UK.

Plus Tesla will navigate to those and only those.

Get a Tesla they said - makes public charging easy and convenient :cry:

Like you said - the majority of owners just go with the Tesla Nav charging recommendation stop, rather than loading up Zap Map and finding a charger themselves, which could have better availability.