EV general discussion

I've been driving a full electric for two years.. and it's taken some getting used to!
My best advice is to make sure you know (a) how much charge your vehicle can actually take. It's no use getting excited about finding a 22kW AC charger, if your vehicle will only ever charge at 7kW, and (b) you need understand the 'real' range for the vehicle. ie when you have the heater on in the winter or AC in the summer.. the range expectations are fast become the EV equivalent to combustion engine vehicle MPG..
 
My parents are hopefully moving closer to me. As they will be 10 minutes down the road and will have a drive.

I was thinking I could get an electric car in a few years time when my current car is getting old. Probably a model 3 or id3 and charge it on their drive.

I only do about 250 miles a week so would only need to charge it once a week. I'm at their house for tea more often than that.

Or maybe just get an Audi S3. :D
 
Eurofighter said:
My parents are hopefully moving closer to me. As they will be 10 minutes down the road and will have a drive.

I was thinking I could get an electric car in a few years time when my current car is getting old. Probably a model 3 or id3 and charge it on their drive.

I only do about 250 miles a week so would only need to charge it once a week. I'm at their house for tea more often than that.

Or maybe just get an Audi S3. :D
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That sounds bonkers. Just get an S3.
 
Anyone else enjoying Octopus Agile's tariffs to get paid to charge their cars today/this weekend? Got paid to take my M3 from 50-90% today, driving to see family tomorrow and will get paid to take it from 20-80% when I get back in the afternoon.
 
Eurofighter said:
My parents are hopefully moving closer to me. As they will be 10 minutes down the road and will have a drive.

I was thinking I could get an electric car in a few years time when my current car is getting old. Probably a model 3 or id3 and charge it on their drive.

I only do about 250 miles a week so would only need to charge it once a week. I'm at their house for tea more often than that.

Or maybe just get an Audi S3. :D
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just why?

it's almost as ridiculous as the guy who wanted to run a 300m extension cable from his flat over shared lawns to a indoor bike in his garage which was 300m away
 
Matthew.M said:
It’s all about the charging network. Honestly. I would pay serious money just to use the Tesla supercharger network in my non Tesla car. You could drive to southern Italy using nothing but their chargers and the in car navigation would sort the entire journey. The integration is seamless and brilliant. They’re fast, ignoring the headline figures of 250kw which is only in limited circumstances, you can reliably get over 100kw over most of the charge curve. No membership cards or apps on your phone, just plug in and walk away. They build them in serious numbers as well.

And performance is amazing, even standard models feel rapid.

Last time I looked at the Kona there was a 12 month wait for new orders, I don’t know if they’ve improved that recently.

There are better cars than the Tesla (practicality, quality, dealer support) but you’ll be hard pressed to find a better EV with supporting infrastructure.
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which is the pick of the non-tesla apps, for charger location/route optimisation to see what is viable for travelling around the UK (and then the EU).
eg. cambridge->yorkshire dales weekend return, with 60 miles of pottering whilst there, using operational chademo

Southern France, which I know better, it's handling performance on some windy passes (route napoleon, col de turinini, ...) that is nice to have at the destination
... the EV medal for handling, is probably still up for grabs, waiting for less dense batteries to arrive.
 
jpaul said:
which is the pick of the non-tesla apps, for charger location/route optimisation to see what is viable for travelling around the UK (and then the EU).
eg. cambridge->yorkshire dales weekend return, with 60 miles of pottering whilst there, using operational chademo

Southern France, which I know better, it's handling performance on some windy passes (route napoleon, col de turinini, ...) that is nice to have at the destination
... the EV medal for handling, is probably still up for grabs, waiting for less dense batteries to arrive.
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A better route planner works really well.

https://abetterrouteplanner.com/

But it doesn’t help with apps and membership cards for accessing the chargers once you’re there. The situation is better abroad as there are roaming agreements, I drove my i3 to Munich with a single plugsurfing fob and it operated every charger irrespective of network, but the UK is terrible. They all just need contactless. It’s a shambles. The Tesla model bypasses all that and is so much better.
 
Russinating said:
Anyone else enjoying Octopus Agile's tariffs to get paid to charge their cars today/this weekend? Got paid to take my M3 from 50-90% today, driving to see family tomorrow and will get paid to take it from 20-80% when I get back in the afternoon.
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It's not just agile customers getting this, I'm on the Go tariff and was paid 5p/kw from 5-7am today - needless to say, the Zoe got scheduled to kick in this morning :)
 
Slightly off topic but wouldn’t 5ppkwh be cheaper than gas for water heating due to the inefficiency of the boiler, even on an immersion but especially if you had a heat pump?
 
Haggisman said:
It's not just agile customers getting this, I'm on the Go tariff and was paid 5p/kw from 5-7am today - needless to say, the Zoe got scheduled to kick in this morning :)
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What is your total saving on fuel per year and is it really sufficient to make up for having to have a Zoe?
 
[TW]Fox said:
What is your total saving on fuel per year and is it really sufficient to make up for having to have a Zoe?
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Under normal* circumstances I'm saving ~£180/month in fuel, and £30/month in VED over the car it replaced (2006 1.8l petrol Civic).

Servicing is obviously more expensive than the DIY on the Civic, but at £100/year is pretty insignificant. Maintenance is pretty much none existent, whereas the Civic was turning into a money pit. (the reason I replaced it was it needed a gearbox replacement/rebuild, needed a suspension refresh etc).

With everything taken into account**, the Zoe is costing me at most ~£150/month (or ~£9k over the 5 years HP).

Edit: make that £10k as I got £1k px for the Civic

Anyway, what's wrong with a Zoe? It may not be the best EV out there, but it's certainly nicer to drive than any ICE I've ever driven (or that would be in my budget), plus not having to go the petrol station every week is great :p


* obviously given the current lockdown and working from home, my mileage has dropped significantly!

** e.g. Fuel, tax, servicing, maintenance, the cost to keep repairing Civic to keep it on the road, or replace with another 10 year old banger, extended warranty on the Zoe etc.
 
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Think of a Renault Clio but an EV, it’s a cheap car but for the money it’s pretty good. The main issue with the older ones are that they don’t have CCS rapid charging and have a 40kw ac plug which isn’t widely supported.

The new Zoe with CCS is a pretty decent small car all things considered and will suit your typical fiesta/clip/Corsa buyer well.
 
Electricity prices over the weekend were just silly on Agile. Between 0:00 Saturday and 23:59 Sunday I spent 72p. On Go, that would have been £4.02, and on Bulb Vari-Fair, £5.28.

I moved on to Agile on the 4th April. I've spent £48.94 since then, vs £86.17 if I stopped on Go, or £95.78 if I was on Bulb. I don't change my behavior any more, either. Got bored of that after the first couple of weeks (who wants to eat dinner at a different time just to save a few pennies in electricity?).

b0rn2sk8 said:
The main issue with the older ones are that they don’t have CCS rapid charging and have a 40kw ac plug which isn’t widely supported.
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There are still over 1,700 rapid AC connectors in the UK, vs around 2,400 CCS. The problem is that some providers aren't installing rapid AC at all now. Instavolt being the primary example. But on the flip side, the Zoe is one of the few cars that supports 22kW AC. There are a few large retail parks and shopping centers around here with those chargers. Perfect speed for such a location, and they fall under "Fast Charger" pricing, which means either very cheap or free.

The Zoe is too small for me now. But if I went back to one, I'm not sure I'd pay for the CCS add-on for how and where I use the car.
 
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Oh I agree the Zoe is a good car, and an older one would be absolutely fine as a secondary vehicle but as a primary car the lack of CCS on the older vehicles is only only going to make it more difficult to recommend going to forward. I expect those 40kw ac rapids will also start disappearing over time as older chargers are phased out in favour of 150-350kw ccs units. While that is speculation on my part, what is clear is the share of rapid ac chargers in the market will reduce as the big players stop deploying them, especially as no new cars actually support the standard.

22kw ac is also very nice for those times where you stop at shopping centres but again it’s not entirely useful for those times you are going over the 100 miles they can do. As someone pointed out above people people will not buy into a car that can only do 95% of what they need it to.

Same goes for the Leaf, huge missed opportunity to drop chademo in Europe when they refreshed it. That standard is going to slowly die over the next decade and will effect used values against things like the Corsa, 208, Zoe, id3 etc once the supply side is sorted out.
 
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