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EV general discussion

So my wife has pretty much been given a charging bay at work just for herself now, awesome. Free leccy.


What am I looking at here? I'm guessing a povvo charger barely quicker than a granny lead?
Our Tesla gets 11kw from the very nice bank of free charge points her school kindly installed! They have 10 of them that are in constant use, I am really surprised they have not made them chargeable... we are a year down the line since they opened!
 
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Our Tesla gets 11kw from the very nice bank of free charge points her school kindly installed! They have 10 of them that are in constant use, I am really surprised they have not made them chargeable... we are a year down the line since they opened!
Hopefully in use by the staff not the general public :D

Amazed they are giving away the energy for free given the price these days but I guess that's public sector for you. Gotta get some benefits lol
 
Just in case it's of interest to anyone, the Model 3 has had a minor refresh:

16" Screen
Black headliner
Zen Grey interior option
AWD model now does 0-60 in 3.8
Nova wheels are now darker

This will probably apply to deliveries from Feb/March 2027.
 
Just in case it's of interest to anyone, the Model 3 has had a minor refresh:

16" Screen
Black headliner
Zen Grey interior option
AWD model now does 0-60 in 3.8
Nova wheels are now darker

This will probably apply to deliveries from Feb/March 2027.

Ours is scheduled for December and we're getting the larger screen and black headliner.
 
So yeah. Just drove to Oxford and back in it (about a 2 hour drive in traffic) and I'm very impressed with just how smooth and civilised the Tesla feels. TACC is really quite good and handles stop/start traffic well. Autosteer only tried to kill me once, so that's good. I can't see me using autosteer much. The fact that it disables itself as soon as you change lanes makes it quite pointless. I guess they want you to buy the full self driving to have it do that properly but I'm not spending £100/month for that. Waste of money IMO.
The HiFi is excellent. Really well balanced with good detail. Sub bass is a bit boomy and uncontrolled but I was able to mostly fix that with EQ.
Nav is good but I don't like the voice and it can't be changed. Grok works surprisingly well for controlling things in the car and so I'm finding the lack of buttons a bit of a non issue.
Steering is numb and very quick. I was quite surprised by how quick the rack is, and coupled with the very small steering wheel it can feel a bit nervous.
Ride is just OK. Not great, not terrible. It feels.... unsophisticated. Like they went "Yeah, springs and dampers are here, they spring and they damp. Send it". It feels like it's under-sprung and over-damped.
Cabin noise at motorway speeds is also a bit higher than that which we had in our CX5. Not by much but it is noticeable.

All in all it's a good travelling appliance. I'm reluctant to call it a car as that implies something that brings driving pleasure. This does not. It gets me to my destination with as little fuss and drama as I could ask for, and because of that, it's good.
 
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So yeah. Just drove to Oxford and back in it (about a 2 hour drive in traffic) and I'm very impressed with just how smooth and civilised the Tesla feels. TACC is really quite good and handles stop/start traffic well. Autosteer only tried to kill me once, so that's good. I can't see me using autosteer much. The fact that it disables itself as soon as you change lanes makes it quite pointless. I guess they want you to buy the full self driving to have it do that properly but I'm not spending £100/month for that. Waste of money IMO.
The HiFi is excellent. Really well balanced with good detail. Sub bass is a bit boomy and uncontrolled but I was able to mostly fix that with EQ.
Nav is good but I don't like the voice and it can't be changed. Grok works surprisingly well for controlling things in the car and so I'm finding the lack of buttons a bit of a non issue.
Steering is numb and very quick. I was quite surprised by how quick the rack is, and coupled with the very small steering wheel it can feel a bit nervous.
Ride is just OK. Not great, not terrible. It feels.... unsophisticated. Like they went "Yeah, springs and dampers are here, they spring and they damp. Send it". It feels like it's under-sprung and over-damped.
Cabin noise at motorway speeds is also a bit higher than that which we had in our CX5. Not by much but it is noticeable.

All in all it's a good travelling appliance. I'm reluctant to call it a car as that implies something that brings driving pleasure. This does not. It gets me to my destination with as little fuss and drama as I could ask for, and because of that, it's good.
It'll bring you pleasure when you drive past a forecourt and see the fuel prices.
 
I would characterise mine a bit like that too, it's almost more a piece of technology than a car, and I don't see that as a bad thing.

In terms of your suspension comments, it was improved significantly on the newer Model 3's and Y's.
 
Ah, that's good news. I think the black headliner is definitely an improvement, and obviously the screen will be too.

We actually just popped by Tesla to have a look and I'm not a fan tbh, but then I like light airy interiors. Not a deal breaker though, the roof is mainly glass anyway.
 
We actually just popped by Tesla to have a look and I'm not a fan tbh, but then I like light airy interiors. Not a deal breaker though, the roof is mainly glass anyway.

I'm the same, but I doubt it will make much difference on that front, thankfully.

Glass roof seems like a downside as summers get hotter. Isn't it just a greenhouse? Rather have a solid roof surely?

It's heavily tinted so generally fine, especially in this country. Even during the summer I thought it was fine.
 
Glass roof seems like a downside as summers get hotter. Isn't it just a greenhouse? Rather have a solid roof surely?
I've got the pano roof on my ID3, it's so tinted it looks like a solid roof from the outside and I can't say I noticed it being any hotter inside than our Kona
 
Fun feature on the new ID Tiguan (I don't think this is the first time VW have done this but I didn't notice before) - you can set the driver info screen to be an imitation of the old 2000s era VW clusters

Thanks, looks like my MK4 Golf from the year 2000, one other thing, how you are finding the steering wheel? It looks the same as the ID.Polo

Too big, too small?
 
Ugh. First experience with public chargers did not go well. Parked at Sport Wales in Cardiff and pulled up at the ev charging posts. Scan first qr “this charger is in use”. Scan second. “Cannot connect to charger”. Scan 3rd. Same as second. 4th and final one appeared to be working and accepted payment but refused to charge the car, claiming I’d not plugged anything in.
Will go to a supercharger on the way home but figured, hey, if I can charge here then great. No dice.
 
Ugh. First experience with public chargers did not go well. Parked at Sport Wales in Cardiff and pulled up at the ev charging posts. Scan first qr “this charger is in use”. Scan second. “Cannot connect to charger”. Scan 3rd. Same as second. 4th and final one appeared to be working and accepted payment but refused to charge the car, claiming I’d not plugged anything in.
Will go to a supercharger on the way home but figured, hey, if I can charge here then great. No dice.

That's one of the biggest benefits of Tesla, the other public chargers - while broadly OK - are just annoying and can be a mixed bag at times. Just treat them as a last resort and stick to Superchargers.

Even if I get a different brand of EV, I'd sign up for the Tesla £10 a month thing and continue to use theirs (then you get the lower rate), not all of them are available to other brands though.
 
So, I have not been able to drive the 2023 ID4 for almost 3 weeks after receiving an email from my company stating there was a "serious" safety concern and they were investigating. Please do not, drive charge or move the vehicle.
What I find funny is that, 2 days earlier I had just collected it from VW as it went in for a recall on the rear door handles (known fault) and they never mentioned anything.
Contacted Zenith, who administer the scheme for work and they had no knowledge. There are also 3 other people with VAG electric cars in the same situation at work.
Email from work landed at 7pm on a Friday night, but did say, go and get a hire car through the expenses portal until you hear anything else from us.
None of the car rental places had anything electric available, so I ordered a Volvo XC40. When I got to the rental place, err we haven't got that vehicle in stock. You can have a Juke or a Vauxhall Grandland!!
Had a bit of discussion with them as there was no way I was letting the company pay the amount they were going to charge me for the Volvo, but stick me in a much cheaper car.
Ended up taking the Grandland, oh my days, what a loathesome piece of equipment. Gearbox was like a suet pudding (cvt) and regardless of what driving mode you had it in, tried to kill you when pulling out of junctions, etc. Was very inconsistent, nut on the motorway it was actually quite efficient.
Car was under a year old and whilst drivinmg oil light came on and wouldn't go off, contacted rental firm and got ah, just drop it into one of our branches and they will top it up.
2nd fault was related to electronic parking brake and after that I rang them and told them I wanted them to change, so they dropped me off a Pug 3008 GT mild hybrid.
Whilst they are probably on the same platform the Pug is a much nicer place to be, although the menus are far too fiddly. Gearbox, whilst again semi automatic has much better response so it must be down to the software or something. The cost of filling them up though made me wince, compared to charging my electric vehicle.

Anyway, the ID4 has been sat in the company car park for 2 week and should have been returned on the 1st October and replaced with a Kia EV3 GT line S. Dealership have been in contact and told me that they will not change the vehicle whilst under a safety notice, as the driver will need to switch vehicles to get back. When the ID4 was delivered it came on the back of a flatbed.

Colleague of mine managed to get a Merc GLB (electric) and he told me that he did 78 miles in it before it died on his drive with a HV powertrain issue and has to be recovered as the engineer couldn't repair it.

Delivery of the Kia is hopefully going ahead w/c 19/10.
I'll do a review when I eventually get the vehicle.
 
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