EV general discussion

fullspizz said:
Well, the ID4 arrived last Monday morning. My work commute is 135 miles each way, done twice per week as I stay away.
First trip was Monday night in poor weather conditions and it used 48% of the battery. Almost all motorway driving (M1,M25,M40) from Derby to Slough sat at around 70mph on the motorway.
Charged up whilst down there at a 50kw charger and was charging at 43kw.
Came back on Friday teatime and the display shows me averaging 3.7m/kw.
Car is so easy to drive, loads of interior space and I'm still getting used to everything. Android auto is a breeze to use.
I haven't had an issue with the haptic steering wheel controls apart from the up and down buttons working opposite (up goes back and down goes forwards on track selection)
Biggest real issue is the lack of illumination on the temperature control / volume bar under the screen, how that got missed I don't know.
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My colleague lives in Slough and commutes to Derby if you want to swap jobs (y).
 
hillbilly2 said:
Should I be getting hung up on only buying a car with a LFP battery?
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No.

Edit:
NMC/NCA had higher density (less volume and weight per kWh) which typically means it comes in the form of a larger pack with more range and charges faster.

LFP has a longer life and lower degradation but NMC/NCA should long enough so it doesn’t really matter.

That’s about it really, all the long range cars use NMC or NCA because it’s the only way to get the range in the car.
 
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Not sure LFP deployment has really matured yet - does MG4 meet high DC charging rates yet ?
and , as discussed, the current recommendations of regular 100% charging could offset the additional lifespan LFP should have;
did Tesla just pocket the additional margin from shipping LFP too.
 
My mum recently got an electric car. It’s a Q4 Etron.


She’s liking it but having a bit of a mare with charging. I picked it up with her and tried the charging at home to make sure it was working, but a few days on it’s throwing a bit of a hissy, saying that there’s no mains voltage available.


She’s pretty tech savvy so I would be 99% confident she knows how to plug the car in. Especially since it seems to work sometimes but not others.



I think it’s getting to her, since it’s becoming a bit of a hassle to ensure it can be driven.
 
MrRockliffe said:
My mum recently got an electric car. It’s a Q4 Etron.


She’s liking it but having a bit of a mare with charging. I picked it up with her and tried the charging at home to make sure it was working, but a few days on it’s throwing a bit of a hissy, saying that there’s no mains voltage available.


She’s pretty tech savvy so I would be 99% confident she knows how to plug the car in. Especially since it seems to work sometimes but not others.



I think it’s getting to her, since it’s becoming a bit of a hassle to ensure it can be driven.
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I don't really know the Etron and this might well be specific to Etron, the specific car, the house electrics or the charging method. Does she have a EV charge point or just using a normal plug socket?

If the house electric aren't great then the pull of charging can reduce the voltage down outside of a cars range. For example in VERY rural France I was only able to pull 2-3amps over long periods.
 
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hillbilly2 said:
I'm probably over thinking it. We are changing the base model MG4 51kWh to a 64kWh this afternoon for a go overnight. So a LFP to a NCA.
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The LFP requires less babysitting if you want to try and minimise degradation for the next owner. As you won't want to brim the NCA as often, that means you will also generally have less range in the car. NCA should be better in the winter though.
 
FerretBoy said:
I don't really know the Etron and this might well be specific to Etron, the specific car, the house electrics or the charging method. Does she have a EV charge point or just using a normal plug socket?

If the house electric aren't great then the pull of charging can reduce the voltage down outside of a cars range. For example in VERY rural France I was only able to pull 2-3amps over long periods.
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It’s a 7kW home charger. There are two of them. Each independent circuit with own fuse. Fuses are supposedly on.
 
Jokester said:
Just came in here to ask this, was an article online this week about how people are seeing the EV insurance sky rocket to thousands. I've seen a couple of burnt out Teslas this week, one in a multistory car park, so I'm not surprised insurers might be getting worried about additional risk.
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My Model 3 (SR+) Went up from around £380 to ~£530 with our existing insurer (broadly in line with the low end of quotes on comparison sites) whilst my wife's new MG4 XPower was a whole £3 more than her Fiesta ST (Pro rated at around 9 months left on the policy).

Tried a few different EV's and they were all coming in (same details as the Model 3) around the £400-700 mark. Well all bar the IPace anyway, that was coming in at £2,100 with our current insurer and comparable amounts across multiple insurers on comparison sites... :confused:. Not tried again to see it was some sort of bug but just left me scratching my head.
 
hillbilly2 said:
Should I be getting hung up on only buying a car with a LFP battery?
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it depends on your motivations.

do you believe the articles in the sun / express or what ever about cobalt and children mining it for EVs? if so LFP batteries do not use Cobalt and so that could be a selling point

are you worried about car fires (also hugely peddled in the same media linked above) in which case then again, LFP batteries wont have the (albeit tiny) risk of a thermal runaway leading to fire.

Do you fear the (same media as above along with the likes of Jeremy Clarkeson) degredation of your battery and that after 5 years it will be junk and need to be thrown away? if so again LFP batteries may be worth thinking about as they are more robust (albeit its mostly FUD anyway).

TLDR personally it is not something i would worry much about, but aside from their lower power density, they otherwise do have some genuine advantages esp for 1st time EVers who believe some of the FUD in some of the anti EV media but still want to get an EV anyway.
 
MrRockliffe said:
It’s a 7kW home charger. There are two of them. Each independent circuit with own fuse. Fuses are supposedly on.
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whose charger ? (is it defective) - sounds like the charger could have arbitrated that voltage is inadequate, and signalled that to the car ,
had she used charger over a period on previous vehicle.
 
I’d have thought voltage too low and voltage not present would trigger two different fault codes.

If it’s not actually starting a charge then it’s unlikely to be voltage too low as that tends to happen after the charging has ramped up. They have 2 chargers, presumably they charge the other car with no problems?

If it’s been tried on both chargers and they charge other cars just fine then it sounds like the car is faulty and should be returned to the dealer for investigation.
 
@MrRockliffe (sorry i forgot to quote)
This may not help but just incase it is related...............................

my zappi had a firmware update recently. it was working fine so i had never updated the firmware, however i needed to get it updated ready for intelligent octopus support.

and immediately i was presented with a connection to grid CT lost error and it flatly refused to charge for more than a few minutes.

the old firmware was not fussy about incorrect CT setups OR on top of that sometimes during the firmware update it had managed to incorrectly add my zappi as having a Grid CT, which was then conflicting with my Harvi device which (correctly) was configured to the grid CT.

I went into the zappi menu / other settings / advanced / CT config and just changed the the CT which was showing as grid to "none". (default password for advanced settings is 0000)

since then it has charged ok.

obviously this is only relevant if you have a zappi, but it is a very common issue if you do.

PS the above is no thanks to me, it was info given to me on the zappi forums
 
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b0rn2sk8 said:
I’d have thought voltage too low and voltage not present would trigger two different fault codes.

If it’s not actually starting a charge then it’s unlikely to be voltage too low as that tends to happen after the charging has ramped up. They have 2 chargers, presumably they charge the other car with no problems?

If it’s been tried on both chargers and they charge other cars just fine then it sounds like the car is faulty and should be returned to the dealer for investigation.
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From what my mum is saying, it doesn’t seem to charge at night but does during the day. Suggests to me there’s a timer on the chargers or something.


The car doesn’t have a timer set yet either.



The home owner used to regularly charge both of (their) Tesla’s. My mum only has a single electric car


One charger seems to work if the other isn’t. No other appliances were active in the house at the time.
 
The other charger may be set in solar only mode or something like that. It should be a quick setting change.

Edit: is it a tesla charger? They can be configured to only charge Tesla’s.
 
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Okay so there are 3 chargers…

POD point - in the garage. Won’t be used as garage is a storage facility at the moment :P

Easee - this works, sometimes. Not at night.

Indra - this works, sometimes. Not at night.



Each have their own app :(
 
MrRockliffe said:
Okay so there are 3 chargers…

POD point - in the garage. Won’t be used as garage is a storage facility at the moment :p

Easee - this works, sometimes. Not at night.

Indra - this works, sometimes. Not at night.



Each have their own app :(
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Sounds like previous owners set them up so that each of their EV cars took it in turns during the day ( I assume too much power would be drawn if both used at once?) I know with the easee app you can set the charger to only charge at certain times. Some people on Easee forums advise to switch off the timer on the charger and use the car timer to control when it charges.

So I would start with the apps first and switch off all timers and then once you have it all working, set timers on car or app from there. #
 
Greebo said:
Sounds like previous owners set them up so that each of their EV cars took it in turns during the day ( I assume too much power would be drawn if both used at once?) I know with the easee app you can set the charger to only charge at certain times. Some people on Easee forums advise to switch off the timer on the charger and use the car timer to control when it charges.

So I would start with the apps first and switch off all timers and then once you have it all working, set timers on car or app from there. #
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Yeah that’s what we’re looking at. Problem is all the chargers have different connection methods, require accounts and have previously been connected so need resetting some how.


The Easee one, for example, needs serial and pin to connect. We don’t have that information, so we can’t connect/reset.

Indra Smart Pro says it’s already connected to an account and so won’t let her connect to it. The boost button should bypass any timers but it doesn’t appear to be.
 
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