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EV general discussion

Rilot said:
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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If this is the best you can say about it, then you may eventually grow very bored with it. This isn’t a problem if you have a fun “weekend” car, but I like to look forward to driving my car rather than using my “appliance”.

For example my Born has a lot of decent driver focused feel, yet does our regular driving with ease, so it can be practical and fun. As does my wife’s iX2 xDrive30. The last car that I owned and classed as a give up on life “appliance” (Qashqai), left me totally numb after only a few weeks of ownership. It actually became a chore to just think about driving it.

I hope this isn’t how you end up with the Model Y. Personally when I tried one I felt the same as you, not good as a car, bit good as an EV. But the EV bit is hardly exciting. At least in my opinion of course.
 
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I actually look forward to driving my EV. While it's only a Gen 2 Leaf Tekna it is nippy and fun to throw around the back roads and with the all season tyres I stuck on it the car is brilliant in any weather conditions, even deepish snow.
 
I think the Model 3 is good to drive too, has a lot of go-kart like qualities. In part due to the very quick steering.

Having driven the IONIQ 6N though, that really shows what an EV can do. Fantastic to drive and it does feel like it has an engine. It's weird.
 
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Well, I've now had my EV4 for about a week and a half, and I'm really enjoying it :)

It's my first EV, and my first automatic, so it was quite a big change. I like the smooth style of driving it offers, and it feels quite refined and comfortable, though the seats are perhaps a little less supportive than the sporty ones I had in my previous car (Focus ST). The ride, however, is much better. It feels nippier than it is (~8s 0-60), though I wouldn't want it to be much slower than it is, I think. The handling is okay, but it doesn't feel terribly composed through corners at the moment, possibly due to the weight of the car.

The main annoyance so far is how long it takes to charge, though this is mainly down to the fact that I'm using a normal mains socket with a 10A adapter cable. I'm getting a Hypervolt charger installed at the end of the month, so I'm hoping that this irritation goes away. I have been using a 50kW charger at a local supermarket, but even that feels quite slow. Still, the range seems pretty good - I did a run down to Watford and back last Wednesday, and only used about 40% of the battery over 170 miles. The journey there was pretty poor (traffic and weather conditions), but the car was comfortable and very easy to drive.

The only other oddity I've found is that the lane-keeping feature seems to get very confused by the diagonal hard shoulder markings on the M1 (south of Luton, down to the M25 junction roughly). It kept trying to drive into the next lane. Hopefully this can be improved. On Friday night, driving back up the A1M at Peterborough, I was playing with the adaptive cruise control on a relatively empty road, and it was following the gentle bends of the road perfectly, such that I barely had to do anything - quite impressive! :cool:

Overall, a big improvement for me, with a bit of a learning curve, but a nice car which I'm enjoying driving.
 
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I did my first long journey yesterday - 320 miles. Stopped to charge twice, once was not planned - stopped at services but thought why not. As it wasn’t planned it ‘only’ charged at 50kw.

On the way home we did a proper planned stop, where I was amazed at the speed. Pulled in at about 22%. By the time it took both of us to pop to the loo, and her to get a coffee, it was at 53% when we got back. Started at 200kw, then dipped a bit as the battery increased.
The % was increasing as quickly as the £!! Still only cost £8 (after I used the last of my new car credits)

Averaged bang on 250Wh/mile too, which doesn’t seem bad for 90% motorway driving.

Did have an odd moment with the lane assist auto steer thing. When it saw an arrow in the lane pointing left to the other lane, it tried to dive off to the left. My hands were near the wheel as I’m still not confident in it, and this hasn’t done much to help that.
 
Having now covered 500 miles in the Tesla this weekend, I can say that it has my approval. It’s an excellent motorway car. I’ve used Superchargers twice and the experience was completely seamless. My experience with a random public charger was anything but.
I see now why people recommend Teslas so much. It’s not the car, it’s the charging.
 
Rilot said:
Having now covered 500 miles in the Tesla this weekend, I can say that it has my approval. It’s an excellent motorway car. I’ve used Superchargers twice and the experience was completely seamless. My experience with a random public charger was anything but.
I see now why people recommend Teslas so much. It’s not the car, it’s the charging.
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Ditto this.

The supercharging was seamless. My colleague almost put me off EVs as on the way to Heathrow we had to ditch the first charging stop as he couldn’t get it to start. (BMW i4)

One little thing though, it feels like your participating in a little Tesla club, when all the Teslas are parked up next to each other. Not an issue, but my partner remarked on it.

It’s also super quiet and comfortable. And the sound system now has my approval too.
 
ChrisD. said:
Musk is a ****. Hopefully that helps steer the conversation away from praising Tesla. Thanks.
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Nope.

I had 500 miles in the Y this weekend, I did two chargers out on the road and all seamless as you’d expect.

At the Kettering supercharger there is a Model 3 test drive car you can book and take out.

Sounds great right? Well whichever plonker used it last decided it would be a good idea to not just park it in one supercharger bay which is ‘not exactly considerate’ but instead they decided to spectacularly fail and park it across TWO charging bays when they were finished with it.

Fortunately for me, there were 7 empty charger for me to use so it wasn’t an issue but idiots are going to idiot…
 
I've noticed a few times while on my travels that people often seem to cross the cables across from the other bay. Not because of where the charge port is, simply cable for the left stall being used on the right bay and vice versa.

Also noticed at Leeming Bar McDonalds people regularly park straddling the back to back bays, taking up two bays in the process.

Are these regular occurrences? I guess the first doesn't really matter but the latter would be annoying if you couldn't plug in.
 
Talking about crossed cables. Our hospital in Elgin has a free 22kw charger for people with appointments that can charge two cars at the same time. The number of times I have gone there and seen the left hand cable plugged into a car on the right hand side and vice versa is ridiculous. Both cables are exactly the same so why do this? I know the second person has no choice if the first person has done it but why would the first person do it in the first place?
 
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Tesla puts food on the table for 140k people. It's contributions to the auto industry probably rival or even surpass what Ford achieved with the Model T and the production line. It changed the charging infrastructure worldwide.

I'm no fanboy by any stretch of the imagination but there's no denying their achievements.

By all means avoid it if you don't like Musk, but to preach to others for buying a quality product involves ignoring all of the above and to be quite frank, makes you look a bit of an idiot.
 
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