When are you going fully electric?

TheOracle said:
I'll be totally honest, the only reason I bought the etron was through my works car scheme. Mine is a 50 E-Tron Sport which gives you the nicer alloys, seats and glass buttons on the center console rather than plastic. No upfront cost, for £250 a month including insurance for two people, servicing, breakdown cover, tax etc etc. I was also able to get a free home charger, so the only thing I have to pay for is the electricity costs. I'm now on octopus go so get the 5p rate between 00:00-04:00.
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I'll tag this on your e-tron discourse - but, given the charging discussion, I haden't appreciated e-tron charging is much more flexible,
so, even if it needs charging more frequently - it has a linear charging rate irrespective of current battery level ... ergh - like filling a car
(maybe it is confounding the science - but if it works it works)
Audi E-tron 55 3,000 mile review. What’s it like charging with Ionity Instavolt Shell and BP v Tesla
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
I don’t agree EV charging is in the early stages of development. There is a large range of good quality and reliable hardware available to providers. Most of the issues come from how they are implemented.

E.g. lack of customer support outside of business hours and that support taking too long to answer the phone.

Having to use a plethora of apps to start chargers.

Not fixing chargers which do fail quickly.

Poor uptime on some chargers.

Not having any redundancy for likely issues.

Single charger locations.

Pre authorising excessive amounts of money to start a charger.

This without doubt comes across as negative but there is no good reason to gloss over these issues like they don’t exist. They’ll never get fixed if nobody is talking about the elephant in the room and at the end of the day I want them to be fixed and I want to have a good experience every time someone goes to use them.

For the most part it’s generally fine but ‘for the most part it’s generally fine’ isn’t good enough for mass market adoption.
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These are exactly the issues that were brought up in these videos.. Along with a few others like they reviewed the brand new Audi e-tron and the in car sat nav couldn't even take them to a charger reliably. Took him to somewhere there wasn't even a charger. He then had to get his phone out and use another app.. That's a brand new, pretty expensive car. It's max range was also only like 200 miles max the week he had it which is atrocious tbh in 2021. I'd feel I'd constantly have this range anxiety going on. Also some places not having a fast charger, and not every car is capable of using fast chargers. The amount you have to rely on all these different apps to even use all different chargers and pay just seems like it's a mess to me. They also mentioned plugging the car in, all seems fine and come back some time later and charger had failed. They also said the amount of EV vehicles on the road now seem to be quickly outnumbering how many chargers there are for people to use when needed.

He went to 3 different places before he found just a single empty charger in the whole place he could use straight away without anyone already plugged in or waiting. At this point he was pretty stressed driving around on such little range. All in he said the journey took him probably almost 2 hours longer than it would have without the EV. This wasn't a single incident either the week he had it.

I can jump in my car and barely have to think about anything at the moment. When I need to it takes me 5 mins to put some petrol in and I'm off again. Don't really need all this extra anxiety trying to get where I need to go.. Sorry but the pros don't outweigh the cons for me right now. It seems very far from a seamless transition.
 
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Coowhan said:
Sorry but the pros don't outweigh the cons for me right now. It seems very far from a seamless transition.
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This is where the incumbent ICE manufacturers have totally failed, in almost every respect, what is the point in having a £70k Audi e-tron if you can't charge it easily? Tesla are the only company who offer the whole package, and have actually though about the seamless transition you mention, how long will it take for the others to catch up, no one knows but at least companies like Grid Serve are trying.

Over 90% of my miles are done from my home charger, so if I do end up having a problem it will be an exception rather than a rule, and the car currently is way more convenient than any ICE car I have ever had due to that 90%.

I guess if you (personally) can't have a home charger, or do more than one really long journey every couple of weeks then it makes it seem worse. However if you are like Joe Average, doing a few longer journeys per year, the time potentially lost, is saved elsewhere, so it is break even for the most part.
 
Journey said:
This is where the incumbent ICE manufacturers have totally failed, in almost every respect, what is the point in having a £70k Audi e-tron if you can't charge it easily? Tesla are the only company who offer the whole package, and have actually though about the seamless transition you mention, how long will it take for the others to catch up, no one knows but at least companies like Grid Serve are trying.

Over 90% of my miles are done from my home charger, so if I do end up having a problem it will be an exception rather than a rule, and the car currently is way more convenient than any ICE car I have ever had due to that 90%.
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It’s an interesting point, however all I can see is the fact those two paragraphs above contradict each other.

Personally speaking from experience the Tesla superchargers are well catered on primary routes but not as well distributed and ideal for those long jaunts, otherwise you might find you are using more local energy stations anyway. Model 3 gives you the flexibility with CCS but the S can be more limited! For example I tried Rugby only to realise CCS Superchargers only and the only charging was Chademo with an adapter @46kW! Explains why the car wasn’t showing a supercharger there Atleast

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ODBDgXT
 
I hadn’t realised that not all the super chargers have the type 2, that’s an odd choice on Tesla’s part. It used to be the other way round that not all of them had the CCS as they were rolling it out.

Can all Model S could CCS now? I guess you still need to buy the adaptor.
 
We've collected my wifes Mokka-E this morning and I'm very impressed. Its well spec'd and looks and drives very well with active cruise etc included.

Will stick it on the charger later to confirm all that is working as expected but so far have no complaints or worries about it. She'll do great with it doing her 30 miles a day commute to Towcester and back.
 
I've got a sneaky idea that national grid may be including electric vans in their next round of van purchasing.

Only issue is they won't be installing chargers on site, only at employees homes.which will make being on call interesting, get home with battery near zero only in the house for 3 hours and get called out either have to wait 2 hours at a charger or run out at site and have to run a extension lead and use a slow charger...

Should be fun, not sure how staff are going to be able to claim back the cost but knowing grid it's probably a way of passing a cost onto the staff
 
J1nxy said:
We've collected my wifes Mokka-E this morning and I'm very impressed. Its well spec'd and looks and drives very well with active cruise etc included.

Will stick it on the charger later to confirm all that is working as expected but so far have no complaints or worries about it. She'll do great with it doing her 30 miles a day commute to Towcester and back.
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Enjoy, they seem great.

Also expect to be hugely frustrated by the terrible app at times. I tend to manage all my charging through the pod point app as its more functional.
 
Abraxaz1 said:
I've got a sneaky idea that national grid may be including electric vans in their next round of van purchasing.

Only issue is they won't be installing chargers on site, only at employees homes.which will make being on call interesting, get home with battery near zero only in the house for 3 hours and get called out either have to wait 2 hours at a charger or run out at site and have to run a extension lead and use a slow charger...

Should be fun, not sure how staff are going to be able to claim back the cost but knowing grid it's probably a way of passing a cost onto the staff
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Funny you say this, I've got a suspicion about my workplace thinking about the same thing. They've already got a few small Renault electric vans that get about 100 miles out of a full charge with no fast charging:cry: 2 apprentices that have them at the moment as they seem to be the guinea pigs were out of action for pretty much the whole day due to charging issues.

As you mention there is always 2 of each trade on call covering each side of the city. I can see this working brilliantly for the rest of the workforce when on call after a full days shift:cry: Sorry I can't go to that emergency, my vans on charge:D
 
Coowhan said:
These are exactly the issues that were brought up in these videos.. Along with a few others like they reviewed the brand new Audi e-tron and the in car sat nav couldn't even take them to a charger reliably. Took him to somewhere there wasn't even a charger. He then had to get his phone out and use another app.. That's a brand new, pretty expensive car. It's max range was also only like 200 miles max the week he had it which is atrocious tbh in 2021. I'd feel I'd constantly have this range anxiety going on. Also some places not having a fast charger, and not every car is capable of using fast chargers. The amount you have to rely on all these different apps to even use all different chargers and pay just seems like it's a mess to me. They also mentioned plugging the car in, all seems fine and come back some time later and charger had failed. They also said the amount of EV vehicles on the road now seem to be quickly outnumbering how many chargers there are for people to use when needed.

He went to 3 different places before he found just a single empty charger in the whole place he could use straight away without anyone already plugged in or waiting. At this point he was pretty stressed driving around on such little range. All in he said the journey took him probably almost 2 hours longer than it would have without the EV. This wasn't a single incident either the week he had it.

I can jump in my car and barely have to think about anything at the moment. When I need to it takes me 5 mins to put some petrol in and I'm off again. Don't really need all this extra anxiety trying to get where I need to go.. Sorry but the pros don't outweigh the cons for me right now. It seems very far from a seamless transition.
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Yeah, it sounds like you can't charge at home so you're right, the public charge network would be of concern to me if that was the case. Your specific issue about the e-tron is pretty moot though.
 
Coowhan said:
Funny you say this, I've got a suspicion about my workplace thinking about the same thing. They've already got a few small Renault electric vans that get about 100 miles out of a full charge with no fast charging:cry: 2 apprentices that have them at the moment as they seem to be the guinea pigs were out of action for pretty much the whole day due to charging issues.

As you mention there is always 2 of each trade on call covering each side of the city. I can see this working brilliantly for the rest of the workforce when on call after a full days shift:cry: Sorry I can't go to that emergency, my vans on charge:D
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I was wondering if they were gonna give us a bike and a alternator, so either you cycle the rest of the way or you charge the car up of the alternator.

Is there even a 4x4 electric vehicle on the market? Don't fancy offroading in a leaf...
 
Journey said:
This is where the incumbent ICE manufacturers have totally failed, in almost every respect, what is the point in having a £70k Audi e-tron if you can't charge it easily? Tesla are the only company who offer the whole package, and have actually though about the seamless transition you mention, how long will it take for the others to catch up, no one knows but at least companies like Grid Serve are trying.
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Are you suggesting each manufacturer should have a network of (possibly proprietary) charging stations?

A lot of people see it the other way around - the way Tesla have done it is a good way to get the whole thing off the ground, but is not the long term way of how charging should work. Charging should be universal, in the same way as filling an ICE.
 
Joe T said:
Are you suggesting each manufacturer should have a network of (possibly proprietary) charging stations?

A lot of people see it the other way around - the way Tesla have done it is a good way to get the whole thing off the ground, but is not the long term way of how charging should work. Charging should be universal, in the same way as filling an ICE.
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No, I am suggesting that Tesla had the foresight to realise people wanted a seamless transition and that meant easy access to a high quality charging network that out paces (or at least keeps pace) with the increase in their sales. All the others just thought, sod it we'll let someone else do the donkey work while we sell cars, now it has turned into a bit of a race to get the network on track. Obviously given the governments changed target dates this would have affected the sitting on of hands.
 
Journey said:
No, I am suggesting that Tesla had the foresight to realise people wanted a seamless transition and that meant easy access to a high quality charging network that out paces (or at least keeps pace) with the increase in their sales. All the others just thought, sod it we'll let someone else do the donkey work while we sell cars, now it has turned into a bit of a race to get the network on track. Obviously given the governments changed target dates this would have affected the sitting on of hands.
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But you have no constructive suggestions of how that would have worked in practice?
 
Amusingly after this post and did you on availability I went to a Bp pulse yesterday on way out of Leicester, a Kona and 308 were parked up, charging and waiting. :o

Journey said:
No, I am suggesting that Tesla had the foresight to realise people wanted a seamless transition and that meant easy access to a high quality charging network that out paces (or at least keeps pace) with the increase in their sales. All the others just thought, sod it we'll let someone else do the donkey work while we sell cars, now it has turned into a bit of a race to get the network on track. Obviously given the governments changed target dates this would have affected the sitting on of hands.
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well if the cars are going out the door regardless it seems it would be foolish investment. Played a blinder if you ask me.
 
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One of the things that is possible within the CCS standard is automatic billing but very few people have actually implemented it at the moment (a few have).

As part of the handshake process on CCS the car hands over a unique identifier, the charger recognises this and automatically checks your account for a valid payment method and starts charging.

You’d have to have a sign up process provided payment details but it removes the app from the process of getting the charger started. This could be implemented in addition to normal contactless payments.

It would just massively simplify the experience once you are out on the road as you would pull up, plug in and the thing starts charging automatically.
 
Joe T said:
But you have no constructive suggestions of how that would have worked in practice?
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What? I am not employed by a car company to solve an issue they didn't want. How did Tesla do it, uh they spent money to build a charging network, there was nothing stopping BMW doing the same, then allowing it to be used at a cost by other manufacturers, or for that matter Renault.
Heck Nissan were the only ones that bothered by giving Ecotricity a crap ton of money to build out the network, and look how that turned out once the free cash had gone. Ionity shows you what happens when you make an open to all network operated by greedy manufacturers though, they price it more than a tank of fuel which utterly defeats the point in making it an open for all network as once again it puts people off switching.
 
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