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My ID7 GTX has drums on the back!
As I say, I am lucky enough to no longer know what a queue looks like. Or a traffic light. I guess I spent a couple of seconds parking.....
There's about three junctions between my house and the motorway and the rubbing sound has gone by the time I get there - it doesn't take much. But if you are worried, just brake firmly once in a while. Point is that the brake pedal isn't the friction brakes, it's the slow down pedal.
There are dozens of ECUs in the car, some will be under the bonnet along with a truckload of electronic sensors and wires and whatnot.
Well maybe but the fact remains that heat and vibration from an ICE do not kill these things and that there's magnitudes more vibration from a vehicle merely driving along a road than that coming from an engine.
I feel like I might have entered a 'Lost' (the TV series) twilight zone. In an idle moment I thought I'd plug the car into a random waterproof 3 pin socket box next to a pond on our land ('our land' sounds very grand - other people might dare to call it the place a garden should be if you put a bit more effort in). Just to see if the jazzy 3pin plug cable thing that came with the car worked. It's charging at a speedy 1.3kw....
But....the power is not coming from our house according to the live meter. Or the holiday let we run. There are no other buildings within half a mile. The plug is there to plug in a pump in the pond. If you turn it on and leave it an hour all the water in it disappears....to I have no clue where.
There maybe darker forces at work....
Hello all, and apologies if this question has been asked before.
I am starting to look for a new car and I suspect it'll be an EV. What I want is an estate car, like I have now. I like estates as they're lower to the ground than an SUV (helps our elderly dog get in and out) and they have loads of boot space. I'll be buying 2nd hand, likely 3 ish years old.
Initial (admittedly not hugely detailed) research suggests that EV's tend to be SUV in shape. What am I missing?
Current car is a Kia Proceed which replaced an estate version of the Kia Ceed that was stolen.
Have a look at the MG5. Considered it for a while. I struggled to find a comfortable driving position but it seems to work for a lot of people. EVs have a slab of batteries under the cabin which can impact foot well space, especially if the same platform is shared with petrol/diesel cars. This extra height does make an SUV shape an easier design to make work.
The MG MG5 has been rated very well for the money. They gave it a facelift 2 or 3 years ago and the new one is substantially nicer inside and a little better on the outside (still not a looker). Newer ones are holding their value better than the old ones so not quite such a bargain.
Well maybe but the fact remains that heat and vibration from an ICE do not kill these things and that there's magnitudes more vibration from a vehicle merely driving along a road than that coming from an engine.
I've replaced one. Also sensors and actuators and such fail fairly regularly. A lot of sensors are fixed to and wired into the engine itself, rather than the car, and that vibrates a lot.
But....the power is not coming from our house according to the live meter. Or the holiday let we run. There are no other buildings within half a mile. The plug is there to plug in a pump in the pond. If you turn it on and leave it an hour all the water in it disappears....to I have no clue where.
There maybe darker forces at work....
Start charging your car from there and i'm sure it'll soon become apparent who's paying if it's not you...
EV3 has a disc cleaning mode also, activated by a long press of a button and it applies a light cleaning force until it decides they are clean. Haven’t tried it yet.
Ohhh...did not know about this, tried on my Niro on way home from work. No discernable loss in regen or performance handy to know this as you say hardly use brake pedal now.
Interesting, guess I'll have to actually read the manual one day and see where that magic button is as I have had disks brakes seize up on ICE Cars before. Mostly a winter thing though.
Talking of regen braking, I've been playing with the different regen levels on the EV3. As @molgrips said, the brake pedal isn't connected to the brakes any more than the accelerator is directly connected to the motor. It's all just different ways of sending signals to the computer so you can achieve the same thing in different ways. You can engage (and vary the amount of) regen using the brake pedal or you can set it so that the car applies it automatically when you lift off the accelerator. The different levels of regen effectively seem to vary the point in the throttle travel that equates to coasting. Push down beyond that and it accelerates, lift beyond that and it brakes.
So which level of regen you like tends to come down to what feel you want. A higher level lets you drive just using one pedal in a wider range of situations. However, so far it seems to me (and this may be specific to where and how I drive) that the lower the regen the better my overall efficiency. I guess that makes sense as the worst thing for efficiency is to slow down too much and then have to accelerate. However, from what I've said above it ought to be possible to get the same efficiency in the higher regen levels. I'd just need to press the throttle a bit more when I wanted to coast. But so far, no regen at all is working out best on country lanes. In town there is no difference in efficiency as far as I can tell. Or at least, it depends so much on the traffic that I can't detect any difference due to regen mode.
Oh well then it must a thing.
If you've never had a sensor or a control module in your engine fail then you've been blessed.
As@molgripssaid, the brake pedal isn't connected to the brakes
Yes but actually I think it ultimately is - the first bit of travel seems to be on a spring so it activates the sensor, but if you press it when the car is off you can eventually feel actual brakes. Which makes sense from a safety point of view.
Re regen my car (Ioniq 38kwh) has an auto regen setting where it varies the amount depending on what's in front of the car. so lifting off on an empty road has the effect of regen 1 but if there's a car in front it goes up to regen 3. It also seems to work on windy roads possibly accidentally as it might be perceiving the hedge on the bend as a car. This was rolled out in an update and I hated it at first (it's easy to disable) but then I got used to it and it's now great. If for example you are leaving via a slip road and the car in front brakes faster than you expect the car detects it straight away and slows as well. Works quite nicely.
The EV3 has a (recently updated) auto mode too, which tracks the car in front and also uses the GPS to apply the regen for you when you are coming up to a bend, roundabout, junction etc. It's quite spooky really 😀
I find at the moment I tend to have days where I turn all the toys on and marvel at what the tech can do and other days where I prefer to turn it all off and just drive. The later seems to give slightly better efficiency (although that may be because I haven't learnt how to drive efficiently with the toys on yet) but efficiency isn't everything. In fact, most days it's irrelevant.
I am setting the EV3 to smart auto regen all the time now, 3 weeks and 1000 miles in. I used same mode in my previous car, an i4, for 2 years and find it the most effortless way to drive an EV.
EV6 owners, do your door handles pop out when you approach the car?
Noticed yesterday that the door mirrors auto fold when I get near the car or move way and then see something in YouTube saying the door handles should pop out as well.
It's a 2023 GT Line but the handles don't pop out and lightly pressing the sensor area on the handle does nothing either (both driver and passengers).
Can't seem to find anything on Google spec wise to definitely say whether I should have it or not. Only that the base Air models didn't have it
If you've never had a sensor or a control module in your engine fail then you've been blessed.
40 years of ownership of multiple cars (although not that many as I keep cars a long time) and never had a sensor/ECU issue. 😇
I do have a 225bhp Honda that blows an O2 sensor every year.... But that's on a boat so probs doesn't count!
EV6 owners, do your door handles pop out when you approach the car?
Noticed yesterday that the door mirrors auto fold when I get near the car or move way and then see something in YouTube saying the door handles should pop out as well.
It's a 2023 GT Line but the handles don't pop out and lightly pressing the sensor area on the handle does nothing either (both driver and passengers).
Can't seem to find anything on Google spec wise to definitely say whether I should have it or not. Only that the base Air models didn't have it
It's a setting called Approach Unlock. Find it in Setup -> Vehicle -> Door.
The handles don’t pop out on the EV6 Gt-Line. That’s a posh extra
Not sure it's that useful to be honest. My EV3 does have handles that pop out as you approach the door (most of the time) which looks fancy. But they don't lock when you walk away again and the handles stay sticking out so everybody knows you've left it unlocked. What was so wrong with door handles anyway 😀 Yes, I know it's supposed to be more aero, but the EV3 is a brick anyway so does it really matter.
Got to confess pop out handles were/are on my -ve list about the EV3. Look jazzy and all, but it's another thing to stop working properly when the world is frozen. UK frozen is I think the worse kind of frozen as we like to mix thoroughly wet then almost instantly frozen in quick succession. Frozen and dry seems to be a lot easier to engineer around. And I'm just a bit cynical that our uniquely crap version of winter is considered by international car manufacturers. See also mountain bike designed in California.
I agree with you @convert but I think I'm right in saying that the EV3 handles can still be retracted manually if the pop out bit doesn't work. Ask me again in January 😀 but it's not like traditional handles (and locks) don't freeze up. You've just got a nice big handle to yank on when they do.
Doesn't it have the same handles as the EV6? It works in Norway, it'll work in Surrey
To be fair, I had the pop out handles on the GV60 and they worked flawlessly through two winters and were infinitely more convenient than the fiddly manual ones on the EV6
It works in Norway, it'll work in Surrey
Don't really care about the good people of mildly moist and a tad chilly a few days a year Surrey but I'd say this is not the case in northern UK. As I said above - places like Norway do proper cold - we do the lovely kind of weather that goes above or below zero so we get the kind of weather where wet gets everywhere then it all freezes to ice.
I had an Audi with doors with frameless windows where the glass drops half an inch when you open them and goes back up when you close them. In the UK if you bring the car home wet and it freezes overnight they mostly freeze stuck up so you end up driving along for 4 or 5 miles with the door not shut properly until the vibrations breaks the frozen components apart. Forums are full of UK residents coming up with ways to make them work, sliding credit cards covered in de-icer down the windows seals and the like. In the frozen Black Forests of Germany - they work flawlessly.
Frameless windows was one of the things that I decided to rule out. Too many stories of them getting stuck in Scottish conditions. That removed things like the Model Y, Smart # whatever etc from the list. I thought about making flush door handles another exclusion criteria but that seemed to remove a lot of otherwise interesting options and I decided that (as long as they could be popped out manually) then I could probably live with them (even in Aberdeenshire). It's going to be a few months before I find out whether I was right on that one though. Ditto my decision not to get too hung up on a heat pump.
Yes, my better half used to have an Audi TT with windows that dropped when you touched the door handles, utterly rubbish when it got cold and wet, unbelievably poor design for the UK. The Merc she swapped it with with the same sort of arrangement for the windows has been flawless over the last 5 years. Before you question her sanity the Merc was only on an 18m lease originally so she was fully prepared to send it back if it froze up like the Audi.
My Megane has magic poppy out door handles when you walk up to it, it'll be three years old in Dec and I haven't had an issue with them in cold County Durham.
Ok, to be serious, i live by the sea in southern Norway so i come out to a car covered in a very heavy frost /later of ice most days in the winter. The Kia door handles have been good through this
The Merc she swapped it with with the same sort of arrangement for the windows has been flawless over the last 5 years.
Sounds like Mercedes have cracked it because I have never seen this problem on mine. Weird feature though - great when the windows are all the way open but you have to shut the windows before you open the door to leave so..? Not sure the point.
Not sure it's that useful to be honest.
Article about Tesla faults, but pop out handles not popping out has caused nasty avoidable deaths after accidents where people have been unable to open doors.
Not sure what happens with locking. My car (Kona) locks as you reach a certain speed (maybe 5-10mph) but then doesn't unlock when you stop, only when you open the door from the inside. I feel pretty sure that there must be some kind of accident sensing / unlock doors feature - but then again Tesla door handles are supposed to pop out.
My car (Kona) locks as you reach a certain speed (maybe 5-10mph) but then doesn't unlock when you stop, only when you open the door from the inside. I feel pretty sure that there must be some kind of accident sensing / unlock doors feature
I've seen this on cars going way back - it's an anti-intruder feature, if you have to drive through rough places late at night etc. On my Passat at least, there was a crash sensor that would open them if you crash.
I think I can turn off the auto lock with speed thing and having read that article I'm tempted to. It's not as though Aberdeenshire is that rough. Maybe I can just turn it on if I ever need to go to Dundee 😀
Frozen windows? If you heat the car before going outside frozen windows don’t turn out to be a thing at all.
frozen door handles? More problematic but a gentle-ish whack with the flat of your gloved hand tends to free them up. Some GT-85 sprayed into them the night before can prevent sticking. I’ve had the non-recessed pullout handles on cars freeze up in the past and experienced fully-recessed electric pop out handles freeze and the lever-like recessed handles freeze. The latter two the ‘whack’ worked well. The ‘regular’ ones nearly got snapped off before de-icer got things moving.
A friend sent me the a guardian article. Hard to discern what’s old news, what’s valid, and what matters. SUA is a long-standing ‘issue’ in cars. Mostly user-error but I’m not sure that Toyota have gotten to the bottom of their SUA problems aside from blaming the carpets.
188 miles at 89% charge is the current guess on the range. I'll report back after this weekends driving in warm weather.
Fully charged the car guessed at 211 miles. I covered just over 400 miles over 3 days of mixed driving. On the A and country roads the car/my driving averaged around 5.5m/kWh and overall after the motorway return leg 4.8m/kWh. Spent around £35 on charging at evyee and instavolt chargers. Apart from the slow charging speed of the ioniq, the car performed well.
Those are the same sort of numbers I get. Drivers of other cars think 4.0 is a remarkable achievement 🙂
The best I have seen is 212 miles at 100% on the EV display with climate control off - but climate only knocks 5 miles off that.
My new mantra is "range is not a number". In fact I'm not sure why everyone seems to be so keen to try to put a number on it. Whenever anybody learns that I have an EV the first question is almost always "what is the range?". If I tell them what the WLTP figure is then the next question is usually "yeah but what is the real range?". How am I supposed to answer that? "Enough" (as somebody suggested above) is probably the right answer, but sounds evasive Anything else takes far too long to explain.
Take last Saturday, for example. I did a 75 mile drive into the Cairngorms for a day in the hills. On the way there I was keen to get going (and keen to get to the car park before it filled up) and my efficiency was 3.6 m/kWh. With my 78kWh useable battery that's a nominal range of 280 miles. On the way back I was chilled (and tired) after a long day in the hills and probably drove around 10mph slower (and a lot smoother). My efficiency for the 75 mile return journey was 5.2 m/kWh, giving a nominal range of 406 miles. I bet if I tank it on the motorway on a cold day I could get the nominal range down to around 220 miles.
So I guess I could say that the "real range" is somewhere between 220 and 400 miles depending on weather and your preferred style of driving. That doesn't sound very useful either though.
The analogy I tend to make is with my phone. I don't know (or care) what the battery life of my phone is. I use it all day and then put it on charge overnight and it never runs out of battery. So, I know the capacity is "enough for a day of use". Is it a day and a half?, is it three days? is it more? I don't know (or care) and certainly wouldn't pay extra for a phone just to get a longer battery life as it wouldn't make any difference to me.
Basically I think range on an EV only matters if you don't have enough. What counts as "enough" obviously varies from person to person, but once you have enough anything more is largely irrelevant.
For me the magic number seems to be 150 miles (from around 70% of the battery, so lets say 215 miles). For around 360 days of the year I won't do more than 150 miles in a day. On a long trip, I wont drive more than three hours (which equates to around 150 miles at most) without a stop. It doesn't make any difference to me if the battery is at 10%, 20% or 50% when I stop. I stick it on charge and when I'm ready to go again (or the next day if I'm at home) it's back to 80%.
I guess it's the fact that range varies so much with weather and how you drive is what makes range a useless number, but it's also one of the useful things about an EV. If I'm trying to get to a certain charger and it looks a bit tight, I have the option of just slowing down a bit and suddenly I've got plenty of capacity to get there.
I'm glad you've come to that realisation. If you can charge at home then range is only a problem in exceptional cases
That's a good point. I'm talking from the position of someone who can charge at home. If you can't chare wherever you regularly park and have to make a special trip to a public charger whenever you need to recharge then everything changes and I guess in that context every mile of extra range is useful.
My new mantra is "range is not a number". In fact I'm not sure why everyone seems to be so keen to try to put a number on it.
Seems you have had a damascene conversion @roverpig! It's true once you have the EV, but requires that step into the unknown.
enjoy your EVing!
Agreed roverpig (also, why when quoting does it show your real name...andy?? Is that even a GDPR issue?) - good analogy.
Interesting read on a real life examination of battery life. No babying the process, often charged to 100%, left for days at full, etc. In 4 years, 107,000 miles it's lost 9% of 'capacity' by health check. However...because of software updates making it use its charge better, it also has gained efficiency (did 3.1m/kWh, now does 3.4) so it charges slightly faster and in actual terms that 9% less capacity only gives 8 miles less actual range.
Thanks @theotherjonv I noticed that my real name was showing in the quoted text a while back but was never sure if it was just me that could see it or everyone. Doesn't bother me (the roverpig name was just something I picked on a whim many years ago) but does look like a bug.
Interesting article by the way. Looks like battery degradation is just turning out to be another of those myths.
Whenever anybody learns that I have an EV the first question is almost always "what is the range?".
Yep. we've done 2,600 miles since we bought ours and in that entire time we've used a public charger once. Cue discussion about how EVs need to be able to tow a horse box to John O' Groats three times a week, without stopping.
Deleted my post..
Cue discussion about how EVs need to be able to tow a horse box to John O' Groats three times a week, without stopping.
Well for some people that may be a requirement, in which case an EV isn't for them.
EV's, like all vehicles, are a compromise and people should buy what is best for their requirements.
ICE owners should not deride EV's just because they don't fit their particular use case - and at the same time EV owners should accept that they have their limitations and don't suit everyone.
Well for some people that may be a requirement, in which case an EV isn't for them.
My point was about the 0.1% of use cases somehow seeming to dominate conversation.
Well for some people that may be a requirement, in which case an EV isn't for them.
EV's, like all vehicles, are a compromise and people should buy what is best for their requirements.
ICE owners should not deride EV's just because they don't fit their particular use case - and at the same time EV owners should accept that they have their limitations and don't suit everyone.
Exactly.
Rather than 2600 miles, I've done almost 100,000 in an EV over the last 10 years and while I love them I'm far from an evangelist (which I often find to be those who are new to the powertrain). They have some huge pros but there are plenty of cons too and as you say, there are a range of situations which don't suit an EV as well as say a petrol hybrid -or even quite frankly an eCargo Bike
Still best not be too dogmatic about any of it or you just turn people away.
They have some huge pros but there are plenty of cons too
Their principal limitation in my view is that they are a like for like replacement of a private car which does nothing to solve the congestion that blights our towns and cities. That's why I limit my mileage as much as I can.
The EV does a lot for the health and well being of the people living in those towns though. And which kind of town would you rather walk through or ride a bike through, one with EVs or ICEs? In a town where walking and biking are gaining popularity EVs can only help the trend. I'm asthmatic and curse every time a filthy car smokes me out. You've even got a thread about your smokey 47 000k miles VAG group TSI, Renton, how do you think pedestrians and cyclists feel about your car that smokes after idling. VAG seem quite happy with cars consuming 1l of oil per 1000miles and converting it into smoke in addition to the homologated emissions.
The EV does a lot for the health and well being of the people living in those towns though
It really doesn't. Local air pollution is certainly reduced (though not eliminated) but roads clogged up with private cars are a barrier and risk to more sustainable modes of travel.
It really does, Renton:
https://qz.com/135509/more-americans-die-from-car-pollution-than-car-accidents
thats the deaths, here's the psychological impact of noise and pollution:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202400549X
Car pollution puts people off cycling:
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/fuming-air-pollution-and-cycling
On a personal level I know that ozone aggravates my asthma so on high ozone days (car pollution and sunshine) I leave the bike at home and take the EV driving a long way behind the car in front. On long journeys I prefer the train and if the car is the only viable alternative prefer driving at night when there are fewer cars and the ozone levels are lower.
It really does, Renton:
I'm really confused - you are saying Renton, but talking to ransos. I can't even see Renton's name on this page. Is there some forum glitch going on here?
The glitch is in my head.
I've had that option on every car i've owned for the last 2 decades...My car (Kona) locks as you reach a certain speed (maybe 5-10mph) but then doesn't unlock when you stop, only when you open the door from the inside. I feel pretty sure that there must be some kind of accident sensing / unlock doors feature - but then again Tesla door handles are supposed to pop out.
And most cars seem to be moving to auto disc cleaning on the brakes. Every xxx minutes of regen usage, we deactivate it until we've done yy minutes/events/decelerations using friction brakes. Mainly to cover people who pretty much always get regen, and also, the newest smartest, spangliest motors can regen down to pretty much stationary.
Car pollution puts people off cycling:
The number one reason why people say they don't cycle is safety: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-travel-attitudes-study-wave-9/national-travel-attitudes-study-ntas-wave-9-cycling
Swapping an ICE car for an EV doesn't address that.
For that we'll have to wait and see. Contributors to this thread have noticed that without a vroom vroom ICE they become more zen and courteous in their driving. Hopefully that attitude will translate into safer roads.
For that we'll have to wait and see. Contributors to this thread have noticed that without a vroom vroom ICE they become more zen and courteous in their driving. Hopefully that attitude will translate into safer roads.
You're clutching at straws.
Or you are, Ransos. It's you in denial, "it really doesn't", about the health benefits of EVs for people living in towns. Read back, and then consider that the reading age of people on this thread is well beyond 10.
Or you are, Ransos. It's you in denial, "it really doesn't", about the health benefits of EVs for people living in towns. Read back, and then consider that the reading age of people on this thread is well beyond 10.
"Or you are" is evidence of your advanced reading age? Ok.
Let me make this simple for you, as it seems like I need to. EVs do not provide any health benefits for people living in towns. In fact they are a disbenefit because cars are cited as the number one reason why people don't cycle. If the best you can offer is a hope that everyone will start driving nicely then it's time to stop and have a think.
EVs do not provide any health benefits for people living in towns. In fact they are a disbenefit because cars are cited as the number one reason why people don't cycle
Aren't you ignoring the potential benefits to pedestrians and anyone who lives by a busy road? Many of them would not cycle even if the roads were empty.
Must admit, as a long time supporter of EV’s it’s testing me this week. New ID7, was faultless on the drive from North Yorkshire to Cornwall, genuinely brilliant. Then on the last charge just before the holiday cottage it did something weird and stopped charging after 5 mins and threw a ton of errors. That night the car wouldn’t be moved, showing among others a red drivetrain error.
Next morning, absolutely fine…. An opportunistic afternoon charge at Sainsburys wouldn’t work. It then worked fine at an instavolt…!
The kicker is I called VW assist who said they’d come out and have a look and check it for errors… the guy gets here and says they haven’t got the right kit to plug it in yet!!!!! Unbelievable on a few levels. Hoping it will behave itself until we get home, then I can deal with the inevitably month long wait to get it looked at by the incompetent dealer. Oh. And it’s got a disabled passenger airbag cos they’re liable to explode with shards of metal if activated…. And no date to fix after 5 weeks.
This is the stuff they need to sort. The driving and even the charging experience on a 400 mile journey on the first day of summer holidays was spot on. We just charged when we stopped and it never dropped below 40%. Loads of contingency.
For that we'll have to wait and see. Contributors to this thread have noticed that without a vroom vroom ICE they become more zen and courteous in their driving. Hopefully that attitude will translate into safer roads.
HA HA. I haven't noticed that whatsoever, as an observer.
I'd say almost the opposite.
The squirt & go nature of EVs and rapid acceleration compared to a lot of normal ICE cars seems to make a lot of EV drivers more moronic than the general BMW/Audi middle management moron. A generalisation perhaps, but I would say the characteristic driving style of a certain driver does not seem to alter when they get into a car with a different powertrain.
On recent trip there was a dead Audi on a charge point with an apologetic note on the windscreen. Your experience is not unique Northernremedy. Zoe charged fine as usual and there's no noticeable loss of range after 5 1/5 years
And for the consideration of ransos just one of hundreds of possible links in many languages on the effects of ICE pollution on the health of the population:
https://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-early-deaths-each-year-in-the-us-0829
If you accept there's a need for a means of transport in towns that can carry more than a cargo bike and don't want a return to the horse and cart towns aren't going to be car free any time soon. If you accept the need for cars EVs make a significant improvement to the health of town dwellers.
A generalisation perhaps, but I would say the characteristic driving style of a certain driver does not seem to alter when they get into a car with a different powertrain.
Funnily enough, I was going to post on here to ask if anyone else had noticed that an EV made them a slower driver. As you say, it's counter intuitive with all that instant torque. But you don't seem to get the same dopamine hit from an EV as it's all so effortless and as a consequence I find myself just wafting along and enjoying the stereo more.
I have definitely become a slower driver since getting an EV. I obviously make use of the stupidly fast acceleration at times, but generally I am more aware of efficiency and range and want to maximise both. Like @roverpig, I enjoy wafting along and enjoying the drive more.
(I also drive a 1976 VW camper so slow is a natural condition. 😀 )
Read back, and then consider that the reading age of people on this thread is well beyond 10.
This kind of sneering really does not help nurture a civilised discussion.
This is the stuff they need to sort. The driving and even the charging experience on a 400 mile journey on the first day of summer holidays was spot on. We just charged when we stopped and it never dropped below 40%. Loads of contingency.
It's annoying when they fail I'm sure. In theory an electric motor should be more reliable than a petrol engine but that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment. Not sure how much of this is down to all the fancy software though and how much is actually EV specific vs things (like your airbag) that would affect modern ICE cars too.
Encouraging that you didn't have any issues finding chargers though. I've got to travel from Aberdeenshire down to the Lake District later this week so I've been watching the charger occupancy on ABRP. Seems quite busy in some places but much quieter in other places nearby for some reason. But quite hard to predict. An hour ago all 4 of the Ionity chargers at Gretna were in use but 7 of the 12 Applegreen ones in the same services were free. Now there is only 1 of 12 Applegreen chargers free but 2 of the 4 Ionity ones are free. Middle of the day does seem like the hardest time to get a charge though, which I guess makes sense as everyone stops for lunch.
Yeah I don’t think it’s the electric motor itself, it feels like the surrounding complexity ie control units, software and an effective support network that let it down.
re chargers, my philosophy on a long journey is if when we stop, whether lunch or coffee/wee, if there’s a charger I plug it in. Amazing how much 10 mins adds, and it prevents you ever getting to a situation where you ‘have’ to charge. You just spent most time with battery between 40-90%. IME.
Looking at buying an EV at long last
40KwH leaf - 2020-2021 <10k miles C~£9k
Seems like a lot of car for the money. Still no use for my purposes but for mum perfect - spend most of its time doing the shopping run and 10 miles from her village to ours occasionally doing a 100 mile round trip back to her hometown - having to charge at the other end wouldnt be ideal but acceptable in winter.
I understand these are Gen 2 - but they do have the later battery temperature control ?
Any reasons i shouldn't ? - should i be holding off for the facelift 22 model for any reason other than looks ? The Vauxhall corsa E for similar money does have the bigger 50Kwh battery and longer range BUT they are still dogged with Vauxhalls lacklustre reliability of the last 10 years where as the nissan seems famed for its reliability besides their known foibles with the Gen1
all the Zoes in the same age and price range all have much higher mileage - and significantly fewer to choose from.
Contributors to this thread have noticed that without a vroom vroom ICE they become more zen and courteous in their driving. Hopefully that attitude will translate into safer roads.
Anecdote but not data, but my experience is the exact opposite. It's almost like they've used up their quota of social responsibility by buying the EV, so now believe that it's absolutely fine to drive like a total arsehole with no respect for any other road user.
I’m a month into my second EV, a preregistered Kia EV3. I drive it much more slowly than the BMW i4 it replaced, so maybe it’s not about the ‘E’…
If you accept the need for cars EVs make a significant improvement to the health of town dwellers.
Well yes. As an EV piled through a red light as I was waiting to cross this evening, I gave my thanks to the thoughtful driver for putting my health first.
it does feel like some kind of EV tipping point has finally been realised. Since I got my Leaf over the last 10 years I have been idly counting the number of EVs per commute. For the first couple of years it was basically like when I had a 2CV or a Triumph Herald - flash the headlights and wave territory with only Leafs and the odd Zoe taking part.
Then Tesla came on the scene, S and X but still it was rare to see more than 1 a day out of hundreds of vehicles.
Then it was Model 3 and there were a couple more then Y and by 2023/4 it was 6 or 7 on each 16 mile drive - still far less than 1 EV in 100 cars.
However in the last year its increased massively and today I counted well over 30 EVs (and as they look so normal these days i prob missed a few) on my 16 mile drive home in East Sussex on A/B roads
Looking at buying an EV at long last
40KwH leaf - 2020-2021 <10k miles C~£9k
They don't have any temperature control but for one or two rapid charges a day it's fine. The minor facelift in 2022 was just cosmetic and they went to quoting usable rather than total battery capacity. They're great cars within their capabilities - although for not a lot more money you can be in a 2023 one with more warranty etc left.
Just given my e+ Leaf back (won't be worth anywhere near the balloon payment and was at the halfway point for VT), same day it was collected I saw and bought this BMW i3S. Leather, dark oak trim, freshly refurbed wheels, £9k. There are some nice cars about for sensible money, unlike back in 2021 when I bought the Leaf.
They don't have any temperature control but for one or two rapid charges a day it's fine. The minor facelift in 2022 was just cosmetic and they went to quoting usable rather than total battery capacity. They're great cars within their capabilities.
Ah ok , i understood the original ones didnt have temp control i thought that had been fixed on the later ones.
surely that means they will suffer similar battery desegregation to the originals .....perhaps i will look else where then - maybe not such a great deal.
that said - its likely to be 1 or 2 rapid charges a year - she will have a charger at her house for the majority of her use and itll likely be limited in capacity due to electric heating and ho****er.
Whats not alot more? - i saw the 2023s starting at 13.5k.... unless i was willing to take 40k miles.
No, mk2 (40 and particularly 62) do much better than the 24/30kwh. I think the battery chemistry changed in them. They still have battery "bars", it's just hidden in the menu, and very rare to see one that's lost any bars even with high mileage, so over 85% SOH. Mine was still on 95% before I gave it back.
For clarity Leaf's will not necessarily have a duff battery. Mine is a Gen 3 or 4 from 2015 with 195000 kms on it, and is still at 11 of the 12 bars. Those that were not good were gen 2 cars BUT in this context these Gen2 = old style cars from 2013. Or cars from the far east, or other places that are consistently very hot. Mine was at one point getting rapid charged about once a fortnight, but less so in the last year
Look at the 'bars' - I don't think you need to overthink this. If the battery is OK they're a good, basic car with not a lot to go wrong
Just got my Grandland Ultimate EV.
It's a very substantial car and everything is looking good from a quick drive apart from the suspension - is a bit mushy. Small-ish point but a bit annoying compared to my previous kodiaq.
Lots of nice technology - let's see what the efficiency and load carrying brings.
Nice to have front window de-icer and high quality 360 cameras.
Was a cheap lease ultimately.