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We drove about 1200 miles give or take ten on our trip, we spent £173 on leccy. That works out roughly 15p a mile.
We could have tried a bit harder to save money by seeking out Tesla chargers or Electroverse affiliated, but in the end I couldn't be bothered. The only supercharger we tried in Ft William wouldn't work for me.
Just out of interest, when you rock up at the superchargers in a none Tesla, how do you know how much they're charging you p/kwh?, they don't seem to advertise it anywhere that I can find and where they do, it says things like, "typically" and "prices vary" etc
On the app?
Yup..the app.
I think the price can vary depending on the time of day.
DrP
yeah, if you register for the Tesla App as a non Tesla driver (it asks you what you drive) it seeks out available chargers and gives you a rate for the specific charger for various time slots - cheaper in am than pm often and always cheaper outside rush hour periods I think. The Aviemore ones seem a bit slow compared to others I have used, but mid morning price was around 40p/kwh so decent enough.
yeah, if you register for the Tesla App as a non Tesla driver
Ah ok cheers, maybe I didn't get far enough within the app, I downloaded it and registered and put in card payment details, but never actually found any third party charging options ie a map, route planner or whatever.
Thanks for all of the replies, very helpful. Can anyone recommend me an electric car. Budget 12k max. Recently retired and pootle about the SW -Dorset, Wilts, Somerset but would like to explore more of the UK car camping with a bike in the car. In the past 3 months my longest journey has been a 150 mile roundtrip.
Why is the Zoe or Leaf not recommended? Is the range too low? Older tech? Other issues?
Corsa e for the cheap ev if you don't need a roof rack or a tow bar. Charges quick on dc. reasonable summer range. Winter like all evs not so good but it should do 130+miles. Splash out on the top spec model and get matrix headlights, heated seats and a warm steering wheel on the colder days.
Ah ok cheers, maybe I didn’t get far enough within the app, I downloaded it and registered and put in card payment details, but never actually found any third party charging options
It’s the first thing you see when you open the app? “Find a charger”. Are you sure you got the right app?
Why is the Zoe or Leaf not recommended? Is the range too low? Older tech? Other issues?
They are both first gen vehicles and very old hat now. Zoes are small city cars, Leafs are not but they don't have any battery heating or cooling so the range is quite variable between summer and winter. That makes the range meter unreliable, which is a much bigger issue than I thought it would be. We had one, and for me it's just not that good of a car. The ride is unpleasant. We had previously had an Ioniq, we sold the Leaf for another one (the first time I've ever got rid of a car because I didn't like it) and it's so much better. For us the range on our Ioniq only drops to 170 or so at worst in the winter, from 190 in summer. And the Premium SE spec has cooled front seats, which is fantastic.
I don't know about the Corsa, but they have always been small cars, whereas the Ioniq can fit four adults in comfort. However, it does charge slowly and it's not a fast car although quite fast enough. That said, the spectacular efficiency of the Ioniq offsets the slow charging speed, we go from 20-80% in about 40-45 mins which gets us up to 150 miles of range. We just went to Scotland and back in it from South Wales and we stopped four times on the way back for 30-40 mins each time.
Corsa e has a decent sized boot for a small car. Bigger than a Kia picanto which is what I sold to get the Corsa e. Should get 4 medium people in it with ease. Seats folded down has a decent boot space. For a daily driver, quick city car with fast charging when further from home it's pretty good. Local miles efficiency is around 4.5m/kWh so I'm not grumbling.
I'm going to get rid my Skoda roomster which is having age related issues and get another electric car. Corsa e that I bought last year is used daily by my other half so I can't use that apart from weekend trips out.
I had sort of convinced myself to buy a large battery, big range, roof rack and v2l capable car but I'm now considering the Hyundai ionic 38kwh. It doesn't meet most of the requirements above but they are pretty cheap. Cheap being relative to spending significantly more on a car with the above features, mg5 being another option.
So my questions to @molgrips are:
Rear seats flat how long is it from the boot lip to the passenger dash/behind front seats? For the occasional time I put lengths of wood in I would like to think I could fit 2.7m 🤔. Current roomster is 1.6m with the rear seats removed, 1.4m folded up.
Have you encountered any of the 12v battery drain problems that seem to occur and feature on the ioniq forum(s)? Might only affect some cars?
DC Charging speed shouldn't be an issue. I think I will be able to plan my few longer trips around chargers.
Have you stuffed any bikes in the back? I'd like to think it could hold 2 MTBs with both wheels off? Seats down capacity seems to be pretty big volume wise, similar to an mg5?.
Thanks in advance for any answers.
I have an ioniq 38kwh. It’s a nice car. As you mention, it doesn’t meet the requirements you set out, but I do like it.
I discovered it is not rated or approved for a roof rack for some reason. They are available for the hybrid version, and probably fit but legally it’s not approved.
12v issues - I had the car from nearly new, and had a period where the 12v battery would randomly go flat when the car was on charge. After a few months of back and forth to the dealers, with a replacement 12v battery, I eventually got to the bottom of it and has not happened in the last 40k plus miles.
the issue for me was related to the Bluelink app the car uses. The charger I had (rolec- I don’t recommend) used its own app that connected to Bluelink via its API. This app would continually access the cars state of charge to determine whether to charge, and did this via pinging the car which ‘woke’ it up and then drained the 12v system, bricking the car at the most critical moments. Once I stopped using this, it’s been fine.
one thing to look for is that the car has had the coolant replacement recall / service carried out at 40k / 80k. There was an issue on a number of Hyundai evs with the battery coolant, where the coolant would turn to jelly and not circulate correctly. A special service was needed to force flush this out and replace with a different coolant. I had some errors with this but the recall perfectly matched my service and again been fine since. This improved the cars range and charging speed, likely due to being able to properly heat and cool the battery.
servicing costs are reasonable (around £100) even at main dealer although they seem to only look at it and wash it, and it’s every 10k miles. But this keeps warranty and that has been very important as above. The 40k / 80k coolant replacement service though is quite expensive.
We got it October 2021 with 5k on and currently has 65k. Other than the above issues it’s been good.
It drives nicely, is much more efficient than all of them newer EVs my colleagues have but the range can be frustrating for long journeys and the charge rate is slow. However we bought knowing that 95% of journeys are shorter trips in range and from home charging so accept those issues.
Thanks Matthew for the in-depth review with some good questions to ask about maintenance and service history to raise with the seller.
My search for a car will begin in a few weeks...
Rear seats flat how long is it from the boot lip to the passenger dash/behind front seats?
I'll measure it tonight.
Yes the coolant flush is expensive at I think £450 for the service when it comes up. Annual services are I think £75/£150 from my main dealer.
I haven't put an MTB in the back but I have put my road bike in with both wheels on, it just pops straight in. I would expect it to easily swallow wheels-off MTBs.
I got 5.3 miles per kWh yesterday on a trip about 2/3 dual carriageway, driving at the speed limit with four people in the car. Range is indicating 199 miles, so no sign of degradation at 77k.
I think 12V issues on these cars are just down to the battery being small and a bit under-specced given some issues with blue link services being over-used as above. When we bought ours the 12V was dead at the dealer at only 3.5-4 years old, however the car wasn't bricked. It told us there was an issue before that point and we just dropped in a new one for £100. You don't know what dealers have been doing with doors open whilst cleaning etc. Some people are fitting AGM batteries or Li-ion but I didn't want to do that as the charging specs are different.
Thanks molgrips for your additional info.
Good to hear that it can stuff a road bike in easily enough. 👍
It's about 2.65m from the boot lip to the nearest part of the dash in a line parallel to the length of the car. A little longer on a diagonal of course. However the front seat doesn't lay flat.
Thanks for the measurement. Seems like it'll be good for occasionally transporting long bits of wood. 👍
Potentially silly question for those that run more than one electric car and charge at home. Do you get any breakdown of charging from Octopus or other electricity company (do they know what's going through the charger compared to the house)? If they do, can it differentiate cars or is it just "car charging" on the bill?
just 'charging'.
we've 2 EVs. just plug them in, and electricity runs into them. Charger can't tell which one is plugged in. A tesla MAY communicate back, but a polestar and Nissan Leaf don't.
It's just like plugging in 2 different phones in a USB C cable really.
DrP
They also can't really tell what's charging - it could be an EV or house batteries, or warming a hot tub, etc, but if you're pulling 7kW for 11 hours, that's pretty much a sure sign it's a car.
Re the 12v batteries, Tesla have gone over to Lithium for the 12v battery. There are lots of aftermarket Lithium 12v batteries available too but the teardown videos of the non brand name ones are pretty shocking. I'd stick with a brand name lead acid battery if you need to replace.
Thanks both, as I expected. Mrs Biscuits asking "how will we know who's car cost what" but I guess its a mindset change from petrol filling.
Mrs Biscuits asking “how will we know who’s car cost what”
Your car app will probably give you a comprehensive breakdown of energy usage and mileage. Having said that, I can only get historical mileage from Bluelink - the energy efficiency is only for the current day. But it also gives me the average eficiency over a period so I can approximate. You also need to add on about 10% or something for charging efficiency losses.
OK, thanks. I think it'll probably just get absorbed into the electric bill, especially since I do double the monthly miles than she does.
Does anyone have any opinions on an Audi Q4? She's got a Q2 which is too small and I'm trying to sell her on an electric model. Lightly used ones are pretty good value on PCP compared to what she's paying now. It'll be a harder sell to prise her away from the four rings.
Our EV does something like 7-9k a year and it's less than a tenner on the electricity bill, on which we are paying £100 a month (and are in credit currently). We would have spent about £80/mo on diesel alone.
Around £10/month in electric for the Corsa e using intelligent octopus. Would have been £40+ in petrol for the Kia it replaced and it has saved around £200 in diesel for the trips which the roomster would have done.
If I get an ioniq I'll be occasionally charging it up on the off peak part of the intelligent tariff where the Corsa e lives and the rest of the time I'll be using the agile tariff at my house and a 3 pin plug charger for the limited miles that I drive. That said I think I'll be using the electric car more on early and late shifts when the weather is poor as it would be cheaper and more comfortable to use than my petrol scooter which costs around £1.25 for a commute round trip.
Colleague has a Q4 and loves it, he says his electirc bill is less with the car on octopus than previous supplier without the EV, think he's moved dishwasher/washer to different times of day as well as charging overnight, he catches the train to work so only really uses the car for weekends away and ferrying his kids around so not a high mileage user.
I have a Q4 Quattro Sport Back Black Edition, had it since end of March. Love it!!
Such a nice vehicle to drive. Super comfortable for long runs. I don’t use it for putting bikes in or anything like that, but for typical family usage I’m really impressed.
I am getting about 3.5 miles K/h. That’s typically a 70 mile commute mainly dual carriageway and motorway.
Let me know if you’d like any specific info about the Q4.
If they do, can it differentiate cars or is it just “car charging” on the bill?
I think the Ovo EV tariff does; it charges all your consumption at the normal rate then gives you a rebate for the power used by the car to make that cheaper. This depends on them being able to talk to a particular kind of charger iirc.
Octopus doesn't, in the cheap periods everything is cheap.
Octopus does give you a daily break down, so if you kept a record of what was charged and when then you could work it out.
Here’s the weekly view, you can also see an hour by hour breakdown. It just doesn’t tell you what was being used.
My Ohme charger app gives a nice list of charging sessions, inc. cost as it's tied into Octopus tariff data. I'd be using that rather than my Octopus app if I wanted to tot up who used what charging wise.
you can also get the same info from the octopus compare app, which is nicely laid out and easy to view
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Just to add, I'm currently keeping a spreadsheet to compare Agile tariff against Intelligent/Go to determine whether Agile is financially worth the extra effort (I'm not convinced the app itself would give true comparisons as your electric usage patterns would completely change depending on what tariff you were on). I find the octopus compare app is much easier than the octopus website graphic to quickly get your kWh and £ data from. If anyone's interested I'm currently achieving on Agile Octopus 7.10p/kWh car, 13.15p/kWh house. 9.84p/kWh combined (all figs include 5% vat). If I can maintain the same over 12 months then it's possibly going to be a saving of £400 pa over intelligent Octopus. That's on an estimated yr 3500/2500kwh car/house
How are you controlling usage to hit the Agile cheap times? Are you manually starting and stopping the car charging or using some automation?
@molgrips I've got a dumb untethered Rolec charger, the ohme cable I had has stopped working (ohme want £200 to fix it). So, I'm using the Tesla app to schedule a start time, I then use an app called 'EV charging time calculator' to help determine when to set the end percentage in the Tesla app. I use the calculator app to speed the process up in getting the correct end time I want, that's if I'm not charging to 100%. What I can't do is cherry pick half hour segments like you can do with ohme. At some point I'll probably get another ohme
What I can’t do is cherry pick half hour segments like I think you can do with ohme.
I think the deal with Ohme is that it does that automatically. You could in theory save even more if you created your own automation. I think if you were hacky enough you could do it with a smart plug and a granny charger; or if you are even hackier you could fit a smart relay to your dumb charger. I'm not that hacky mind.
I've watched YT vids on fitting the smart relays for dumb chargers. I've also looked into smart rcbo /RCD 's (?). I'm not confident where electricity is involved tho. I do have a couple of smart plugs turning items off 4pm-7pm.
he says his electirc bill is less with the car on octopus than previous supplier without the EV, think he’s moved dishwasher/washer to different times of day as well as charging overnight,
I've said this too... I reckon i'm actually getting paid to drive the EV, because if sone smartly, not only do you charge the EV at 7.5p/unit, but the whole hose is billed at 7.5p/unit whilst the EV is charging (i.e 1/4 of the normal unit price).
The ideal would be for the polestar to update to run V2H - it feels shameful having 80kWh of batter just sat there doing nothing most of the time. I'd love to charge at cheap rate, and discharge back in the day.
DrP
The lack of V2L on the Polestar is the one thing that causing me to hold off getting one.
25k get you a lot of 2nd hand Polestar but an EV6 might be the more sensible option (coming from a eNiro)
The other day my sister was adamant that you cannot tow an EV out of a muddy field without damaging it, because she was recently at a festival where EVs had needed towing with a tractor and they were damaged. She even showed me an article that said that you can't tow one because the wheels are always connected to the motor, so that would cause damage.
I don't think either of these things are true. My car has a neutral setting on the transmission, presumably for this reason, but even if you don't select neutral then towing it is no different to going down a hill. I have read many times people who've recharged EVs by towing them in D. All I can think of is that the cars had dead 12V batteries so were unable to be moved out of P; or some how they were dragged over something hard and the batteries were damaged.
You're right.
You need to slip the EV into neutral somehow, and then it'll just roll.
I guess the challenge is figuring out how to do this.
I suspect that, because it's not as easy as just wiggling the 5 speed gear stick to neutral, numpties in nice EVs say it's impossible!
DrP
Sadly your sister has been taken in by the anti-EV fossil-fuel funded mafia. You can tow an EV, just not for long distances as the motor(s) may overheat depending on whether they’re permanent magnet or not.
Funnily enough you can’t tow an automatic car either for similar reasons.
Ultimately though if your car is stuck in a muddy field it makes no odds. Either the wheels don’t turn and it just slides, or it’s so slow and short that nothing can heat up anyway. Or as others have pointed out… just put it in neutral.
Add this to the existing pile of motoring urban rumours:
- having the interior light on will cause a crash.
- using the headlights will drain the battery.
- stop/start is a scheme to sell more starter motors and uses more fuel than leaving the engine running.
- sidelights should be used as dawn and dusk.
I have definitely seen a TV article with the AA who changed the rear wheels for some clever wheels which allowed them to tow electric vehicles so she is not totally wrong, but you might be able to tow a short distance possibly
Possibly something to do with neutral not actually being the same as an ICE and it builds up kinetic energy which damages the battery or something as it does not completely disengage from the motor.