Forum menu
Does the Y use indicator buttons instead of a stalk like the new 3? If so how did you find it? I think it would drive me crackers.
Still stalks, the update to similar spec to the 3 is due next spring sometime apparently.
I didn't drive the 3, but I'd imagine the lack of stalks is a backwards step, like the hideous haptic touch buttons on the VW idbuzz.
Musk is a level above in the dickhead race.
Can't argue with that but I'd rather buy a car from a dickhead than from a company that has killed thousands of people by selling cars that broke emissions limits, been fined billions and had a senior executive sent to prison.
Can’t argue with that but I’d rather buy a car from a dickhead than from a company that has killed thousands of people by selling cars that broke emissions limits, been fined billions and had a senior executive sent to prison.
Hmm, not sure about this. I'd suspect that VW aren't doing these things any more, but Musk is still a dick. Let's not forget that lots of companies of all types did shitty things in the past. The Ford Pinto scandal was far worse than what VW did.
@bedmaker what other cars did you try? Plenty of choice out there.
I’d suspect that VW aren’t doing these things any more, but Musk is still a dick
Why don't we add conspiring with BMW and Daimler to fix the price of steel and restrict the deployment of emissions reduction technology? But never mind all that, one of 180,000 people at Tesla is a dick so we mustn't buy any of their cars.
Can’t argue with that but I’d rather buy a car from a dickhead than from a company that has killed thousands of people by selling cars that broke emissions limits, been fined billions and had a senior executive sent to prison.
Oh, I didn't realise there were only 2 auto manufacturers...
Oh, I didn’t realise there were only 2 auto manufacturers…
Just one example. I gave two others above who's corporate cultures and ethics you might like to consider before buying from them..
He’s very much a far-right throbber and I have no doubt that Tesla management are working on a way to evict him from the job. Until then though he’s having a massively negative effect on their sales in the UK, in my opinion. The people who subscribe to his views are now in prison as opposed to buying Teslas - although I wouldn’t be surprised if this works as a sales boost among the rednecks he’s courting in the USA.
I’ve still not decided whether to get a replacement Model 3 on the work scheme and it’s about 90% down to Musk, and 10% down to “this car doesn’t feel like great value for money” with the number of features on the new one that are locked out or inop for RHD markets. On the bright side the Australians like Teslas, and they mostly subscribe to his unpleasant and backward opinions too.
I’m not one for arguing over which multibillion dollar corporation is better, but the obvious difference between Elon and VW is that VW were caught and punished, whereas Elon has been getting worse and worse since the Thai cave rescue fiasco and gets away with it.
I don’t think owners of Tesla’s are all far right misogynistic incels, but I do think they care more about how well the buttons work in their cars than how much damage Trump and Elon are doing to our civilisation.
Personally I wouldn't buy a Tesla and that is down to Musk, but I wouldn't have any issues buying a VAG car. Don't suppose it makes sense but I doubt I'm alone. Most car purchases are pretty irrational really.
Anyway, back to more interesting things:
I live on a hillside, accessed by a dirt track in a forest in Scandinavia, i’ve got stuck once in 2 decades. Driving an assortment of 2wd cars.
Thanks. I guess it's been over 20 years since we last bought a 2WD car. Although I know that 2WD+good tyres beats 4WD with average tyres I still think that 4WD+good tyres is going to be the safest option up here. But we don't get the snow we got 20 years ago and obviously traction control systems (and tyres) have come a long way in that time. With ICE cars there wasn't really a reason not to go with 4WD (or AWD) cars. They were a bit more expensive to buy and run but didn't really change what you can do other than being a bit safer when conditions were bad. With EVs you have to sacrifice some range to get a dual motor setup (as there is usually a single motor version of the same car that goes further) so you could end up regretting that decision on longer journeys I guess.
Thanks to all the people who took the time to respond to my comments/questions. I won't quote them all here but have read them all and found them very useful.
I'm now wrestling with this issue of insane power in an EV. It seems strange to live in a world where I could buy a car that goes from 0-60mph in under 4s. That is the super-car performance that my adolescent self dreamt of and since I never actually grew up it is very hard to resist. But we're back to the dual motor issue and the price you have to pay in reduced range. Plus would/should I actually use that insane acceleration. A few people have commented that they don't but obviously still like having it. But if you aren't going to use it is it really worth paying the price in reduced range/efficiency? Where is it actually a real-world advantage to be able to accelerate that quickly?
I've never had an issue getting up to speed on a slip road. I guess it would allow me to nip out in front of people who are a bit closer (or going a bit faster) at junctions and roundabouts. But is that a good idea? If they are too close for you to be able to pull out in a car with normal acceleration maybe they are just too close. If in doubt, chicken out as the driving instructor tried to drill into my son.
I do use the acceleration of my current car to get in front of other cars sometimes, but nine times out of ten it just results in them being even more determined to get past again, which they can always do by taking more risks or being more aggressive. So you end up doing 100 mph down the dual carriageway trying to see who can brake later and hang on round the roundabout. Well I do, which probably means that I shouldn't be allowed to drive anything that accelerates faster than a milk float 🙂
Where is it actually a real-world advantage to be able to accelerate that quickly?
It isn't. It never was. It's a bizarre trend started by Tesla as a way to convince petrolheads that electricity is 'better'
It always makes more sense to have a single motor and bigger battery (range). It irritates me when makers have a big battery EV, and it's only for the dual motor model.
Polestar have got this right (long range, single motor) and Volvo missed it (XC40 - Single motor, smaller battery) despite being the same company. I think they are waking up to it on the new models though.
A proper 500mile range EV at a sensible price point will be a game changer. BMW are promising it on the next gen EV, but we'll see.
Plus would/should I actually use that insane acceleration.
I would not use it as a matter of course, but IMO when overtaking slower traffic it could be useful. If you live in an area where the main roads are windy and single carriageway then it can make a difference. That said, a 6 or 7s 0-60 time is probably enough. I don't think I would get a dual motor car to lose 10% of the range.
A proper 500mile range EV at a sensible price point will be a game changer
I think this would be a terrible idea. No-one needs to drive that far in one go. For perspective, it's 417 miles from London to Edinburgh. Can you imagine there being no free rapid chargers anywhere along that route? Even today there are hundreds. A 500 mile car is going to use 50% more valuable battery resources than is realistically needed, and for what? Hardly anyone is going to use it. You're not going to drive 6-7hrs in one go.
What we need is 300 mile cars that charge quickly, and charging stations everywhere. If we can halve the average time spent charging then we will effectively double the number of available chargers. That said, I think that when people stop they often tend to stop for at least half an hour anyway, so maybe even that's fast enough.
The second biggest problem for Teslas is that they are ugly.
If you live in an area where the main roads are windy and single carriageway then it can make a difference.
Good point and I do 🙂 It's probably the only place where I could legitimately argue that my car is safer than, say, my wife's car as I spend less time on the wrong side of the road getting past slow moving traffic. Mind you, that does mean that I look for spaces to pass in my car but when I'm in my wife's I don't bother looking unless there is a long clear straight and just stick on a podcast instead (and annoy all the people behind who now have two cars to try to pass 🙂 ).
It does make me wonder why people always quote 0-60 times though when something like 40-70 is a more useful real-world measure. This is where the old petrol turbo engines were fun. Not so fast off the line as the turbo didn't kick in until 2,000 rpm but a nice bit of power just where you needed it. I guess with an EV that isn't an issue though and the 40-70 mph time will be proportional to the 0-62 anyway.
It’s probably the only place where I could legitimately argue that my car is safer than, say, my wife’s car
As you allude, a faster car should not be safer as you should never overtake in too small a gap. The faster car can be quicker because a smaller gap is now safe and there are more smaller gaps.
In terms of acceleration, in an EV it does tail off as you go faster unlike an ICE which builds as you go up through the rev range.
That said, a 6 or 7s 0-60 time is probably enough.
This is the question I'm trying to wrestle with. A sub 7s 0-60 time is plenty. That's hot hatch territory. Why would I possibly want more than that? Except I could have something that could do 0-60 in under 4s and how cool would that be 🙂
A 500 mile car is going to use 50% more valuable battery resources than is realistically needed, and for what? Hardly anyone is going to use it. You’re not going to drive 6-7hrs in one go.
This gets back to a point I was making earlier about not understanding the obsession with range. I still think what we need (and what will come) is better charger infrastructure rather than ever longer range. But, to be fair, a 500 mile WLTP range probably wouldn't be any more than 400 miles on the motorway (maybe less in winter) and you wouldn't want to drop below 10% or charge beyond 80% so you need to look at 70% of that, which is "only" 280 miles between refuelling stops. That is still a bit less than most petrol cars do on a tank of fuel. Given that you can fit a fuel tank of almost any size in an ICE car, there is presumably a reason why most ICE cars can go at least 300 miles between refuelling stops. I guess that marks the point at which "range" stops being an issue (i.e. you will almost always want to stop before your car says you have to) with the current infrastructure. So I guess it's not a bad benchmark for an EV.
A quick squirt of the accelerator is fun and helps get around traffic. I use it once or twice per commute I guess (yes, the ability to accelerate amazingly fast is turning me into a bit of a nob).
Really not noticed a significant impact on range as a result. Don't forget that the increased speed will get scrubbed off by regen braking, so used charge is recovered somewhat.
If you're that troubled by it, most electric cars have an Eco mode which limits the max acceleration (they also have a sporty mode which opens it up more).
I think you're overthinking all this. Buy a car, use it.
Having driven in the UK recently I can't get my head around people here seeing overtaking performance important. Most people were driving up to the limit and if anyone wasn't a queue soon formed so I'd have had to overtake dozens of cars to achieve anything other than change my place in the line.
Other people were sensibly not bothering to try to overtake, there were few gaps in oncoming traffic and if there was a gap the next on-coming car was often speeding.
High risk no reward. Pointless. Leave a good gap, relax and enjoy whatever you have on the audio.
A proper 500mile range EV at a sensible price point will be a game changer.
Absolute bobbins. Mine does 280miles to a charge. No way am I driving that far without a break, and if I'm having a break I might as well charge, and I've never had an issue charging.
Buy the car. Use it.
A quick squirt of the accelerator is fun and helps get around traffic. I use it once or twice per commute I guess (yes, the ability to accelerate amazingly fast is turning me into a bit of a nob).
That's the problem. I don't think I need any help in that department 🙂
I think you’re overthinking all this.
Oh, that's a given. Overthinking is what I do best.
The thing is that there is this (hypothetical) sensible option I could (and should) go for. But then there is this bonkers option that I could (but shouldn't) go for too. The bonkers option makes no sense except to my inner child. But then my inner child isn't suddenly going to shut up just because I went with the sensible option. Maybe I should just save the money I was thinking of spending on an EV and spend it on therapy instead 🙂
Having driven in the UK recently I can’t get my head around people here seeing overtaking performance important. Most people were driving up to the limit and if anyone wasn’t a queue soon formed so I’d have had to overtake dozens of cars to achieve anything other than change my place in the line.
It all depends on where you are. In many places, yes you're absolutely right. But in say, Mid Wales - take the A470 as an example - it's generally pretty quiet, but you do get held up by single 40-50mph vehicles quite often. So the ability to get past them easily and get on with your journey really does help, even if you are sticking to the limits yourself.
The i4 40 does a claimed 5.7 to 60 and is plenty quick - faster than could ever be needed. It drives like a car that's quite a bit quicker as the power delivery is instant - no waiting for turbos to spool up, change down a gear or two or the revs to build.
A real world range of 300 miles is absolutely enough. There is no way I could ever drive it from full to empty without at least a couple of stops. 300 miles is 5 hrs driving at an average 60MPH - you can't do average of 60MPH in the UK for that long unless you're purely on motorways and it's very quiet. In the real world it's more like 7 hrs to drain the battery. What the longer range DOES do is give more flexibility to charging stops, so you can cherry pick the lowest cost or most convenient or the one without any queues etc. Or - more commonly for me - be able to do fairly long round trips without charging at all (or at least very little) which keeps the cost down.
It seems strange to live in a world where I could buy a car that goes from 0-60mph in under 4s. That is the super-car performance that my adolescent self dreamt of and since I never actually grew up it is very hard to resist.
And then you get into BEV supercar territory where 0-60 is a chunk under 3 seconds and then they keep on accelerating at the same rate. 0-200 kph in ~10 seconds is organ re-arrangingly quick and i would doubt whether even 1% of the customers buying these cars (even the sub 5 second ones!) are in any way capable of dealing with that sort of acceleration if they get even the slightest bit outside the envelope where traction control helps. (or when they turn it off.)
It’s a bizarre trend started by Tesla as a way to convince petrolheads that electricity is ‘better’
Pretty much this, if you want a big battery that charges fast, and motors/invertor/battery that are efficient and allow you to regenerate even the smallest amount of energy, speccing the powerpack up to accelerate like a race car is just a matter of going from 16 mm cable to 20mm and changing a few of parameters in the system. Then managing the heat. The rest of the hardware is already there and capable.
He’s just such a high profile bellend despite heading up some incredible people doing spectacular things.
He mostly gets in the way, shouts at people and sacks them if they disagree with him or if they refuse to sign off on something that he thinks is good enough. There are some issues at Tesla which the authorities are picking at now. God knows how many court cases his legal team are fighting at the moment. Certainly into 4 digits.
The A470, the most dangerous road in Wales, and still up there even if you take into account the length.
I worked for Welsh Water based in Aberaeron for 5 years driving 20 000 miles or more sampling, investgaing, site visiting so I'm familiar with those roads which despite low traffic levels have a lot of crashes, often misjudged overtakes.
My landlord's son, a farmer, had an overtaking accident - a tractor pulled out only looking the way he was expecting cars to come from. He lived. Decades later I was reading the Welsh press online and realised the person killed in a similar collision was the landlord's grandaughter. 🙁
A car that accelerates well gives drivers the feeling the can make safe overtakes with shorter gaps. The reality is that when you overtake another vehicle doing 50 you're on the wrong side of the road well over the speed limit and someone doing the same as you might be coming the other way.
The reality is that when you overtake another vehicle doing 50 you’re on the wrong side of the road well over the speed limit and someone doing the same as you might be coming the other way.
Yep, all part of how to drive in the countryside. But the point stands - UK roads are not all as you describe.
I can't find a reference to the A470 being the most dangerous road though. I have regularly driven some awful dangerous roads and I can't say I've ever felt the A470 was dangerous. Windy roads between population centres or linking up bits of motorway tend to be the worst - the A417 between Ledbury and Gloucester was utterly terrifying on a daily basis when I drove it 20 years ago.
sounds like surfmat has been resurrected and has now got an EV...... 🙂
While I'm trying to get my head around what features of an EV actually matter to me, I thought I'd look at home chargers. No point getting an EV if I can't charge at home really.
I'm with OVO energy (Scotland) and they seem to have an OK looking EV tariff. They can also apparently install a charger for me. Makes sense; they deliver the electrons to my house so they might as well take care of diverting them to the car.
So, step 1; choose a charger. What? How? Is there any difference? Well, the options are:
Ohme ePod £914
Indra Smart PRO £914
Ohme Home Pro £964
Hypervolt Home 3 Pro £1,064
All prices include installation but assume it will be a simple one.
So, any reason to pick (or avoid) one over the other?
I went for the Ohme home pro over the Ohme pod as I wanted a tethered cable. I didn’t want to be going into my boot every night getting the cable out and then packing it away again every morning (probably in the rain). Doesn’t look as neat when it’s not in use (with the cable hanging next to it) as an untethered box on the wall but that was not an issue for me. Personal choice really. No idea about the others mentioned.
Thanks @andy4d That was the one I was leaning towards anyway to be honest. We're not exactly house proud and it wont be the scruffiest looking thing on our driveway anyway.
I went ohme home pro too - the ohme chargers seem to have the widest compatibility with the various electric company smart tariffs, so if we ever need to move away from octopus ,in theory it gives the most choice of who else we can use.
I went with the home pro as opposed to the epod because I didnt want to be getting a cable in and out of the boot all the time (like andy4d).
Its been fine - the app is not the most intuitive, but its always worked without fail.
@roverpig , just to flag something that may be relevant. I have an Ohme pro, but it is set up completely 'dumb', I've signed out of it and deleted my account (on instruction from both Ohme and Octopus), charging is completely managed by Octopus and car. So really, as long as charger is reliable, in our case it really doesn't matter.
One positive note for Ohme, it was only giving us 3.5kw after installation, our fitter said to call them direct as loads of his installs had a firmware update requirement. Called Ohme, talked to someone quickly, and within an hour they'd done an over the air update to the unit and we were back up to 7kw.
So, maybe it does matter a wee bit which model/company you go with, and I'd give a thumbs up to Ohme.
Thanks all. Sounds as though Ohme is safe enough.
I was a bit surprised (and bewildered) to be given a choice of four. OK I can see (now) that there is a tethered vs untethered question and maybe some do look prettier than others but they didn't give me a choice when they fitted the smart meter and the sparky didn't ask what fuse box (or whatever they are called these days) we wanted when we had the extension done. They just fitted something that did the job.
To get the cheapest rates (on Octopus, at least) they need to be able to control when the car charges. So either they need to talk to the car directly, or the charger, to tell it when to start and stop and read how much charge it has. Octopus's system talks directly to a handful of cars but they also talk to Ohme; and Ohme support loads of cars.
If using Ohme, you have to remove any sort of charge timers etc from your car so it will accept whatever it's given by the charger's schedule. In my case, this means the car is expecting a full charge at all times, but it's not always getting it - so it generates alerts from the app saying 'oh no, charging has stopped' etc. So you turn these off in the car/app and only get alerts from the charger.
So, I think I've now almost completed my EV "thought experiment". With much help from you all (thanks) I've worked out a shortlist of EVs that would fit the bill and even the charger/tariff that I'd need. But I'm now back to that old chestnut of does an EV actually make sense for me at all?
I recently had a play in a (pure) petrol Suzuki Swift Sport. Now, full disclosure, I'm a big Suzuki fan. My S-cross is ugly as sin but I bought it new and in 140,000 miles it hasn't given me a moment of trouble. The (pre-hybrid) Sport is basically the same 1.4l turbo engine, which is surprisingly nippy, stuck in the Swift, which I think is the perfect size car now the kids have grown up.
It was a reminder of just how much fun a moderately powerful, light (sub 1,000 kg) car can be. Nothing special on paper. Plenty of EVs will thrash the 8.1s 0-62 mph time. But chuck it into a corner, let it understeer, lift off and feel that switch to oversteer. Hilarious. It also has all the toys I want (CarPlay, adaptive cruise) but doesn't try to grab the steering wheel off you just because you get too close to the line (turn off the lane departure warning and it stays off next time).
More importantly, I could get a 2019 model with under 20k on the clock for around £13k. I can be pretty confident that it will be trouble free for the next six years and 120k. My local independent garage can service and repair it (if needed). No worries about driving it across the country if the mood takes me etc.
I know I'm not comparing like with like, but all the EVs I'm looking at are north of £20k and would have to be serviced (at least for now) at a main dealer. I don't know how reliable they would be over, say, six years and 120k and longer journeys would be more of a pain. Yes, assuming nothing goes wrong, running costs should be lower, but low enough to offset the purchase price?
Anyway, this probably isn't the place to talk about petrol hatches and the EV vs ICE debate has probably been done to death. But it helps me to put my thoughts down in writing, so thanks for bearing with me.
If using Ohme, you have to remove any sort of charge timers etc from your car so it will accept whatever it’s given by the charger’s schedule. In my case, this means the car is expecting a full charge at all times, but it’s not always getting it – so it generates alerts from the app saying ‘oh no, charging has stopped’ etc. So you turn these off in the car/app and only get alerts from the charger.
Presumably this is what @big_scot_nanny was talking about when they talked about making the Ohme into a dumb charger. I guess there is more to these chargers (and charging different cars) than I'd bargained for and there doesn't seem to be any consensus on what bit of kit (car or charger) should actually be in charge.
there doesn’t seem to be any consensus on what bit of kit (car or charger) should actually be in charge.
there is if you are using low price off peak charging such as Octopus. The Electricity supplier app (Octopus in this case) has to be in charge, regardless of what car/charger combo you have, they just need to be Octopus compatible, and lists of what is compatible are available at Octopus.
But you also need to be able to set the car up so that it can accept a charge at any time (without going to sleep or setting off alarms) right? Presumably the car has to control when the charging stops too as the supplier doesn't know when you've reached the desired percentage. Or does it?
Ah, clever. Thanks. I'm not actually on Octopus but presumably OVO can do something similar with their anytime EV tariff (which isn't anytime at all really of course).
Hmm, had a bit of a deeper look at the OVO anytime EV thing and am even more confused.
The car I was thinking about (Smart #1) isn't on their list of compatible EVs but if I tick the boxes to say it isn't on the list but I have an Ohme charger and my car can connect to the internet then it thinks I'll be fine. But just because a car can connect to the internet doesn't mean it can do whatever they want it to do does it? And if it can then why isn't it on the list of compatible EVs? Guess I'm going to need to have a chat with OVO, but they don't exactly make things easy for newbies do they. What if the phone signal for whatever network the car uses is a bit flaky, for example. Could end up spending a lot of money on an EV and then find you can't actually charge it at home, which changes everything. Or am I being too negative?
But you also need to be able to set the car up so that it can accept a charge at any time (without going to sleep or setting off alarms) right?
It just means cancelling any charge timers you might have. If you're not using a smart charger, you can get the car to be ready at a specific time in the morning; and there's also a setting to limit it to a given percentage. Just cancel these (or don't set them up) and you're good to go.
For smart charging tariffs the electricity provider needs to work with EITHER the car OR the charger. From their site, smart charging is supported by these brands:
I just went on Octopus site, I put in Smart #1 and Ohme Pod and it says you can get the 7p rate.
What if the phone signal for whatever network the car uses is a bit flaky, for example. Could end up spending a lot of money on an EV and then find you can’t actually charge it at home, which changes everything. Or am I being too negative?
Whoah - you will still be able to charge at home, of course - you just pay a slightly higher rate (9p I think) if it's not 'smart'. That's assuming you have a smart meter though. If not then you will have to pay the 23p I think.
OK, thanks. It sounds as though, one way or another, it would be possible to get something to work.
Most EV owners (at least on here) seem to be on Octopus and there must be a reason for that. So, if all else failed I guess I could just switch supplier. On the face of it the OVO anytime EV tariff looks like a decent solution. It seems to offer 7p/kwh any time you like. The "catch" being that you are only getting 7p/kwh for the EV charging not the whole house, but on the plus side is doesn't increase the peak rate either as it's just an add-on to your normal tariff for EV charging (as far as I can tell). The information on the web is a bit confusing though. In some places it clearly says that you either need a smart charger or a compatible EV (not both) but in other places it implies that you need the smart charger and a car that can connect to the internet while charging.
We're on EDF's Go Electric tariff. Bought a Tesla charger, had it configured to charge anything on the install. Have paired it to our car exclusively via the app and configured it to charge during the 9p/kw window between 1 and 6am. It was very simple to set up.
Running the dishwasher and washing machine overnight as well has resulted in the monthly bill including car charging being less than it was on the previous standard EDF tariff excluding the car.
Most EV owners (at least on here) seem to be on Octopus and there must be a reason for that
It's because Octopus are a great company after being with complete clowns for years.
You don't exactly get 7p any time you want. It's 7p when the car is charging IF you have scheduled a departure time; the departure can be any time. In practice you will set it to say 80% every day at 7am or whatever as a routine, so you don't have to program it in. If you want to leave at some other time, you schedule that time and it will do its best. So at 11am if I suddenly need to leave on a long trip at 1pm I can tell it that I want to leave at 1pm and it will do its best to fill me up, and will still charge me 7p. BUT if electricity is too expensive at that time it might refuse to do it, I guess. Any time your car is charging the whole house is 7p, leading to people scheduling their car to charge during the day and doing their baking or welding or whatever then. Octopus ask you not to do this, and I guess they would remove you from the tariff if they could prove you'd been taking the piss.
Additionally, everything is 7p between 11.30pm and 5.30am, and they suggest you schedule your washing machine, dishwasher or immersion heater during that time.
Is charger rage a thing ?
A few times when I've done long trips at busy times (e.g. Christmas) I've noticed that all the chargers are full (fair enough) but there didn't seem to be any queueing system with cars either sitting in random places or driving around, which seems like a recipe for conflict. So, is this something you've experienced?
I have got a quote for an electircian to install an Ohme Home Pro (it will be outside Ohme's limits for their online quote and I am not sure our meter is smart enough for them) and the quote is "not including load monitoring cable". From what I can glean from the Ohme site, a load monitoring cable would be a good thing and is necessary for charging at the full 7kW. Why would the quote not include this?