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The HSE spec has the air suspension
It varies with model year, some it was standard, some it was an option, but HSE does not mean it’s got airsus. Mine doesn’t.
I wouldn’t bet on Jaguar being around long enough to honour a 3 yr warranty
I suspect JLR are one of the less likely manufacturers to disappear in the UK in the next 3 years, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some other brands disappear at least from the UK market - there isn’t room for everyone plus the Chinese.
Disclaimer - I’ve been driving an iPace for the last 3 years and it’s been faultless so I haven’t had to test the warranty. The dealers are a mixed bag just like any other manufacturer but the car is brilliant..
It varies with model year, some it was standard, some it was an option, but HSE does not mean it’s got airsus. Mine doesn’t.
Only the launch edition and the 400 Sport have air suspension as standard. HSE is standard springs. Very few cars have it and you can tell those which do as the ride height actually looks correct on the Air suspension. Most (but by no means all) cars with 22s will have air as the ride would be quite rough otherwise.
Well as I have to buy two cars this year, I've pushed the button on car 1, the cheaper one!. A second hand Renault Megane E tech. It seemed the best option considering its replacing our 11 year old Leaf. They seem to be in the shadow of the 5 and the Scenic and so are an appealing price - plus few people seem to realise that for 6 months from June to Dec 22 they had a 5 year base car warranty before dropping to 3 years thereafter so ironically a 22 model (mine is registered in Dec 22) has a longer warranty than a 23 or even an early 24!
I like the idea they are light and not so obese as some small EVs can be plus I reckon with the biggest range of EVs of any manufacturer Renault have gone all in on EVs and so will be keeping apps and tech up to date.
Plus I like the looks - mine is a launch so it has the old skool gold renault sport highlights!
The only thing that bothers me is the stupid 20" rims but the one I test drove seemed ok even on those - anyway I'll pick up mine in a couple of weeks on my way back from holiday.
Hmmm but now for the bigger car replacement......
I went to the launch of the Megane at the local dealer. I asked the salesman if they'd be doing a more basic version with smaller narrower wheels preferably in steel that would take higher profile Winter tyres - no. Great car, shame about the Ninja wheels.
170k round trip to work for me. On average it costs me around AUD$2.00 a day which is nice. I think is you include running costs (only 2 x tyres per annum) that probably pushes it up to maybe $5. The biggest things I appreciate is 1) not having to stand in the heat/cold/rain and fill the thing up twice a week, 2)grovel around underneath it 4 times a year to service it in the heat/cold/rain, and lastly 3) nearly always the car is nice to get into regardless of the weather. Driving an ice car would bankrupt me with the k’s I do.
We were camping in the blazing heat over the weekend: I used the car to power a fridge for perfectly cold beer. Magic.
Well I've joined the ranks after getting a train down from Manchester to Gatwick at the weekend and in true YouTube fashion I appear to have bought the cheapest EV6 GT Line for sale in the UK.
23 plate with 85k and a battery report showing 96% SoH.
215 miles home and the battery went from 95% to 26%.... Meaning the mileage from last full charge would be over 310 miles.
Journey home was steady and got 4.1m/kWh.
Only problem so far is I can't get it to connect to the Kia Connect app. Deactivated and reactivated in car but app says network unstable. Reset the head unit but that didn't work. Disconnected the 12v for 30 mins and that made no difference so need a bit more googling before I phone Kia. I don't think the network is unstable as it's showing full bars and I've tried it in a few different locations.
Fingers crossed 🤞
Contisilent tyre repairs.
Has anyone had a Contisilent tyre professionally repaired ? I had a tyre breakdown repair bloke put a string / worm repair, but I am uncomfortable with that as a permanent repair.
Halfords said it was not repairable because of the foam band.
Question for the EV veterans....
The first couple of hundred miles of driving ours on local routes has been a bit of a revelation - in a good way. Turns out our local minor rural roads with their relatively gentle twists and turns are effectively one pedal driving (at non 'making progress' speeds - YMMV) with regen doing all the slowing needed on the vast majority of corners with just the mildest of additional braking on the odd one or two. Junctions, lights and traffic are hardly a thing. It's such relaxed driving. But......I think I probably use the actual brakes on the Niro EV about 1 or 2% of what I would do in an ICE. And even on an ICE, in the frozen north with the salt on the roads and tough conditions for a car, disc corrosion and seized callipers was/is a significant issue that I've spend a good chunk of money on in the last few years. I'd imagine it's going to be much worse on an EV. Do any of you do anything about it - like go out of your way to put in some hard braking from time to time, or get your brakes 'serviced' more regularly?
The foam tyres are repairable. They just need to cut a little circle out of the foam when they do a repair. Halfords may not be bothered to do that mind.
Show them this video:
But......I think I probably use the actual brakes on the Niro EV about 1 or 2% of what I would do in an ICE.
The brake pedal doesn't simply activate the friction brakes*. When you lift the accelerator or press the brake pedal, you're just telling the car you want to slow down at a certain rate. The car always uses regen unless you have requested more deceleration than it can provide, in which case it applies the friction brakes as well. The slower you are going, the less regen is available. So at very low speeds like manoeuvring or driving in a queue, you are probably using friction brakes all the time. You will probably be able to hear the discs scraping if you haven't driven for a few days and it's rained.
These cars are designed to be driven normally, by people who don't know or care about any of this stuff, so just do that. Most people's brakes last much longer than on ICEs and don't have issues. Mine are fine after 85k miles and we don't do anything special.
* unless you're in a BMW i3 I think?
Do any of you do anything about it - like go out of your way to put in some hard braking from time to time, or get your brakes 'serviced' more regularly?
I’m in the habit of turning the regen off completely for one leg of my commute maybe once a fortnight to give the friction brakes a bit of a polish up. It was recommended by Genesis when I had my GV60 and, I assume that Kia would recommend similar for my EV6.
Edit: According to the manual there is also an automatic brake disc cleaning mode which is operated by pressing the auto hold button for more than three seconds. Who knew?
Don't think I do anything differently really as I do still use the brakes - not as often as I did and possibly a bit harder than I did as I've grown used to the car doing some decent braking when the foot is lifted.
If salt corrosion is a concern, maybe give the wheels a wash/hose down once back home to rinse as much of the road crap off them as possible? That will work until it is cold enough to freeze I suspect.
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.
my previous i4 would often sit for 3 or 4 days in the damp, and brakes would be a bit noisy for first 5 mins, as they would in an ICE car, but sorted themselves out pretty rapidly.
Don’t know about corrosion but I wonder if that may be part of the thinking for my Born to have rear drums, or is it just cost saving or because the don’t need rear discs with the regen braking help? I was surprised that a pretty nippy car had drums. It was interesting to see my wife’s smaller/less powerful Inster had discs front and rear.
The brake pedal doesn't simply activate the friction brakes*
I did my commute in yesterday and literally my foot left the accelerator once in the 40mins (25miles of back A&B roads), and that was for about 3 seconds. The rest of the time just gently lifting to let the regen slow me as I approached the corner, squeeze a touch to reduce the braking effect as I enter the corner and then squeeze more for power on the apex. In fully geek mode I watched the regen gauge and it never reached max regen with my foot lifted so I'm guessing zero friction disc was used (apart from those 3 seconds).
So at very low speeds like manoeuvring or driving in a queue, you are probably using friction brakes all the time.
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.....
No, brakes look fine at 5 years with hardly worn pads.
But where you live, would you expect disc pitting and seized callipers on ICE cars?
According to the manual there is also an automatic brake disc cleaning mode which is operated by pressing the auto hold button for more than three seconds. Who knew?
Interesting. Will investigate for the Niro - suspect not as it does seem a generation behind the EV6/3/4 etc on this sort of thing...edit....3 second google - it does! happy days. That might resolve that then. Thanks. Reading the manual - an underrated pastime!
Salty roads up to the ski resort each Winter. The corrosion on the unswept part of the disc is comparable to ICE cars of the same age here. The car gets a couple of km of town drivng each time its used and the low speed use of friction brakes seems enough to keep them clean and working freely. France is the land of the STOP sign which must help.
Pretty sure I watched a carwow YouTube video recently where a manufacturer had done just that. Fitted drums instead of discs as cost saving for user as discs were corroding rather than wearing out.
edit...it was his ID.4 review.
A quick google suggests loads of articles re EV's saving the drum brake!
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