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I expect away from home charging to be about the same (if not a little more) than petrol/diesel but for most people thats far eclipsed by the convenience of charging from home. cost next to nothing and I'm always fully charged. havent visited a petrol station in 18months and havent missed it one bit.
Despite the cost of this trip we're still thousands better off.
Just taken the plunge and ordered a Tesla Y though the company lease scheme. My 165k mile Passat was becoming a little unreliable with a couple of breakdowns recently, so seemed like a good time to look at replacing. Hopefully the transition to a smaller boot and EV will be relatively painless, and more than offset by having a much more expensive and brand new vehicle...
This seems to me to be why EV are not yet ready for prime time. Compare – “needed fuel so stopped at any one of a zillion petrol stations, and filled up in 10 minutes”. I’d love to be wrong but it just looks like a massive pain.
It's odd this argument keeps being made. Define "prime time"? If you're regularly doing long journeys and either don't have the time for charging enroute or there's a lack of chargers (either enroute or at the destination) then yes an EV probably doesn't make sense. Personally though I don't think that use case is "prime time" if you mean by that it would impact a majority of people.
I've used a fast charger 3 times with my EV, all before my home charger was installed. But then my daily commute is 10 miles and the longest trip I've done is 150 miles (which was round trip so didn't need to charge until I was home). I'm probably below average in terms of average trip distance but there's a huge amount of people in between the extremes for who an EV would still make sense
Agree for most the common argument of either inconvenience or cost is moot. We have charged away from home once in 6 months between two cars, and that is only because my partner didn’t fancy using my car which has a longer range.
Daily charging costs about 2.4p per mile. If a couple of times per year it costs the same as fuel then that doesn’t matter one bit.
Infrastructure and reliability of paid for chargers does obviously need to improve a lot though. Plus would be a whole lot simpler if they just all worked with credit cards.
public charge points - idiots guide please !
My EV is due for delivery in a couple of months (BMW i4 though work lease) and we already have the Eesee home charger installed. I will need to do some away from home charging on occasion, rapid and otherwise I suspect.
So what do I need to know, I naively expect to plug in, swipe my credit card and it'll all work !
@Alex no complaints with ours after a few weeks. Very easy to drive and everything seems to work. Wife thinks it's ace, she does quite a lot of A and B road miles and it just cruises along but has the accelration of a ICE hot hatch so makes short work of overtaking.
Home charging no bother at all on intelligent octopus. Takes 20seconds to plug in charger every 3 days. Sorts itself out overnight automatically. We always used to have to go out of our way to get petrol so it's a genuine time saver.
@Iainc
Do BMW do a subscription? I'm on an Audi sub at the moment which gives me Ionity at 30p per kwh
Infrastructure is improving all the time, but it can be expensive - PodPoint at £1 per kwh near me, very busy or broken.
1. Get a decent charger map such as ZapMap or A Better Route planner
2. Have a plan a, plan b and plan c for charging when on a long journey
3. Sign up for all the apps some don't let you just swipe a card.
If you haven't done so already, consider an ev charge tariff for your home such as Octopus Go or Intelligent of your car/charge supports it.
Oldtennisshoes has pretty much covered it. It’s really not a hassle at all, less so with the range they get now. Rock up to your charger plug it in, tap your card or phone then enjoy a bit break.
Mine will be low on charge when I head to work tonight, I’m not working local tonight, so I’ll stick on the charger around the corner when I get there. It’s a slow charger but as I’m working it doesn’t matter. I’ll take it off the charger when I have a break. No need to stop at a garage on the way home sniffing stinking fumes as I top it up and then stand in a queue waiting to pay.
don't want to start an other electric car thread.
but has anyone converted an ICE car to electric ? It's something I've been eyeing up for a while now. I know it's not the most cost effective option, would be good to hear from anyone else that has looked into ti / or actually done it!
public charge points – idiots guide please !
The only ones I've used had a card reader on them and didn't require registering (I did also create and add some credit to a BP Pulse account as I noticed they have chargers on a route I might need to use in future, not entirely sure if I needed to do that though).
As for using the charger - one thing that caught me out was the spring-loaded effect due to the thick cable (on a 150kW charger), the charger connector pinged out of my hand and hit the floor as I casually grabbed it as I would a petrol pump nozzle. No harm done, I just looked a tit, and you don't need any sort of strength to use it just more be prepared for it.
Also the second time I used one it took 3 or 4 goes (disconnecting the charger between attempts) before it actually started, not sure how common that is (I've only used one 3 times in total, it's not happened on my home charger though). So don't assume you're doing it wrong if it fails to start charging.
And one small tip, if you're fast charging remember it gradually slows down the charge rate over about 60% battery level (at least it does on my Polestar 2) so unless you have a lot of time to wait around or you really have to get it to a near full charge I'd stop around 75%.
Also the second time I used one it took 3 or 4 goes (disconnecting the charger between attempts) before it actually started, not sure how common that is (I’ve only used one 3 times in total, it’s not happened on my home charger though). So don’t assume you’re doing it wrong if it fails to start charging.
Weight thing again. Hold it into place until you hear it lock, sometimes if you don’t the pins may not align.
And one small tip, if you’re fast charging remember it gradually slows down the charge rate over about 60% battery level (at least it does on my Polestar 2) so unless you have a lot of time to wait around or you really have to get it to a near full charge I’d stop around 75%.
Yeah it’s a thing for most but not as low as 60% on my e-Troon.
great info, cheers all, I had a look online, the BMW EV app can be downloaded once I get the car and it has some good looking stuff re charger access and locations too. Reviews seem to indicate it should do 300 miles relatively easily (vs quoted 365) so I won't need to charge away from home that frequently
but has anyone converted an ICE car to electric ? It’s something I’ve been eyeing up for a while now. I know it’s not the most cost effective option, would be good to hear from anyone else that has looked into ti / or actually done it!
Loads of people, you can even buy kits now. There's a guy i work with who converted a BL mini in his garage, that's probably 10-12 years old now and still a daily driver, it's probably on it's 15th iteration by now.
His day job is developing PHEV/HEV and BEV platforms.
Yeah it’s a thing for most but not as low as 60% on my e-Troon.
Depends on the battery strategy and design, you can charge harder for longer, but you then either start to degrade the battery, or increase energy usage/wastage to cool it harder. Lots of other factors at play too (ambient temp and starting temp etc)
My summary of away-from-home charging:
- There's slow, fast, and rapid chargers. Slow means 13A plug i.e. 3kW; fast means 7kW AC like the one you have at home (or 22kW but I'm not sure how many cars can do this); and rapid means 50kW DC or more. My car allows you to search for AC or DC, but it's DC you want unless you're parking up all day or in a real bind.
- There are lots of charging companies. Most are really expensive if you just rock up - 79p/kWh or so - but most exist on one of the many many partnership schemes and subscription tariffs to make them cheaper. For example, we charged at Instavolt the other day and paid 79p/kWh through the Hyundai charging app (different to the one that manages your car!) because we don't pay them a monthly fee. You can halve that if you pay monthly.
- Gridserve seem to still be 45p/kWh so if that suits your needs go there.
- Many schemes or car apps I think let you either scan your phone or a card at the charger or activate it directly through the app. Charge My Hyundai app lets you activate a charger remotely even if you aren't there, which was very handy on Saturday as after I failed to get a charge at Rhug Farm I was able to verify that the one at Chirk was working before I went there.
- Some charging companies also have an app/scheme that you can subscribe to directly but of course only work with that specific company - Ionity and Instavolt and probably others. You can also pay them for a subscription but this is probably not ideal as you're then tied to that brand. Guessing you're better off going through BMW.
- It's true you get nowhere near the 'max' charging speed but you may get close depending on how full the battery is and how warm it is. This fantastic page from Fastned shows charging curves for loads of cars. This is your car: 
Well my plug-in hybrid Octavia is probably still another year away at least, so over 18 months in total, so thinking of cancelling and just sticking with petrol again. I'll likely have to take a cancelled order at this point, if I can find something. EV/plug-in will have to wait another 4/5 years I think.
molgrips - very useful, thanks
Oldtennisshoes has pretty much covered it. It’s really not a hassle at all, less so with the range they get now. Rock up to your charger plug it in, tap your card or phone then enjoy a bit break.
Not to flog a dead horse, but molgrips trip report above shows that this is not universally the case. I\m not an EV-sceptic, far from it - last year I met up in Italy with a friend who'd driven his Tesla down from Denmark, and in the course of a week he waxed lyrical about the car (like Tesla drivers do) and had me convinced. But then when I got home I first of all saw the price of a Tesla, and then saw the infrastructure for non-Tesla cars, and noted how many of the charging points I saw in passing were occupied, and how many drivers reported broken points. I'm sure an EV would be fine for 90% of my journeys, but what about the other 10%? Do I need to rent a car? have am ICE car in reserve? I'm ready to buy an EV when the time is right, and assuming that anyone actually has one to sell me, but it doesn't feel like that time has arrived yet.
Well, this thing happened to me but I'm still happy to do it again. The problem was with me taking the route that I knew had hardly any chargers. If I'd gone the other way there'd have been zero issues as, like with an ICE car I'd not have pushed it that far. I'd have stopped more frequently to make sure I had loads of charge at any point.
The only real issue is time. I wasn't in a rush, because it's May and there's plenty of light. A nominal 8 hours of actual driving took about 10.5hrs including all faffing, however at least 45 mins of that was spent eating which I'd have done anyway, and there were piss stops. So the EV side probably cost me 1h45 over an ICE, of which about 20 mins was probably farting about on the phone with Instavolt.
Last year's trip to Scotland was different though. I wanted to get to the event to register on Friday afternoon before 5.30pm, which needed an early start as it was. If I'd had to charge it would not been possible. But, I could easily have registered the morning of the event anyway it was just my preference to register the previous day. So even then, if I'd gone EV it would not have been a deal breaker. The only real issue was that there ended up being three of us and that needed a bike rack. That would have mullered the range.
But then again, my car is a cheap short range one, it's only got 183 miles. With a 300 mile range there'd have been zero issue on Saturday. I only drove 330 miles all day, so I'd have only needed one stop anywhere on the trip which would have been a cinch. Just don't leave it til you're on empty to top up.
but has anyone converted an ICE car to electric ? It’s something I’ve been eyeing up for a while now. I know it’s not the most cost effective option, would be good to hear from anyone else that has looked into ti / or actually done it!
Have a look at the fully charged youtube channel... there's a company that offer a kit for an OLD mini - £40k!!!
I much perfer the 'in your garage' approach of guys like "ageing wheels" etc...
I would love to buy a second leaf for about £12k and get the motor, batteries, and electronics from that, and put it into something else...
I can't understand why the bare EV kits are so expensive!
Anyway... i'm a few months into my EV ownership and covered about 2500 miles... It's a 40kWh Leaf..
It suits me perfectly for my 13 ish mile commute, and for round town trips...
I've a charger installed at work (nhaven't got one at home) so just top up at work a few times a week.
Did a longer trip to the new forest on Friday eve... arrived there with only 14% on the battery. Just dangled a (decent) extension cable through the window of the Air BnB and recharged the car overnight... fully charged by 7am the next day. Perfect!
You DO have to get used to the shorter range compared to an ICE (my octavia will cover 550 miles on a tank), but... topping up when you can is great.
DrP
PS - I've now fitted the coilovers so it's 30mm lower all round, upgraded the speakers, and fitted a small Focal 4.320 amp behind the dash!!!
But then again, my car is a cheap short range one, it’s only got 183 miles. With a 300 mile range there’d have been zero issue
I think this is a huge thing for many unaware buyers, obviously not stw regulars 🙂
I posted the other week about my neighbour who took delivery of her new Peugeot and was/is horrified that she needs to charge it every other day, doing about 50 - 60 miles a day. The car has a range of about 150 miles, she had no idea that some do that and some do double. I don't think she is that different from many who buy EV's - they go on spec, price, colour as many people are conditioned by ICE use since they started driving where range just isn't really a thing, and mpg not often top of the list when making a purchase choice
I have a friend that is doing an ICE to EV conversion. He's using a small vehicle (Smart Roadster), but it was cheaper for him to buy another one as a donor vehicle than to get things swapped onto his daily driver. He also said that people like doing conversions on the older models because it makes the job of installation so much easier. You don't have to worry about CANBUS or ECU so much and can just install things.
He was not mentioning names, but did mention he approached a couple of well known conversion companies, but they were not interested and seemed more keen on instagram likes for the classic conversions than doing more modern cars. I asked one place about converting a VW T3, and they basically told me it would be too expensive.
I posted the other week about my neighbour who took delivery of her new Peugeot and was/is horrified that she needs to charge it every other day, doing about 50 – 60 miles a day. The car has a range of about 150 miles, she had no idea that some do that and some do double.
The snag is that the recommended usable range of the battery is not 0 - 100% to preserve long term battery health, on our MG4 it's 20-80%. So car has 280miles claimed range but in practice it's ~150miles between charges for day to day use.
We chose the long range model basically so it would do 3 days between charges for daily commuting use.
The snag is that the recommended usable range of the battery is not 0 – 100% to preserve long term battery health, on our MG4 it’s 20-80%.
fair point, however given that the majority of EVs will be on 3 or 4 year PCP or lease deals I can't imagine many will take that approach - I certainly won't, on a 4 year fully inclusive lease through work salary sacrifice scheme. If the battery fails after I give it back, not my problem.
My battery gets cha4ged to 100% whenever I need it. The car can handle battery management and 100% isn’t 100% of actual battery capacity anyway.
Will you be using it in 15 years time? No, dont worry about it.
I rarely charge away from home, but if I do then I have a few cards/Apps to cover my needs.
1. ChargemyHyundai app/RFID card. Covers most networks.
2. Shell Recharge app/RFID card. Likewise, covers most networks.
3. Ionity App. - doesn’t accept debit cards.
4. Tesla App
5. Instavolt App. They are very reliable, and often at Macdonalds.
I’ve given up on BP Pulse - they are useless & unreliable.
I’m investigating for my Alps trip if I need anything else….
The snag is that the recommended usable range of the battery is not 0 – 100% to preserve long term battery health, on our MG4 it’s 20-80%
Is that what the manual actually says?
It's intrinsic to most batteries - they don't like being fully charged or discharged, but decent manufacturers (like Hyundai for one AFAIK, but there are others) don't actually let you do this. When it says 100% it's not actually at 100%. This means that the battery will last longer but your advertised range is shorter. I think it's rather unscrupulous of manufacturers like Tesla to crow about their range but if you use it regularly you are shortening the life of the battery.
The MG4 normal lists a nominal capacity of 51kWh and a usable amount of 50.8, which seems rather close. The long range one lists 64 and 61.7 so in that one they are holding some back. I wonder why it's not the same the different versions?
fair point, however given that the majority of EVs will be on 3 or 4 year PCP or lease deals I can’t imagine many will take that approach – I certainly won’t, on a 4 year fully inclusive lease through work salary sacrifice scheme. If the battery fails after I give it back, not my problem.
The app I use with the Audi nags me if I have charge set to 100% Audi know how I am using and charging the car.
I wouldn't be surprised to see terms/constraints in some PCP / lease deals to prevent users continually charging and discharging beyond what is considered reasonable.
All electric cars are the same as far as recommending avoiding full battery charging on a daily basis, but again this is a non issue - day to day you don’t need 100% charge. Tesla recommend up to 90% for daily charging and then full charging for long journeys so this works perfectly fine unless you plan on driving 300 miles every day.
Hyundai recommend 80% for daily charging so lower than the Tesla, not sure what you’re on about saying they are any different?? All electric cars have a usable capacity a few kWh less than the full battery capacity.
I had read calculations that Hyundai's actual battery capacity was greater than was published and people had to deduce what it really was. I had also read that that was not the case with Tesla. Of course, I've only got what I read to go on and being me I cannot remember the details of how it was calculated or where I read it.
There's clearly something up with the calculations on screen. When I had 10% remaining it gave me 24 miles range, but it clearly won't do 240 miles on a charge. Then when it dropped to 6% the remaining range number disappeared when which was kind of disconcerting. Immediately before that it had been about 16 miles.
day to day you don’t need 100% charge. Tesla recommend up to 90% for daily charging and then full charging for long journeys so this works perfectly fine unless you plan on driving 300 miles every day.
but surely if you are home charging, esp at night if on an EV tariff, the charger switches off when the battery is 100% full and you are sound asleep ? Or does the tech let you set it to stop charging at 90% full ?
Yes just set the Tesla to maximum allowed charge it won’t let it go above that. Although the Zoe doesn’t have that feature so if necessary just have to adjust how many hours of charge to put in if it would go over 90% or whatever level you decide.
but surely if you are home charging, esp at night if on an EV tariff, the charger switches off when the battery is 100% full and you are sound asleep ? Or does the tech let you set it to stop charging at 90% full ?
You can set my car to stop at any given percentage, and give different numbers for both AC and DC which usually corresponds to at home or away from home. My charger can also stop at a given charge according to a schedule - we currently have it at 80% during the week but it goes up to 100% at weekends just in case we want to do a spontaneous trip.
If the battery fails after I give it back, not my problem.
There are industry moves to add "battery health" as one of the criteria for hand back, such as mileage is today.
When it says 100% it’s not actually at 100%. This means that the battery will last longer but your advertised range is shorter.
It's not that much difference, if you can connect to the car in the right place you can work out what the actual 0-100% (battery) is compared to the 0-100% shown in the DIM. Most manufacturers it's only ~3% at the top end and up to about 5% at the bottom end (the bottom end number is pretty much meaningless though, because you can keep on discharging WAY beyond whatever 0% the manufacturer has decided on.)
I think it’s rather unscrupulous of manufacturers like Tesla to crow about their range but if you use it regularly you are shortening the life of the battery.
I'm saying nothing.
The MG4 normal lists a nominal capacity of 51kWh and a usable amount of 50.8, which seems rather close. The long range one lists 64 and 61.7 so in that one they are holding some back. I wonder why it’s not the same the different versions?
This is because they use different chemistry batteries from memory - I think the normal uses an LFP, so is better at handling full discharge cycles (ohh err). It also has no cobalt.
Someone might need to fact check me. Have a watch of the Bjorn video of him driving his mum around Thailand(?) in one. He talks about the battery differences.
I’ve only ever had one issue that caused a slight issue. The chargers at York by the old wall encroach into the parking bay. It meant I couldn’t use it as the read of the car stuck too far out. Tesla now allow use of their chargers to none Tesla owners.
I get max 185 in good conditions the worst I’ve had is 125. The regen though means I’ve travelled over 200 miles before.
Audi have a built in buffer, the battery never reaches actual zero or 100%.
The charge ports on the e-tron are in a stupid place imho; too far from the end of the car. One of the few things I don’t like about it. It’s only really been an issue with the Tesla chargers I’ve used a couple of times though.
Yeah, I think it’s the massive bonnet. I’ve never used a Tesla charger but if they have short cables then it may be an issue.
What pigyn alludes to is correct. It depends on the type of battery you have as to whether it likes to be charged to 100% all the time or 80%. The newer LFP lithium iron phosphate batteries will take much more abuse and like to be charged to 100%. Battery tech is moving at such a pace that I wouldn't read as gospel what some people above are saying about it's got to be charged to this or that. What you buy in 6-8-12-24 months time might be completely different dependent on the battery therein. Certainly Chinese cars appear to be much more LFP batteries now, even the Chinese production Tesla M3 SR+ or whatever its now called (and probably Y) come with a LFP battery. USA production ones are still lithium-ion I think. Chinese battery giant CATL reportedly plans to begin mass-producing sodium-ion batteries in 2023, altho not clear yet whether the chemistry is suitable for cars. Also lithium-air, solid state blah blah loads of possibilities in the pipeline, the race is now on.
The MG4 normal lists a nominal capacity of 51kWh and a usable amount of 50.8, which seems rather close. The long range one lists 64 and 61.7 so in that one they are holding some back. I wonder why it’s not the same the different versions?
The 80/20 thing is on the in-car display of our long range MG4, manual doesn't have it. It's called battery health range or some such thing. Ours is a work lease car so could just ignore it but I've set the charge schedule up to do 80 every morning mon - fri so no bother to follow and has plenty range for me.
Ian - our charger phone app lets you set different charge schedules on your phone. I have a daily commute one (80% overnight using cheap rate only) and a weekend one (100% overnight using cheap rate only). It's as simple as just toggling the one you want. It's been a bit of a mindset shift from an ICE but no bother at all. I'm not a great lover of tech and found it easy to get it all working.
New car has arrived at dealers three weeks earlier than expected. Wall box goes in on the 13th....... of June.
Going to be an interesting month. Phoned installers who could offer me a cancellation spot on Friday, but my colleague is off on holiday and no way can I blag the day off. Next few weeks are mainly work commutes, so 30 mile round trip 4 days a week, but off to Fort William in a few weekends time and that's 260 mile round trip before adding the running around once I'm there. Staying in Roy Bridge where there's a 50kw charger across the road from my hotel, but hoped to have a better handle on the EV life before. After that I've only short time before holiday then instal after that. Equal parts excited and nervous about EV life.
@tjagain and others have often wondered why EVs aren't being made super small and efficient as city runabouts. Well, they are:
https://www.greencarguide.co.uk/car-reviews-and-road-tests/carver-review/
I must say this looks pretty good as effectively an enclosed motorbike. By my calculations it looks like costing about 0.9p/mile which equates to about 900mpg in cost terms, at current prices.
My - that looks safe…
(not)
Is it any worse than a moped or motorbike? Serious question, I can't decide if it is or not.