The Electric Car Thread

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

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?

@timmys – that’s exactly what I was hoping for – thanks

@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.

I guess the challenge is figuring out how to do this.

I press the button marked N…

Corsa e recommends towing with the front wheels up on a tow truck. If it was broke rather than stuck.

I’m almost certain the manual did mention neutral for very short distances of needed.

Stuff like anti rollback probably makes dragging the car backwards whilst not in reverse and not pressing the accelerator more complicated? The car will probably lock the rear wheels if it thinks it is rolling backwards?

If I was going to a fields often to park my car I’d invest in some skid plates too slide under the wheels. 🤔

So I’ve read the manual for my car.  It does say not to tow it with the front wheels on the ground – but it then goes on to say this:

If towing service is not available in an emergency, your vehicle may be temporarily towed using a cable or chain secured to the emergency towing hook at the front (or rear) of the vehicle. Use extreme caution when towing the vehicle with a cable or chain. A driver must be in the vehicle to steer it and operate the brakes. Towing in this manner may be done only on hard-surfaced roads for a short distance and at low speeds.

Limit the vehicle speed to 15 km/h (10 mph) and drive less than 1.5 km (1 mile) when towing to avoid serious damage to the reduction gear.

Rory Reid recently drove a 430,000 mile Tesla Model, Y still on its original battery, until it ran out of juice. The car stopped about 10 feet from the charger. Fortunately a helpful Tesla driver showed him how to put the Model S into tow mode and they pushed it onto the charger.

I think the issue is as above with permanent magnet motors. It says in mine there is a fire risk if you tow it fast for a long time so it must be to do with eddy currents induced somewhere. If you don’t have a permanent magnet motor you wouldn’t have that issue.

I press the button marked N…

Oh…you know this … I know this….

But have you MET the general population?!

DrP

having the interior light on will cause a crash.

Nonsense, but if the Police see the light is on you WILL go to prison 😎

Just getting ready for my new EV which should arrive in the next month or so.  Currently have a Sync EV charger which ive had for about 4 years along with a plug in hybrid/diesel C Class.  Its worked well for me but going full electric next.

Preperation has included changing to British Gas EV tarrif (7.9p) between 12.00 & 5am.  I have also had an app update on the charger which has suddenly added scheduled charging.  Have tested it on my current car, setting it at 12.30-5am and i am able to plug in when i get home from work, plug it in and when i get to it the next morning its ready to roll.  I can also set a maximum charge if i desire.  I quite like the fact i dont have to rely on the car for charge settings for doing all this as Mercedes have a habit of dropping app functionality and making them chargeable.  I will probably average about 10kw per day in useage so this shortish charging gap will suit me fine.  Work has 50kw chargers they are allowing us to use for 22ppkw for when we need it.

Not that its relevant but we have also got the washing machine instructions out and discovered it can be put on a timer delay of 1hr blocks so setting it to go at 9pm with 4hr delay is working out well.  Dishwasher is doing the same.

Plan to purchase a smart plug for the heated airer for the winter too.

Anything to save a few quid.

It saves quite a lot.  I also added a timer to our immersion heater to use 7.5p/kWh electricity instead of gas.  Of course gas is about 8p per kWh but at the temps needed to heat the water the boiler is only about 90% efficient because it can’t condense; then there are significant losses in the pipework.  Also makes the house cooler in summer without hot pipework.