The Electric Car Thread

I love one pedal driving (both teh LEAF and polestar have it)..you get really good at slowing down to a stop RIIIGHT on teh line after a while…feels smooth and natural.

barely touch the brake pedal now!

DrP

I have no idea if this is normal, but my electric car has ‘flappy paddles’ so I can control the amount of regen braking – it goes from ICE-like coasting when you lift off the accelerator to *almost* one-pedal stopping on maximum regen. I have quickly got used to using it – it’s normally set at mid-range but I whack it up to max when going down hills. It’s fun.

It’s not as normal as it should be

I have no idea if this is normal, but my electric car has ‘flappy paddles’ so I can control the amount of regen braking

E-GMP cars all have this with settings from full coasting with no regen all the way to full one pedal driving.
If you hold down one of the paddles though it has an auto regen mode which constantly adjusts the level on the fly depending on where and how you’re driving.
It’s witchcraft.

Conversely, the VW ID4  I’m temporarily driving at the moment has only two regen settings – Some (D) and some more (B)

No 1-pedal driving at all. Seems a bit antiquated by comparison.

most cars have a ‘level’ of regen, from nil, to some, to most…
Flappy paddles is cool though!

I’ve just seen on teh Polestar FB group that a few people have utilised the ‘homelink” buttons in teh earlier generation P2s – basically 3 buttons on teh underside of the rear view mirror that utilist ‘home link’ RF frequencies.
It’s meant for garage doors etc, but i’ve bought a bunch of 12v homelink switches from Aliexpress, and will connect them to all sorts of piontless goodies!!!

Musical airhorns…. remote controlled LED flood lighting…. Fast+Furious undercar lighting…

the possibility is endless!

DrP

My Q4 has the regen with flappy paddles, don’t really use it though. I set the drive mode to Comfort and B, this does regen at the max setting.

Having issues with my Ohme app though. Every night this week I’ve had a message to say that there was an error with charging, charges to about 78% each time (set to 80%). But I also ask it to pre-heat the car and windows for 20 minutes. It doesn’t seem to do this. Also had one night where it wouldn’t read the car’s battery at all – I had to remove the car and then add it. Don’t suppose anyone has had similar with the cabin pre-heating?

I only like one-pedal driving in slow traffic. I don’t like it in open driving because I can’t lift my foot off the pedal ever.

Is there anyway of telling how good the regeneration is on the Polestar or any vehicle?

molgripsFree Member
I only like one-pedal driving in slow traffic. I don’t like it in open driving because I can’t lift my foot off the pedal ever.

this, on my i4.  I love the one pedal (B) mode when driving in town and in slow or stop start traffic.  Once out of the 20 or 30 zones and more open road I use D mode and adaptive regeneration, so it uses the on board cameras and the nav gps to read the road, the traffic and the speed limit signs.  It is pretty clever, will slow down for junctions, slip roads, roundabouts, slow traffic and speed limit reductions without much, if any, need to touch the brake pedal, but will coast freely with foot off the accelerator when on the open road.

Yes, one pedal is good in traffic, but I don’t like it anywhere else.

The auto mode is decent though, where it uses the radar plus sat nav info to vary the regen upon lift of the accelerator according to conditions, so it will vary from coasting with no regen at all, to full regen depending on what’s going on around it/the road ahead.

At the end of the day though, it doesn’t seem to make any difference to efficiency which regen mode you use, it’s just different preferences for how the car drives*

*assuming that pressing the brake pedal also uses regen ahead of friction brakes

Mine has the flappy paddles.  TBH i dont use them since a colleague mentioned he got way better range setting it to auto regen (Like mentioned earlier).  Before it was a case of it either slowing the car down way to much with regen and losing any momentum or not slowing it down enough and having to use the brakes all the time.

Now it uses the sat nav system, the front cameras etc and just seems to know whats going on.  As per my colleague said, it now seem to float along on the motorway using much more momentum and around town it seems to know exactly when to use more regen on some junctions but not others.   Its witchcraft.

Superscale 20 i suppose the floating graphic which states the level of regen on the dashboard is an indication.  Basically if its slowing me down hard or i am braking hard the level shoots up.  If im coasting it doesnt register, but imo on a 2t+ car momentum could be worth more than regen energy.

. I don’t like it in open driving because I can’t lift my foot off the pedal ever.

I’ve massively adapted my driving now (from how i drove in the Octavia)

It goes:

one pedal drive ALL the time, and adaptive cruise control 90% of the time..

I’ll use ACC as soon as i hit motorways, and use it a LOT around town – great for traffic and such.

I flick ACC on and off kinda like i changed gears in the Octavia!

And to change the setting of one pedal drive/regen in the polestar is done in the menu on the screen – you don’t do it on the ‘fly’ like some other cars.

DrP

I prefer OPD on all the time, but my driving is about 90% single lane a and b roads, 10% town. Just feels natural for me now.

Slight change of subject: just back from a shopping park and MrsSB pointed out a car in a charging space.

She asked how did it work if you parked in the space and plugged in but didn’t come back for, say, 4 hours.

Is there generally a time limit on these spaces?

Is there generally a time limit on these spaces?

It depends on the charger. Most  tesla charger that I have used (only ones in motorway services so far) charge a idle fee of something like a pound per minute, if your car is connected to the charger but not actually charging. I think you get 5 minutes grace after charging stops to move the car before the idle charges start to acrue. I think the idle charges only apply if the supercharger station is 50% or more occupied.

At some other chargers there is no charge for staying in the space even if your car has stopped charging.

Essentially it varies from place to place.

Slight change of subject: just back from a shopping park and MrsSB pointed out a car in a charging space.

She asked how did it work if you parked in the space and plugged in but didn’t come back for, say, 4 hours.

Is there generally a time limit on these spaces?

yes, rule of thumb, fast chargers 1hr, slower A/c chargers 4hrs before overstay fees kick in. An added bonus can be that some places give free parking if you are charging so I will plug in and use the parking fee saved to cover the charging cost and essentially get a free top up.

I only like one-pedal driving in slow traffic. I don’t like it in open driving because I can’t lift my foot off the pedal ever.

In open driving my car is mostly in some form of ADAS so I can relax my foot a bit. I figure that its probably safer than me.

The Corsa e has developed a problem.

The HVAC has decided not to work. Displays and controls work but no heat or air is blown through the vents.

I have read a good look at the fuses and they are all ok. The HVAC system seems to try to work but fails to push the air. I’ll guess something but has gone wrong at the fan?. No leaks or anything untoward is wrong in the engine bay. Radiator fan spins when required.

I haven’t plugged in an obd2 reader yet. I’ll try that tomorrow.

Me thinks all the cash saved from owning a nice EV is going to be absorbed by the repairs dept?!

Rest of the car is working.

The Ioniq is fine, fingers crossed, no issues with 3 times the mileage of the Corsa e.

Checked if anything is blocking the airways?

It seems as if I can hear a switch when I call for heat from the heating controls then nowt happens. I don’t think it’s a blockage unless a big squirrel has lodged it self in the air intake?

The other half said that it just stopped working. She enjoyed pre heating and cooling the car and I wonder if the additional stress of this process speeds up the demise off the HVAC system?

I’ll take another look at it tomorrow and check the filters and other accessible stuff.

Doubt it will have stressed it. EV HVAC’s vary a little, depending on heat pumps but the bulk of the power is provided by a big PTC (essentially a hairdryer), hence why they use so much power. Sounds like the fan may have stopped/gone/be having a little rest.

The EV side seems OK, the Vauxhall side seems to be behaving as expected.

On my Enyaq, I shift into drive twice – first one tells me regen is set to automatic and I’m not sure it does anything. So I shift again and it seems to be far more aggressive – I see the blue regen bar showing far more frequently so I’m assuming it is doing much more of that.
I do tend to be able to do 1 pedal driving for vast majority of my driving, I don’t have adaptive cruise control but I suspect I’d be using that constantly if I did.
However, change in weather and a far busier company car park means my charging isn’t quite as simple as it was…but a 4 hour bike ride of an evening isn’t a bad thing!

Next question:

What are your thoughts regarding what happens when a battery runs out of warranty.

Obvs it will keep on working but what if there’s an issue big enough to require a new battery.

This cost could obviously be huge and that might lead to the whole car being scrapped.

If that’s the case it might lead people to think that EVs are effectively disposable items with very little value after the 8/10 year warranty runs out.

If I bought a car it would be 2-3 years old and have an 8 year warranty.

If I’m faced with potentially a bill for maybe £30-40k after 8 years of ownership then I’m less than keen to enter that ownership experience!

This would affect used prices as well.

I reckon the battery refurbishment industry will be up and running by 2030. Repairs will hopefully be relatively cheap. I’d expect a higher energy density battery to be available as well, so an improved range.

There are an awful lot of ifs in that post Sharkbait. I’m with retrorick, there would be many more options in 8 years time. I’d also take confidence in all those long warranty periods being offered. Clearly manufacturers have evidence of long battery life.

@retrorick I don’t think the symptoms are quite right, but the AC compressors on Corsas/208s are a known weak point.

I don’t think it’ll be 30-40k to replace/repair a battery out of warranty, I expect there will be a 3rd party industry replacing cells, and/or using second hand entire batteries from crashed cars, much like major components from ice cars are harvested from crashed cars and used to keep cars on the road for much less than buying a new engine/gearbox etc from a main dealer.

Just doing a quick Google suggests an entire new battery for my car would be about 10k now, a lot of money but not 30-40k

I think a brand new engine for my previous ice car would have been soemthing like 25k from a main dealer, but nobody’s going to pay that if they need a new engine out of warranty, they’ll just find an engine from a scrapped car for 5 to 10k. I think It’s a similar cost for the dct gearbox from a dealer.

I’m faced with this battery decision as our Model S battery will coming out of warranty in 2025. We have had it around 3 years now. It charges to 80% on a home charger for 99% of the driving we do and I don’t think we have seen any significant reduction in range in that time. Has covered around 140k and have replaced some suspension parts in the last year and do need to finally do the back brakes soon too.

My gut instinct is to just keep it. It’s paid off and the value has dropped since we bought it too. Running cost compared to a diesel is great. We would only replace it with another electric car anyway and we love the space in it, huge boot for the dogs/bales of hay/shavings etc.

Spend what we would on replacing it on solar and battery and then see if we can make further savings that way

timmys

Full Member

@retrorick I don’t think the symptoms are quite right, but the AC compressors on Corsas/208s are a known weak point.

I had read something about this a while back. Hoping I would be lucky and avoid the problem! I will report back with updates when I have more answers.

If that’s the case it might lead people to think that EVs are effectively disposable items with very little value after the 8/10 year warranty runs out.

There is an independant industry around fixing tired Leafs when their batteries start to fail. Why wouldn’t this expand to fit other EV’s?

It’s a future proof version of car spannering with cleaner hands.

Crazy discounts on pre-registered i-Pace down from ~£75k to ~£43k

I don’t think anyone will buy a brand new battery frim the dealer if they get a fault. There are already businesses refurbishing batteries by replacing the failed cells for older models e.g. Leafs. There are enough cells around from crashed cars to support this as the failure rate is pretty low. It will be more expensive with other makes of course as they have more complex batteries and coolant circuitry, but the idea is the same. The battery drops out from under the car then you can fix it on a bench.

The other thing to consider is that with a repaired battery an EV could be nearly new; wheras ICEs can have engine parts failing left and right (check the threads on here or any other forum). I think that lack of desirability and interior wear  will be the most likely things to eventually scrap your EV.

What are your thoughts regarding what happens when a battery runs out of warranty.

Obvs it will keep on working but what if there’s an issue big enough to require a new battery.

This cost could obviously be huge and that might lead to the whole car being scrapped.

If that’s the case it might lead people to think that EVs are effectively disposable items with very little value after the 8/10 year warranty runs out

Pretty big ‘if’ there. ‘Disposable’ is perhaps a bit hyperbolic as there’d be some scrap value in the vehicle if it suffers a too expensive to repair problem.

@molgrips describes things well I think. And the experience @bruk has fits with most of the Tesla fleet experience. Sure, capacity reduces, but not as much as manufacturers expected. The things just keep on going. Though mechanical bits will wear out in time.

I’d be unsurprised if they ended up with greater longevity than modern ICEs. More frequent charging to offset reducing battery capacity isn’t too troubling. And total battery pack failure seems uncommon. Maybe less common than head gasket/turbo/engine/gearbox failures? Albeit more to fix.

I have just started the purchasing process for my first ever new car (46 and only ever bought used). A VW buzz GTX. I’ll let you all know how it goes!

there would be many more options in 8 years time.

I agree, but as has already been said, some people are already over the milage limit or getting close to the warranty time limit.

So, as a future owner, I’m interested in how the manufacturers are planning on handling replacing/repairing battery packs.

Yes there are third party repairers but moving ahead, as more people see an opportunity, are these repair shops going to be regulated?

You can’t compare an ICE repair with a battery back repair as the latter has a greater chance of bursting into flames all on its own.

My biggest concern as a potential buyer of a used EV is whether values will plummet once out of warranty, which is a possibility unless the manufacturers stand behind their tech. Maybe some have a published plan already, but the manufacturer I’m interim right now does not seem to.

….. And how are insurance companies going to view vehicles that have had a battery transplant from a scrapped car?

Not looking for problems, I’m looking for some reassurance!

I’d like to buy a 2 year old car now and know that it’s still going to have a resale value in 10 years time.

And how are insurance companies going to view vehicles that have had a battery transplant from a scrapped car?

I shouldn’t think they care as long as it passes an mot, and has no undeclared modifications from the manufacturers standard

I’d like to buy a 2 year old car now and know that it’s still going to have a resale value in 10 years time

I’ve done what you’re thinking about doing, bought a 2 year old ev with the intention of keeping it long term, 8 to 10 years, who knows how it will pan out, but my gut feel is that it will be OK.