The Electric Car Thread

But there’s no denying that you lose the clever stuff with the cars sat nav – charging location, preconditioning, range forecast etc.  Seems like you do one or the other and accept a heavy compromise!!  I wonder when it’ll get sorted out.

The volvo cars, and some others, have android automotive, which has google mapping integrated with the car charge/range etc.

Quite useful seeing as I’m on Andoid, so all my google stuff is linked

DrP

That sounds good @DrP.

My Peugeot doesn’t have whizz bang EV stuff integrated into the car’s satnav, but I did come across a thing yesterday (in regards to the built in range estimation being woeful), that it is apparently possible to get the ABRP app to talk to a bluethooth OBD dongle to replicate the full car data + environmental data + route planning + charger location intelligence stuff. ABRP can obviously be displayed via Android Auto / Carplay.

I only really use the cars sat-nav so that I can get the maps displayed on the HUD, when using carplay/android auto you only get simple instructions. I find that even with the car knowing the route the range estimation is still too far off to be useful. So google maps it is then (I trust it more than the cars own. The cars own map has a few weird errors that means it has tried several times to send me on stupid routes to avoid junctions it thinks are close but are perfectly open.)

Can anyone comment on best home wall charger to look at currently or a decent site for reviews, no particular budget in mind as long as I can schedule the charge as my new hybrid is awful with the schedule setting, sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t.

Can anyone comment on best home wall charger t

To keep your options open I’d recommend getting one that works with something like Octopus Intelligent Go in case you get an EV that can’t be controlled by your power provider’s API. Personally I have a Zappi which is great but others like Ohme are worth a look too.

We have an Andersen A2. Friend got the new A3 and very happy. It now smart integrates with octopus agile. If you’d like a discount referral code please message me.

I believe Ohme is fairly high on the list of charger points @wooksterbo

Hypervolt work well with Octopus Intelligent. Nice app, looks ok and you can turn the lights off. Choice of cable length too.

In other news I went to have a look at an EV9 yesterday.  First observation was I’m not sure I could handle the actual dealer, they could not have given less of a sh*t.  The car was outside, I waited 15 mins to get someone to talk to me to begin with.  It was unlocked from inside the dealer and I was then ignored.  After having a look round and through it I ended up leaving.  Second observation was thats a car only a mother could love.  Stunningly ugly, and with some really weird ‘functions’ – why do you want a calf leg rest for the driver?  How on earth would you use it safely.  Very odd.  Its a very chintzy car and very massive, and very ugly.

I was meant to take one of these out for a test drive today, but i’ve got what feels like Covid , so im avoiding people for a bit . I ‘ll report back next week on my findings

Dealer was quite enthusiastic whilst showing me round the car in the showroom end of last week though. I think a lot of these places work on a kind of agency basis nowadays. If you want to be properly ignored , try a VW dealer 🙂

@revs1972 be interested to see what you think about it. I don’t think I could bare looking at it to be honest.

Seeing if I can get an EQE suv for a demo this weekend.

Ohme is working well for me, it integrated with Octopus Intelligent Go and the car, so all I need to to each day is plug the car in and it just sorts itself out magically in the background so I wake up to an 80% charged car each morning unless I’ve told it otherwise.

Ohme is working well for me

Same for me. The charger handles all the integration with intelligent octopus go, so it doesn’t matter whether the car supports it or not (in my case the car doesn’t support it)

All works fine, have a set a default charge to add 100% by 8am the next day, whenever I plug the car in, and in the car I have set a charge limit of 80%. So I just plug the car in and it’s back at 80% the next morning, when I occasionally need 100% I just use the car app to increase the charge limit to 100%, I don’t need to touch the ohme app.

“In other news I went to have a look at an EV9 yesterday.”

I checked out an EV6 today. Absolutely fantastic car and the dealer was very good and attentive in most ways but it never ceases to amaze me how little they know about their products. I went to two dealerships (Kia and MG) and asked basic questions such as would it take a roofrack or towbar and the differences between various cars. Both started googling for the answer to the roofrack question – I said I wasn’t interested in random info from a forum (LOL!), why couldn’t they simply contact Kia/MG direct and get a definite answer? And the Kia dealer when asked the difference between two secondhand EV6 models he had on the forecourt proudly told me the external bodykit was different and seats had different stitching and colours like I couldn’t see that but neglected to tell me one was RWD and the other was AWD which impacted just about every performance number there was including BHP, range and acceleration!  Why is it when we buy really expensive things like houses and cars the people selling them are so clueless?

But the EV6 was perfect and now I’m spoiled cos I didn’t want to spend that much……….but it actually looks like a car I want rather than a car I need.

To be fair the MG ZS Trophy wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but it just felt tiny inside after the EV6 – the EV9 was just comically gigantic and yes, ugly as sin.

The EV3 was pretty awful looking as well

I have had my EV6 for 14 months and it really is a great car. Good size, comfortable, spacious and decent range.

Any questions you have, @winston just ask.

@dove1    I guess what I really want to know is if it has been reliable and if not, how have Kia been with the warranty.

Also what the range is in winter.

I really like the EV6 I agree!!

Re the dealer knowledge. This has always bugged me and tbh the sign of a half competent sales person is they know the product. What gets me is 1) they don’t have that many products to remember and 2) if they can’t remember why don’t they have little crib sheets?

Our VW e-Up came with a phone app to manage charging, turn on the heater while charging, etc. 3 years in I’ve had an email saying the contract for the app will run out and do I want to pay to renew it. To me, it’s part of the car and the idea of paying to keep it just puts me off buying a VW – it’s not the money, just their attitude to customers. I don’t know how much it will cost to renew as their web shop has been down ever since I received the email. They say “use the in-car shop on the infotainment” but the e-Up doesn’t have that, it’s only on the IDs. It’s a good car and I like it, but their IT and attitude to customers are terrible.

They’re all doing it. BMW seem to take it to next level which is installing hardware elements on all models for production line efficiency then only turning on the sw to enable it if you pay for that option or trim level. V wasteful from a component using earths resources perspective.

Our current lease is up and exploring EV for next car. But, live in a terraced street and no dedicated parking never mind off-street.

So key question is does the lack of home charging make an EV infeasible either practically or economically? Any thoughts, experiences, or ideas on how to make it feasible would be great.

They’re all doing it.

Kia, Hyundai and MG don’t. Though I suspect MG collect a lot of data they shouldn’t.

The legacy car makers need to up their game basically. 3 year warranties, expensive apps, hardware that needs to be activated, low levels of standard equipment, all this was just about sellable when the cars were better designed and more reliable but that just isn’t the case any more, especially at the mid range part of the market.

Also what the range is in winter.

Range is always a tricky one. It depends on multiple factors that are difficult to predict in our wildly changeable climate. A better metric is efficiency.
My EV6 is currently averaging about 3.2 mile per kWh in the current conditions. (Wet and misty with temps hovering around freezing)

Based on the 77kwh usable battery this would give an extrapolated range of about 240-250.
Tomorrow could be dry and ten degrees warmer or maybe ten degrees colder and that extrapolated range would vary wildly.

In my previous car (GV60- based on the same platform)I measured it over a year and averaged 3.5 m/kwh and I expect the EV6 will be similar

In short, the range is always more than enough

I guess that’s not too bad – my leaf has averaged 3.4 over 10 years! But it is a smaller car though I do drive it quickly and it always has roofbars on. The Tesla I borrowed off a mate for a few weeks a few years ago did over 4.0.

Have you got the AWD or the RWD?

Battery temps are a funny thing. They need to be reasonably warm to get the best range, but they don’t get that warm during normal use in cooler weather. They could be heated up artificially but the capacity you’d gain isn’t worth the energy you’d use heating it up.

Polestar (not sure on other manufacturers) preconditioning while tethered uses AC to heat the battery and cabin. I get about 8% range increase over cold start with 30 minute preheat. I do need to remember to plug in the cable though.

Have you got the AWD or the RWD?

RWD GT-line

Polestar (not sure on other manufacturers) preconditioning while tethered uses AC to heat the battery and cabin. I get about 8% range increase over cold start with 30 minute preheat. I do need to remember to plug in the cable though.

Less useful when you’re on a smart tarriff, and though it’s plugged in at 8am, there’s no power in the cable!

DrP

This is why I let Octopus control the car and not the charger, though I suppose you could hit the bump charge button in the app if you know you need to precondition.

Less useful when you’re on a smart tarriff, and though it’s plugged in at 8am, there’s no power in the cable!

If you are on IOG with Ohme charger the pre conditioned by specific time gives 30 minutes at cheap rate on the schedule regardless of the time of day.

@dove1 I guess what I really want to know is if it has been reliable and if not, how have Kia been with the warranty.

Also what the range is in winter.

The car (GT Line S) has been 100% reliable in the time I’ve had it. Coming up to 12k miles and haven’t had a single problem.

My driving is a mix of short, commuting type journeys with two or three 200+ mile trips a month.
During the summer I was regularly getting over 300 miles from a full charge.
During last winter the range dropped to around 230 miles, but can vary quite a bit depending on how you use the heating.

Overall I have averaged about 3.1mi/kWh.

 3 years in I’ve had an email saying the contract for the app will run out and do I want to pay to renew it. To me, it’s part of the car and the idea of paying to keep it just puts me off buying a VW – it’s not the money, just their attitude to customers.

It’s VAG group wide, we’ve just got a Skoda (ICE unfortunately) and I was very reticent to sign up for the account and app(s). Turns out it’s ‘free’ for the first 3 years as well, but no indication of what follows on, and so far as I can see any functionality is being pissed about with in the background. I can look at stuff like locking and headlight status in the background. I can unlock the car remotely with my phone (if I really want) and flash lights when I lose it in a carpark…

It’s s all pretty meh stuff currently and feels like they’re just trying to coax you into an “ecosystem” but in an incredibly inept way, almost as if they’re car manufacturers not a software company… Mostly because VAG know you’ll have seen someone else’s slicker Merc or Tesla and probably expect more ‘tech‘ on new cars, especially in an EV, but it’s being rolled out across all ranges (like it or not).

It could actually become a selling point in the not too distant future, someone selling a car without intrusive phone apps, updates and prompts on the infotainment screen every other week.

In fact take away the “infotainment system” again, just give me an old fashioned dumb DAB head unit with Bluetooth/AUX for my phone and I’ll muddle by just fine. (I’ll keep the heated seat though if that’s OK).

/Aimless Rant over…

3 years in I’ve had an email saying the contract for the app will run out and do I want to pay to renew it. To me, it’s part of the car and the idea of paying to keep it just puts me off buying a VW – it’s not the money, just their attitude to customers.

Pretty sure all manufacturers do this. I had to pay to subscribe to the Nissan one to get all the features, and whilst you are meant to have to pay for Hyundai I think they haven’t bothered to build the systems to actually bill people for it because people are only just coming out of the free 5 years now and they keep getting free extensions 🙂

Re preheating before leaving – normally I’m leaving  the house outside of the cheap overnight tariff and driving within the range of the battery, so actually want to use the battery rather than the house AC supply to do the preheating (7p vs 26.7p / kw.hr).   On the relatively rare occasions that I’ll be driving beyond the range and hence be using public chargers at some stage then I’d rather use the house AC to do the preheating (26.7p vs 50-80p / kw.hr).  It is possible to force it to do this one way or the other but is a manual intervention unless there’s a trick I’ve not figured out yet.

Re paid subscription activations “BMW seem to take it to next level” – yep, I agree.   My connected drive subscription is 3 years free – not sure what happens after than (i.e. what you actually lose by not coughing up or how much). I’ve got a 3 yr lease (company car) so any gap over the 3 yr point will be short enough it won’t matter much. The next car will be on a 4 yr lease though so maybe more of an issue.

The two features that the car has that you have to pay for are auto dipping headlights (£200) and adaptive cruise control (£750!).  Hardware is fully present including the buttons on the steering wheel for adaptive cruise “following distance” adjustment.  No, I’ve not paid for either.

Hardware is fully present including the buttons on the steering wheel for adaptive cruise “following distance”

That would royally pee me off every time I got in the car and looked at the steering wheel, especially as its a properly useful feature unlike many other ‘driving aids’.

That would royally pee me off

Yep, it does annoy me.  Visually it’s not noticeable, but if you accidentally press the buttons it brings up a “function acquirable” message in the centre console that you have to actively click to clear.

Yes it’s annoying, but in the grand scheme of things it wouldn’t stop me getting another BMW i4 when this lease is up as there’s not another car out there with the same blend of long range, decent handling and a practical hatchback design yet (or will be avaiable to order in circa 18 months time when the current lease is up)

@dove1 the important question about the EV6 is can you get bikes in the back?

@onewheelgood Yes, you can.
Gravel bike just fits with both wheels on. MTB needs front wheel removing.

Cool, thanks.

Hardware is fully present including the buttons on the steering wheel for adaptive cruise “following distance”

These type of subscription services will get hacked/reverse engineered by back street garages at some point

These type of subscription services will get hacked/reverse engineered by back street garages at some point

Read Cory Doctorow’s ‘Unauthorized Bread’. It’s a great story, and it’s all about fighting back against the subscription model where you don’t actually own anything.

Well I guess most people pay for their whole car on a subscription model anyway so what’s a few more buttons?