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Electric Vehicles

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Well, I'm making the switch. I pick up my Kia e-Niro on Monday. Second hand, but only 6 months old, so it's got a six and a half year warranty left. If I'd ordered a new one, it would have cost at least 4 grand more, and not have been available until at least August; also, my car would have lost a lot of value by then, since it's a diesel.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Good choice! I’m sure you’re going to love it.
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I think so! It's the top of the range, so has all the toys, including memory settings for the driver's seat. Since my better half and I are very different heights, it will be great to just push a button when we get in after the other has driven the car, instead of making three different adjustments!

There didn't seem to be many other cars that fitted our requirements. The Kia Soul was a possibility, but has less luggage capacity.
 
We have the same make and model. The better half thanked me earlier today for the time and effort I put into buying such a comfortable car

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c.280mile round trip over the weekend was fraught with danger because there was no destination charging. We'd asked on the booking form, but they only bothered to answer when we were stood at reception (they did not). On Saturday, Gridserve on the motorway on the way down was always full (we tried three services), one with an MG who'd connected, but hadn't started to charge, so was just an idiot.

One services had a big bank of Tesla superchargers, which would have been nice. I really do need to research where Elon is at with open up that network.

On Sunday morning, we really needed to find a rapid charge to get us home quickly after the football. The Shell rapids in Maidenhead, complete with "best rapid network 2022" sticker, were both out of service. A charging hub in Slough didn't exist, so we finally ended up sat outside a Greggs' drivethrough, where we managed to put on over 100 miles while we went for a cup of tea in Dunelm.
 
Yesterday we drove our 2022 Tesla Model 3 Long Range from near Melbourne, FL to near Blue Ridge, GA - just over 600 miles. Superchargers everywhere in this part of the world. Pretty cost efficient as well!

52077520824_1822e9557f.jpg



As an aside, had our first Supercharger hiccup at Lake City, FL. 92° and 20% charge and the charge rate was abysmally slow, at less than 250 mph. Another Tesla driver at another stall said his charge rate was very slow as well. We gave up after about 15 minutes and easily had enough to get to Valdosta, where the charge rate started at its typical 800 to 1000+ mph. First time we’ve had that problem over several long road trips.

We’ve still never had to wait at a Supercharger, but it can happen. A couple of times only 2 stations were available. Hopefully the network will continue to grow to keep up with increasing demand - so far so good.
 
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Wife and I are driving from Seattle to Southern California next weekend in our Model Y. Longest trip so far!

We're going to use A Better Route Planner for the stops.
 
Filippo Lippi said:
c.280mile round trip over the weekend was fraught with danger because there was no destination charging. We'd asked on the booking form, but they only bothered to answer when we were stood at reception (they did not). On Saturday, Gridserve on the motorway on the way down was always full (we tried three services), one with an MG who'd connected, but hadn't started to charge, so was just an idiot.
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To be honest, I'm not prepared to handle that kind of stress. Nice of you (and others) to be trail-blazers though ;)
 
We arrived at the football with about 10 minutes to spare, so a bit touch and go

However, 99% of our driving is carefree, cheap, and emits few pollutants
 
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GlennB said:
To be honest, I'm not prepared to handle that kind of stress. Nice of you (and others) to be trail-blazers though ;)
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One of my reasons for switching is the stress recently when we've had local fuel shortages, and there was no petrol or diesel available.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Yesterday we drove our 2022 Tesla Model 3 Long Range from near Melbourne, FL to near Blue Ridge, GA - just over 600 miles. Superchargers everywhere in this part of the world. Pretty cost efficient as well!

[qimg]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52077520824_1822e9557f.jpg[/qimg]


As an aside, had our first Supercharger hiccup at Lake City, FL. 92° and 20% charge and the charge rate was abysmally slow, at less than 250 mph. Another Tesla driver at another stall said his charge rate was very slow as well. We gave up after about 15 minutes and easily had enough to get to Valdosta, where the charge rate started at its typical 800 to 1000+ mph. First time we’ve had that problem over several long road trips.

We’ve still never had to wait at a Supercharger, but it can happen. A couple of times only 2 stations were available. Hopefully the network will continue to grow to keep up with increasing demand - so far so good.
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Older superchargers are slower and share capacity between two stations. If you are using 1A and another Tesla starts to use 1B, your charge rate will drop by 50%.
 
Filippo Lippi said:
As far as I can see the UK government are failing to persuade Tesla to open up their superchargers soon
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Mrs Don got very excited when she got a notification from some charger location App that Tesla were opening some Superchargers to other vehicles. She was rather less excited when those Superchargers proved to be in Norway, Germany and France.

Meanwhile Mrs Don continues to love her Fiat 500e. She went shopping in Tesco the other day for a little over 30 minutes and picked up a useful 15 miles of range for free.

At the moment we're about 50/50 with charging at home and charging in the wild. We have a weekly appointment in Monmouth where there's a 7KW charger in the parking lot. Parking is free if you're charging which helps to offset some of the costs. In an hour we get about 30 miles of charge - about half a week's motoring - for a little over £2 (parking would be £1). The rest of the charging is done at home with a "Granny Charger".

We looked into getting a home charger installed. We can only have a 3.6KW charger in our garage and that would be £1000+ installed so we're sticking with the "Granny Charger" for now and will wait until we install some solar panels on our workshop to decide what to do w.r.t. a charger.
 
Had a chat with our friends (whom I've doubtless repeatedly mentioned in this thread) who have two EVs, an eGolf and a Jaguar iPace.

Since they got the cars, they've done more than 25,000 miles in them and have so far never found themselves stranded or even being in a panic looking for a charge. The majority of their charging is done at home from the electricity produced by their wind turbine and PV arrays, but they regularly do road trips where they have to use the public charging network.

The closest they have come to running out is 3 miles of indicated range in the eGolf on their way home when they chose not to do a quick charge in the local town.

So far the eGolf is averaging over 4 miles/kwh whereas the iPace is around 2.5 miles/kwh thanks to it being a bigger car and the person who mostly drives it having a very heavy right foot.
 
10% of UK Tesla Supercharger network open to the rest of us from about half an hour ago, or so the Twitters informs me

Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk
 
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Filippo Lippi said:
10% of UK Tesla Supercharger network open to the rest of us from about half an hour ago, or so the Twitters informs me

Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk
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I've just downloaded the Tesla app and my nearest ones (as the crow flies) open to non-Tesla vehicles are:

- Banbury
- Birmingham St. Andrews
- Cardiff
- Flint
- Trafford Centre

@zooterkin

60p per kwh - Yi-hikes :jaw-dropp
 
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The Don said:
I've just downloaded the Tesla app and my nearest ones (as the crow flies) open to non-Tesla vehicles are:

- Banbury
- Birmingham St. Andrews
- Cardiff
- Flint
- Trafford Centre

@zooterkin

60p per kwh - Yi-hikes :jaw-dropp
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Rates just went up over here as well. just in time for a two day road trip

Still cheaper than gas though.
 
Shalamar said:
Rates just went up over here as well. just in time for a two day road trip

Still cheaper than gas though.
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At 60p per kwh, it's marginal.

For Mrs Don's tiny Fiat that's approximately 15p a mile.

My much larger Skoda Oktavia has averaged around 50mpg (imperial) in the 60k miles I've owned it. With petrol at £1.60 per litre, that's around 15p a mile.

Other commercial chargers round here are in the 30-40p per kwh, we pay 28p per kwh at home.
 
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