32p is similar to a standard non discounted home tariff. I was paying 69p at a Gridserve point yesterday and that seems to be the going rate for a 50kw charger. Some higher output chargers are more expensive though.Originally Posted by ben4watches
Also I did a trip to Snowdonia from the south coast and every time I stopped on the motorway there were only 2 chargers which were in use. Compare that to Tesla supercharger where there were 8 or so with several free and it makes a pretty compelling case for Tesla over other EVs, or plug in hybrids.
Interesting little video from Bjorn here…https://youtu.be/30qoC8qMRug
Tesla model 3 charged almost entirely on superchargers and done nearly 100k km
He seems to be not that impressed with it however it still achieved a reasonable range
For anyone who hasn't seen this guys youtube vids hes well worth following, he carry’s out real life tests on virtually all the electric cars.
HEEEEY WHATS UP!!
I don't often do long trips in my i3 but I did go again to North Wales this week. The lack of public charging infrastructure has definitely got worse as a result of charger installs not keeping pace with EV sales, with the noticeable exception of Tesla. Only once in 2 days was I able to charge which was at Telford Services. My neighbours tell me they've given up trying to charge in Motorway services and go off piste to find an available charger. I wouldn't mind waiting but there's no orderly queueing system for the public chargers. So I just filled up with another 10l of petrol and continued on my way.
Last edited by Caruso; 18th August 2023 at 20:50. Reason: duplicate
On a lighter note, if any of you still hanker after the Austin Allegro's Quartic steering wheel, check out the Volvo EX30.
It’s becoming a “thing” again. As well as the EX30, my Megane E-tech has it, as does the MG4.
So far ahead of their time those Allegros!
11,000km in 5 months in my Megane E-tech. Super comfy and a blast to drive. Easy to put manners on many a bmw and audi driver.
Funnily enough - the previous mention of vehicle fires on this thread made me recall the time when I was in the back of a Allegro in 1987 when it caught fire.......! Can't imagine for a moment that a modern EV is more likely to catch fire than that.So far ahead of their time those Allegros!
In more recent news; my recently acquired (used) Tesla hasn't caught fire (yet).
And went to north Wales last weekend from the Midlands.
Happened across a charger in a Maccy D car park in North Wales so put a few extra miles in whilst the kids spat out and refused to eat the breakfast.
Another 10 min charge at a Supercharger on the M6 south that the car thought I needed (but didnt really!) and home with no drama and 19% spare.
I have just done a back to back trip from London to Liverpool and London to North Devon in my EV.
I have a Ionity card which gives me 35p/kWh for the first year of my EV ownership, and Ionity are strategically located across the motorway network.
I don’t have charging at home so always fill up at Cobham services on the M25. There are 6 chargers and half the time I find at least one is free, and half the time I have to wait a few mins, but not much more.
No problem charging at Stafford (1 out of 6 chargers in use when I arrived) on the way up to Liverpool and also no problem in the return (4 out of 6 in use when I arrived).
On the trip to Devon, stopped at Cullhompton services on the M5. No problems. Straight in and charged. On the way back (Friday) I had to wait 15 mins.
The are peak August trips, so I will balance your neighbours comments and give you some real world experience from someone who has charged 8 or 9 times on the motorway network over the last 2 weeks with little issue.
There is no numbered ticket machine like you get in the blood room at the hospital, for example.
But, it is not out of the wit of man to get out your car, chat to the other EVs waiting to charge and establish what the pecking order is. First thing I do if all chargers are full, and if can see other EVs waiting.
I find everyone is pleasant, and in typical British fashion, regimentally adhere to the agreed queuing protocol.
A non-issue in my opinion.
I have had a few nice chats with other EV owners in similar circumstances I'll admit. Also the motorway services were pretty busy for all cars not just EVs, so maybe it's a summer holiday phenomenon I encountered? However, I'll maintain my stance that public chargers aren't currently being built at a rate to keep up with EV ownership and that can only lead to worse experiences in future.
If the average charge is, say 30 minutes, sounds like you’ll spend pleasant few hours chatting to fellow drivers.
In the near 10 years I’ve been driving EVs, I can say with certainty that I’ve spent more time queuing at the checkout in Tesco’s than I have at an EV charge site.
If you head for the charging hubs with 6+ rapids, there is usually one free when you arrive or the wait is merely a few minutes.
I find in practice it’s no more complicated than waiting at a barbers shop…
Very rare you are waiting long if at all at a Tesla Supercharger site. The screen even shows how many stalls are available prior to arrival
The Tesla implementation is a good one, as it should be on what used to be a private charging network.
The only time we’ve waited at a Tesla site is Scotch Corner, which understandably gets a bit busy with Scotland and Lake District bound travellers. There are 15 Gridserve rapid units going in at the services the other side of the roundabout though, which should help with that.
On a long run I just look at Zapmap or one of the other Apps on CarPlay and it tells me of there are charging sockets free or not, and I head for a spare one. I usually charge just off the motorway, mainly because I'd rather pass my time in a hotel lobby or shopping centre than a services. I've not had to wait to plug in yet.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
A better route planner is also a good app.
I have it linked to my car and when driving for work I can set the start, end, and any battery arrival % preferences and it always sets a good route.
Yes, that one's very useful. It can be configured to optimise charging for specific EVs, I usually charge to 80% on long runs because of the way that the Nissan battery life management works for repeated rapid charging.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Was solely basing my reply on noTAGlove’s real world experience - enough people queuing that a pecking order needed to be established.
Yes, and I was merely replying to you with my own real world experience.
If I ever arrive at a charge hub and they are full and there are obviously multiple cars waiting, I move on to another later in my journey.
That’s rare though.
I've spent less time queuing for EV chargers than I have for petrol pumps to be honest, you should try one you seem very intrigued.
Last time I queued at the pumps was during the shortage whenever that was.
I had a Mach-e for a long weekend last year up in the Lake District. Ironically, I had an easier time finding chargers in random small villages than in Liverpool. Only downside in that EV experience was when we came off Scaffel in biblical weather.. half of us got nicely dried up whilst waiting for slower half of group.. and we then had v.low juice and had to turn off the heat/seats and go limp mode. They weren't happy!
This is part of my job in the Automotive Engineering industry. Customer feedback is that round wheels are not 'modern enough', although pro users (commercial vehicle) prefer full round. You would not believe how many designers and ergo reviews it takes to hone the new squircle shapes.
I don't mind it to be honest, didn't even feel different after a short drive, just looked different. The placement of the gear selector in the Megane is a different matter - although I'm getting used to it I do occasionally flick the wipers on when going for reverse.
Do you think that's still going to be the case when the superchargers are made available to all and sundry ?
Many already are. The difference is each Supercharger site has at least 12 chargers.
Isn’t it only 15 sites open to non teslas?
After the initial rush of non Tesla’s trying the sites after some were opened up, for other EV drivers it’s just become another charge point operator for them to consider.
Having a foot in each camp, my wife being a member of the Teslerati, I’ve tried my ID.4 on Tesla chargers up in Aviemore and it worked fine and didn’t see another car of any sort using them.
I think Tesla have only opened up the less busy sites so far, or ones with a large number of chargers.
Even allowing for the massive influx of new Tesla’s, and opening up some sites, the network seems to be holding up well.
In some other European countries, where the whole network is open to all (France/Norway are two I’m aware of), there seems to be no issues and it must be helping to generate more revenue for Tesla.
Any one had any success changing to EonNext Drive scheme with their 12am-7am overnight EV charging for 9.5p/kWh?
I am with EonNext but when I applied I filled in a form and just told that they would get back to me. No commitment and no details of when they will come back to me.
I have found EonNext immensely sh1t (I had to get the Ombudsman involved to remedy their sheer incompetence) and it ball-aches me to stay with them. I can’t use the Octopus scheme as their technology doesn’t talk to my EV.
Seven overnight hours on a Granny cable should get me around 16 kWh or around 50 miles of driving per day which is plenty enough for me.
I've got Octopus and it doesn't communicate with the, er, 'technology' on my Leaf - so I just the timer on the car to come on when the Octopus cheap tariff starts and to charge for 6 hours. The car just switches off once full. It's worked perfectly fine for the last 2 years.
Currently out in Norway, they’ve really bought in to this electric car malarkey out here. In Bergen today and I’d say over 50% of the cars I’ve seen around the town are electric.
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Almost all electricity in Norway (97-98%) comes from renewables, so you'd have to say that electric cars make absolute sense.
Thanks. I did look at Octopus, but their simple cheap tariff (Octopus Go) is only for 4 hours according to their website.
Since I am charging on a granny cable, the 7 hours cheap rate with E.ON Next makes more sense.
Maybe they still honour existing customers with 6 hours?
Any advice on which i3 to look at?
33/42kwh (94/120ah) any big differences & any real world ranges.
Any options worth searching out & any reliability issues.
Don’t do many miles, probably charge for free 8 months of the year, Solar.
I would go for a Range Extender model, so you always have options. I have the 33kwh with REX and it gives me a total of about 180 miles in the summer on a long run.
Personally, I’d go for the 120Ah, which I think only came in a battery only flavour, so no petrol REx.
It’s not because I’m anti-petrol, it’s just that the REx element is the weak point with the range extender version of the i3. The high voltage electric motor inverters on the REx versions are prone to failure, and out of warranty they’re at least a £4k fix.
I had the 2014 60Ah REx version, and that had a 60-70 mile real world range on the battery only, and similar again with the tiny 7ltr fuel tank. It never let me down, but I didn’t run it past the warranty.
The 120Ah battery BEV i3 should be easily 125-140 miles in any weather.
Real world range assessments for all versions can be found on here;
https://ev-database.org/uk/car/1145/BMW-i3-120-Ah
Yeh just looked, their kWh is about 14p
Not only that but my equivalent car over here is 10k less. I wonder if I can get the wife to eat pickled herrings for the rest of her life
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Well I've just jumped in with both feet and swapped our only car to an EQB 350. Excited, yet nervous that it's already triggering my over analysis paralysis. Collecting the thing Friday, can't wait.
I'd forgotten to measure the supplied charging cable, but it looked fairly short at about 4-5 metres, is that normal? Got a 10m one coming tomorrow to leave at home anyway.
Final question (for today anyway), needing to have some plates made up: should I actually bother with the green label? Seems online advice is it's no actual benefit.
Very nice! :-)
Yes, green flash plates have no practical benefit, some say they’re just virtue signaling.
Mine came with them, so I’ve stayed with them, and I’ve added the green flag/UK retroflective stickers on top, as I do drive in Europe and are accepted instead of the ‘country of origin’ plate you otherwise need.
Yep - Also affluence signalling in some cases....... especially where a visually identical EV version costs more than the ICE equivalent. Seriously, its a thing (well, at least a company car thing, anyways........)
Personally, I think the green looks pretty naff- but I'll never actually get around to doing anything about it on mine.
Very 'woke'.........
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Not sure I follow, but if you say so Chris! ;-)Very 'woke'.........
I didn't bother with the green stripe on my plate as it serves no purpose.
On another note I'm away at the moment and have hired a Renaukt Megane e-tech. Whilst it's not quite as good as my i4 it is still a very decent car which I am thoroughly enjoying.
It is good to explore a different brand's offerings, they can surprise you.
Mercedes dealerships (and sometimes BMW too) put green flash plates on some of their plug in hybrids too even though they are supposed to be for pure EVs.
My van is older than the green plates so I haven’t bothered to change them.
Whilst in Budapest earlier this year, I noticed that the whole plate is green on their EVs, rather than white or yellow (taxis).
I signed up to E.ON Next Drive tariff which gives me one year fixed at 9.5p/kWh for the 7 overnight hours between 12am-7am.
The day rate is slightly higher than the cap at 33.52p/kWh, but the tariff is overwhelmingly worth it overall.
Plus washing machine, dishwasher and tumble dryers will now go on in the cheap hours.
7 hours of granny cable charging per night should give me 50 miles range per day, and the car only does 16 miles per day.
So I should be able to keep it charged near 100% when I need to do longer journeys. No need for a wall charger even if I could have one.
The tariff has no early cancellation, so I can move if something better comes along.
Trouble is I have no driveway. So I have tried to be as professional as I can be with this set up.
I have been reading about EV cable theft and the recommendation to park on your cable. But given the risk of cable damage I set up this nifty arrangement by chopping off the end of the cable protector which was too long anyway. I am very pleased.
My wife uses the car for work and is back home by 2pm each day, meaning there is usually a parking spot outside the house given the rest of the commuting neighbours have yet to get home.
Otherwise I can do some jiggery poker with our second car to keep the parking space.
All seems to have worked out well. For those who have rejected an electric car because they have no off street parking, hopefully this helps to demonstrate it can be done.
Last edited by noTAGlove; 27th August 2023 at 18:43.
Any good Tesla model y deals?
I've been offered 10.5k down and 493 a month on a business PCP by Tesla for 3 years. Total spend 27750 over three years
Or 6+35 at 648 a month on a lease. Total spend 26568 over three years
Need to buy in the next day or two
The problem is however, if somebody trips over it, the liability and any subsequent claim is against you.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Yep
This is not a solution by any means. Some people would even feign injury because the opportunity is there for those types.
That is not true. You MAY be liable. Lots of articles on the internet explaining as long as you have taken all reasonable safeguards, you are unlikely to be liable.
In fact I have followed the advice of some councils that post their recommended solution on their websites. Hampshire council guidelines are below.
https://www.hants.gov.uk/transport/e...rging-guidance
The cable protectors weight 13 kg so cannot be easily moved. The cable protectors have a ramp on both side and are fluroescent yellow on top. Plus I intend to light the cable protector overnight to improve visibility.
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