New electric car- tips?

[RhubarbCircles]

We've got an electric car on its way to us, our first, a VW ID4.

Any advice please? Good apps to use etc?

Need to choose between an Ohme and a Myenergy Zappi tomorrow, both have good reviews and same time scale for fitting.

It'll be mostly for local driving, we are in Scotland so the heating will be on a fair bit which I know affects the range. We 3 or 4 times a year go further down south to see family but stop regularly anyway thanks to small bladders so not too worried about stopping to charge.

Thanks for any chat (and if you're anti EV, this is not the thread for you!)

Oh yes! Thought of one more. The car still has a 12volt battery like an ICE car, which powers the auxiliaries (lights, dashboard, heated seats etc). It can run down same as an ICE car but you don't need to drive around to charge it up, just leaving main ignition on should do it. (Check manual).

If everything on the dashboard goes haywire, consider if the 12V could be low on charge. This happened to me after too much waiting outside for teenagers with the heated seats on.

The SpeakEV forum is helpful; lots of general and vehicle specific advice.

Thanks for these tips! It's good to know about things like chargers not working etc, I hadn't thought of that so good to plan in plan b.

There is a really good app called A Better Route Planner for longer journeys - then it's worth checking on the Zapmap app that the recommended chargers are working. We live in Kent and have been to Scotland, Cornwall and Paris a few times with no issues but I use ABRP to plan the longer trips.

We did find public charging in Scotland v good and found Charge Scotland app really helpful.

Not much to add to the great tips already shared.

One thing I learned about my VW ID was that the CAR, not the charger, wants to be in control of when it charges. In other words, I set the charging time on the charger’s app and the car display bar went red; the charge indicator by the plug went red; basically the car threw a strop! I learned what had gone wrong from the ID forums and now I set the charging time on the car itself.

And yes, as per PP, you tell it to charge to 80% or whatever. If you have a night rate electricity tariff or EV tariff, you can also set ‘preferred hours’ to take advantage of the lower rate. You don’t have to manually start or stop the charge.

It is annoying to have to have £25 on several different apps for public charging but more places have tap-card payment now.

Actually I disagree. We set the time of charge on our charger NOT the car. This was after we set the car charging on our way to Christmas dinner, went for a 40 minute walk and came back to find the car was waiting till midnight before it would accept charge.

Another tale I've read on the EV forums is people who set the car to warm itself up every morning before they drive to work. This is great until they park it at Gatwick for two weeks of winter sun and come back to a flat battery.

Basically you just need to think through the effects of changing your routine if you have any clever automation set up.

Just to add to the 'who controls the charging' debate - mine is controlled through Octopus. Not the charger, and not the car.
DH sets his through the changer (not the car, and not Octopus - his car isn't Intelligent Octopus compatible).

So there isn't a straight answer, or a One Size Fits All.

Yes, they probably are all different so you absolutely have to know your car and charger. Mine needs to be told what preferred hours I have and I can choose to apply these daily, just on a Monday, or onthree other days etc. But it’s all there on the menu in the car, so I wouldn’t accidentally leave it merrily warming itself up every day it was parked at Gatwick (but now I have The Fear that I might! I could override it in the VW app though, I believe…).

I can only say how my car behaves and given that OP is getting the same car, sharing what took me a while to work out via the deepest pages of EV forums.

Of course you would remember. Probably 🙂.

I think it helps whenever you set something new and smart up to think through possible exceptions. I was sharing our car versus charger thing because we were more likely to need a different charging pattern when the car was away from home, so it made sense to programme our regular charging on the charger as less likely to change (and more likely to notice our cockup at home if it didn't charge). You can presumably set your car to charge any time any day if you'd rather control that through the charger or home electricity management system?

Conversely If you live between two locations and charge up away from home but always overnight at both places it would make sense to set the time of charge on the car instead.

Wow, the car vs charger posts really confused me last night but I think I've got it now!

We're going for the Ohme charger as I asked on our neighbourhood Facebook page which ones people had, and they were by far the most popular (our estate is FULL of EVs!) and I've read they have a very intuitive app.

When we switch to Octopus we'll probably change our charging habits then to make use of their cheaper times.

If anyone is still around, is tethered generally better because it's easier to use than untethered? As you just plug in then wrap it up when finished?

I went for untethered. I knew I’d wrap it round a couple of times and then it would get annoying and I’d leave it on the floor out of laziness! I keep the cable in an old laundry bag in the boot. As I also can’t be bothered to put it under the proper storage flap every time due to all the crap in the way.

I just wanted to update this thread for anyone who may come across it. We've had our car for a little while now and it's a DREAM <3 driving it is so enjoyable. it took a while for me to get used to it just because it's huge compared to the little cars I've always had, and parking is hard for me, but the cameras really help! Overall I am loving having an EV.

We also got the Ohme charger, and it works brilliantly. So easy and intuitive to use. Definitely recommend that.

Also did go for untethered which I'm glad about. When it's raining we just leave it on a heap by the charger and wind it up when dry- I wouldn't want to faff with winding a wet one up to put in my car!

Haven't dared use a public charger yet, but will soon- made easier by all the local ones just being contactless now, although I have got the heavily recommended Electroverse card.