Electric car

[babasaclover]

Going electric. Have picked the car, I only go around town don't leave a 4 miles radius and the range for car days 300 miles. Even if I get much less cause of using heating / air conditioning etc I'll be charging twice a month at home

Any tips / things to avoid? Service station chargers seem extortionate but Lidl is cheap. Where do you charge if you have to outside of the house? For me it'll happen once / twice a year I expect

Looking forward to NOT paying for petrol.

We charge at home mostly. If going on holiday we usually charge at an insta volt. They are pricey but very quick and as they're usually a bit more expensive they are normally available. You don't have to have an app you can just turn up with your card and pay.

I have a 10 year old full electric and I charge it to 100% every night. It doesn't seem to be harming the battery! But my total range is only 60-100 miles (depending on who is driving, the type of driving and the weather). In general life for commuting and school runs, that is fine and we use Octopus EV tariff.

Holidays and visiting relatives does mean we have experience of charging on the go! (The good thing about a small battery is that it is fully charged at a fast charger in 20 minutes). Motorway service stations are NOT the place to charge. If you look on things such as Zap Map, you can find places slightly off motorway with multiple chargers and usually other facilities too such as a restaurant. With a large range, you can plan ahead and find the place that suits you best.

And please everyone with CCS chargers, IF possible, please try and leave the CHAdeMO chargers free for those of us who have no choice! (Sometimes chargers have both, but only one can be used at any one time. So please choose the CCS only if that's a choice you can make)

We always charge from home (on cheap rate electricity overnight), although we do have a second, diesel estate car that we use for long journeys or if we both need to go out at the same time. So it's been very rare that we need to charge it. Usually just go to a restaurant and have a coffee while charging just enough on rapid charge to get home.

Great info thank you. I'd only the gym out some chargers in I could get a work out in whilst I charge.

I only ever do maximum of 4/5 miles usually it's 1/2 miles but several times a day so think it'll work out great :-)

Probably once a year I drive 100 miles to friend but she has home charger and said I can use that so orange anxiety. I'm really excited now feels like such a modern thing to do

I would rather charge just outside the motorway for a bit of peace from the long drive if necessary so will check this out thank you

With the acronyms it is like you are speaking another language I'm gonna spend so much time working this all out 🤪

I know you have to pay for the price of the coffee, but actually this could work out very well. I could end up having a bit of me time just peace and quiet whilst I wait?

My husband has a diesel car and when we go on a long journey, we will just use that I think

This is my summary of different chargers:

• Three pin plug (the same as your kettle!). I think all cars have these or can be bought as an extra. This allows you to plug your car into your house (outside socket or through the window!). The charge is very slow, but it is useful when visiting friends! (We do pay them!). Also known as a trickle charge.

-Type 2. This is the charger for charging at home. Your car should definitely come with this one or it will be attached to a home charger. It is slow-isha reasonable speed to charge, but this is what people use for overnight as it takes several hours. Some public chargers at shopping centres and hotels have these - basically places you'll be for a long time. Don't use if you're just stopping for a coffee unless you hardly want any charge!

• CCS. Your car probably has this fitting. You won't have your own cable though. This is the charger for fast charging when out and about on a long journey (40 minutes charge ish, but depends on your car and the speed of the charger).

• CHAdeMO. This is like the CCS but only a few cars have them, mainly Nissan Leafs! Cars either have CCS (normal) or CHAdeMO.

Charging station chargers might be type 2 (slooooow). But are usually CCS and/or CHAdeMO. They often have one 'box' and two leads and two parking spaces. But mostly only one car can charge from a 'box' at a time. So if a car is already using it, move to a different one! If there are lots of 'boxes', some might have two CCS connections, but some might have one CCS and one CHAdeMO. If you have a choice, please use the CCS only ones and leave the CHAdeMO for drivers who don't have a choice.

I hope that helps. Good luck and enjoy!

Expensive to buy, cheaper to run but depreciation is horrendous. We don’t know what to do! We’ve had two hybrids and maybe continue down that line. When battery isn’t able to function at 100% after a few years, the depreciation is massive.

l love mine. The only downside is the anti electric car brigade who are relentlessly boring.
I charge on a normal plug at home overnight about once a week possibly twice if I've got to go further. I have always charged to 80%.
I have a horrible commute through some very tricky areas and lately endless temporary traffic works. I find the silence of the car and smoothness of it really relaxes me.

Thanks v much. I live in Lancashire now, but grew up in Grantham. Still have a few family there. Until my Mum died last year, in my head, I thought we must have a car that could get there and back on a full charge, about 300 miles. Not quite as crucial now. We have been looking at a Cupra Born and also the new Skoda Enlaq, due out next year. Both are on the same VW platform, which is the same as the Ford Explorer, and has a published range of 350+ miles. We intend to compare them with a T Roc, and then wait for he best deals. Our lifestyle has slowed in the last couple of years, so rarely do more that 100 miles in a day, so a lower range may be OK now.

Our car has a similar range. Get yourself an Octopus EV tariff for home as a full charge will cost you only £6-8. Get into the habit of putting your car on the charger on the same night every week and you’re unlikely to use a public charger in your day to day.

We only ever use public chargers when we are going on holidays so twice a year say. It’s a rarer occurrence than you think. Zapmap is a great app for finding fast chargers locally.

In winter I’d say we get around 220 miles of a theoretical 320 but in summer we get 270 miles. We do garage our , I don’t know if that makes a difference.

Very few cars get the published range. If you need 300 miles to get somewhere you won’t get it. 250 in winter is more realistic. Some areas have public chargers far away from villages. Certainly in Cornwall we have nothing within 10 miles. New car park in the village has nothing as no suitable electricity supply . Unless you can charge at home it’s a total nightmare. It’s a reason why sales stall. Little terrace house owners do have problems with charging.

@FiveFoxes has touched on some important public charging etiquette.

1. Don't charge on a public charger over 80%. Your car will charge much slower (you can see your charging curve at the bottom of this page - I wouldn't bother charging it past 70% based on this) and you will be hogging a charger someone else might need. The only time I break this rule is if I can see there are multiple other chargers still available.
2. Don't use a charger that supports both Chademo and CCS charging unless you have to - as @FiveFoxes says, the Chademo brigade have far fewer public chargers. Your car is a CCS.

Charging away from home isn't too bad, it depends a bit on where you're going. Best to plan ahead so you can charge when you would naturally stop for a loo break or lunch or whatever. Expect charging stations to be busy at peak times and avoid if you can. The app Zap Map will allow you to search by number of chargers (if you have a paid subscription with them) so you can look for places with multiple chargers - less stressful than heading to a site with only one charger!

There are two major types of public charging - 'destination' (slow charging that you'd typically do overnight, or maybe if the car was going to be parked somewhere for a whole day whilst you went out shopping) and rapid. How fast your car will actually charge on a rapid charger depends on:

• how fast the charger itself is - a lot of motorway and older ones are 50kWh, so the charge will take longer
• how low the battery is - all cars charge faster when the battery is low
• how cold the car is, or the weather is - most cars charge slower in cold weather.

There are some other annoying factors as well - is the charger crap. Are all the chargers in use and the machines can't deliver full charging to everyone. Is it a crap network (BP Pulse used to be notorious but I think they are improving now). I will normally go for Instavolt and MFG out of choice, they also have nice big spaces.

It's worth having at least the Electroverse card, as sometimes chargers are working but have lost their network connection, so you can't charge unless you have a physical RFID card.

However - for your day-to-day life, just plug it in when you want to charge, set it to charge on the cheap tariff overnight and then you can forget about it!

I can't see how depreciation is horrendous - 2nd hand electric cars are not cheap!

We have a BMW ix M60 and it has a 320mile range. We charge at home for 7p kwh. Usually charge it to 80% but 100% if we know we have a longer journey.

Unfortunately we have found a lot of public chargers have had their cables cut and stolen as the copper is valuable and the thieves sell it for scrap.

Would you consider leasing? That's what I do purely because I like to change cars every few years and I actually don't want to own this way what I pay per month is the only bill I have as all servicing maintenance and even things that wear out such as tyres wiper blades, brakes et cetera are all covered by the one price then I just hand it back at the end of three years. Works for me wouldn't work for everyone I know.

Cannot thank you all enough for the information spent nearly the whole day driving and absolutely pleased with my decision I will never go back to petrol or diesel ♥️

VW ID4 range is 308. Reliably does that in the summer; drops to more like 280 in the winter.

I'm starting to look and think I'm going with a Cupra Born with the largest battery for a real world 300. Tesla model 3 long range is over 400 but I don't think I like it.

This is also helpful thank you. Obviously I've been googling for months but I've got more out of this thread than I found in all of my research.

Just ordered an Electroverse card as well

My home charger is not fitted for a few weeks yet, so I'm going to plug in with the three point plug until then

Wonderful information, thank you and I will use proper charging etiquette when I need to charge on the run :-)

Leasing is expensive if depreciation is high. However we need to consider it. DH is retiring so need to replace his company hybrid. The electric version of that is £50,000. We have solar panels/batteries/air source heat pumps so could charge cheaply.

@FiveFoxes Second hand electric cars are cheaper. They often were more expensive than the petrol equivalent but depreciate faster. It’s a big reason why many private buyers are not convinced. I’ve been out today looking at hybrids and electrics. Even a few months old with not much on the clock and they are way cheaper. Everyone is offering deals. Our decision is hybrid or ev. The range is not great on the ev we have looked at though. Luckily it would not be our only car!

My main source of info when I was a new EV driver was YouTube @babasaclover - Mr EV and Electric Vehicle Man. Matt from Go Green Autos does some good reviews which are really helpful for things like boot size for wheelchairs, a major sticking point for us. Hearing how big a boot is in litres is bugger all use for something like a wheelchair! And likewise he does good reviews of charging stations too.

@TizerorFizz The thing with hybrids is that you have both a heavy engine AND a heavy battery to lug around. Twice as many things to go wrong too.

If your EV isn't your main car you won't need to worry about range anxiety. But if you've got solar then you may as well get an EV as your fuel will basically be free!

I was sceptical about moving to EV, but as DH has a company car we thought we'd dabble with it that way (he has to change it every year - he works for a car manufacturer, so the management cars are on high circulation). We could have gone back to ICE if we didn't get on with it. But we have no issues whatsoever with charging etc, which is why we switched my car to EV as well when my trusty Fiesta got to the end of its useful life.

We have very quickly settled into a charging routine (always trying to stay ahead of ourselves so that we don't get stuck if one of the cars doesn't have enough range for where we need to go), and have had no issues charging OOH either.

There's also the bonus of EVs being an absolute joy to drive too. So much nicer than any other car I've had (I now have an ID3, so a very 'run of the mill' car).

We love our EV! We've really never charged outside of home charging and it saves a fortune. DH uses it for work too and they pay 45p a mile for petrol or electric so he actually makes quite a lot of money on his business mileage. He's always the one volunteering to do site visits such a smooth and quiet ride too.

Enjoy!