Luckypants

Legacy car makers probably haven't even thought of this, just using a standard design paradigm that worked in the past. I suspect my ID.4 will have similar issues despite heated nozzles, if it ever gets cold in tropical Wales. I've already taken a leaf out of your book to put in -20C screen wash.

Wow. can I get that in my ID.4 next week please?

Also, in terms of charging hubs, look out for Osprey expanding their network using Kempower load balancing chargers and the very latest Tritium load balancing chargers to create more hubs. Instavolt are now getting onto that bandwagen, with a full hub at Banbury about to open. Motor Fuel Group (MFG) are building electric forecourts and hubs, gaining a reputation for reliability into the bargain. They already have several in London, one in Birmingham, Manchester, M6 and 3 in Bristol. Shell have opened an electric forecourt in Putney. Gridserve's second electric forecourt, in Norwich is nearing completion and a third one will be built at Gatwick in 2022. There is lots happening in the charging space right now. I expect to see some winners and losers in the coming year.

Gridserve have announced a partnership with Dobbies garden centres to install high speed charging hubs in some of their garden centres. For me, this takes care of the A5 corridor where the current sites with Ecotricity chargers have not agreed to Gridserve replacing them. Gridserve seem to have a problem with Welcome Break services and Eurogarages forecourts replacing chargers - this has stymied improvement in N. wales (and other places) but the Dobbies deal fixes the problem on the A5. The A55 is still ******ed. https://www.gridserve.com/2021/12/20/dobbies-garden-centres-rolls-out-ev-charging-with-gridserve/

He didn't actually say why he took it to Amsterdam for a new battery? Be easier to have it done in the UK. Even I'm aware of one firm offering such a service, without doing any research. Odd.

I saw my very first one last week. Much higher bonnet line than it looks in the photos I thought.

OK - what class is the Enyaq and what class is the Model Y? I myself would have said they are competitors but I don't know what class an SUV coupe crossover thingy would be? If I could wait, I'd be considering a Model Y versus Enyaq/Enyaq coupe versus ID.5/ID.4 versus EV6. Maybe I'm odd lumping them all together?

Interesting they are claiming best in class drag coefficient of 0.234 when its Tesla rival, the Model Y has Cd of 0.23. Perhaps they don't count Tesla in the same class?

Yep! Yesterday I averaged 3.2 mile/kWh on a 106 mile round trip. Almost summer consumption figure that is.

You are on the good rate which you got on prior to summer 2021, I assume - well done. For my area, Go is now 25.9p peak but still 5p off peak. Octopus are not taking on new customers right now though and if already with them advise to stick on the tariff you have.

I was on a tracker tariff with Octopus (called Tracker!) which was good last year and early part of 2021. It started going up shortly after the ID.4 arrived and I bailed onto a fixed rate in August before things got really bad. I'm on 23p (inc vat) now and that looks good compared to what else is out there. Its fixed for 2 years, so cannot get any worse. If prices improve, I'll be able to swap away from it. With current fuel prices I'm still doing OK compared to an ICE vehicle but I'm not saving like Rory says I will!

too bloody true! I said as much in the comments about an hour ago Christ, I'd be laughing all the way to the bank on that deal.

Ohh a turbo, welcome to uncontrollable torque steer folks... (drove one back in the day). Mum had a NA MG Metro back then, it seemed nice in those days. But @roottoot That looks like a winner.

Now if they brought out an MG Metro EV.....

Do you think the AEB delete was due to the chip shortage? It will be back in the Zoe from March 2021. Its just the manufacturers trying to maintain production despite not having all the parts they'd normally fit. The new side airbag sounds like form over function to me, a 'proper' airbag wouldn't fit in the new design so it gets reduced in size and effectiveness.

PCP deposit being lost due to an insurance write off is a bit of a smokescreen. If it is written off and valued at less than you paid, you are still liable to pay off the finance so the loss is the same whether you paid a big deposit or not. This shortfall can be covered by gap insurance (which he may have mentioned?) which is very expensive from VWFS, but more reasonable from some of the site sponsors. I have 'back to invoice' cover for gap insurance, so no matter what it is valued at when written off, the gap cover will give me back the difference between insurance pay out and what I paid for the car new. Hopefully this would put me back in a new car if the worst should happen. The broker is talking BS as this is no longer the case. My ID.4 was insured by Admiral with just a phone call. My existing insurer LV could not insure as it was not in their system at the time (too new) but ID.3 would have been no problem. No one on the ID.4 forum or Facebook group have mentioned that insurance was a problem or more expensive.

@ColinD The same guy (R Symons) did a cold weather range and charging test of all the cars mentioned (apart from Enyaq!) and loaded it yesterday. Shared elsewhere on here by roottoot so you might have seen this.

The PCP payments on my ID.4 work out about £100 more than the lease on the Karoq doing 12k miles a year. On 23p / kWh (no cheap deal available here) I'm saving around £100 a month in fuel costs. So its been cost neutral for me. I do make full use of free supermarket charging where possible though to help with that. For instance, I got 40kWh hours last weekend and the weekend before. Useful and timely video for you. A shame the Enyaq not featured.

Powerpass is the Skoda offer, the VW WeCharge card is a much poorer deal. To get the best rate of 25p you have to pay a £9.99/m subscription. The free offer is 46p at Ionity - which is now looking not so shabby as other providers have increased their tariffs. Sorry for going a little off topic...

Twitter is the place to see how Gridserve are doing. Also use Maz Shah's map which he keeps updated with Gridserve roll out. I find Twitter to be a mine of EV information and is the only reason I have it. e.g. I found out about the Welsh Government's initiative to install some chargers this way, which is handy as I live in Wales.

I think the manufacturer has already thought of that. I have charged in bad weather and not had an issue so far. The Norwegians have the largest uptake of EVs and don't seem to have an issue.

As I cannot get a cheap rate for electric in the middle of the night rate, I can charge at whatever time I like at home. Now its getting colder, I've scheduled my charging slot for the early hours until 8am. This means in theory that when the car is plugged in and charging, the battery will be warmed by the charging effect and save me battery heating kW and give better efficiency when first driving. Also means the pre-heating will be drawn from the mains to preserve battery charge. This only works if charging from 40% or less, otherwise the charge will complete and the battery will cool before she's ready to leave. If VW could sort out the timed charging feature on the IDs, then I'd set the schedule in the car and it would work from any SoC.

A quick revisit video of the R. Symons view of the ID.4

A smaller estate should do us fine, but living up a lane we both like the higher seating position of an SUV that makes it easier to see over hedges for oncoming vehicles (especially on one particular bridge). The SEAT Leon ST we had was a great car and we almost replaced it with the 4x4 version, but went with the Karoq for higher seating position. We stayed SUV-ish with the ID.4, but TBH there wasn't an alternative to an SUV with a battery at the time we were looking. We have a reason for an SUV and SWMBO does feel safer in it.

This is similar to the battery care section in the manual of my ID.4. VW go further by suggesting you keep the battery between 40% and 80% SoC in cold weather. (UK probably don't count as having cold weather). VW also make it clear that 80% is recommended for normal day to day driving, 100% only for long trips - Tesla also recommend this limit although Elon tweeted 90% is also fine. The information on battery care is easily found via Google too. The problem going forward is all the company car drivers jumping into EVs for tax reasons right now without really thinking about it, they just want to get in and go. As they don't own the car and get a new one every 2-4 years from the company, they don't care about the battery - that will be someone else's problem. So they charge to 100% all the time, rapid charge all the time, park up for days with low/high states of charge. Ex-lease EVs might be the ones to avoid in future.