Luckypants

Yes. Look up Zap-home (by Zap-map) and / or Co-charger apps.

A real life week away in an EV. (OK a very expensive one) Shows that its not a big deal.

I take your point about charger availability at peak times, as this is already a problem on busy routes at lunchtimes and holiday times. This is resolving quickly though and should become a thing of the past. However, I do not think you will get to the situation with chargers that we now have with filling stations with multiple pumps everywhere. The model is different. If you want to run a fossil car, you have to visit a filling station, so there is a guarantee of local users as well as travellers. Many EV owners will be able to charge at home, so the local custom is not there. I think it will be multiple chargers on busy routes like motorways and trunk roads, with conveniently spaced rapids on other routes so you can top up when needed. From my experience, I would say many more destination chargers are needed, to charge when you reach your goal ready for the return trip.

It is entirely possible that the difference in premium between these cars is accounted for in the difference in the value of the cars. To make a fair comparison, you should use a newer Fabia worth about £7k

My car is an ID.4 first edition. RWD 77kWh (82 gross) battery. 150ps (204HP) motor. Excess is £250 mandatory IIRC. These are exactly the same terms as my Karoq was. The Karoq was about £300 to insure and the ID.4 the same. Full NCB, protected on a multi-car policy (along with the Citigo) from Admiral. The £300 is the premium for the ID.4, Citigo is charged an additional premium.

My ID.4 cost me the same as for my previous Karoq to insure.

I disagree with the above. If you have kids or dogs, do you really drive 400 miles without stopping? Even a good motorway run will only average around 65mph, so 400 miles will take 6 hours, a more realistic average of 50mph for a journey is 8 hours. No child or dog can be expected to sit and hold 'it' for that length of time. So you will stop, to walk the dog and toilet / feed the children and for everyone to stretch their legs. So a 30 minute stop when the car is charging 'while you get on with your day'. Using a 50kW charger and getting 3 miles per kWh will give you an extra 75 miles - these are deliberately conservative figures. In an 8 hour drive I would be making 4 such stops, so a total of 300 extra miles could be added without any inconvenience. Seems pretty effective travel to me. For context, I'll be driving my ID.4 to a cottage north of Inverness in exactly the same manner as I drove there in my Karoq - a drive of around 450 miles. I will be stopping at the same places for the same amount of time to walk dogs (only this time charging while doing it) as previously and expect to arrive with 20% remaining battery which I can then top up overnight while sleeping. In the 8 months / 7500 miles I've had the car, charging has not been an issue and certainly has not impacted on travel.

Definitely looks that way. Ideal for a one off road trip or holiday. Better than Ionity in that regard, where its a 12 month contract.

ID Furkan has video'd the process of charging a non-Tesla at a Tesla Supercharger. Looks very straightforward. The subscription pricing model will be useful for anyone doing a lot of miles.

He is quite a Tesla fan ole Richard. He like Audis too mind. I think Tesla will make money from the Supercharger network and good luck to them. It did make me smile how Richard says how he welcomes non-Teslas being able to use the SC network, as long as:- They pay more than him (Tesla owner) The number of stalls they can use is strictly limited they don't cause queues Tesla change all the charging cables so everyone uses the right parking bay for the charger. (park properly plebs) No PHEV at all. (kind of agree with this)

Indeed Ken, the reason this is a win is we stop at Tebay on almost every trip. The fact that there are potentially loads of chargers is moot, we'd stop anyway. But, always be charging as they say so if we do stop then charge up while we have coffee /cake / pie and other nice things.

Pricing in the Netherlands is pretty steep for non-subscription customers. Take out a subscription and as long as you charge more than 40kWh a month at superchargers you will benefit. Bjorn Nyland did some maths on that (see below) I think they are taking the same view as Ionity, you can use our chargers but preference is given to our customers. Personally, it won't make much difference to me, except perhaps going to Scotland and stopping at Tebay services. Two Gridserve Electric Highway chargers suddenly becomes a hub with the addition of the 8 Superchargers there.

Agree we are beyond early adoption phase now, it has gone mainstream. You only have to look on the Enyaq / ID.4 Facebook groups I belong to and see the level of questions asked (repeatedly) about these cars to realise someone told the muppets masses they can save some tax having an EV. They just want to drive it with no thought or effort.

Those drivers should show some consideration and plug in to a 7kW charger if leaving it for hours. Many charging companies are introducing idle fees now, so you get charged a penalty for being plugged in and not charging. In Europe many rapids stop charging at 80% SoC, to prevent blocking by cars which are charging slowly over that last 20% (they should move to an AC post when charge rate drops anyway) and idle fees can kick in. The days of using EV spots as free parking are over due to the chargers being much more in demand.

I do like the free Tesco charging. Pretty simple to use and convenient. I like to claim the charge as the PodPoint app shows electricity you've had if you do. My first experience with them was a rapid charger (paid for) which failed to connect but I was pretty sure the user before me buggered the charger as he seemed to have no clue what he was doing. This was my first time public charging, so pretty clueless myself. After that it has been smooth sailing and I use PodPoint at least once a week.

To be fair, those rumours have been circulating in ID.3/ID.4 groups for almost a year now, still no sign. Its an owner wish list item I think with no indication from VAG if this is possible or likely. (and if it is, would this not be rolled out to Audi first as the premium brand?)

The video shows the 22kW chargers. Not many of them but there is a mixture.

I heard about this place just last week. 50+ chargers! Apparently parking charges are steep, so free electric makes it more bearable.

This is an article written in April this year citing a study that used data from 2012-2018 - a time when the EV infrastructure was in its infancy. I can see why some people would give up on EVs back then, short range, poor public charging, no service centres and the general hassle of being a (very) early adopter. The situation in the UK in 2021 is VERY DIFFERENT - 200 plus mile range is common, thousands of public charging points (more than there are petrol stations) plenty of garages with EV expertise. This is fake news using out of date data.

They can hardly give it as a free upgrade without giving refunds to those who paid for the faster charging when they bought the car. So I guess its now available as a dealer upgrade for anyone regretting not ordering it from the get go or buying second hand.

I got mine from SmartHomeCharge, who have several options of chargers at various prices. They have video reviews of their chargers. https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/ https://www.smarthomecharge.co.uk/guides/charger-selector-tool/

Lots of people jumped ship from the Agile tariff in the early part of the year as 'plunge pricing' (negative rates) became more rare and the top rate of 35p became more prevalent. Many jumped to the Octopus Go or Go Faster tariffs and fixed at a good rate - before the "energy crisis" became a news item. Go tariffs are now very expensive for peak rate, but the headline off peak rate of 5p is still there. Although to be fair, all tariffs are expensive at the moment.

Fully charged and Autogefuhl have also covered the launch. Looks a bit odd, slightly remodelled ID.3 IMO.

Fully charged and Autogefuhl have also covered the launch. Looks a bit odd, slightly remodelled ID.3 IMO.

The government would have to foot the bill for that, so very unlikely. I see road pricing being the way they get the tax back, this is already being trailed by the Treasury. Rishi Sunak appears to be keen. 2p/mile would see a 12K mile/year driver pay £240 in road use tax. I suspect that the VED rules will also change to include electric cars and I think this will be based on the car's value when new. BIK rules for company drivers will be brought in line with ICE vehicles.