Luckypants

Hear! Hear!

Looks smart for its age.

Your lease seems to have gone by quickly! I just signed up for an ID.3 Match 79kWh model on lease to replace the ID.4. Happy new car to you!

@Ootohere Where is that please? We're heading north in a few weeks and National Trust properties will feature heavily.

Yes all ID.4 (and all MEB cars) are 11kW on three phase. 16 amps per phase or 3 x 3.6kW (nominal at 230V). Most cars charge at 11kW on 3-phase, mainly due to cost of the larger 22kW charger from what I understand. Most European homes have 3-phase supply but are limited on amps, so there is less demand for 22kW OBC there as most cannot take advantage.

I've held the view since about 6 months into my ID.4 ownership that 22kW 3-phase AC charging should be a standard feature on all cars. It makes destination charging pretty much all day trippers need. Of course a lot of AC chargers are only single phase, but 3-phase is common enough for 22kW charging to be a useful addition to a car.

The rear brakes get so little use on an EV, the 'sealed for life' rear drums on MEB cars are a very good idea. Just Google Tesla Rear Brake Corrosion to see why drum brakes make sense on EVs. FWIW, after you get used to the slightly spongy feel to the brakes in MEB cars, the brakes are fine and do not lack power - just press a bit harder. While on the subject of brakes, my VW ID.4 (MEB platform the same as Elroq) has only 10% pad wear on the front brakes after 4.5 years and 56k miles. So you guys can expect the brakes to last and last.

Just coming on here for a bit of a boast really. 😀 Just completed my July stats for the ID.4 and my average is 4.02 miles/kWh this month, measured as what went in, not what the car says it achieved. That bloody good for a big bus. So 4.02 miles/kWh over 987 miles with average cost of 2.17p/mile, total cost of £21.40. That cost includes one Tesla super-charge as we were not able to charge overnight on one trip away. (more on this later). Yesterday, due to an impromptu trip to the seaside, I ran the car down to 1% SoC and 2 miles of range. I left it for a couple of hours before charging to allow the car to sleep and allow the BMS to balance up the cells - SoC recovered to 3% and 9 miles of range. I then charged to 80%. By extrapolating the charge into the car I see my battery still has around 74kWh net capacity from the original 77kWh after 4.5 years and 56K miles. Not too shabby. Its not all been good news on the EV front this month. I needed a new N/S/F tyre after spotting the cords were showing on the inside edge. Turns out the cords were exposed by a deformation of the tyre, most likely from pot-hole damage. My tyre guy said those deformations can lead to rapid wear which is what had happened here. I'm glad I spotted it as we were about to get on the motorway with both my grandchildren aboard and the thought of a blowout chills me. The other potentially expensive item this month is that the car succumbed to the well known VAG fuel flap stuck issue. The fuel flap locking mechanism seizes up due to water ingress to the solenoid. This is worse on EVs than fossil cars due to the flap being open for charging much longer, so more water gets onto the locking pin. As soon as it happened, I knew the cause and was lucky in that I'd recently seen a how-to video on fixing it. As we were 130 miles from home I called the RAC as I needed a charge to get home. The RAC managed to open the flap without too much damage to the flap and body coloured cover with some handy tips from me. This is what led to the 'expensive' Tesla Charge this month. The complete charge flap has now been replaced by VW under Extended Warranty, so hopefully this problem will not appear again in my ownership. If it does, I know exactly how to fix it.

@thamestrader I see your current car is a Karoq. My car prior to my ID.4 was a Karoq 2.0 TDI DSG 4x4. Both vehicles have been doing the same mileage and types of journeys, so a comparison is quite valid. The Karoq did 10 miles a litre solidly through the 3 years we ran it and would cost me 14p/mile now at our local diesel prices. Compare that to my lifetime cost of 5.16p/mile (including all rapid charging I've needed) for the ID.4 and current costs of 2.5p/mile by charging mainly at home.

The key to cheaper running costs is charging at home on domestic electricity rates. If you get on a cheap overnight tariff and charge using the cheap rate of say 7p / kWh (Octopus overnight EV rate) then you will be paying 2-3p/mile. If you are stuck on the standard electricity rate of say 26p/kWh it will cost approximately 6.5-8.5p/mile. ( @SurreyJohn beat me to the punch) Just to say if you are home every night, you will rarely use public chargers, so it makes little impact on your overall average cost per mile. I've done 56K miles at 5.16p/mile for fuel in my VW ID.4 - the first 3.5 years on the standard rate for electricity. (I've averaged 2.5p/mile since getting on an overnight EV tariff)

My mechanic lubricated the spring mounting and that sorted it. Just some silicon spray IIRC. We needed new front ball joints at the same time, roads here are bad. Get the electric version 🙂 I cannot justify the extra purchase cost to myself for such a low use car as ours, but the E-UP (same car) I tested climbed our Welsh hills waaaaay better.

Plus one on the 'they all do that sir'. We have the exact same model and year Citigo with almost identical mileage and it has had the rattle for as long as I remember. Oyrs has been serviced by my trusted mechanic ever since the warranty expired and he has never mentioned it as a potential issue.

Very detailed look from autogufuhl... I like the shooting brake, but I have VW means but Mercedes taste!

Not much to note, three new Tesla Open to All sites takes the total of Tesla sites for all to 121 in the UK. with prices at around 53-55p peak to charge and go, they are a very good option. Cheaper prices off peak and even cheaper with subscription. FYI a total of 199 open SC sites in UK, if you include the ones that are Tesla only.

Fair enough. For further clarity, his van is a 23-plate and he's been running it for a couple of years. The savings are based on what he is paying now compared to his previous Transit van. I think he is on a cheap tariff as he mentioned his smart meter. He has also installed solar and battery (for the same reason as me, frequent power cuts) but I don't know if he counts solar charging as 'free'. He took an EV van as a commercial decision, not through any desire to save the planet. His car is an 'environmentally friendly' VW Touareg.

It probably is. So what? You buy / lease what works best for you.

A plasterer that lives near me is fully made up with his Citroen e-Dispatch van. He reckons it will cost him £20k less over 4 years than his previous Transit.

You really should try a VAG group MEB based EV, I think you would love it in standard 'D' mode. Sounds like we have a similar driving style and D mode is great. (I know you need an enormous car due to being the BFG, just saying it would probably suit you 😊)

There has been a lot of issues between Intelligent Octopus and OHME chargers reported recently. I've seen this in the VW and Skoda FB groups and EV forums. Not sure what's going on. Often these sort of issues are caused by people over complicating the IOG charging process by setting schedules in the charger and car or having both charger and car defined as devices to Octopus. With IOG you should only have one device defined and no schedules set up - then let IOG schedule your charging. My Wallbox Pulsar charger is my defined IOG device and it runs almost perfectly. I've had one issue of the charge not starting.

Recently a fella was convicted of a murder on Anglesey in part due to the telematics of his car placing it at the scene. It was found burnt out on the night in question, but the crucial data had been uploaded already. It was a diesel LR product. This has nothing to do with EVs....

Did you manage to get on-board with Octopus or do you have 'the wrong sort of meter'?

All the talk of building extension cables and cross sections for your granny charger.... just buy a granny charger with a long enough cable in the first place. My granny charger has a 10m lead as I knew if I needed to use a 3-pin plug socket it was likely I couldn't get parked close up. The 10m cable is downstream of the control box, so that can usually be kept somewhere dry if being used. No 3-pin plug connections in the middle of a drive to get wet. I've never struggled to reach a socket the dozen times or so I've used it.

As others have said, a 2.3kW granny charger will provide plenty of heat over time. Your point is valid however, as my car will use around 5kW at max heat early on so not quite half would be met by the granny charger but still better than the ICE car that relies 100% on it's fuel tank to warm up your car. A proper wall charger will meet 100% of the power need for pre-heating. But people do do it, especially if the windows are frozen over.

I've stopped trying to keep up with new hubs opening, due to there being so many. I don't worry about needing a charge at any stage these days even though I rarely charge away from home. However a little landmark for EV charging - there are now over 1000 hubs in the UK and Ireland.

The truth about EVs 🙂 The only thing he mentions I slightly disagree with is 'losing range due to pre-heating' The same is true of ICE vehicles, if you run your engine to to preheat / defrost your ICE car you are losing range and quite a bit of it too. Also, if the car is plugged in to the charger you lose no range as it draws from the grid to heat the car.