Luckypants

@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.

Probably caused by a difference in voltage between your properties. Around here we have 248-250V as a rule, very close to the maximum allowed by the regulators so my charger often gives 7.8kW and never under 7.5kW (should be 7.3kW at 230V)

That battery report seems off. It states 1212 days standing time (which I assume is time parked up) but standing time fully charged of 2177 which is the entire life of the car more or less. Either someone messed up the report (unlikely as its software driven) or someone has been messing about with the BMS stats IMO. For comparison my 2021 ID.4 has 54376 miles (87000km) on it and I measure my battery SoH (by charging from 2% to 100%) to be 93%. 77kWh battery.

You say you have the basic headlamps in your previous post. These "LED Headlights (Standard): The Elroq SE 50 comes standard with LED headlights, which provide efficient and bright illumination." The final paragraph in the image posted by @Steve153 states no adjustment is needed to drive abroad. Its all in your manual if you read it.

Read the last paragraph in the image posted, the bit that "applies to headlights without adaptive functions" which you have.

If you don't have a charger installed yet, consider getting one that integrates with Intelligent Octopus Go as this takes your car out of the equation. It also means any visitors can charge at the off-peak rate.

For those who have been told their car will now have 135kW charging instead of 175(?)kW, here is Bjorn Nyland's 1000km challenge in a Cupra Tavascan with the same MEB 135kW battery. It shows a flat charging curve which leads to very rapid top-ups up to 80%. I don't think its something to be worried about.

A slight benefit from PodPoint. The latest version of the PodPoint app allows you to link your Tesco Clubcard to get points when charging at Tesco. £1=1 point like other Clubcard promotions. Sainsbury's have been offering Nectar points on their charges for a while. A small benefit, but significant that incentives are starting o be offered.

Agree, without home charging running costs are much higher. For my car to cost similar to diesel per mile (at current prices of 139.9ppl) I'd have to be paying about 53p/kWh on public chargers. The local council slow chargers are 49p, so works financially just about but massive hassle to go into town for a 5 hour charge. Depreciation has been a bit scary on mine too, probably lost £22k over 4 years. One thing seems to be that many people view 54k miles as high mileage for an EV, but wouldn't blink at a diesel with that mileage at 4 years old. This seems to depress it's value. I hope as cars age people will come to recognise they are equally capable of high mileages. However, with home charging and with solar, my cost per mile last month was 1.85p! Much cheapness.