Luckypants

MFG are claiming to have opened 19 new charging locations this month

Pics when done please 😉

Are the mudflaps specific to the Elroq or some generic ones? How do they look? Pictures would be appreciated.

Shamelessly stolen from Electric Cars forum Summary of new hubs:- 9x Sainsbury's Bamber Bridge, PR5 6BJ 16x MFG , Lobley Hill Road, Gateshead, NE11 0UH 20x Osprey Rainhill, L35 6NE 16x Osprey Garston, Watford, WD25 7JZ

Just one that I spotted today. Gridserve have expanded charging at Toddington services on the M1. There are now 6 new High Power charging bays northbound by installing 3 brand new chargers and an additional 12 new charging bays served by 6 new chargers at the Southbound services ! All of the chargers are 360kW-capable.

Really? How many ICE cars have an eight year engine/gearbox warranty? (EV battery/motor warranties are for the drive train) Once you are out of manufacturer's warranty period you are on your own. If the engine starts using loads of fuel at 7 years old after 70k miles its on the owner to fix that. Holding EVs to a higher standard is an unfair comparison. The battery warranty demonstrates to the customer the manufacturer has faith in the technology. What gives ICE owners confidence in a ten year old car is anecdotal evidence of similar cars working fine until 10 years (or longer). That anecdotal evidence is still building for EVs and the warranties help with that. There are now many examples of 200K+mile Teslas with good batteries, many older Leafs and Zoes with a high percentage of original range available. These are the cars that have been around long enough to 'test' if the long battery / motor warranties are needed. The oldest MEB platform cars are 2020 ID.3s with many reporting over 200K KM on European forums. I think it will take time for trust in older EVs to build up, but it will as more and more people buy second-hand EVs.

Well on the battery front, VW ones are warranted for 8 years or 100k miles to have greater than 70% of original capacity. My own ID.4 now has 50K miles in 4 years and by my rough calculation still has 73kWh capacity from the original 77kWh. (95%) I calculated that recently by trying to force a calibration / cell balance by running the battery low as possible (3% in my case), allowing to sit for 12 hours so the car 'sleeps', then full charge to 100% and leave plugged in for a few hours at 100%. I then started a cabin preheat which woke everything up and the battery started charging again even though showing as 100%. This 'extra' charge added an extra 3kWh (or 10 miles) to my full battery, although S0C display dropped to 99% and then 98% before climbing back up to 100%. Working from an assumed 8% charging losses on a nice day and allowing for the 30 minute cabin preheat gave me my capacity calculation. In this nice weather the car is claiming a full battery range of 290 miles. So a real world example of how the battery is faring that you can refer him to.

I quite like this guy, but he's a bit of a geek...

Videos like this remind me of why I love the West Coast. If only it wasn't so far away.

@Stonekeeper BTW the 12V socket in the boot can be made permanently live by moving the fuse just like most VAG cars if you need to run the cool-box while parked. I've done mine.

I have used one in the ID.4 and not noticed a drop in range. Make sure you have the Skoda equivalent of my VW's 'optimised battery use' set in the car or app, to top up the 12V from the traction battery when 12V is in use when parked. This will prevent the 12V being run down.

@Tilt On the whole I rate it very highly. The whole thing in the press about haptic buttons being crap and only two window switches is just moaning for moaning's sake. Once you get used to the haptic buttons, they are fine to use. As a car it is quiet, smooth and comfortable. Climate control works well which makes it feel comfortable all the time no matter what the weather is like outside. The car rides well but you can tell its heavy on twisty roads. It is superb on the motorway with ACC. The seats are comfy for long distances. Range is good in the 77kWh model, giving 4 hours of driving time so ready for a break when needing a charge (240-300 mile real world range). Charging is fast if you understand to plug in at a low SoC. Charging at home has always been a breeze. I'd advise they get one with a powered tailgate as the manual tailgate is heavy and tends to slam shut hard if left to itself. I would have preferred to have the matrix lights on mine but the basic LED headlamps are good. The current Match trim has both these items. If buying used, get a 2024 model or newer (if budget allows) as it comes with better software and the more efficient / powerful AP550 motor. If buying an older model, endure the dealer updates the software to V3.7 and check all recalls done (biggy is the HV battery health check). Also check if any of the known gremlins have been fixed under warranty, such as front droplinks, charging flap stuck closed, door locks behaving badly (new handles needed and a VAG wide issue). As a used buy, I would strongly recommend getting a VW warranty either Approved used or the VW Extended Warranty as any major issue will be expensive. Battery/drivetrain has 8 year or 100k mile warranty. One final thing. Get them to sit in one, they are very roomy inside! We came from a Skoda Karoq with similar external dimensions, but the ID.4 is huge inside by comparison. Its the benefit of bespoke EV architecture. We've decided its too big really and we would be fine and comfy in an ID.3 with the benefits of smaller footprint and greater efficiency.

I get his point about the Audi being poor value. Its basically the same car as VW ID.4 or Skoda Enyaq but £20K more. I've had a couple Q4 E-trons as courtesy cars when my ID.4 was in the shop and I was not impressed by the interior. The seats were hard and materials felt cheap for an Audi. Driving wise its the same as the ID.4, so fine for most. Economy in the real world will be similar to ID.4/Enyaq, so better than he was making out. I'm surprised by the charge speed stated, as many MEB cars will do 175kW (even my 4 year old First Edition after various software updates) but he did not actually test charging. He only states the brochure speed which is the same as mine (135kW) but real world this is most likely wrong. Not a very good review but he's right about it not being great.

I just log my charging versus miles from odometer, like I did for ICE. Basically I measure everything going into the car, so it includes costs for pre-heating, heating, data, app control, charging losses, heat losses etc. My miles per kWh is often lower than those claimed by others who just use the car stats. For instance I just reset my long term trip which was measuring winter consumption... according to that the car did 3.2 miles/kWh over 5400 miles.... my spreadsheet says its more like 2.7 based on kWh charged.

Every two years. So biennial it turns out. Thanks for educating me.

I've posted this in the 'Cost to Charge' thread too. Posting it here as it is a truth about EVs that it is costing me a lot less to run than the equivalent diesel. I've just done my annual calculation of overall cost to charge, which I do on the car's birthday. Last year I did 12017 miles at an average cost of 3.53p/mile. Most charging was done at home and getting onto Octopus Intelligent Go in December has helped enormously to reduce that down from 5.96p/mile for 23/24. (although that higher figure includes 2500 miles around France on public charger rates in September 2023.) Additional costs this year has been the biennial service @£170 and MOT approx. £50. Not sure if the extended warranty I purchased is a 'running cost' but taken as a hedge against the fact most EV problems will be a main dealer to resolve (with associated £155/hour rate!) £260 per annum. I did make use of it last year for suspension issue and door locking issue (new car design issues but not EV specific issues)

I've just done my annual calculation of overall cost to charge, which I do on the car's birthday. Last year I did 12017 miles at an average cost of 3.53p/mile. Most charging was done at home and getting onto Octopus Intelligent Go in December has helped enormously to reduce that down from 5.96p/mile for 23/24. (although that higher figure includes 2500 miles around France on public charger rates.) Additional costs this year has been the biennial service @£170 and MOT.

I have found over the past 3 summers that air-con cooling uses far less power than heating the cabin. It is rare to see power use for aircon above 0.7kW for sustained periods and normally less than 0.5kW. Air-con power consumption does go higher when cooling a hot cabin, but that can be mitigated by opening the windows until the cabin cools. Whereas heating the cabin can start at a power draw in excess of 5kW on very cold days and often remains in 2-2.5kW region maintaining temperature. Heating an uninsulated metal box is really a fool's game and the heat just leaks out.

Dave takes on Arnold Clark....

I've not posted here for a while as its hard to keep up with all the new hubs opening. However, here is one of note - the largest single operator hub in the UK. The new Instavolt hub at Winchester. Still at those prices, I doubt they'll be busy.

I had my smart meter activated before Christmas (long story) and I'm now on Octopus Intelligent Go tariff which means the car is charged with electricity priced @7p/kWh. That gives me 2.25p / mile currently and that will improve as the weather does, On the SVR price before that it was around 6.5p / mile. both are significantly less than my previous Skoda Karoq which would be 14.7p / mile on current local prices.

200k mile Tesla still good...

Did you have to use their app? Did you need to pre-book?

More vapourware. Not even a complete interior. VAG and their trailing of models not even off the drawing board is annoying,

Saw my first 25-plate car yesterday, it was an EV. A Peugeot E-3008 charging at Aldi (probably first ever charge)