wyx087

There's your answer as to why shared charging is needed. It makes better use of resources when slow charging vehicle is plugged in. Gridserve implementation of charge sharing is really bad. It just splits speed in half. Tesla V2 and V3, Kempower, all able to gradually ramp up the second car as first car's charging speed ramps down. This is ideal and allows the second car to plug in, get charging while not affecting first car.

Must have had a blast whilst driving the brand new car to you 😡 It's all totally unacceptable, hope the dealer sort it out for you ASAP.

Looks like a bigger polo or a smaller golf. Perfect size for town driving. Price it right, make sure EV-ness works well (the software, the winter charging experience, don't need huge battery) and we will be on a winner. The Skoda version may well be our local runabout, bought second hand in 8-10 years time after Leaf V2H is knackered. Would be good for future cars like this to have V2H.

The Tesla sites that are open seems to be less busy ones. They are also testing and hopefully roll out V4 on all new sites so that there's no problem of cars using up 2 spaces. Busy places like South Mimms probably would not open until they get V4 chargers a lot more stalls. If at all possible, it's worth using Tesla chargers, they seem to be cheapest around (outside their peak price period). Even for non-Tesla drivers. I've used Applegreen in South Mimms before, it's fantastic and super easy to use. Same as Instavolt.

Instavolt are 400v units right? That means they would be sending the same amps down the cable as Tesla's. Are their cable rated/watercooled for that? I wonder if I can get 250 kw on a non-Tesla charger. But to avoid the death stare, I would never run that low.

For looking at charging locations: Octopus electroverse for checking compatible chargers, it covers quite a few networks. Can also make it display all chargers and filter by 6 chargers. I then use Zapmap for a closer look, mainly comments for reliability. Problem with Zapmap is that it hides multiple charger filter behind a paywall. I would not consider single charger locations nowadays. For route planning: ABRP is great for those longer trips with multiple stops and return trips. I set it on the pessimistic side and get a rough idea where I need to charge. When driving, I just use in car satnav, it will tell me very accurate arrival SoC %. I enter do all the stops up to planned charger. Keep an eye on arrival SoC % and don't need to worry about anything else. If planning multi-day trip, I'd plan my charging to be in the morning if at all possible so superchargers are almost guaranteed to have available stalls. Also gives opportunity to try local slow chargers overnight. But take the hit of slower charging speed due to less ideal battery temperature. I drive near the South Mimms service regularly. It's a busy supercharging site. I often notice it gets super busy from late morning and onwards, 2-3 free stalls if lucky at a 12 stall location. But in the morning it usually have more than 6 stalls available, easily get a charge.

Interesting test methodology. Not how most EV owners with home charging drive their cars. They charged up to 100%, left the car for 14 hours and come back next day to charge again to 100% and do the test. Most EV manual will say don't do small top ups to 100%, it degrades the battery in the long term. They did not publish what sort of temperature battery is at. I would (with limited 4 hours cheap period, it recharges 35% on my car) charge to whatever so that end with ~70% the previous day, charge to 100% AND turn on pre-condition with minimum cabin temperature during cheap period to pre-condition the battery. Then a few hours later drive the car with a warmer battery. I've bought "s3xy buttons" and been monitoring how the car behaves . Without overnight pre-conditioning while plugged in, after overnight charging, car battery is at a few degrees above ambient in the morning. With overnight pre-conditioning, car battery is around 12c when I come to drive it in the morning. Battery temperature does play a noticeable part in vehicle overall efficiency.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/06/elon-musk-cuts-thousands-tesla-prices-second-time-year/ Back to 2021 prices for Model 3. I was tempted with a Model 3 base level but decided to keep my Octavia due to no road trips planned and occasional commuting need that can be taken up by Leaf because kid hasn't started fulltime school yet. £44,320 for Model Y base spec is very good. They may be able to achieve sub £40k for Model Y when 2025 rolls around and EV's get the same lux-car tax. Model 3 will definitely get below that by then. Prices on their website hasn't changed. That's strange. Edit: Ah okay, it's on the inventory cars, not "list price". I bet you will get matched to an inventory car after placing a new order. £53k for a blue MYLR (otherwise standard) like my one. I paid £56k. Very small price drop, just £1k drop from list price. But if buying now, I'd wait a few more months to be sure to get suspension upgrade. It is said "comfort" suspension are being installed to cars from China starting Feb.

Indeed, for normal driving, according to TeslaMate logging, I've never used more than ~120 kW of power on a 2t car. Due to single reduction gear, electric motors drives very well before reaching max power, typically for normal driving, torque is more desirable than power. So lacking power isn't end of the world. Although not sure about any arbitrary time restrictions, feels like the reason for its existence is because powertrain had been pushed beyond its limit. Article nor the brochure had any mention of how to put the car into this special condition for max power, Unlike ICE where goal is to keep engine below a max temperature, battery thermal management are able to heat or cool the battery to maintain temperature and thus performance. So does this mean Skoda/VAG or Ford does not understand EV and their performance modes are same as ICE cars, no thought had been put into getting the most out of batteries?

LOL WUT? That's an oddly specific set of parameters. Typical old style motoring journalist...... How do I get this maximum power during winter? What sort of battery thermal control do I have?

Of course to be most efficient, the less conversion the more efficient. Regen braking and then accelerate will never be as efficient as keeping the vehicle rolling. 1-pedal driving is more about convenience. Just release go pedal when want to stop. It is also possible to drive efficiently without switching modes. I always drive in B mode in every EV I've ever driven. It's a simple matter of finding the spot in the go-pedal that does not command forward power or regen braking. Haha, love the idea of a Cygnet-like EV.

Totally agree, somehow SUV also means charging a premium. But what's funny is that although Nissan Leaf is marketed as Golf-like hatchback, it is actually taller than my neighbour's small-SUV the BMW x1, both exterior and seating position. The batteries under the floor makes EV's taller, so the only difference is how the car is stylised and marketed. SUV are popular these days (sorry), so cars are all bulked up to "have more road presence". End of the day, I think the key is smaller footprint on the road. Cars should be able to breeze through 2.1m width restrictions and park in tight parking spaces. If it means taller EV, it shouldn't matter. As long as we don't get charged for adding SUV style plastic cladding.

And following the link in the article on small Skoda SUV: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/skoda/358698/new-entry-level-skoda-electric-suv-match-fabias-price-tag

I had a family trip Fri-Sat, just got back earlier, Friday to National Space Centre, Today visited British Motor Museum. Above screenshot is the trip usage. Please ignore the cost value because it is only counting the previous night AC home charging. Mostly motorway driving, AP set to speed limit +7%. Averaged out to be 3.4 mi/kWh at ambient in low 10's, lots of wind. Light blue in the state timeline is sentry mode. Parked up at 60%, it was possible to make it back in day 2 without any charging. With DC charging and used sentry mode, got back at 15%. Cost worked out to be around £10: (78.2 - 10.3) = 67.3 kWh home charging at 7.5p/kWh => ~£5.5. Was charged £4.50 for DC supercharging 12 kWh used at 37p/kWh. Average 4.1p/mile. I wasn't able to get on some free Asda chargers in Leicester. Then I saw Motor museum had chargers at pretty much same cost as Tesla supercharger at Leicester, might as well use the easier option.

I thought the ID 3 is Golf sized EV....... We need Polo sized 5 seater EV.

I actually don't feel the DFS effect ("expect a deal") when buying a Tesla. I feel it more sitting in a traditional car dealership when the car sales "executive" says he has to talk to his manager about getting a "better" deal for me...... Got to remember the manufacturing price variations are usually soaked up by the dealership network for transitional car companies. I personally prefer less middleman taking totally unnecessary cuts. I predict Model 3 and may be even Y will be below £40k in 2025 when the expensive car tax bracket starts on EV's. I hope they make a smaller car, MY is just too big. A £25k Leaf/Golf sized car would be great. ~200 miles EPA range, 50 kWh battery. Let's see what their 1st March "investor day" brings, supposedly "Master plan part 3" will be announced then.

Haha, what? Ignorance does not excuse for poor service. It's actually more reflective of their poor conduct.

BP and Shell posting record profits. BP are even saying it will scale back plans to reduce fossil fuel extraction. 😡 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64544110 Here's 2 very good and simple fixes to the electricity prices: Source: [MEDIA=youtube]ig-_WRd8GC0[/MEDIA]

PHEV? Yeah, my takeaway from that: avoid nice spots, do rapid charging at somewhere like an industrial estate.... at least until situation improves.

Who would have guessed! Free breeds greedy.

This really needs to be improved. Great destination charging will take a lot of pressure off motorway rapid charging network. And enables more EV miles or efficient miles for PHEV. This is due to newer low voltage 12v battery. All newer Teslas have a tiny Li-on battery under the hood. During normal operating, its only job is to close the contactors for the big battery. When the big battery is out of juice, the little battery drains in no time. For this reason, I've got a jump-start booster battery in the frunk. I believe it's a simple matter of connecting that up when you need power to the car to do stuff. I think the carwow crew are not as well prepared as they should be (at very least read the Tesla manual on out of juice procedures) On the other side of the coin, Tesla will be the car with most useful warnings. It will warn before you drive beyond range to get to a supercharger, it will warn if temperature affects performance (as shown in the video), and it will do other usual dumb percentage based warnings like other legacy maker EV and ICE cars.

There will be a period of bad rapid charging until installation ramps up and any bottleneck with approval is worked through. Until then, you really need home charging to stay sane, switch to EV tariff for super cheap motoring. If GM hasn't killed their EV1 and fossil fuel + auto manufacturers hasn't lobbied against CARB, we would have been a LOT further along in our EV transition. Regarding motorway service overstay, I think if you speak with service station manager, have a valid reason (eg. waiting for EV charger), they will be able to prevent any parking tickets. But even at 30 kW, it'll still be able to fill most EV's with enough juice to get to next charger. The slow charging problem shown in the video is due to poorly designed cars without battery pre-conditioning.

Indeed, having overnight charging makes driving EV super easy.

There's a Shell petrol station at bottom of A1M Borehamwood. There used to be a single 50 Kw rapid charger, works okay. About a year ago they ripped it out and installed 8 newer 150 kw rapid chargers. But wrapped up "coming soon". It was like that for good few months. Makes you wonder, are fossil fuel companies deliberately being slow with providing this service? Or do they think a few months of downtime is absolutely fine? I've rarely seen petrol station pump broken down for more than a few days. Why is it okay to completely remove a charge location for months!?

I was talking about what's in the video, where he said it isn't showing on podpoint app. Indeed many times chargers haven't been correctly marked and main point of EV ownership frustration. EV themselves are great, but public charge point anxiety is real.