Lady Elanore

Well today I did a car swap with my friend and got to drive the hybriddy a bit more than I'd expected It's always nice driving something new, as the sensations are all strange to you, the steering feels different, the acceleration too as well as the noise, handling and doodads to play with. Anyhoo, I did come to a few minor conclusions about it. Firstly, it's super comfy. Almost in the way cars used to be, before the Nürburgring turned everyone's family car in into an overdamped circuit star. It is also quiet and well screwed together, which surprised me as it's a Peugeot. No insult intended, but I did sell them for a short while and they weren't the best things on the block. The economy round town is pretty good if you use the hybrid mode and seems even better if you program up the satnav as I believe it then works out where best to share it's meagre electrical resources. Also, the turning circle is amazing for an SUV, it's more like a micra in that respect, the only let-down is the steering is super light. But the weird shape of the wheel wasn't a problem and I can see over it fine, which is useful for not crashing as well as seeing the high up dashboard. It's a novel concept that seems to work reasonably well in this SUV. The charging is an odd one though. It's super slow charge rates mean even when on a 16amp supply, it takes nearly 4 hours from flat to full (I think typically at home you would rarely go from entirely flat to full so your standard 8/10amp charger would probably still do a charge in around 4 hours - the battery has a little over 10kWh that you can use out of around 13kWhs in total) and that only gives a max of 39 miles range, which at the moment in the cold weather seems like 20 miles at best and even less, as the temperature drops further. I'm not sure about the 2nd 12V battery thing though. I guess it's there for running the general electrics while the car is running in EV mode and once it drops below a certain level the car defaults back to petrol mode permanently until the 2nd battery hits a certain charge %. I think I might have seen this happen, but I can't say for certain, as I don't know what the car is thinking. Probably, familiarity over a long time would give clues to its methodology? Overall it's a nice place to spend time, comfy, quiet and in sports mode, quite brisk, which it should be for it's total of 296bhp and 383lb/ft even though it's a bit chunky in weight thanks to its battery mass - or it just eats a lot of pies when nobody is looking? I buy one I reckon and suffer the dirty looks from the EV boys and girls at the charge stations with my thickened skin.

I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked for me. If I was driving something sporty I would lie a lot flatter, but in an SUV it seems perfectly natural to sit reasonably upright. Certainly wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me.

The spark option is already deep in my thoughts, as is a suitable bribe. Not sure if I could get away with a full EV charge though

So I've been out in the Hybridddiddy and even had a go in it. The steering is a bit mad, super light and you look over the top of it to see the dashboard. Weird, but it works well as the steering wheel is flat on top and bottom. But anyhoo the drive is very smooth. It's hard to tell when the petrol engine kicks in and joins or takes over from the electric engines. Super well implemented. Not sure about the economy of it all yet, as it wasn't really that sort of drive and the trip computer also reflected my friends drive down to my house, but I must say the engineering of the hybrid system seems beautifully integrated. I'd like more control over whether you wanted to purely drive on the petrol engine, but I think there might be a setting for this in a sub menu, my friend has no idea Another thing that came to light is how comfortable the car is. It's a little bit old school. You forget about comfort a bit these days, as cars tend to firmly sprung with a serious weapons grade dampers, the 3008, with its extra mass, seems to flatten bumps without being too bouncy, even if there is a little roll in the corners. It made a pleasant change from the modern uber hatch with its Nürburgring honed suspension.

I've just been looking at charge points I could use if I had a hybrid and it was used for work. For one day jobs, charging at home is a no-brainer, probably about £2.80 for 10kWh with new tariffs (approx correct I think ,as I gather the batteries retain around 25% of charge at all times, or at least the Peugeot/Vauxhall one does). But I do longer jobs where I work away from home and there are currently no chargers at the hotels/digs I use, or on site at the places I work (this includes nearby car parks). So running between accommodation and work would be a petrol only affair after a few days, except for a slight braking recharge facility. I don't know if that meagre amount would make much difference in town driving?? Certainly, full EV would be a nightmare for me.

It makes a good argument for us all having V8s with low development costs. The ultimate green car is a 5.7 V8 Chevy I reckon

A hybrid must be staggeringly complex. Having the complicated petrol and electric engines to integrate into a more or less imperceptible single-feeling power train, is a work of genius. Different forms of propulsion and the integration of them together can not be an easy ask, certainly you'd imagine a pure EV or ICE car would be significantly easier to design and build.

So you don't have a second 12V battery? Although i guess you don't need one if you don't have an engine to regularly start.

There is definitely a second battery, I just can't quite pin down what it does. I might have to go to a dealership and ask, just so I can sleep at night

Further reading seems to show that the second 12V battery (described as a lead acid) needs at least 70% charge to enable the traction battery to work at full capacity and this isn't always happening for some owners. I'm beginning to think the car really wants to live as a hybrid and the EV setting is not good for the cars overall health if used regularly

I'm hoping I can get to drive my friends, or at least we can go for a longer drive in it. "I'm properly intrigued, I am". On further reading, it seems the 3008 can suffer from drastically reduced range, not because of the air temp, but something linked to the second 12V battery. I'm hoping it's to do with people who are really using the car as an EV and in doing so, neglect the fact that it isn't one and that the petrol engine needs to be used, presumably, regularly. I think it might work with my lifestyle, as I often drive longer distances for work, so hopefully a hybrid would like that. In fact, a small hybrid would be fine for my work I reckon, especially as we often have huge mobile generators onsite

Actually, the more I think about these hybridididididy things the more I go off-topic too For instance, imagine you go to the shops. It's dark, cold and around 20-30 minutes away. The car starts to run on electric only, that means the heating, lights, sound system, heated seats, heated steering wheel and lots of other smaller systems all drawing power, even the steering draws electric power. So a quick jog around the interweb seems to suggest that all these systems would be run off the cars 12V battery. That makes sense I suppose, in that it would probably be a pain and expensive to fit an inverter to the traction battery (around 400V in the Peugeots) and the items are already all 12V designed anyway (they come from petrol and diesel standard cars). So if that is the case, then I assume the petrol engine will have to kick in as nothing more than a 12V generator! On longer runs it probably isn't a problem, as I guess the petrol engine will run a lot more on the motorway etc and so recharge the 12V battery, but I assume the petrol engine won't be happy if it's only occasionally kicking in for small intermittent bursts during short journeys. Does the petrol particulate filter get clogged, do the catalysts not really reach operating temperature etc. This makes me think that the designers will have to force the petrol engine to run, just to keep the day to day operation of the car functional and not cause damage. A knock from this probably means a fair bit of running will have to be with the petrol engine, whether you want it or not? Not great if you are in an 'electric car only' zone in somewhere like London. Apparently the Peugeots have a blue light 'tell tale' that shows the car is running in EV mode and so hopefully the emissions police won't come after you in one of the afore mentioned zones. There is even talk of a second 12V battery somewhere in the car that affects the operation of the EV systems if it isn't reasonably well charged up. These cars are a lot more complicated than I gave them credit for, I'd only ever really thought about the integration of them into the drive train. I wish I had an engineering brain I could borrow to answer the questions from my normal numpty brain, or maybe just plug it into my head like a second HDD Makes you wonder how the current younger generation will ever understand the things around them as technology becomes even more prevalent and complex? 😞 Perhaps I'm over thinking this I need to go back down the cellar to feed George his lunch....

I've already borrowed a nice long 16amp extension cable for the job She is charging on my leccy, whether she likes it or not besides, I'm intrigued by the whole thing

The car above is the prefacelift model as far as I can tell, I don't know if that makes a difference. As for the 13amp charge thing, somebody should tell Peugeot about the danger of domestic charging. Mind you, my home entertainment spends several hours a day burning though a fair bit of juice. (the additional power amps don't help). Still, it helps keep the room warm.

I think some of the confusion is that the car has its own inbuilt charger, one that is fixed in the car and as I have no experience of EVs, I didn't know that the 13amp adapter can come with a current limiting device. I see now that the 3.7kW car has the 13amp as a standard accessory and the 7kW does not, but that the same adapter is entirely compatible with its workings. I am definitely not getting a 7kW charge point fitted to my house and the idea of a load balancer is not one I will entertain as I love electricity and use as much of it as I can at any one time (most of it is used in my home entertainment system I think )

I've been to see the Peugeot man on my way home tonight. The 3008 is normally fitted with a standard 3.7kW onboard charger. It also comes with a 13amp, 3 pin domestic plug, to type 2 AC plug (although I guess strictly speaking it's a socket as you wouldn't have a plug if it had live voltage on it's pins that you could touch). Anyhoo that has a current limiter that will prevent the domestic plug drawing more than 13 amps and is in fact somewhere below this. This is what I had assumed, more or less. The 13amp box isn't for emergency only however, as it's only a small traction battery involved, it will only charge for a few hours at most. The 7kW onboard charger can still be used with the above 13amp domestic interface and this will still protect your domestic socket and ring main for overloading in the first place. It shouldn't make much difference to the charge time compared to the 3.7/3 kW onboard charger version. Although I suppose the inverter may be slightly different and so a slight change in efficiency will alter the charge times very slightly. I asked the above questions, as a friend of mine is going to be staying with me for a couple of weeks and is bringing the afore mentioned 3008 to stay along with her (I've made a nice comfy bed up for the car too, of course). I said it would be fine to charge it on my domestic supply before she raised the question of the 7kW charger. She has a proper charge point at home that is wired into the house supply. Anyhoo as long as she has the 13amp interface buggery box it should be fine. She is going to ask her husband if he has any idea if they own one I suspect he will be of no use, as he is even less technically minded than she is

If the onboard specific 7kw charger - as opposed to the standard onboard 3kw charger - is purely a mechanical design difference, eg bigger heat sinks and thicker copper cabling and so on, then I guess it's the external current limiting box that is what protects your house. What I can't find out is what the difference between onboard chargers.

If you put a short across a domestic mains cable, it doesn't current limit, so I figured that if the 7KW tries to draw more than 13amp, something has to give. There is no current limit in my electrics and the house will be on a fairly big current supply as it can support many kws of stuff simultaneously. I have an older house, so think it will be around 60amp supply. A 7kw device will not cuase a change in voltage but as far as I can see it will try and pull too much current for my house 😞 I wondered if the device the Irish chap used in your vid could be used with the on board 7kw charger, as the chap showed you can adjust the maximum current demand. The more I think about it, the cars onboard charger will probably be OK with the throttled current feed from such a device, as the voltage will be constant and it's inverter will just lower the available recharge current.

If it simply draws what it can get it will trip my ringmain out A 3kw kettle draws around 13amp and you can feel the fuse get hot. 7kw would draw way too much current

What I wondered was if there was a way to current limit the charge rate from a domestic socket. The draw from a 7kw charger would pop fuses or knock off relays in a regular house when fed from a domestic socket. If the car also has a secondary charger that can plug into a domestic socket, I guess it would current limit as a precaution, but I don't know if this is compatible with the 7kw charger on board? I am assuming the car in the vid has a 3kw-ish on board charger as standard. Apparently if you want a 7kw on board charger, you have to spec it when you order it, which is why I figured the car had the charger inbuilt. But it may well be only the inverter part of the system that then charges the car's traction battery and the little box in the video is the current supply controller if you see what I mean

I thought that some cars, ie the 3008 hybrididdy had an onboard charger? Does that not mean you are reliant on it to draw the correct current? Or do you get a thing like in your picture that can also limit current going into your 7kw car?

If you were going to charge a hybrid car with a relatively small battery from your domestic supply, ie straight from a 13 amp mains socket, but the car in question had an onboard 7kw charger, what would happen. Would the charger try and draw around 30 amps and so the inevitable would happen, or do they have a mechanism to select a lower rate of charge? I'm thinking of the Peugeot 3008 hybrid model if anyone has specific experience of this model in particular.

It must be said I am not a first choice for fashion and colour info. I like the front on the new M3/M4 for instance

You might like this Rob

I was happy with mine until it blew up The thing with OLED is that everything that you liked about Plasma (and made it the enthusiast's 'go to' choice in its day) is present in OLED and a whole lot more....except the room heating bit of course (they do get warm though )