domhnall

my point is you can see from the driver's seat the availability of "fuel" ahead of you. You go to the places where there is availability (plenty of it along that route) and avoid the places where there is limited availability. Sadly not available on petrol cars as I know from turning up at forecourts to find those yellow covers on the nozzles of the pumps.

My car has a notional range of 240 miles but realistically it does 215 in the summer, 200 in the winter. That is fine because my regular trip is just Livingston to Milton Keynes which is only 380 miles. It takes 6 hours by train or 7.5 hours by car (including stops). I stick by the Army's rules on driving which require me to take a break every two hours. In those breaks I plug the car in while I wander over to the loo. Like I said recently, the last trip back needed 12 minutes at Stafford for the loo and to grab a coffee to go, and 24 minutes at Tebay for dinner. I simply would not drive a whole day without a break as it would be foolish in the extreme to do so.

who mentioned apps? My car shows whether they are available. As for ICE I have turned up at petrol stations plenty of times to find covers over the nozzles saying they are out of fuel. On the way back from France last year I called in to Costco for fuel in Birmingham, we wueued half an hour for fuel. If I had been shown in advance the state of play then I would have gone elsewhere just as I do in my Skoda. as for the covers, MSAs were built without the grid connections to support EV charging. The government has promised funding to provide grid upgrades but it is running roughly 18 months behind schedule - it's not Gidserve's fault, it's the UK government.

videos like that really **ss me off. You can tell from your car before visiting those sites how many chargers there are, whether they are in use / broken/ available etc so why would you go there and then say "oh this is rubbish"? I mean it's like if I read that a petrol station was out of action (Like my local Shell garage was recently) and then went there and said "the petrol/ diesel infrastructure is rubbish". Done to get clicks and engagement nothign more.

also made this quick video review of the car

Just did Edinburgh to Milton Keynes and back. On the return leg I paid attention to the times we speant charging. We set off at mid day, the car wanted us to charge at Manchester but by the time we were nearing Stafford my son said he needed the loo. So we stopped at Starbucks and plugged in while we emptied our tanks. We then bought a couple of drinks and took them with us. Spent a total of 14 minutes charging by which time the car said we could get to Gretna. But by 5pm we were passing Tebay and given a choice between Burger King at Gretna or Tebay we stopped and paid a premium for their chargers (64p versus Ionity's 43p). Going to the loo, ordering and eating food and then going back to the car took 24 minutes. By which time the car was at 92% which was more than enough to get home to just outside Edinburgh. And this is the shorter range Enyaq. I can't actually see that there is a pressing need for longer range cars.

the 60 is not getting 4.0, they were very clear when they announced 4.0 that it was for the 85 only

which contient is it in then? Asia or North America? Australasia? Do tell 🙂

I'm on Zappi - used to be on Agile and it worked well with that. Now I'm on Intelligent Octopus Go, we averaged 8.5p per kWh over the winter for the whole energy bill - and we're an all electric house

My energy provider gives me an 8% discount on many chargers and the charge gets added to my home energy bill. Why should they have to start buying chargers that cost 6 figures plus the cost of maintenance, a grid connectiion charge of £1000 per charger per year plus site rental, cost of running a help desk. Nah, far better to do what they are doing right now. After all Tesla are providing charging below cost (using cross subsidy from car sales) to drive as may others out of the market as possible and become dominant. Why would an energy provider try to compete with that? It makes zero sense.

actually some of them are smarter than that. Mine can and does integrate with smart tariffs so it knows only to charge when the price drops below a value I set, it works with my home battery storage and also my solar, I can tell it to send a specified amount of power to the car, or to only charge the car from solar or when a certain percentage of the available oower comes from the grid/ solar. So a bit more to it than just a connection.

Most of the charger operators are still loss making. They are having to invest in network rollout and that is capex intensive. The other reason is that the government has artificially depressed our energy prices, so the difference has been made up from business tariffs. Businesses typically hedge and lock in for longer periods, many are still paying significantly more than we do with our artificially constrained prices. Then there's the cost of connecting to the grid. The grid charges are up roughly 500% since 12 months ago. Per rapid charger it is now roughly £1,000 per year just to have your unit hooked up to the mains. Then there's maintenance, site rental, wayleave costs etc etc etc

meh! My Skoda cost £36K three years ago, similar cars selling now for £23k but with lower spec. I'm pretty sure that's roughly the same as I would have lost on a fossil skoda over three years. In the meantime a service is under £200 every 2 years and it cost me £319 to cover just over 13,000 miles last year. It's the best car I have ever owned (previously 11 Skodas, 1 Tesla, 1 Renault and a Nissan)

if the government really wanted to make the UK a less attractive place for illegal immigration, an ID card would do more than all the other things put together. One of the biggest pull factors for the UK is that you can vanish into society and work without any form of ID being needed.

My solar was installed 15 years ago and is long since paid off and is now pure profit. My battery is on a zero percent government loan. The combination of the two mean that even in the depths of winter when it was minus 11 the total cost of home energy plus car fuel was £123 for the month. No one said it's free but it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the flammable liquid I used to use. 🤷

Manufacturers are now copying Tesla. If you buy a new Enyaq you buy it from Skoda direct. The dealer is just a conventient location you go to when it's time to collect the car. The dealer gets paid an admin fee. My experience of owning a tesla for 14 months was enough to put me off for life. A poorly built car riddled with faults and Tesla couldn't give a toss once I'd paid them. In 14 months it was back more than 14 times. I spent as much time in old dirty model S loan cars than anything else.

there's ionity at Stranraer and new ultra rapids going in soon at Cairnryan. On Skoda you need to be below 15% to get the fastest charge. People who fill up before then need to put their big brave pants on 😉

tht grid fee is £5000 per charger, per year

prices of the power may be going down but the grid connection charges are up 500% in the last year. Now several thousand pounds per connector just to have power to a unit

I've been averaging 4.1 or 4.2 most days on my commute the last couple of weeks. Heating on, heated seats on, heated steering wheel on.

so happy with it I made a video previously I have had numerous Skodas (1 x estelle, 2 x favorit, 1 x Felicia, 5 x octavias, 1 x yeti, another octavia) then a Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe and finally a Tesla model 3. The Enyaq is the best of the lot. I have o

I've not had any luck coding the enyaq with VCDS, I had to use OBD eleven to make any changes 😞

best colour

£800k will only go so far, a rapid charger is roughly £50k, you have £2k for the grid connection for a 50 kW unit, CPs charge 25p per transaction, then you have the cost of the civils to get it all installed. THere's a reason the likes of Gridserve, Instavolt etc are not making any profit, same with any infarstructure rollout, you need to invest a lot and wait years to make your money back.

don't forget you're using rapid chargers that start at around £38,000 (max £1000 at home) and then you need to factor in VAT at 20% (5% at home), grid connection charges (zero at home), back office and telecoms charges (zero at home), and card fees (zero at home) and also commercial electricity tariff (a lot higher than residential tariffs). That's why most charge poiint operators have yet to make a profit.