Monkhai

The farm services near Gloucester are nice too. Similarly I seem to remember them picking up EV early too.

I get the impression that the big motorway service groups like moto and welcome break should watch their backs. Give it a few years and there will be no need for traditional services if hubs take off.

Same idiots that are not disabled that park in disabled bays then 😕

I guess I'm not driving EV yet, but my logic was that garden centres etc are likely to have a 1 hour stay, hence a 50kW DC would fill most cars in 1-2 hours, which would be plenty for a normal stay. You are of course correct an en route charger would do just as well, bar you spending some money whilst charging. If you consider it to be say 3+ hours, then yes 22kW is plenty, although what I really think you need is a car park where at least 50% of the bays have chargers. Perhaps a singe supply that can do 3 phase 22/11 with 1 car (or if you're lucky 2@16Amp 3Ph) or 3 cars each at 7kW. It's a difficult one in my mind, because if every bay has it and there's a small risk of not being able to graze at the next stop, then lots of 7kW is better. As things stand though there are not that many bays, so a small number of 50kW will help more people. I think I said above, I'd like to see a small number of fast on each floor for a very short boost at higher cost and then most/all bays have 7kW which are included in the parking charge/cheap as chips.

For a destination charge, 22kW isn't bad, although 50Kw-100kW DC would be much better as most cars can't actually charge at 22kW and most are much slower.

I like that anaology. Having driven a few of those cars shown against it, including the Maclaren, they're all very quick and the Maclaren eyewateringly so. It's a damn fast car and from the standard AWD handles well.

Living nearby, we avoid the M5 like the plague when it's holiday season, but on the off chance you have to that always seems packed. In some respects I agree with you, it's just that the distance isn't far between there and Exeter. - Taunton Dean to Exeter Services = 30 miles - Bridgwater to Exeter Services = 40 miles - Sedgemoor to Exeter Services = 50 miles - Bristol to Sedgemoor = 33 miles - Bristol to Bridgewater = 40 miles - Bristol to Taunton Dean = 55 miles It's actually quite a tough one to be honest, as bridgwater is the half way house, taunton dean is busy and sedgemoor is a good break point if you're coming down the M5 from the midlands, can get past the M4/M5 junction then fill up. At the moment the stuff I see around Cribbs is tesla, slow or a customer only type thing, although I might not be seeing them all. Of course the farm services on the M5 are always a favourite of mine if you do need to stop and sit for a bit.

The Gridserve competition or indeed gridserv themselves need to put something big in around somerset, so not everyone is going for a charge at exeter. Whilst taunton dean has space and north/south or sedgemore a little further north could make sense, another good option could be bridgwater services. Bridgwater is on a roundabout serving both directions and close enough to hinkley point to get a fairly direct supply of large volumes of eletricity without long runs.

Not Far as it has the same battery and motors as the AWD GTL/GTL-S with a bigger inverter on the rear motor and some body stiffening/suspension and similar handling/stopping improvements. Since the GTL has the same battery, 19" wheels and a 316 official range, then I imagine turning the wick up and going from 19-21" wheels will drop it to around 275 official. The GTL-S has 20" wheels and is more like 300 miles, so the wheels definately have an effect. The AWD cars are getting 220-250 in winter conditions. then I'd say this is in the 200 mile real world (Without using all the performance, all the time) Still a beast and still a respectable range vs a tank in a supercar, but... Of course if they get it released soon and there are some available, then a trade in from a standard AWD to a GT could be a lot of fun.

Be interesting if you had the battery on the car, a battery on the caravan and one/both of solar/wind on the roof as you say. That way the car can do the V2L, but then when sun is out/wind is blowing the caravan can recharge itself and if so desired the car. Should cover the daily driving around the campsite if nothing else and would probably be pretty cheap too.

Pretty bad this didn't make it into the CCS chargers though if it didn't. Even if it was something that only worked for tethered chargers due to a missing wire to allow charger controll on your own cables. I don't mind having a couple of rapids in a car park, as long as they are very very expensive after a suitably short time period. The better solution would be to have a couple of fast bays which give 20 minutes of electric @50-100kW and if you're gone within that 20-30 minute window, then you can fill it up for "free" in the parking bay on a 7Kw.

Be nice if the system could give them a nudge on the app to allow unplug. If there is CCTV over a charger, so any damage could be caught, then I'd say it would be quite reasonable for a tethered charger to unlock the charge port once the car has hit 80%. Again it comes back to there being a need for idle/overstay charges. Idle is a bit harsh as you don't actually know how long a car will take, but frankly after the car is charged 15-30 minutes is kind of the limit. This is one part of electric car ownership I am not looking forward to.

Regardless of who replaced Mr Jones, or in fact if he was just dropped I don't think there would be many complaints. Some of the "jokes" on this week were cringe worthy, not funny and I'm left debating if he is deliberately trying to play the fool (who isn't funny) or is just the village idiot.

Battery pack and a gentle regenerative braking system in the caravan to supply power to the tow car?

Absolutely drag is an issue and not just Aero, but also friction from tyres etc. Sort both and you make a big step on the motorways, which as you say are the EV weak point not cities/traffic as for ICE.

Yes this is definately a good thing... Most people won't need the 450 mile range, but if you want to get business commuters, sales forces and those with long distances to drive, who currently use a diesel to move over, there will need to be the option. Like there is a petrol/diesel choice, the car companies offer an SR offering with 250-300 mile and a say 50kWh battery or a 75kWh which gives 375-450+. Horses for courses, but the big first step is getting weight down. I mean when we were looking at the EV6, it amazed me how many of these cars use big batteries to get range, then slap wide 20/21" wheels on them and eat up a big chunk of the range. We wanted a particular model version, but you had no option to trade down to 18/19" wheels from 20 to gain approx 10% range improvement. It's fine, we went for the one with smaller wheels and better range, but even so. For this generation, I took what I could, but next time around I want to see something lighter, more aero etc. Things you see alone on cars, such as cameras in place of wing mirrors, flush door handles, steeper raked aero designs, dual gearing or suspension that lowers at motorway speeds are going to need to start appearing together on the next gen of cars.

Ooops, I completely missed the 2 year old date stamp. I do agree though getting cars from doing 3-4 miles/kWh to 5-6 miles per kWh would make a huge difference. Oddly I'd expect somebody like Jaguar, who have been making cars with aluminium for years to be able to improve their range a lot in the next gen cars. They would of course have to choose to go down the aluminium/other low weight plus good drag factor route and fit not stupid tyres, but would offset that by using a smaller battery to still give better range. 100kWh for 400 miles becoming 60-75kWh to go 400 miles would be a nice improvement, save weight and cost/time to fill. If they could get 60-75kWh to do 450-500 miles, then there is no (real) range anxiety any more and even a 50kWh charger would get you from 10-80% in an hour. A 350 (At lets say 220kW) would have you on your way for "diesel range" in 15-20 minutes too. The charger tech @ 800V 350kW is there, they just need to push it everywhere and get cars doing 400-600 miles from a smaller battery. When efficiency goes up, those 7kW chargers could give you north of 200-250 miles range miles in 4-5 hours, which again means topping up for a full drive overnight is easy, it's cheaper and the grid has much less strain on it.

I mean if they can launch it with a sensible price and delivery time and not a 12 month wait, then I think you'd find a lot of people would consider changing car orders.

And this is where it gets sticky... Regs give safe zones, RCD all the rest, but pretty much all seem to suggest things around AC. I ask as I have somebody coming in to fit them and we don't want a huge chunk of external conduit running down the house. I wanted to check, as they stated it can be run in the wall, but as I'm not aware of DC RCD/ARC systems then obviously it's better to be safe than otherwise. Looks like it's a case of cut out some holes to push steel conduit up. I am slightly concerned though as if you use metal conduit and it's earthed, then surely that would increase the danger in the case of a damaged DC system as it would complete the circuit.

To the OP... I've removed the white space/new lines and left the random bits of text that were burried in it. You may wish to make sure that your first post says what you want it to say.

Yes but as mentioned, the prices for the Kia (at least) are fictional based on what dealers are saying.

Just placed an EV6 order and it felt most different, but I actually liked the drive/feel of the ipace. Totally agree on the e-tron though, sat in it and decided we wouldn't be driving it as it was a bit meeh for the range/money. It's funny how they're all as you say, very similar.

The thing is the only cars I have driven are demo cars and almost all currently on fleet are first release vehicles as replacements are hard to come by. It's never a true show of what the car is like because you have no idea if it's up to date, if they've done a full PDI, tyre pressures or anything else. The ID3 we drove was terrible as it pitched forward under heavier braking then the accelerator was as if you had pushed it down 100% and then car just rocked forward and back. The Enyaq much less roll and far better body control (IMHO) it was just after stopping quickly for another car that wouldn't stop, I touched the accelerator and honestly it felt again as if it was full throttle meaning I felt quite sick. As I mentioned, I have a feeling that we are more sensitive to the movement than average, but I also think there has probably been a software update or something which tones down the accelerator response. It'd be all over the place if what I experienced was normal. The Enyaq also has a very nice cabin though, much nicer than the ID3 (IMHO). EV6 was a good middle ground of range, charging speed and generally a nice car at a fair price. Delivery time as always is once upon a never never... but current estimate is Q1 2023

Play nice

So having driven many electric cars, we've ended up on the first one we drove, which holds a good mix of features and doesn't have the one really annoying quirk of some others. The ID3/ID4/Enyaq all seem to have this interesting behaviour where if you (even very lightly) apply the throttle after lifting off the brakes then your stomach gets the opportunity to empty it's contents on the steering wheel. I think we're probably more sensitive to this than others, as people are clearly buying them, but it wasn't something we could live with. ID3 was far worse IMHO than the Enyaq, as it seemed to have softer suspension which allowed the car to roll around like a boat when you applied brakes then the accelerator. If I had to guess I'd say that there's something between the regenerative braking and a throttle response that is very on/off which shouldn't be too hard to fix with a software update. It may already be fixed, but there wasn't an update for that. As it is then we've gone and ordered a Kia EV6 on a lease and it's a GT Line AWD. The drive is good, the car is well equipped, the lease price was more reasonable than most other cars, there is a local (and helpful) dealer, the range seems good and the charging speed is better than most (even if it doesn't get full speed as some say). I really liked the iPace, which was nice to sit in, but slower charging and a bigger battery to do a similar real world range kind of dented that. When you then added in the much higher purchase/PCP/Lease costs, it was never going to happen. It seems the computers in the dealers have an EV300 on (As opposed to EV400), which was around 10k cheaper and would possible have swung it in the iPace direction. Having waited 6 months, it's sadly not available in the UK currently, so that's a no go. Cars we tried: - EV6 - Ionic 5 - ID3 - Enyaq/ID4 - XC40 - Jaguar iPace - Tried to get a Cupra Born (No such luck) - Tried to get a polestar2 (Nearest sales dealer is 200 miles away) - Tried to get a Model 3 (But it wasn't easy and then the touch screen put me right off) - A few others were sit in them and decide we didn't like them enough to drive.