OK if I lob in the odd question re Elroqs?

Looking to change Mrs DSL’s car and thinking Electric, presently looking at low spec Elroq (50 SE) and Volvo EX30. Mega discounts on EX30s, moderate discounts on Elroqs so similar cost. We’ll be complete EV newbies, my car is a Karoq TDi SE 4x4 and that’s not changing. New car will be pretty much all local driving so planning just to charge at home, charging being the cause of most of my head scratching.

So first question, do the Elroqs have cabin preconditioning, ie set the time of departure and either get it up to temp by that time, or down to temp in warmer weather?

Is the blind zone detection where there is a warning light in the side mirrors if there is a car in the blind spots either side? Wish I could get that retrofitted to my Karoq.

And re home charging, and I know opinions will vary wildly, but what’s the best combo of tariffs and wall charger? I assume that’s something I have to buy on top, as is cable for granny charging from standard socket? I have no idea where to start re wall chargers and tariffs, we haven’t even caved in to our energy supplier’s demands to fit smart meters.

Apologies if these have been covered, I did have a look through this section but couldn’t find answers.

TIA

53 minutes ago, DSL said:

OK if I lob in the odd question re Elroqs?

Looking to change Mrs DSL’s car and thinking Electric, presently looking at low spec Elroq (50 SE) and Volvo EX30. Mega discounts on EX30s, moderate discounts on Elroqs so similar cost. We’ll be complete EV newbies, my car is a Karoq TDi SE 4x4 and that’s not changing. New car will be pretty much all local driving so planning just to charge at home, charging being the cause of most of my head scratching.

So first question, do the Elroqs have cabin preconditioning, ie set the time of departure and either get it up to temp by that time, or down to temp in warmer weather?

Is the blind zone detection where there is a warning light in the side mirrors if there is a car in the blind spots either side? Wish I could get that retrofitted to my Karoq.

And re home charging, and I know opinions will vary wildly, but what’s the best combo of tariffs and wall charger? I assume that’s something I have to buy on top, as is cable for granny charging from standard socket? I have no idea where to start re wall chargers and tariffs, we haven’t even caved in to our energy supplier’s demands to fit smart meters.

Apologies if these have been covered, I did have a look through this section but couldn’t find answers.

TIA

I can't advise on the Elroq per se as we don't have one. However, my 2p worth is of the two, Elroq & EX30, I would go for the Elroq. The EX30 doesn't have a driver display or any buttons because everything is on or in the central tablet screen thingy, ala Tesla's. The boot & rear legroom are much smaller than the Elroq as well.

As for tariffs & home charging, my wife has a Hyundai Kona 64kWh (our 1st EV) which we charge at home overnight on a Zappi charger & Octopus Intelligent Go tariff. 25p/kWh during the day (don't use much as we have solar & batteries) & 7p/kWh overnight from 11.30pm till 5.30am plus cheap rate offers outside of the cheap rate times as & when advised. We hammer the overnight cheap rate tariff charging the car as needed to 80%, charging the LFP house batteries to 100% (20kWh) & running any appliances that can be delay timed to come on overnight.

The granny charger "should" come with the car. Same for the main type 2 charging cable. Our Kona came with both cables but we've not used either because our Zappi came with a tethered cable attached to it. And yes you will have to pay extra for the charger which must be installed by a qualified electrician. You may also have to have your main house fuse upgraded to take the extra kW / amp drawn through the mains cable. We had to have a bigger 80amp main fuse installed by our DNO. However, check with Skoda as to what cables come with the car as standard.

Note that you will not be able to access any special EV tariffs unless you have a proper 7.4kW home charger / wall box. A granny charger can only charge at 3kW on it's 3 pin plug (not recommended & cannot be used on an extension lead either) so will take twice as long to charge any car than a proper wall box charger.

e.g. A 48kW car battery would take 16hrs to charge from 0-100% with a 3kW granny charger (longer than any cheap overnight tariffs) vs 6.4hrs on a 7.4kW wall box charger. We tend to charge our Kona to 80% overnight when it gets down to 20-30% of charge so it can easily be charged in the cheap rate 6hr window. Never yet had to charge it to 100% for any longer journeys.

Check the Octopus website for your address / area to see what cars & chargers are compatible with their EV Intelligent Go tariff & what the prices are. My understanding is that as long as the charger is compatible you are good to go even if the car isn't. In our case the Zappi & Kona are both compatible with the Octopus system which takes over control of the car charging when it's plugged in at home.

We haven't used a public car charger in nearly 3 years of ownership as the Kona can easily do 280+ miles on a full charge. TBH I would throw up at the thought of having to pay 70p/kWh or more at a public charger when I only pay 7p when charging overnight at home!!

If we plan to go on a trip that's longer than the Kona can manage or there's no "cheap" destination charging available, we'll take my Superb which has far more space for luggage anyway.

As an aside, we are looking to change my wife's Kona soon & are waiting for the new Skoda Epiq to break cover. Smaller & cheaper than the Elroq & similar in size to the Kona we have but with a bigger boot. Almost a "Goldilocks" car for my wife's requirements. If we do it, it will probably be our first ever lease car as well since previously we have always bought used cars.

Happy hunting.

Thanks for that, lots of good info to chew through.👍

Agree re the size of the EX30, though rear is not an issue as there are just 2 of us. What does put me off is the essential driving info in the centre of the car. Having been driving for 45 years with the readouts in front of me, looking to the side is going to be a distracting PITA. Old dogs & new tricks. Also been mooching through the EX30 forum and that car has more bugs than one of the buggier scenes in an Indiana Jones movie. Not sure Mrs DSL would be happy with that, and a happy wife is a happy life.

If you are considering an EX30, might be worth looking at Smart #1 as partly same car underneath.

Granny chargers are rarely supplied as standard nowadays, if you want one will normally have to order it as an extra, or separately.

With granny chargers, not going to be able to add more than about 110 miles even if you had it plugged in from 7pm to 7am.

Don't think you would be allowed a discounted overnight EV tariff if you do not have a smart meter, because they wouldn't know how much you are using at different times of the day. Smart meters are free. Expect about £1000 to install a 7.4kw charger (if your fuse box is old or involves very long cable run will be more), but sometimes there are contributions towards the cost from manufacturers for new cars.

Electricity tariffs change every few days, no point in worrying about best tariff now, just use one of the utility comparison websites, just before you want to change to find who has best deal.

3 hours ago, DSL said:

OK if I lob in the odd question re Elroqs?

Looking to change Mrs DSL’s car and thinking Electric, presently looking at low spec Elroq (50 SE) and Volvo EX30. Mega discounts on EX30s, moderate discounts on Elroqs so similar cost. We’ll be complete EV newbies, my car is a Karoq TDi SE 4x4 and that’s not changing. New car will be pretty much all local driving so planning just to charge at home, charging being the cause of most of my head scratching.

So first question, do the Elroqs have cabin preconditioning, ie set the time of departure and either get it up to temp by that time, or down to temp in warmer weather?

Is the blind zone detection where there is a warning light in the side mirrors if there is a car in the blind spots either side? Wish I could get that retrofitted to my Karoq.

And re home charging, and I know opinions will vary wildly, but what’s the best combo of tariffs and wall charger? I assume that’s something I have to buy on top, as is cable for granny charging from standard socket? I have no idea where to start re wall chargers and tariffs, we haven’t even caved in to our energy supplier’s demands to fit smart meters.

Apologies if these have been covered, I did have a look through this section but couldn’t find answers.

TIA

I'm not sure I can answer your questions re the 50SE as we have an 85 Edition, so providing some of the specs align -

The Elroq does have cabin preconditioning, although I can't comment on how good it is as we haven't used it yet, but the car lives in a cosy garage.

It does have blind spot detection on both side mirrors.

With charging, there are loads of options. We don't have a smart charger, but basically we have an uprated granny type charger running from a 32A Command socket, so it still does 7.4kW, the same as a smart charger. I would have gone for a smart charger, but I wanted the charger in the garage which is detached from the house and a good distance from the meter, so we don't have a CT on the incoming supply, but we do have a 100A main fuse. We have installed PEN protection on the Commando supply, which would normally be included in a smart charger.

We use standard Octopus Go which gives us cheap rate 8.5p/kWh between 0.30 and 5.30 so, 1.5p/kWh more than Intelligent Octopus and 1 hr less.

We've tried Intelligent Octopus, but as we don't have a smart charger, they have to communicate directly with the car. Mostly it worked, but some times it didn't. In a nightly charging session, it might schedule 10 different charging slots, which the car seemingly didn't like so communication was lost on some occasions. I went back to Octopus Go as they don't have to communicate with anything. We just schedule the car to charge during the cheap rate and it works. Normally we plug in when the battery is around 45% and it charges back to 80% with no problem. If the battery is down to 20% we'd charge over 2 nights, which isn't a problem for us. It just means we have to pre plan our longer journeys.

Before the Elroq, we had a Volvo XC40 PHEV which we never fell in love with, but we did have a good poke around the EX30 while the XC40 was in for service and didn't like that either. Seems smaller than the Elroq and less user friendly. To be fair, we didn't drive it so shouldn't really be disparaging about it.

Finally, I don't think a 13A granny charger is even available as on option, although a 32A one is, but it's quite pricy.

I'm not sure if any of my ramblings help or not, but good luck.

Ramblings deffo help. Will have to look at the fuse box, plus what the supply amps we have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=On4EDzk-ELM

Comparison video

Thanks for that, skimming through that (skipping the Kia bits), Elroq is deffo on top. 👍

Now just got to persuade Mrs DSL to give up her beloved 14 year old Jazz. 🙄

They are absolutely fantastic, Mrs DSL will love it !

Just got to persuade her first. That could take a while.

16 hours ago, Bowdie said:

We don't have a smart charger, but basically we have an uprated granny type charger running from a 32A Command socket, so it still does 7.4kW, the same as a smart charger. I would have gone for a smart charger, but I wanted the charger in the garage which is detached from the house and a good distance from the meter, so we don't have a CT on the incoming supply

When we had had our charger (ohme) installed, the installer ran a data cable alongside the supply cable back from wall box to the isolator by the meter box. Because the area in front of the garage had no wifi or connectivity.

So there are solutions to making it smart, rather than just a dumb supply. However some (cheaper and less experienced) installers don't seem to offer solutions to lack of connectivity to web

Edited 10 September, 202510 Sep by SurreyJohn

3 hours ago, SurreyJohn said:

When we had had our charger (ohme) installed, the installer ran a data cable alongside the supply cable back from wall box to the isolator by the meter box. Because the area in front of the garage had no wifi or connectivity.

So there are solutions to making it smart, rather than just a dumb supply. However some (cheaper and less experienced) installers don't seem to offer solutions to lack of connectivity to web

Our Zappi has an an EV ultra extra tuff cable which has extra coms cables inside for CT's with the main conductor cables.

However, after having problems with WiFi signal & dropouts I've connected my Zappi charger, Eddi (solar diverter) & Solar Inverter/battery system direct to my router via a separate CAT6 ethernet cable & 4-way plug & play ethernet switch.

I ran a cable from the router through the front porch in some mini trunking & into my attached garage to the ethernet switch. Then wired up each device back to the switch. Made off & crimped all the RJ45 connectors by hand myself so the cable runs are nice & neat with hardly any slack coiled up anywhere. Works a treat & so much more reliable than Wifi. Also future proof if I want to change my router / broadband supplier in the future in that no reprogramming of passwords will be needed for any of the directly connected devices.