So it didn’t charge last night but I think this may have been due to a setting I had on the lock menu. I really didn’t like the whole menu open to view (and to tamper with) but think I locked it down too securely that it needed a passcode entered to even charge to a schedule. So this is the permanent view now.
So after changing the offending setting I decided to turn off the Kia’s schedule and just have the Zappi on schedule so that if that didn’t work I’d know where the issue lay.
Happily it started charging tonight at 11:15PM as scheduled in the Zappi.
Things get even more comple/clever/difficult when /if your electricity supplier gets involved.
Like manu in the UK i use octopus go to charge my ev. This means that my car decides when to charge based on when it is told to by octopus. The zappi charger is now a pretty dump device.
Once i plug my ev in, and the car tells octopus it has started to charge, octopus stops the charge and sets a schedule,usually to charge overnight. Or when it suits them i.e. when the price is cheapest.
Yes. The car screen and also the BMW app can control timings etc if you want to use a low rate tariff at night for instance. Or you can just have the car set to charge whenever it is plugged in. Simple.
Our i3 is about 6yrs old. My wife doesnt want to part with it, and she uses it most.
As Bruce said they are ultimately plug and play. Upon install it was plugged into the car and it started charging immediately.
Setting up a schedule to use a cheaper electric tariff is actually quite simple either in the car (or app) or at the charger (or app).
I complicated things for myself by wanting to lock down the charger with a password and misinterpreting one of the settings that allows scheduled charging without this password being entered.
I have had a BEV for 2 years now and the experience has been very positive so far and I would not go back to getting a combustion-engined car or hybrid. They are easy to drive and due to how quiet they are I find them less tiring to drive on long journeys. I may be just lucky but I have not had many issues with public chargers and have seen their number grow considerably at different places. I also have a home charger which I think is essential as part of EV ownership particularly when making the EV cheaper to run.
Like many, I was unsure if an EV would suit us especially as we live in a very rural part of North Wales where facilities of any kind are scarce. So we decided to lease for 3 years and see how that went before committing to go all in and buy one potentially. So in lease terms, it came down to a simple formula of choosing the car with the longest range and lowest monthly cost. At the time that was easily the MG ZS EV long-range. It has been a good car and reliable but I would say not the greatest and I will be looking for something else like a Kia EV3 or EV6 or of that ilk next year.
I will want to put a towbar on it as I go sailing and have a boat on a trailer (around 500kg total weight) and will use the car to take it to our local lake (Bala) which is only a 12-mile or so round trip. So reduced range is not an issue. I have a friend who tows his boat with an ID.4 all over the UK and also does not find the reduced range an issue. Just like using a low-range car it just takes a bit more planning to do long journeys. It does help that our boats weigh a fraction of a heavy caravan of course and even including the trailer weight are a lot less than 1000kg.
It is amazing how much more choice there is now even from 2 years ago with so many new models now available.
The home charger we got was a Myenergi Zappi. It has proved a good bit of kit and plays well with our Domestic solar and battery system.
I think I may be missing something here. The Kia connect app tells me I’ve done an average 5.6 miles per KWh. This conversion online suggests this is around 180 mpg
I don’t really understand how you can make the conversion. Cannot be based on price (too variable). Is it on energy, ie 1 gallon of fuel burnt per hour generates a certain number of joules vs 1kW (which is 1000 joules/sec)? Anyway it seems a pointless comparison to me, or maybe I am missing something!
More importantly a journey at 5.6mi/kWh is pretty efficient, it must have largely been downhill surely? I’d expect around 3.5 at this time of year, a bit less if cold/dark/wet/heavy foot etc. I have never seen over 5 on the dash display on any normal journey. 5.6mi/kWh with the EV6 battery of about 77Kw capacity would equate to a range of well over 400 miles so unless your car has a hidden secret that is not likely.
One can make the conversion a KW is just a unit of measurement of energy and KWH an expression of consumption of energy over time an ICE car will go a certain distance on a litre of petrol (say) and a litre of petrol is equivalent to a certain number of KWH i.e. about 8.9KWH.
So to make things easy if a car on avg travels about say 8 miles on a litre of petrol it is the equivalent of 0.9 miles per kWH approx.
It is kind of pointless other than highlighting for those used to seeing efficiency of cars in MPG how efficient running a BEV is compared to an ICE.
Cost per mile of both ICE and BEV is another way to express the efficiency of EVs.
Mainly because I’ve never seen it advertised or mentioned that an EV (in energy terms) generally does the equivalent of well over 100mpg. If I got 35 mpg in my Lexus I was thrilled! I’m surprised it’s not advertised more. I’ll certainly be telling everyone who asks me about its excellent mpg.
Looking at it again I think that’s today’s value, that the average is 4.5 miles /kWh
The comparison is correct in terms of the energy contained in a litre of petrol is known and the energy out into a EV is known and that can be converted to MPG. It does indeed help highlight how efficient an EV is. It is not all about emissions or lack of but how efficiently the energy we put into EVs is used.
Your energy cost per mile is perhaps a more relevant figure, and you could easily compare that with a similar ICE vehicle. Not hard to calculate. ‘Whole life’ ie factoring depreciation/insurance/servicing etc is rather more difficult.
Incidentally it may be that using high regen is actually not more efficient. I have seen a careful test that suggested coasting (zero regen) is actually better over mixed driving. As in an ICE vehicle efficiency depends mostly on avoiding decelerations and therefore energy sapping acceleration so driving style and anticipation is the key. Note braking does capture some regen too. I am not sure there’s a great difference, and I tend to adjust my regen level in proportion to traffic level for convenience and control. The paddles for doing this are just a great idea, one no other brands seem to use.
Indeed I really like the paddles and the ability to change whilst driving.
What I’ve settled on so far is
Heavy Traffic: i-Pedal (one pedal driving)
General Dublin traffic: Level 3 Regen
Motorway: Level 2 Regen
Rural roads : Level 3 Regen.
My daughter prefers less regen.
I tried “sport” for the first time 2 nights ago. Wow! Amazing acceleration. Don’t think I’ll use it too much as I’m not that sort of driver but it certainly is impressive.
On Ferry to UK now, off to MAV show in Barnsley via my cousins in Scunthorpe. Sail/Rail, my daughter will be enjoying the electric experience while we’re away.
I value consistency in the behaviour of my cars and my preference is for max regen - I have preferred that with all the EVs I have had. But I control with my right ankle so that I am not constantly accelerating and decelerating sharply. But I have never had an EV where you can vary the regen via paddles behind the steering wheel. My iX has an automatically variable regen function which in theory gives you coasting on the straights with nobody in front of you and regen approaching a bend (it’s blended with the satnav) but i found it scary when it didn’t apply the regen for minor twists - not predictable so I haven’t used that.
There is a lot of discussion in EV world about whether coasting or regen is better. Coasting (or slowing down v gently) is a lot more efficient than slowing down and speeding up a lot as there are losses suffered in regen.
The regen in my i3s is based on speed. More when slower i.e. around town, less at speed i.e. A roads and motorways. Works well, dont need to overthink things.
