This will never happen and is not the answer. Why should general car parking have a huge supply of EV posts? Who would pay for that? Thats the reason public charging is so expensive because the Gov has made no investment, unlike say France, and without that, companies want to recoup their money as soon as possible and we will soon be seeing £1 per kwh.
This is only an issue while we are using inefficient EV’s with low ranges. We tried doing a plug in on a 7Kw charge point whilst shopping and we got about an extra 4-5 miles of range. It just wasn’t worth the hassle.
In my view, the only viable solution is to get charge points installed near/at homes where people park overnight so people move to that model for 99% of charging. If you then sort out payment so everyone pays each time they charge, and have some kind of national charging ID linked to your car, then where you plug in (i.e. if you are on holiday somewhere) matters less. This will require the Gov to invest so that prices for this can be fair and not sky high. However, they’re so blinkered by being carbon zero which brings us the most expensive electricity in the world, that they’d rather spend on that than on what we really need.
Relating on the general experience here. Last two years has been with a volvo C40, the one with two engines.
In comparison to previous ones (volvo v90cc, 2x mini countryman, land rover evoque), this one has provided way more functionality per problem experienced than the rest. Partly by not having any problems whatsoever.
While its initially fun with something that is fast and quite agile (400hp & 650nm in a small car is quite obscene), that wear off quite quickly. The silence however, is just wonderful. Not hearing any engine, not that much else either. Being able to talk or listen to music at normal levels is simply great.
Charging is mainly covered by wall outlets. Readily available everywhere. Fast charging has only been used on some few longer trips, then it has been some 10% frustration, otherwise just operation. For us it just works, but we have actually not used it outside the southern half of Sweden. Usually reaches 440 km during summer, 340 km in mid winter.
This is from the perspective of a family with two kids, that mainly use the car within a 150 km radius. We prefer compact, but where we fit, that drives on all wheels (winter, country house, etc.). Likes that it is made in Europe, that it is not covered in weird features, and that it is quite discreet.
That things actually works fine, and the silence, have turned us to EVs. Also, not relying on petrol/diesel and the sometimes quite weird countries/industries producing it is a big things for us.
Adding 35kwh overnight (5 hours x 7 kWh) drops from about £3 to just £1.75 (plus the standing charge). That’s 70% charge in my R5 for the equivalent of 1/3 pint in my local.
Indeed. The issue for R5 owners is that Intelligent Go integration has been a nightmare, with cars simply not charging overnight. Roughly half the queries on the online group I belong to relate to these OIG issues.
A recent software fix has apparently improved things - but I’m sticking with the simple, slightly more expensive Octopus Go. £1.75 for 150 miles of range really won’t break the bank.
My Kia isn’t compatible with IOG but my Ohme Charger is. If you have both a compatible charger and car, then IOG defaults to integrate with the car, but you can ask Octopus to change this to integrate with your charger. Maybe that will help.
Likewise. As an electric-only household we already have the immersion on overnight only, and the washing machine too. We are moving shortly to a house with storage heaters, so they’ll be on the 4.99p rate too.
Just need to persuade the wife to eat our evening meal at 0300 - and we’re sorted.
Rural roads / environments and EVs can still be not be great bed fellows… Mrs SinS has just bought a new small Toyota HEV, and very good it too, suprisingly sporty.. she is a community nurse, and not infrequently needs to negotiate unmetalled roads and long un made tracks, where a heavy road vehicle could be disastrous in the rain.. yes it uses a relatively small petrol generator engine… and HEVs have great range with smaller batteries and small petrol generation consumption… so we felt on the environmental front this was best overall… with definitely no bloat !
I guess as a footnote in my part of the world we are very conscious of the immense environmental damage caused by ill thought out renewable electricity supply and distribution as well as oversized nuclear power stations in the middle of no where.. please make future renewable generation more distributed and less concentrated away from urban demand… anyway that’s another topic..
@Argyle_Mikey Just be aware that if the storage heaters are wired to a legacy Economy 7 circuit on an old style meter you may have some problems. We were unable to get our provider to supply a Smart Meter that continued to support the E7 system that served part of our property. This may have been the meter installers but we had issues for over 18 months before they resolved it, and that required the Energy Ombudsman’s involvement. A long story.
The storage heaters can of course just be wired into the same domestic circuit as everything else, but then you’ll have to make sure they have a timing system to trigger an overnight, low-tariff, charge. Our old heaters didn’t have that and we had to ditch them.
Hopefully you won’t have these issues, but forewarned is forearmed.
Thanks Bruce. The new house was re wired in 2020 and the storage heaters and a smart meter were installed then, so hopefully we shouldn’t have too many issues. Heads up appreciated though.
Indeed the advantage of using a new smart meter with E7 is that the smart meter tariff switch over times are exact and aligned to GMT, so you can accurately set automation and timers, and you can accurately collate data showing peak and non peak usage using various tools and apps from many of the suppliers like Octopus.
I recently analyzed my data for a year, and E7 was the most financially beneficial tariff construct for us compared to all but one smart tariff … which was Agile which would have been very slightly cheaper compared to E7 for our usage pattern. We don’t currently have a mains charged EV.
Now trying Octopus Intelligent Go with myenergi Zappi 2 charger and a Tesla Model Y.
It should work fine and does most of the time but I’ve had 2 failed overnight charges, including last night.
Octopus App thinks that the car is “Unplugged” when the opposite is very much the case. Both the car and the Zappi can see the connection but Octopus can’t.
If you can link your charge point to IOG rather than your Tesla it may work better. You may need to ask Octopus to sort this as IOG will default to integrating with your car if is a compatible brand/model, which I believe your Tesla is.
Thank you. The Model Y is stated by Octopus as compatible, as is the Zappi 2 charger.
When we set it up originally, we connected to the car but then changed to link Octopus to the charger, so the current blip is a bit mistifying.
You can of course buy whatever you wish but your rationale is flawed. One wonders why farmers are able to use large tractors, heavy Landrovers, Range Rovers and other heavy petrol/diesel SUVs over rural and unmade roads.
I live in a very rural area and have an EV and suffer no issues doing so.
We live in a rural area too. Our Kia Niro EV weighs less than our BMW X3 M40d. We have tractors, large horse boxes and articulated lorries passing along our single track (private) lane.
I think Simon’s anti heavy vehicle point is about travelling on dirt tracks and other unmetalled surfaces. It’s a perfectly reasonable point. I live in a very rural area with two EVs but don’t drive on unmetalled roads.
That said, Teslas tend to be similar weigh to non EVs (they are the exception) but things like the Dacia spring are relatively light. much lighter than land rovers or tractors
