[willougs]

mines a '21 reg. Jan 2021 build. Battery range isn't impressive.

Apparently gets better as weather warns up, but wouldn't exactly call it cold at the moment.

[Noodle944s3]

Does this seem to be 'usual' with the kind of journey you describe?

However, at least there is a saving to be had. At 15 miles for me will save around 150 miles per week in fuel to and from work

[willougs]

When I collected it, day one, fully charged, I drove it home on full electric. Mostly single carriageway A road with half a dozen roundabouts. I managed to get home (19 miles) with 2 miles range left.
And that was driving very cautiously and light footed.

From my experience so far, 15 to early 20s miles is the max. Charging at home seems to cost around £1.80 for me at present, so it's hard to see the benefits over a diesel (for me personally) in terms of economy. That said, in two weeks I've used 1/4 of a very small petrol tanks worth of fuel. But you really need to factor in the cost of charging at home... a lot of people seem to forget that when banging on about cost savings

I do however like the silence that comes with driving around on electric. (being of a certain age)

If you can charge at work for free, and do a round trip on one charge, then youll be quids in.

[Noodle944s3]

Yes I can see that using a range of 15 miles the difference between diesel and switching to petrol/elec will be very marginal for me.

Do you have a home charging point? I am considering a tethered Pod-point.

[willougs]

At the moment I'm just charging from the 3pin plug. Seems to charge in about 5 hours for me, which happens overnight most of the time.

I've looked into various charging points and each have their pros and cons in my opinion. Some have crappy feature-lacking supporting apps, some just look hideous, some even have ongoing subscription charges after the first x years for data transfer of usage etc. However they all seem ridiculously overpriced. The sooner the government grant ends and installers stop trying to make out they are supplying some magic box and start charging sensible prices, the better IMO.

Unfortunately demand is probably only going to increase, so I doubt that'll happen anytime soon.

Even with the grant, I was still looking at having to pay out over £500... which is quite a few months (maybe years) worth of petrol if my car hasn't charged up quick enough and I need to use petrol to replace the few miles of charge I am missing. (working on basis of absolute max around 20 miles of insufficient battery power on the very occasional days its not charged up quick enough/at all)

[xenon]

Probably only worth having a dedicated charging point if you have a BEV especially if the standard granny cable on a three-pin plug can charge overnight anyway?
Shame the range is disappointing.

[HighlandPete]

Originally Posted by xenon

Probably only worth having a dedicated charging point if you have a BEV especially if the standard granny cable on a three-pin plug can charge overnight anyway?
Shame the range is disappointing.

Isn't the problem, you will lose range if you are preconditioning on the 3 pin plug. Not enough amperage to support both battery and preconditioning.

Not bothering to precondition won't even help, if you want creature comforts on a cold day. You'll still be using mileage range to heat the cabin.

Hasn't AutoCar's 330e long term test shown how energy sapping cold weather can be.

[xenon]

Fair point but you would think that once the battery was fully charged, 10A should be more than adequate to warm the cabin without any contribution from the battery. A mains supply at 10A is 2.4KW which should be able to get the cabin proper hot. Makes no sense to me that pre-conditioning when plugged in to mains power uses battery too although I accept that it does.

[Noodle944s3]

Originally Posted by willougs

The sooner the government grant ends and installers stop trying to make out they are supplying some magic box and start charging sensible prices, the better IMO.

Yes that certainly does seem to be the case with the majority.

For me it's the perspective of ease which is appealing. Pulling in and plugging in rather than have to get the cable from the car every night and put it back the next morning to take to work.

[paulockenden]

A wall box also allows you to only charge with your excess generation if you have solar panels, so that's well worth it - you effectively only charge the car when you have free electricity available.

[willougs]

We were quoted £11,500 for solar panels.
That's a lot of charges. More than the lifetime of the car for sure.

[paulockenden]

That sounds like the costs from a decade ago - they should be much cheaper than that these days.

[willougs]

I dont recall the details, it was several months back now, but it did include battery storage and some pretty decent panels.

I've not written the idea off yet, but hard to see how I can get value for money from them to justify the investment.

Anyway, probably a whole new (off-) topic.