EV and advice from any users please!

Tallman

Member
Messages
1,833
Where I live we have no public charging points at parking spots. I can go to the dealer and charge for free but not great speed and why would I waste my time sitting there. BMW has outsourced a network on the main routes at say 100km intervals and a few in the large cities.

So it’s home charging for me and that works out fine at the moment, even just from the plug point, I’m installing a 32Ah charger that I got with the car which doesn’t really seem necessary but for “emergencies“ it might be nice. My EV has the range extender which is a 2 cylinder generator that charges thThe battery whilst driving, giving an extra 125km of range on top of the 240 or so of the battery.

In theory you can start to use the generator when the battery is below 70% and then keep on refilling with petrol but that of course is not why you buy an EV. nice to have for the odd longer trip or if you run out of electric juice in the wrong place.

Bit so far I’m really enjoying my little i3 for school runs / run around. It takes of fast, like a large golf cart. It’s the way to go for normal driving, I would say it’s superior and simpler than ICE. Now that doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying my ICE cars of course…….but the writing is on the wall.
 

Nayf

Member
Messages
2,734
Drove some EVs yesterday:
Mini - seemed fine enough
Audi E-Tron - unexciting but swift which I guess is the point of a fast Audi. Interior was a bit boring and rep spec A3 for £90k-odd’s worth of car
E-Vito - very car like, which is good
 

rockits

Member
Messages
9,167
Imagine this happening to a car in a car park , the fire you can't extinguish
Bonkers.....that is going to be a big insurance claim!

The Fire Brigade were looking to dump EVs that had a fire into a shipping container of water for a week as the answer. They can easily reignite even when put out for hours/days.
 

mjheathcote

Centenary Club
Messages
9,033
Our garage is under the house.
Has many advantages, security, access, dry and warm.
Bit of a concern, car goes up, the whole house goes up.
Don't think we will ever park an EV in our 'house'.
 

Wack61

Member
Messages
8,764
This fire started when a discovery caught fire , over 1000 cars destroyed and they had to knock the car park down , I assume each owner had to claim on their own insurance , I know petrol cars catch fire but at least you can put them out , if somebody had grabbed an extinguisher in Liverpool it might have been avoided

99663
 

CatmanV2

Member
Messages
48,557
Our garage is under the house.
Has many advantages, security, access, dry and warm.
Bit of a concern, car goes up, the whole house goes up.
Don't think we will ever park an EV in our 'house'.

TBH if your petrol tank goes up in the garage, I'd be a little surprised if the house didn't?

C
 

Felonious Crud

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
21,017
There's a big windmill thing next to ikea on the M62 , it wasn't moving today , no wind , I can see that being a problem when there's millions of electric cars that need charging

I hope the talk of more nuclear power stations isn't just that, talk
The UK has been less green of late due to less wind of late.

Regarding EV fires, that big ship full of cars on its way to the US had many electric Porky Taycans in it. I wonder if it has gone out yet?
 

Alan Surrey

Member
Messages
990
I still own the Maserati of course, but three weeks ago I bought a 7 year old BMW i3 with range extender. This is effectively an EV with a BMW motorbike engine* driving a generator that you can use if the battery gets a bit too low.
It's about the size of a Polo, so handy around town. The boot has no lip , so easy to get things in and out and the rear seats fold completely flat making a surprisingly large and useable load space for visits to the tip with hedge clippings. It has a funky interior that we both like.
I've been qualifying it so over the last 3 weeks, this is what I have found:
Its comfortable and a cheeky little thing, fun to drive :)
At today's prices, a petrol engined car would have to do 300mpg to be cheaper in fuel per mile than the i3 on electricity. I do not have a special EV electricity tariff.
I've found I need to charge it twice a week or thereabouts.
Charging consists of using an IP54 extension flex, plugging it into the 3 pin mains at home and setting it to take no more than 6A from my 50 year old house wiring (you only need to set it once.) In which case if I start charging at 10pm, it usually tells me it will be done by 3am. If I had newer wiring, I might have the confidence to set it to charge at 10A. It can also be charged from public charging stations.
The battery range seems to be about 80 miles.
I've also tried running it continuously on petrol and it did 45mpg with a petrol range of about 100 miles.
The petrol engine is so quiet and vibration free that it is difficult to notice it starting or running, but the instrument panel indicates when it is.
I no longer commute to work, so most driving has been beetling around the village, plus an outing of 25 miles out then return. Mostly day time driving and all in the warm weather of summer when consumption is at its optimum.
So what does this imply?
Practically no need to go to a petrol station again. Just plug in to the 3 pin mains at home overnight.
No need to pay an electrician to install a charge point on the garage wall. Ask me again after the winter though.
No need ever to hunt for public charge points that are working and unoccupied.
To travel further than the battery range, use the Range Extender and put some petrol in when it needs it. There are plenty of petrol stations so no range anxiety.
The last time I tanked it up, it took 7.7 litres.
It seems to suit our use pattern very well. :)

* I understand it is a 650cc twin cylinder motorbike engine, de-rated for durability and running an Atkinson cycle to maximise energy extracted from each litre of petrol, rather than maximise power from each litre of engine capacity. It develops about 35 BHP, the same as my Dad's family car when I was growing up. Interestingly it had no difficulty supplying the power necessary to overtake/ keep up with most things on the motorway.
Perfectly ok then (though, of course, not perfectly ok like a Maserati.)
 

zagatoes30

Member
Messages
20,764
I still own the Maserati of course, but three weeks ago I bought a 7 year old BMW i3 with range extender. This is effectively an EV with a BMW motorbike engine* driving a generator that you can use if the battery gets a bit too low.
It's about the size of a Polo, so handy around town. The boot has no lip , so easy to get things in and out and the rear seats fold completely flat making a surprisingly large and useable load space for visits to the tip with hedge clippings. It has a funky interior that we both like.
I've been qualifying it so over the last 3 weeks, this is what I have found:
Its comfortable and a cheeky little thing, fun to drive :)
At today's prices, a petrol engined car would have to do 300mpg to be cheaper in fuel per mile than the i3 on electricity. I do not have a special EV electricity tariff.
I've found I need to charge it twice a week or thereabouts.
Charging consists of using an IP54 extension flex, plugging it into the 3 pin mains at home and setting it to take no more than 6A from my 50 year old house wiring (you only need to set it once.) In which case if I start charging at 10pm, it usually tells me it will be done by 3am. If I had newer wiring, I might have the confidence to set it to charge at 10A. It can also be charged from public charging stations.
The battery range seems to be about 80 miles.
I've also tried running it continuously on petrol and it did 45mpg with a petrol range of about 100 miles.
The petrol engine is so quiet and vibration free that it is difficult to notice it starting or running, but the instrument panel indicates when it is.
I no longer commute to work, so most driving has been beetling around the village, plus an outing of 25 miles out then return. Mostly day time driving and all in the warm weather of summer when consumption is at its optimum.
So what does this imply?
Practically no need to go to a petrol station again. Just plug in to the 3 pin mains at home overnight.
No need to pay an electrician to install a charge point on the garage wall. Ask me again after the winter though.
No need ever to hunt for public charge points that are working and unoccupied.
To travel further than the battery range, use the Range Extender and put some petrol in when it needs it. There are plenty of petrol stations so no range anxiety.
The last time I tanked it up, it took 7.7 litres.
It seems to suit our use pattern very well. :)

* I understand it is a 650cc twin cylinder motorbike engine, de-rated for durability and running an Atkinson cycle to maximise energy extracted from each litre of petrol, rather than maximise power from each litre of engine capacity. It develops about 35 BHP, the same as my Dad's family car when I was growing up. Interestingly it had no difficulty supplying the power necessary to overtake/ keep up with most things on the motorway.
Perfectly ok then (though, of course, not perfectly ok like a Maserati.)

I do keep considering an i3 but was always concerned about battery efficiency of older cars ( I certainly don't want to buy anything too new)
 

Tallman

Member
Messages
1,833
I do keep considering an i3 but was always concerned about battery efficiency of older cars ( I certainly don't want to buy anything too new)
We’ve got one here in the Cape that has done 200k miles…but I second Alan’s comments, I have a newer one, 2020, it’s a blast to drive, actually a bit like driving the Maserati in a different kind of way. Plenty of attention and very fast off the mark. I only go to petrol stations to check the tyre pressure which is quite weird.
 

davy83

Member
Messages
2,809
I do keep considering an i3 but was always concerned about battery efficiency of older cars ( I certainly don't want to buy anything too new)
my I3 is coming up on 8 years old, and nearly 70kmiles on the clock. 8 years is when the BMW battery warranty runs out. The battery capacity as far as I can make out is more or less what it was when new. i think they seem to have done a decent job engineering the battery packs.
 

Andyk

Member
Messages
61,040
After looking into an electric car as my company car I have decided it isn’t the way to go. I really do not see how they are the future until they can increase the range to get 400 miles plus out of these cars. The best range seems to be the Polestar or ugly Tesla but then the quotes range is no where near what drivers are getting. Polestar quote 299 miles but most get around 200 to 220 in the summer and a miserable 170 in the winter and that is before you decide to enjoy the rapid performance as it is even worse. I do 80 miles a day so would need charging every two days and with a three pin charge at 5 miles an hour and the wall charges at 18 miles an hour it takes an age. These new chargers stations being set up that we rapid charge can be really quick but they cost around 25p a mile when my diesel car is costing around 18p a mile. A friend has a Polestar and he drove from London to West Wales with the family and said it was a nightmare as he had to plan the route to take in chargers…He drove 53 miles more than the journey should have taken. Sounds a nightmare to me…Then add the fact if you have to stop and charge it isn’t like fuel taking 10 minutes to fill up you have sit there hours. Something just isn’t right and while I understand the green credentials electric doesn’t seem to be the the right future unless you only drive local. I am sure they will get better but when the the UK are saying no more new ICE cars by 2030 and trucks by 2040 they have a very, very, very long way to go before they makes sense for all drivers.
 
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