How much to live on

QrizB

Not using motorway services but farm shops and garden centres and the odd pub to charge at.

Teals on the A303 near South Cadbury is quite nice. We've stopped there a couple of times to charge.

https://teals.co.uk/

And Strawberry Fields at Liftondown, just before you enter Cornwall (or just after you leave) on the A30.

https://strawberryfieldslifton.co.uk/

Note that Strawberry Fields can get quite busy during tourist season!

middlewife

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81997432#Comment_81997432

I've taken strawberry fields off my list for bank holiday Monday,it's lovely off peak, but the charging rate is pants when it's busy.

Savvy_Sue

The car is dead!

Long live the car! I've almost bought a new one …

So, it took from Friday (when it died) until Wednesday to arrange for the old Yaris to be recovered to the garage we'd had recommended, which my breakdown service covered. The chap there said if we got it to him this week, if it WAS worth repairing he could look at it next week.

GC = Garage Chap

GC had impressed me even before the car arrived with him: he answered an email I sent, phoned when he said he would in response to that email, answered all my 'what if' questions and sounded like a thoroughly nice chap to do business with.

I'd sent another email Wednesday evening asking GC to phone DH on Thursday or me on Friday once he'd had a chance to look - and he did as I'd asked and phoned DH while I was out at a training session.

The car had several major faults, each of which would have cost £2k+ to fix. GC asked DH what his thoughts were, and DH said we wanted something similar, second hand. And as it happened, GC had an Auris on the forecourt: slightly younger, slightly larger, and with much lower mileage. And an automatic, which we prefer. And what sounded like a very reasonable price.

So I emailed GC again last night along the lines of "I like the sound of this, how do we do it?" and he rang me this morning and answered them!

So today I have taken a bus across the city to a place I've never been to - an hour each way, but there's one which stops at the top of our road and terminates bang opposite the garage! And I have fallen in love with both GC and the car, which is - the most important consideration - pale blue. Paid the deposit and come home to get quotes for tax and insurance, and won at 'hunt the V5', because GC is happy to take the old car off our hands.

Being bigger, it is going to be slightly more expensive to tax, insure and run, but it's not liable to CAZ or ULEZ charges.

If DH hates it, he can then research what he'd like. He bought the last car without me being able to drive it, so it's my turn … Electric will have to wait!

QrizB

Congratulations on the new car!

Farway

Enjoy the new car, a friend had it's predecessor, Corolla, and loved it

middlewife

My sister drove an Auris for years and loved it, she's just gone electric, well she will when it finally arrives, 3 months wait currently

Organgrinder

A few more observations regarding my EV.

1. Charging isn't always as straightforward as plugging it in and leaving it. It needs scheduling to take advantage of cheap rates and if like mine it doesn't have an option to stop at 80% (unless you subscribe!) you need to work out how much charge to add. Obviously I've not always got it right!!
2. The range fluctuates as you drive but at times changes a lot. Eg, if you go up a long hill. Seeing the battery lose 2% up a one mile climb is quite disconcerting.
3. Having all the information to hand means for me my driving is much smoother. No harsh acceleration for example.
4. Route planning is important eg yesterday I did 144 miles and was down to 12% battery by the time I got home. But, I rarely do this sort of mileage in a day.
5. The published range is nonsense. Eg saying a 50kwh battery will do 200 miles. For a start it's hard work getting a battery to 100% as the charging rate slows and also it's not advised to keep charging it to 100% and equally you're not going to run it down to 0% either.
6. The savings are nevertheless impressive. So far I've now done 615 miles. I've not yet used a public charger and the first few charges were done at a more expensive rate. But the total cost has been approx £23 about 3.7p per mile on average. More recently this has been about 1.8 p per mile and this is without the £5/month I get back for allowing my charge to be paused should the grid need it. On 700 miles a month the net cost after the rebate is 1.1p per mile. Or less than £8 per month. My old car ran on LPG and at today's prices would cost £79 a month. That's an £850 annual saving v LPG. Petrol would be over £1050 a year on my mileage.
7. Overall I am still very impressed. It is a very different experience to a petrol car both in terms of driving and in terms of organising things. But so far so good.

tooldle

”Charging isn't always as straightforward as plugging it in and leaving it. It needs scheduling to take advantage of cheap rates and if like mine it doesn't have an option to stop at 80% (unless you subscribe!) ”

Are you scheduling via the car or via the charger? Curious to know. We have an Ohme charger. There are buttons on the charger to manually control it but, there is also an Ohme App (I use this option), where charging routines, dynamic charging, top up thresholds etc can be set. My supplier’s App also shows my charger and allows for some basic scheduling. No subscription needed.

QrizB

We have an Ohme charger.

We also have an Ohme charger and, like Organgrinder, our car manufacturer requires us to subscribe (£90 pa I think, it's VW) if we want Ohme to be able to integrate with the car.

We chose not to subscribe and so don't get "charge to 80%" as an option. We have to look at the charge level meter then work out how many % we want to add.

Last night, for example, we arrived home with about 40% in the battery and so asked Ohme via the app to add another 40%.

Organgrinder

My app is sync energy. I can schedule but unless I pay for the privilege of using my car manufacturers app I cannot use the 80% cut off which I feel is absurd. There are work arounds available online but for me it's quite straightforward.

My calculation is % required to get to 80 divided by 14.

Eg if I'm on 30% and want to get to 80% it's 50 divided by 14 ie 3.6 hours. So I set my charger for 3 hours and 36 mins.