EV Discussion thread

CKhalvashi

Martyn1981 said:

MikeJXE said:

So not all good news then, more cost to compare to an ice, do pads and discs wear out faster too ?

I was on the M6 on Sunday travelling back from Scotland and joined the traffic jam due to the milk lorry incident. 3 hours in a stop start a couple of yards a time fiasco. There were a few EV's I noticed and wondered how they would fair in that situation, stop start for 3 hours + cold afternoon and evening

Incidentally I drove from home for a distance of 451 miles and still had 231 miles in the tank on the outward journey Jaguar XE 1.8 diesel. My trip there was 8 hours including a stop, the return journey took from 8.15am and I arrived home at 9.45pm Sunday 

Don't worry, all good news.

Brake pad wear on BEV's is absolutely tiny. Unless you have to brake very hard, it will all be regen, so just need to use brakes for the last few mph if coming to a complete stop. And even then, because kinetic energy is half mass times velocity squared, using the brake pads to stop the car at say 4mph, is 100th the energy needed to stop a car at 40mph.

As for stop / start driving, then the BEV is perfect, with the ICEV the engine is running all the time (although engine shutdown when stationary may help a bit), whilst the BEV will just be running background stuff (like A/C if you have it on, but powered efficiently from the batts, not via an inefficient petrol generator). 

And whilst nobody wants to be stuck in a traffic jam, I now find it far more pleasant, as you can just use one pedal driving to move you on a bit each time - no need to balance the clutch, and burn fuel in 1st/2nd gear. Certainly one of the big wins.

Mine has a regen selector (with paddle selectors), I tend to switch this between 0 and 3 when driving so very rarely use the brakes at all unless coming to a complete stop.

0 is effectively a coast mode, 3 is light-ish braking on the Ioniq.

As with a petrol/diesel car, the key is to plan ahead. My personal driving style is to creep up to red lights instead of braking hard for a complete stop unless they change a few seconds before approaching.

Grumpy_chap

Did the trip to visit friends today with Mrs G-C and Mummy G-C.

Charged to 90% yesterday. 
This morning, the car said 89% which suggests 1% of overnight vampire drain.  However, it may well simply mean "up to 1%".

209 miles in total for the return journey and the car reads 44 kWh consumed. 
That equates to 4.75 miles/kWh which I'd be very pleased with.
I have plugged the car in to charge again.  The car reports this will take 22 hours (via granny charger as my charge point is not yet in place).  That's 2 kW load to replenish 44 kWh in 22 hours.  I will update after the charge if the car then reports anything different and any change to the miles/kWh.

The car was outstandingly comfortable and relaxing to drive.  It's the fastest car I've ever driven but so chilled to drive it does not spur aggressive / fast behaviour.  That said, the seat is not the best I've ever had - I think trimming the lumbar support will improve this.

Tried out the auto-steer and found it asked for the steering wheel to be wobbled with such frequency that it became annoying.  I was keeping hands on the wheel as instructed.

Also used the traffic aware cruise control.  Now, on the way there, this worked exactly as expected.  On the return journey, I could not get it to adopt speed limit as the target speed - it was using current speed.  I don't know why this was, especially as it did as expected going.  When we stopped at the services, I checked the settings were on "speed limit" and not "current speed".  Even though these were correct, the cruise control was still on current speed.  Very confused - can anyone suggest what I might be doing wrong?



EDIT - I did press the speed limit sign on the display and that then selected the speed limit as the cruise control target speed.  However, when the speed limit changed, even though the speed limit sign showed the new limit, the target speed did not change to match.

silvercar

I never have it set to speed limit, but it maybe that it uses that as the initial setting and then you need to adjust. Assume you know to adjust quickly using the right hand scroll button, slow scroll for 1mph, fast scroll for 5mph.

Grumpy_chap

silvercar said:

I never have it set to speed limit, but it maybe that it uses that as the initial setting and then you need to adjust. Assume you know to adjust quickly using the right hand scroll button, slow scroll for 1mph, fast scroll for 5mph.

Thanks, and yes.
Plus, wobble left or right for larger or smaller gap.
I just can't think what is different coming home than going there 

JKenH

Grumpy_chap said:

Did the trip to visit friends today with Mrs G-C and Mummy G-C.

Charged to 90% yesterday. 
This morning, the car said 89% which suggests 1% of overnight vampire drain.  However, it may well simply mean "up to 1%".

209 miles in total for the return journey and the car reads 44 kWh consumed. 
That equates to 4.75 miles/kWh which I'd be very pleased with.
I have plugged the car in to charge again.  The car reports this will take 22 hours (via granny charger as my charge point is not yet in place).  That's 2 kW load to replenish 44 kWh in 22 hours.  I will update after the charge if the car then reports anything different and any change to the miles/kWh.

The car was outstandingly comfortable and relaxing to drive.  It's the fastest car I've ever driven but so chilled to drive it does not spur aggressive / fast behaviour.  That said, the seat is not the best I've ever had - I think trimming the lumbar support will improve this.

Tried out the auto-steer and found it asked for the steering wheel to be wobbled with such frequency that it became annoying.  I was keeping hands on the wheel as instructed.

Also used the traffic aware cruise control.  Now, on the way there, this worked exactly as expected.  On the return journey, I could not get it to adopt speed limit as the target speed - it was using current speed.  I don't know why this was, especially as it did as expected going.  When we stopped at the services, I checked the settings were on "speed limit" and not "current speed".  Even though these were correct, the cruise control was still on current speed.  Very confused - can anyone suggest what I might be doing wrong?



EDIT - I did press the speed limit sign on the display and that then selected the speed limit as the cruise control target speed.  However, when the speed limit changed, even though the speed limit sign showed the new limit, the target speed did not change to match.

Thanks for the update. 

Most granny chargers operate at 10A (perhaps Tesla is different - I don’t know) so you may well be drawing 2.3 or 2.4kW from the wall socket, or even more on occasions depending on the grid voltage. I often see grid voltages here over 250v, in fact as high as 259v on a sunny day but usually mid 240s. At the moment it’s 246v. Granny chargers are notoriously inefficient. 

Ideally you need a plug meter to measure what you are using - something like this.

Grumpy_chap

JKenH said:

Most granny chargers operate at 10A (perhaps Tesla is different - I don’t know) so you may well be drawing 2.3 or 2.4kW from the wall socket, 

Ideally you need a plug meter to measure what you are using -

Yes, it says 10A, so that is 2.4kW.
The car seems to indicate about 2 kW or slightly over.
It is a big loss.

The plug meter is a good idea.  I was not going to bother as I am having a meter installed when the charge point is fitted, but I've seen those meters are <£10 online so I might just get one in any case.  I am sure there will be other uses for it.

My wife was asking what the cost of the fuel was compared to her Fiesta.  I used 44 kWh at 50 pence is £22, which is the same as she'd pay for half a tank of petrol (which is about right for her Fiesta).  I need to check current electricity tariff but believe it is some way lower than 50 pence.

silvercar

Grumpy_chap said:

JKenH said:

Most granny chargers operate at 10A (perhaps Tesla is different - I don’t know) so you may well be drawing 2.3 or 2.4kW from the wall socket, 

Ideally you need a plug meter to measure what you are using -

Yes, it says 10A, so that is 2.4kW.
The car seems to indicate about 2 kW or slightly over.
It is a big loss.

The plug meter is a good idea.  I was not going to bother as I am having a meter installed when the charge point is fitted, but I've seen those meters are <£10 online so I might just get one in any case.  I am sure there will be other uses for it.

My wife was asking what the cost of the fuel was compared to her Fiesta.  I used 44 kWh at 50 pence is £22, which is the same as she'd pay for half a tank of petrol (which is about right for her Fiesta).  I need to check current electricity tariff but believe it is some way lower than 50 pence.

Current (since 1/7/23) price cap is 30.11p/ KWH. Regional variations apply.

Exiled_Tyke

Grumpy_chap said:

My wife was asking what the cost of the fuel was compared to her Fiesta.  I used 44 kWh at 50 pence is £22, which is the same as she'd pay for half a tank of petrol (which is about right for her Fiesta).  I need to check current electricity tariff but believe it is some way lower than 50 pence.

Are you eligible and is it practicable for you to get a TOU tariff?  With a smart meter and a Tesla you can et Intelligent Octopus which will give you 6 hours a night at 7.5p per kWh.    If you also scedule other appliances for the night slot (dishwasher, washing machine) then you can even bring down the 'pre-EV' costs of your electricity.    I also have a Zappi which monitors my solar PV production and during the day only sends excess power to the car bringing the cost down even more.

Grumpy_chap

ToU tariff is something we are considering.  I'd need a smart meter.

I note that whenever people post about ToU tariffs the emphasis is always on the cheap rate and so very rarely mention that the day rate is at a premium higher than standard.  There was a long thread some while back about time-shifting and I think I concluded the only thing I could sensibly time-shift was the dishwasher which is a pretty low demand in any case.

The EV is a big load, though.  Our daily electricity is about 10kWh so the 44+kWh for charging the car is equivalent to 5-days power consumption.

Solar PV is probably more likely to be beneficial than ToU.

However, we will need to interrupt the car charge today as I want to wash the car and not keen on doing that with the electricity plugged in.  I will probably then not plug in to complete the charge until late evening and the charge should be complete by tomorrow morning.  Even though I do not have ToU, it is  more socially and environmentally responsible to take this load when the grid has most spare capacity.

EDIT - The Octopus tariff referenced does not seem to have an excessive "peak" rate (today at least), but as far as I can tell that "peak" rate is subject to dynamic pricing so you could be paying just about anything.

Exiled_Tyke

Looking at Ocopus TOU tariffs the day time rates appear to be about the same as the current standard rates - approx 54p standing charge and 30p per kWh.  So currently there is disincentive to take up one of these.  

The Zappi also allows you to set a limit on how much grid electricity to put in the mix. So if there is not quite enough sun you can still charge the car from a mix of solar and grid.  The minimum charge rate is quoted as 1.4 kW but I've seen ours go down to 1.2 kW. (Maybe this is the difference between input and outpu). So I have it set so that it won't cost me more the 7.5p per total kWh from the grid by day knowing that I can get that rate of night.  If you've a big enough PV set up this wont be an issue for you but we can't go any bigger practically.

I reckon our dishwasher uses about 2kWh a cycle.  Ours goes on most days so it is a signficant dent in our total consumption.  We had to get a new   washing machine last year so now we can put that on at night as well.  Our other big benefit is that we have a house battery which I top of over night.  So now I have to be careful not to have too many things on at once and blow the main fuse.