Model 3 with no driveway
Discussion
SWoll said:
Unless there's no way of him charging within a 100 miles of your home then he should be able to full charge on the way to you or the way home?
How far does he live from you and roughly what area do you live in?
It would be a 230 mile round trip. We live in Tidworth (I know, but I like the sound of tanka and artillery at 6am!!!!)How far does he live from you and roughly what area do you live in?
I guess his car is up to a round trip as long as he’s had opportunity to fully charge it beforehand?
Actually we have a good, long friendship so him getting a charge from us is no probable. I’m more interested actually if people sort of go ‘oh let’s drop in on cousin so and so on the trip for a cuppa..... haven’t seen them for ages, and we will need a top up by then....
RichB said:
TTmonkey said:
...I’d never seen so many Tesla’s. I realise that most were getting free fuel...]
So, going back to my earlier question, how is it free to charge a Tesla? TTmonkey said:
SWoll said:
Unless there's no way of him charging within a 100 miles of your home then he should be able to full charge on the way to you or the way home?
How far does he live from you and roughly what area do you live in?
It would be a 230 mile round trip. We live in Tidworth (I know, but I like the sound of tanka and artillery at 6am!!!!)How far does he live from you and roughly what area do you live in?
I guess his car is up to a round trip as long as he’s had opportunity to fully charge it beforehand?
Actually we have a good, long friendship so him getting a charge from us is no probable. I’m more interested actually if people sort of go ‘oh let’s drop in on cousin so and so on the trip for a cuppa..... haven’t seen them for ages, and we will need a top up by then....
TTmonkey said:
It would be a 230 mile round trip. We live in Tidworth (I know, but I like the sound of tanka and artillery at 6am!!!!)
I guess his car is up to a round trip as long as he’s had opportunity to fully charge it beforehand?
Actually we have a good, long friendship so him getting a charge from us is no probable. I’m more interested actually if people sort of go ‘oh let’s drop in on cousin so and so on the trip for a cuppa..... haven’t seen them for ages, and we will need a top up by then....
I doubt if hardly anyone does that to be honest. But the cost of charging is an interesting point - let’s say my wife and I have been doing a 300 mile round trip to visit family for the past 10 years. Let’s say we go 6 times a year. With a car doing, say, 50mpg that has cost us roughly £2000. I guess his car is up to a round trip as long as he’s had opportunity to fully charge it beforehand?
Actually we have a good, long friendship so him getting a charge from us is no probable. I’m more interested actually if people sort of go ‘oh let’s drop in on cousin so and so on the trip for a cuppa..... haven’t seen them for ages, and we will need a top up by then....
(The family don’t often visit us because we are in London, parking is tricky, we like to get out of London, they like to be at home etc etc.)
We would never have dreamed of asking family to contribute to that £2000 cost.
Now, with an electric car, we charge up via domestic socket over night on their drive so we are fully charged for the return trip. That will add about £4 or £5 to their electricity bill each time - so about £30 a year, or £300 if we continue for the next 10 years.
We offered to pay, but they refused the offer saying that we had been spending a lot of fuel to visit them previously.
Edited by MaxSo on Saturday 11th January 10:42
SWoll said:
RichB said:
Naive question - when you park at Sainsburys, Cinema, the Office etc. do you have to pay for the electricity and if so how do you do this? Do you have to swipe a credit card or something? Obviously I have no idea but it intrigues me...
Most of them app based so if you know where you are going to charge just get the app beforehand and create an account. Then once there just scan the barcode on the scanner etc. and off you go.Some do use fobs/cards as well but most moving away from that model.
The number of cards true EV aficionados have is crazy
I would not personally want an EV without my own home chargepoint: we have done around 7k miles in our first, and only charged “in public” on a handful of occasions, and almost all of those were because we wanted to try it out, not because we absolutely had to.
BTW, pretty sure Norway has the most EVs outside China and USA....
To the OP: if work could provide that chargepoint so you don’t have to make big adjustments to your life, perfect. If not, is there somewhere local you can reliably use?
I wouldn’t personally want to drag a cable over a pavement: it screams “trip hazard” and potential legal hassle to me!
Let us know what you do!
I've done the no home charging dance both with a Kona and with a Model S.
If you're single, have lots of time on your hands and are lucky enough to live near lots of chargers - it's ok but tedious.
If you're a family man, busy and live more than a few miles from a charger - not so cool.
The Kona, in summer needed a charge for my use around once a week. I'd just drop it at my local pod point (on a new estate 10 minutes walk away from home) then walk back later when it's charged. Worked ok, however the charge points were little used and local residents had allocated parking spaces so often used the charger spaces as extra parking. Walking back home (10 mins either way) isn't much of an issue but is a minor inconvenience.
The other destination chargers nearby were Costco which was around 15-20 minute walk each way and you had to queue in the tyre shop to get an employee to come out and start the charge. They have loads of chargers, almost nobody uses them as it's very inconvenient. The others are in the car park of my local sporting venue. It also doubles up as a train station car park, motorcycle training area and general market and the spots are often ice'd. The charge points also had a habit of dropping out randomly leaving you to return after a few hours to find you'd got next to no charge.
The Tesla, I used similar (the granny cable is useless unless you are quite happy to leave it plugged in for hours and hours to gain very little charge). I also used a couple of local superchargers but they were out of the way and I had to sit in the car for an hour each time and burn 15-20 miles of energy on the drive back. Quickly became tiresome doing that trip purely to charge.
Lastly, the local rapids - all 50kw chargers CCS only so the Model S couldn't use them, the Kona was ok but you only ever got full speed (or nearly full speed of about 45) for short periods before it'll throttle back. Sitting in a Kona for an hour to get 70% battery was also no fun after the novelty wore off.
After a month with each, despite enjoying the experience of the cars (the Kona not so much), it quickly became clear there were too many downsides to consider switching to EV just yet without having any way of installing home charging. You CAN manage without but personally it's not something I'd be happy to do.
There's a bit of a chicken and egg situation with the chargers currently, no way near enough and too many different payment methods, speeds, etc to be ready for mass adoption yet the EV's are a hard sell unless simple to use, reliable and quick chargers pop up everywhere. You need to be a proper geek currently to actually enjoy the experience.
As for supermarket charging or car park charging, good luck relying on that. Everywhere I've seen those units, they're either often blocked, in constant use by plug in hybrids or hogged the same BEV every day for hours on end. The charging speeds they offer really don't give you any meaningful range as you do your weekly shop. You'd have to extend your shop with a coffee stop or such and even then likely only add a few tens of miles range.
As I see it currently, if you have a charger at home (and I mean charger not just a wall socket) they're ace. If you don't it can become a bit tiresome once the novelty has worn off.
If you're single, have lots of time on your hands and are lucky enough to live near lots of chargers - it's ok but tedious.
If you're a family man, busy and live more than a few miles from a charger - not so cool.
The Kona, in summer needed a charge for my use around once a week. I'd just drop it at my local pod point (on a new estate 10 minutes walk away from home) then walk back later when it's charged. Worked ok, however the charge points were little used and local residents had allocated parking spaces so often used the charger spaces as extra parking. Walking back home (10 mins either way) isn't much of an issue but is a minor inconvenience.
The other destination chargers nearby were Costco which was around 15-20 minute walk each way and you had to queue in the tyre shop to get an employee to come out and start the charge. They have loads of chargers, almost nobody uses them as it's very inconvenient. The others are in the car park of my local sporting venue. It also doubles up as a train station car park, motorcycle training area and general market and the spots are often ice'd. The charge points also had a habit of dropping out randomly leaving you to return after a few hours to find you'd got next to no charge.
The Tesla, I used similar (the granny cable is useless unless you are quite happy to leave it plugged in for hours and hours to gain very little charge). I also used a couple of local superchargers but they were out of the way and I had to sit in the car for an hour each time and burn 15-20 miles of energy on the drive back. Quickly became tiresome doing that trip purely to charge.
Lastly, the local rapids - all 50kw chargers CCS only so the Model S couldn't use them, the Kona was ok but you only ever got full speed (or nearly full speed of about 45) for short periods before it'll throttle back. Sitting in a Kona for an hour to get 70% battery was also no fun after the novelty wore off.
After a month with each, despite enjoying the experience of the cars (the Kona not so much), it quickly became clear there were too many downsides to consider switching to EV just yet without having any way of installing home charging. You CAN manage without but personally it's not something I'd be happy to do.
There's a bit of a chicken and egg situation with the chargers currently, no way near enough and too many different payment methods, speeds, etc to be ready for mass adoption yet the EV's are a hard sell unless simple to use, reliable and quick chargers pop up everywhere. You need to be a proper geek currently to actually enjoy the experience.
As for supermarket charging or car park charging, good luck relying on that. Everywhere I've seen those units, they're either often blocked, in constant use by plug in hybrids or hogged the same BEV every day for hours on end. The charging speeds they offer really don't give you any meaningful range as you do your weekly shop. You'd have to extend your shop with a coffee stop or such and even then likely only add a few tens of miles range.
As I see it currently, if you have a charger at home (and I mean charger not just a wall socket) they're ace. If you don't it can become a bit tiresome once the novelty has worn off.
Smiljan said:
As I see it currently, if you have a charger at home (and I mean charger not just a wall socket) they're ace. If you don't it can become a bit tiresome once the novelty has worn off.
I agree the ideal situation is obviously to have a 7kW charge point at home, but it is definitely possible and easily feasible to get by with a normal 3 pin socket too - a lot obviously depends on daily mileage, routine, is it a second car etc etc.Just on your Tesla and the CCS chargers - presumably they were also Chademo chargers so would it not have been an option to charge the Model S via Chademo (with the Tesla adapter)? I’ve no idea what the adapter costs though so maybe if it’s a significant amount that made it not worthwhile.
TTmonkey said:
Another question. I live out in the country side with no local charge points.
If my friend in the jag comes to visit me, Is he going to want to plug into my electric in order to get home?
What’s the score there?
3pin plug will add max 2kWh per hour at 10amps, if they are staying the whole day 8hrs, 16kWh. iPace will do about 2.5 miles per kWh so 40 miles range, might be the difference between a comfortable trip home, or limping along at 50mph to get home on a charge.If my friend in the jag comes to visit me, Is he going to want to plug into my electric in order to get home?
What’s the score there?
MaxSo said:
Not sure about the OP’s situation, but I’d guess most Model 3 are not owned so maybe if doesn’t matter - at least until lease companies etc wise up and possibly start saying they will require batteries of returned cars to meet certain thresholds.
The OP states: "I really want to buy for long term ownership - 10 years."Andy M said:
The OP states: "I really want to buy for long term ownership - 10 years."
Ah - missed that! Then yes, probably wouldn’t be a great idea to rely too heavily on Supercharging. I wonder with a car that can take 170kW at what point does DC charging become a non-issue - would lots of 50kW charging be an issue for example..?MaxSo said:
Ah - missed that! Then yes, probably wouldn’t be a great idea to rely too heavily on Supercharging. I wonder with a car that can take 170kW at what point does DC charging become a non-issue - would lots of 50kW charging be an issue for example..?
The effect is tiny, it's nothing to worry about. Let the batteries take care of themselves, the Tesla has proper battery management.Yep, Tesla limits charging speeds on cars that supercharge too often anyway. The battery will be fine albeit you'll eventually charge slower and spend more time at the superchargers.
https://electrek.co/2017/05/07/tesla-limits-superc...
https://electrek.co/2017/05/07/tesla-limits-superc...
REALIST123 said:
How many company cars are there in the Netherlands? We know it’s quite small in the UK, maybe 3%, so doesn’t affect overall car choice significantly. Is it a greater %age in NL?
It depends what you mean. Of new cars, the % is relatively high, all the cars on the road it's of course a lot less. In any case, iirc new cars, the Netherlands was selling 5% BEVs.And of those, the Model 3 was by far the top seller.
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