Random EV thoughts.....

Has anyone here ever had to be “rescued” by the AA or someone similar due to the battery being fully discharged ?

Do they just call a flatbed recovery truck and take you to the nearest charger (happened to someone I know) or have they any charging facility when they come out?

Firstly try avoid running out by filling back up long before you need to. I bring a public charging cable, a granny cable and a 15 metre waterproof extension lead everywhere I go. I tend to stop every 100km to try refill even though my range is 150km+. Main issue is broken chargers, blocked or busy chargers, very common at peak times. I tend to check on app to see if busy in way there and divert if in use. I tend not to queue.

The breakdown support you get varies depending on contract. Many newer cars come with free breakdown, e.g. Hyundai gets free AA basic.

Your car insurance may have breakdown included, but it may be limited to x km or to get you to nearest slow charger but not all the way home. Typically the tow vehicle to nearest charger, but if this is an AC charger you may have a couple if hours charging before you can make a DC charger for typically 7 times faster fill.

It's relatively hard to run out in an EV. Mine starts to warn at 13% and goes nuts around 4%, so typically you will at least make it to a household socket somewhere.

You should aim to never go below 20% on trips to allow for margin of error but I have gone down. To 1% when I knew I would make it home.

IMO car won't move == breakdown

Certainly if I ran out of charge I'd probably be telling people I broke down to save myself the embarrassment 😏

8 weeks !

I wonder what the longest has been here for a car left in a charger?

The aa have at least one van that can charge an EV, I assume at a pretty measly rate. I'm not sure if it charges and tows at the same time or if it just waits there while giving you what you need to get to the nearest charger

@innrain - yes you must be right. Let's say a 50kWh battery, 15% = 6.5kWh. To charge that in 20 minutes needs a 20kW charger, so this almost certainly is one of those compact mobile 22kW DC charging stations that can do both CCS and CHAdeMO

Damien Maguire of Bmw with Tesla motor conversion worked in this company in county Wicklow and this box claims 5kW charging rate, designed by him I believe.

About EV Rescue

It is powered by lithium ion battery technology so that the EVCharge 4kWcan provide up to 20km of range in half an hour if a car runs out of power. It has the ability to provide Level 2 AC charging with 240V of energy, topping up any vehicle with enough power to get to the nearest charging point.

https://jtmpower.ie/blogs/news/test

In practical terms unless they wait with you it's probably easier to tow to nearest charge point. Even at 20kW they still need to wait with you.

https://evbmw.com/

What are people's thoughts on the future of ev charging and charging costs.

With smart metering going forward, are we just going to end up paying stupid money for any electricity sent into car? The government are surely going to bring costs back to somewhere near what it's costs to run a diesel.

Are we in the golden age of ev ownership before they have even got going?

The way I see it, soon we will either be charged a transport rate for our units of electricity fed to car or will be required to declare mileage and pay tax based on that.

An ev with limited tech run from off grid solar pv could be the motoring hack in the future.

Well there is talk of a higher kWh rate for domestic ev charging so I reckon they must have figured out how to differentiate.

Plus if you are running a grow house and drawing similar levels of power to an ev charging' I'm sure the electricity supplier would be happy to charge the EV rate for the units.

And to give you an idea - I live in a small semi-D house in Lucan. An average house in Ireland uses about 3000kWh per year in electricity and 3000kWh per year for hot water. I produce 10000kWh per year in electricity (solar PV) and 3000kWh per year in hot water (solar thermal). If we had a net metering system like in most more advanced countries, my bills would be zero (including running both my cars)

Can anyone who owns an Id 4 tell me how you feel about it? I'm considering purchasing. Looking into getting solar panels

Hi @unkel, I’m looking to get an EV and living in a semi D with 3 solar PV panels. I have no idea what they generate but didn’t think it would be that much. Interested in charging as much from solar as possible - would love to hear more about your solar set up and how you get the most out of solar for charging?

Change road tax per km driven. You need to submit your odo reading every year and then this is checked when NCT is due. Dealers are also required to submit a reading on all cars they take in.

If you under declare your milage you then get charged the balance plus a penalty when the correct reading is submitted even if you've sold the car.

Several states in Australia have already or are planning to introduce electric vehicle road user charges. Rate is AUD 2.5c per km.

Rest assured the Govt wont be left wanting as revenue from fuel taxes starts to decline significantly.