Random EV thoughts.....

Those are my experiences with the Leaf and ID.4 compared to the Auris

I'll admit they both have proper AC while the Toyota just had basic hot/cool air, so maybe that's a factor

I'm certainly never going back to a car that doesn't have an air conditioner

I never found the Leaf's heating to be power hungry. I'd typically be driving around with the heat set to 20C everywhere.

Funny enough I found the demist setting to be the most power hungry, so I'd always lower the fan speed to stop it draining the battery

It knocks about 8 to 10% off the range in my leaf, multiple short journeys being more range hungry as the car is being brought up to temp each time. That in itself is probably reasonable and comparable to other EVs but the problem I find is that if you are regularly doing multiple journeys that aggregate close to the max range, that 10% can be the difference between having finger nails intact by evening time! So I've evolved into a zipped up jacket wearing driver who is constantly amazed why I'm overheating when I drive the smax!

Are you going close to the max range very often?

I think I've only had one or two times I had enough short journeys in one day to get me below 20%

No option of a daytime top-up if you go below 50%?

Just seems a bit extreme to live without heating year round if it's a pretty rare event that you need to

Do I know you? 😁

There are still a couple of warnings after the '---'. First the last battery bar disappears what feels like ages after the percentage had disappered. Then the power bubbles' outer rings start to go out to indicate power limit when you accelerate but at even speed they do reappear again. Once the current power level and those bubbles meet you get the turtle mode. So the slower you accelerate at low battery the longer you have to go before the turtle but the eventual shutdown happens quicker.

On our well used L30 I can sometimes trigger a less serious the turtle mode if the battery is properly cold and you have a "cold start" with less than 10% of battery remaining. The acceleration is seriously reduced but the car will just keep on going on this turtleish mode for a long time. I think it's to stop you to accidentally hit the proper turtle mode where the acceleration is properly and dangerously glacial. I call this "turtle light". Never experienced it on L24/L40 so it could be just an indication that our battery is getting a bit tired.

Edit: And yes. The M3 LR with 20% of battery remaining has the same range as a L24 with full battery ;-)

Her husband said rather wryly, if she had a wood stove on the back seat she'd still be complaining ☺️ in saying that it was a 2018 or 19 car, it obviously didn't put her off driving them as she has a new one now. Lovely red😎

Tesla only started selling the Model 3 in Ireland in late 2019 and back then the cars didn't have a heat pump. Also she could have heated the car up remotely either automatically on a timer or from the app on her phone from anywhere in the world

Seems to me she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer...

For any cat fans in North Dublin, there's an Ora Funky Cat sitting in the middle of Pavilions shopping centre (as advertising, not bad parking 😂)

Nice looking car, looks about Leaf24 sized and nice looking interior. For €32k it's almost worth giving your location away to the Chinese government (as if they don't already know) 😁

Worse. I have Chinese engineers messing with the settings of my inverter unbeknownst to me. Mind I could give them the two fingers and pull the wifi module out of course 😂

When will the government formally announce what is happening the €5,000 grant from the 1st of July? Sometime during June or earlier?

Ionity opening up new hubs in France:

It doesn't exactly spell it out in the article but there's two hubs on the same route (think Castlebellingham services) and each has 16x 350kW chargers 😱

And a rain shelter, although f**k knows why they need that it the south of France

Looking at the service areas they're actually pretty decent, certainly a lot nicer than any of our TII sites

Nice work Ionity, can we have some of those in Ireland please?

You'd struggle to find the sun in the sky here on some days 😬

Anyway, it's good to see Ionity have rediscovered the age old trick of putting a cover over the humans to stop them being miserable and I would like to see more of it