Random EV thoughts.....

Two weeks ago I did this. Pressed the assistance button on the unmanned toll and said I went through the main westbound toll earlier, he asked did I have a receipt, I said yes (expecting to have to call our a number of something) and he said ok grand and opened the barrier. I don't know if he could see me holding the receipt through a camera

Wouldn't have known about it if it wasn't for someone mentioning on here a while back

if you pass through the same toll both in the same direction within 3 hours of initially passing through that you don’t have to pay again apparently.

(This only applies to tolls that you can pass twice like Enfield if you come off the ramp for the hotel and then rejoin the motorway and has the slip road booth)

At the risk of going off topic talking about tolls, I'm in the UK at the moment and when I mentioned that 1) I had to pay four tolls on my route West / East (Ballinasloe, Enfield, M50, Port tunnel) 2) There are no longer any EV toll price reductions, I was greeted with amazement that I would travel a route that would cost so much....any form of tolls on the roads are not acceptable in the UK it seems.

So an interesting experience I've had recently regarding destination chargers

Went to several campsites over the past few months and did lots of driving and sightseeing around the area. One campsite had AC chargers, the other didn't and I was reliant on DC charging nearby

I will say that surviving on DC charging is definitely doable, it's a bit more head wrecking. I found I wasn't at a low enough SoC to get max speed so it took 20-30 mins to get to 80%

I probably could have charged less to speed things up but I didn't want to leave myself short for the next day and hadn't really planned where we were going next

Having AC chargers onsite was a good but easier, just plug in when you get back to the campsite. Only real hassle (other than chargers not working) is having to delay wine time until the car is charged

So I'd probably still book accommodation that has a charger over one that doesn't, all else being equal. But I certainly wouldn't avoid an area just because there's no destination charging

After driving on Italian motorways I said I'll never complain about Irish tolls. On two stretches I paid once 36 and once 25 plus some meager 2-3 quids at some bypasses. In fairness crossing mountains and such but still. The tolls costed more than renting the car for the day

When you say the car cools down do you mean the cabin of the car or drive mechanism i.e. "the engine".

If you drive lots of short trips in an EV then the energy used per trip will be somewhat high. The car will try heat cabin quickly, each time and the estimated range shown on the car will be lower as it will assume all trips will be like that. If you charge your EV battery once a week you will be fine, the actual cost to fill the EV will be much cheaper than petrol or diesel but with lots of short trips the fuel cost savings may only be hundreds of euro per year compared to thousands of euro for those with a long daily commute. Short trips don't do any harm to the car nor battery.

And if the key is in the car in that ICE car, and it is then stolen, you are not covered by insurance. Also very bad idea to let an ICE car engine heat up by idling. Causes massive wear on the engine.

The cabin and the battery

The cabin is fairly obvious, it gets cold and the car consumes energy to warm it up

The battery is a bit more complicated. Basically a cold battery won't deliver as much power and charges slower

Different manufacturers have different approaches, some will limit the amount of power available until the battery warms up from driving, others use a heater to warm up the battery

VW cars for example would heat up the battery every time the car started in temperatures below 8C which caused a range hit. They've since changed it so that it'll only heat up slowly for shorter journeys

There's no danger to the car from driving on a cold battery, it'll take steps to protect itself using the power limits I mentioned earlier

The main effect is that it increases consumption for short drives. In the depths of winter for example I'll typically see around 21kWh/100km on a long drive, but this can go up to 25kWh/100km when I do a bunch of short hops

The big question is, does it matter? Not really IMO, worst case it'll make your range look pessimistic and makes your electricity bill very slightly higher

Best way to avoid it is to preheat the car when it's plugged in. Then it'll use power from the charger to preheat and not from the battery

Btw, diesel cars do the same crap in winter, all the fuel efficiency and emissions control systems are bypassed until the engine heats up

So an increase of approximately 20% in electricity consumption for short journeys. Still not bad though. Surely petrol or diesel would be the same.

Out of curiosity how do you preheat the cabin in an EV. Is it a press of a button on a key fob?

Depends on the car, but most of them have an app that lets you start the heating and also see the charge level

Most cars also let you set a preheating timer, so if you're leaving at 8am every day you can set the car to be nice and warm at that time. It usually defrosts the windows as well if they're icy, so no more scraping the ice off

A lot of EVs are starting to come with seat heating as standard. It's a lot more efficient for heating the passengers than warm air so better to use them if available

I also tend to preheat to around 23C on very cold days. The idea is that you'll want to warm up all the stuff in the cabin like the seats before leaving, otherwise they'll absorb heat while driving and increase consumption

Never actually tested to see if it's more efficient, but getting into a warm car certainly is nice

No engine, no radiator.

Some EVs have heat pump, and some have liquid cooling for battery and some electrics.

In general an EV should be more reliable. But it's new tech and generally new models so you'll have software bugs and teething trouble with new designs. New design of a door handle Vs one that's been in production for years. New model ICE would have the same.

Same but different. Same in that age and mileage still matter, different in that there are far fewer things to go wrong. The newer battery chemistries are too early in their lifespans to really know for sure what their levels of degradation might be, but signs are that they are much better than the early EVs, especially the Nissan Leaf.

Servicing an EV is effectively just an inspection, no oil changes, DPF filters, etc needed

So it should be enough to check the service history to ensure it's just been regularly serviced

Tyres, wiper blades and screen wash are the only real consumables

Battery warranty is obviously a selling point, most cars have a warranty that is limited by time and mileage, whichever hits first. The more warranty is left then theoretically the car is more valuable

The warranty varies by manufacturer, VW cars for example have a warranty of 8 years or 160,000km. There are some exclusions, for example some manufacturers won't cover taxis under warranty

However if you're doing 10,000km per year you could in theory but a cheaper 2 year old EV with 100,000km on the clock and keep it for 6 years before the warranty is up

I'd recommend getting a battery health check before buying. Most manufacturers have a way to read the battery health with an OBD11 dongle and if you're buying from a garage then they should provide this

You can also buy your own OBD dongle to check it yourself, there's plenty of smartphone apps now that can read various EVs health status. There's also 3rd party checkers like Aviloo which will give you an estimated battery health based on data they've collected from similar vehicles