117 - You just bought an EV? Everything you need to know!

This is Two Blokes talking electric cars with Steven Fenwick and Trevor Long thanks to NRMA

Insurance and UNIDEN. Thank you to UNIDEN, NRMA Insurance, NRMA Insurance helping Australians

protect what matters most for a hundred years or more and they're also one of Australia's

largest insurers of electric vehicles and UNIDEN smart dash cams. Get yourself a dash cam,

give yourself peace of mind, whatever car you're driving, especially if you bought a brand new

one. Steven always says get yourself a rear camera, that's the one with the R model.

These are award-winning cameras, award-winning dash cams, front and back, you want coverage

in all directions. Great peace of mind. We appreciate their support of Two Blokes

talking electric cars for the two and a half years we've been doing this show. I mean,

and we appreciate everyone, our new listeners too, we appreciate that. And with this episode is

dedicated to those new owners of electric vehicles. Now, so you've just bought an EV.

You've just bought an EV, congratulations. Well done. Round of applause for the Two Blokes.

If you already own an EV, a lot of what we're talking about today, you'll already know,

but you never know, there might be a little refresher in there for you. But we talked about

doing these shows, we did one last week about if you're about to buy a car, this is all about

you've just bought an EV. You just pulled the trigger, here's what you need to know.

So let's start with that first moment. You've taken the ribbon off the car,

the salesman's walking you through it and you've got the keys and you're now on the road.

What do you do? I think the first thing to do is get it home and plug it in.

Because that's a mentality thing about just knowing that when it's at home in the driveway,

plug it in. It's a really simple thing to do because when you plug it in also,

a bunch of things happen in the car. The interface, the screens will light up and

tell you that it's charging. So you'll learn very quickly where it tells you about the

charge limit. It'll estimate how fast it's going to take to charge. And that'll allow you to do

a couple of things. Because what you also want to do there, and it may already be factory set

like this, but just check that it's set to the right percentage limit. You don't want to set

your car to charge at 100% every single time. It's possible that your dealer says that's not

an issue and a lot of battery technology today doesn't matter, but it's a good habit to get into

because, not because of battery technology, not because of battery health, but because of time.

The 80%, that last 20% takes a lot longer to do. I think the other mindset you've got to get into

speaking about percentages is that have what you need. Like if you're going on a long road trip,

of course, go to 100% charge at 100%. If you're just going to be driving around town, then having

80% charge or 70% is fine. That's going to get you around and maybe last you for a couple of days

before you even need to consider it. I think it doesn't take long to get used to that charging

process, used to what you need to drive around. We'll talk charging in more detail in a moment,

but in this first 24 hours, what that plugging in will do will teach you all the things you need

to know about where the charging port is, how it plugs in, where to keep the charger in the car,

and all those different things, the basics. Then you want to set your car up so it's able to connect

if possible, if it allows this to your home Wi-Fi. When you pull into the driveway, the garage,

if it's on your home Wi-Fi, any over-the-air software updates that are available will be

available there. If your car doesn't have a SIM card in it, it might also allow you to connect

remotely to the car through apps. That's a really useful thing to do. That's another thing too,

download the app, set up the app, have an account, because you can do things like on my Merc, I've

left my doors unlocked, I can lock the doors through the app, I can open the doors, I can set the

climate, it gives me notifications, things that are happening with the car, you may have that too

with yours, you might be able to, maybe it's a hot day, you might turn the air con on before you

head out or things like that. The last thing I think is really important in that first day

is the range estimate. Now the thing is, don't panic about it. It will change for years. It'll

always change. If you were to charge your car to 100% every day, for example, the driving that you

do actually determines that range number, and every car does it differently. Some cars actually

have a toggle, I've noticed, of a dynamic range versus a fixed range, which is basically a way of

saying, do you want me to use my, this is the car speaking, do you want me to use my brain of what I

was taught to know about the range of this car, or do you want me to use what I know about how

you've driven it for the last month? And that's really critical, because when you get our Kia

EV9, for example, 512K range or something like that, so out of the factory 100%, there it is,

512K. But right now, if I charge it to 100%, so just before we go on a road trip, it might say

600, it might say 590, it might say less, but it does that based on how we've been driving.

So you've been driving in the city a lot. All we do is drive that car around town, so it's going to

go, hey, you're going to make it a long way. Don't panic about the range estimate, but just know it,

know what that is, and that'll help you understand, you know, what's coming up for you. And I think

that's a really nice thing. You're both getting to know each other still. Yeah. So you've had, you've

got your cars in the driveway, you're happy, you're probably going to drive to your friend's place

and show them off. That's cool. Yep. The next thing we think about over time is charging. And this

is really, really important, because I don't think any dealer can truly explain this to anyone

at handover. Yeah, because everyone's different. Everyone's different how they, how they charge,

when they charge. There's a lot to learn. Yeah, there is. I don't think one of the things that a

lot of our callers on this show have said is I didn't realize that, or I didn't know that. Yes,

definitely. I think, well, that's something you should consider, obviously, charging

where you can charge it, when you can charge it. That's probably something you considered before

you bought the car. I know a lot of our listeners can charge at home. 95% of drivers charge at home.

Yes. All the time. Yes. But there's also other, other drivers that maybe have the option to charge

at work and so charge on the way to where they're going. Something we talk about a lot is we call

them a granny charger, the trickle charger. This is the charger that comes with nearly all cars.

That is, it looks like a big chunky power brick on one end, which is what goes into your car.

But at the other end, it's just a normal PowerPoint. It's just a normal Aussie power plug. Now,

using that is totally fine. It's a totally acceptable way to charge your car forever.

You could do that, no problems. It is the slowest way to charge your car. And it will freak you

out the first time you do it at a low number. So if you're at 18% battery and you get home and

you plug it in and you go, I want to charge to 100% or 80%. It's going to take 20, 30,

who knows how many hours because it is the slowest way. It's a two kilowatts, two to three kilowatts,

it's not much, right? It's the slowest possible way to charge. And that's fine because the average

person drives less than 40 kilometers a day. And so if you're doing that, that's a few hours

overnight while you're sleeping, your car is fine. You probably get, you probably put back on the car

what you used the day before. Easily, right? And that's what we think is the best mechanism. So

in that first day you plug in, the reason you do that, so you get in the habit of every day

when you get home, plug it in. That's a really critical thing. And then we talked about why

to set it to 80%. But also, I want to just come back to that for a minute. If you set your car

to charge at 80%, the reason is when you go to a fast charger on a holiday, for example,

when we drive down to my mom's place, I only go to 80% because I know that it might take me 15

minutes to get from 40 to 80. But to get from 40 to 100 could take 35 minutes. And, you know,

dealing with my family going, well, this takes longer. So the additional four, it's like an upside

down pyramid A. So that part is easy to charge to here. Then that bit between 80 and 100 takes a

bit longer to do that. Because it's about safety. It's about keeping the battery safe and doing the

right thing by the charger. So that's the fastest of charging. And then there's the slowest of

charging, the trickle at home. And the in-between is having what we call a wall box. That's a

brand, but it's also just a style. You know, car dealers will sell them to you. There's brands

called Zappy. You can buy them at Bunnings for crying out loud. You need an electrician to

install them. But these ones, there's no PowerPoint involved. It's just the plug that goes into your

car. But it used to be installed by an electrician into your board and all that. But they

range, I think, for speeds of between 7 kilowatts, 11 kilowatts, 22 kilowatts.

My it's capable of 32, but it's not going to get any of that unless the car can handle it.

And I don't think there's any car that does AC32 charging, right? There are a couple that will

do AC22 charging, but very, very few. But that's the in-between. And that's what we've opted for,

because sometimes I do drive a bit of distance in a day or a week. And we also have two electric

cars. So sometimes I don't have the ability to charge mine every day. So it just gets a weekly

top up. And that's the job done. So talking about, this is talking mainly about charging at home.

Yes. What about when you get on the road? Yes. A lot of people think, okay, I'm going on a road

trip. I need to know where the charges are. So this is where there's a bit of planning you might

need to do. You might be driving up to, you know, Trevor drives to Young. He knows exactly where

the charges are on the way. You might be going up the coast. It's handy to know that if you do

need to pull in and use a public charger where it is, what type of charger it is, the speed of

that charger. And this is usually on the road. There's these are normally fast chargers. They

want to get in people in charge fast. But what's really interesting is just looking on any map

and we'll talk about apps in a minute, but talking about on any just pulling up to a charger,

where if it's at a BP and ampola or wherever it might be, they're all different. And there's a

couple of really important things. Speed is one of them. So a big box, what looks like a fast charger

might only do 50 kilowatt charging, which sounds amazing compared to what you've got at home. But

there's others that do 150. And that's that does make a vast difference in how quickly you get

that juice. So you will learn over time which ones are the faster ones. And you can normally see it

within the apps and things, but also be wary of this. And I noticed this with when I go to the

ampola at my local ampola, there's one charger, but there's two plugs. Very cool, right? You think

two cars. Excellent. But the number of times I notice someone pull up in a Tesla and try and

pull the other plug out, which is a different style of plug. There are actually two types of plug.

There's what we call CCS and Chatham. So basically, every car except a Nissan Leaf,

and there might be one other now that still has Chatham uses the standard same charger. So Chatham

is getting very hard to find and they're not installing new ones. But you may come across,

especially in regional and highway areas, you may come across a single charge with two plugs,

and there's someone already plugged in. The other one might not fit your car. So be wary of that

when you're looking at maps and things. How many Type 2 or CCS chargers are there? Because Chatham

will not charge most cars. And are there, can you buy adapters? Aren't there adapters you can

buy? I wouldn't recommend it even if there are. Like it just sounds dangerous to me. It sounds

like the kind of thing that could literally blow up in your face. Well, the other thing too we

should mention in the charging space is that there are some chargers that don't have a cable.

Yes. There are some chargers that are just a plug. And usually the car comes with not only the

granny charger, but also a cable to connect the charger to your car. Yes. So it's got the

two-ended cable. So check that the charger that you're going to has a cable built in.

If not, you'll need to BYO cable. Yeah. If you've got a car that came with a charger,

it's probably a granny charger. If you bought a Mercedes, they might give you both. Yeah,

you do get both. But most likely your car only came with one cable. But I've had cars that only

have the public charger cable, and they don't have the granny cable. So what I did was, in fact,

I think in the Cooper and the Kia, they were the opposite. But what I did was buy the cable so that

in each of my cars, I have two cables. One of them is for public charging. So it's your big

electric vehicle charger plug on both ends, CCS, but it's essentially mail-to-mail so that the

plugs on each end work in the wall. And the other one is for home or normal power points.

It's a normal power plug, granny charger, into your car. Got the same. You've got a bug.

If I'm you and you've just bought a brand new electric car, check what you got and get one of

each. Head to Bunnings or Harvey Norman and find a cable because there are good brands out there.

Sometimes you come up to a public charger, maybe the only one available to you and there's no cable,

you need to have that. A lot of local shopping centers have these chargers. Taronga Zoo, I was

at Taronga Zoo last week, and they've got four charge fox chargers, but no cables. So the second

time I went there, I'm taking a cable. That's a good tip. Make sure you check you got the cable

required. Absolutely, buy cable because it'll make the difference. Now, one thing about public

charging is they're not always working. And that's not because there's a massive failure

of the system. These are complicated pieces of both electronics and computers, especially when

they're in the vast remote area. So be cautious to know how to understand if it's going to be

there and reliable. So what I always say is don't rely on anyone charger on a road trip.

So my trip again to Yang, in my head, I can tell you right now, I pass a charger at Pheasant's Nest

in Amphol, Marulan, a BP, Golban, there's a Tesla, a charge fox, and another charge fox,

and at Yass, there's a NRMA, charge fox, and a Tesla, right? So I know all those charges I drive

past. I aim to go to the Tesla because it's the most number of bays, it's the fastest, and it's

the best in that sense for me. But if I was going, okay, I'm going to go to Yass and go to the NRMA

charge fox. It's one box. If it's broken or faulty for any reason, if I was relying on that,

that could be the end of my road trip. So it's good to know in advance. So one of the things I

recommend, and we'll talk about apps in a minute in detail, but there is an app called Plug Share,

which allows you to just see a map. This is great. You see a map, you can see charges in any area,

and you can zoom in on them. But the critical thing is when you click on that charger,

you can then see other people's experiences. Now, it's not a requirement of owning an EV,

but I would highly encourage you to be part of the community that contributes to Plug Share. So

what you do is you say, I successfully charged today. Yes. So if I see it and it says someone

failed and there hasn't been a successful one after that, I'm cautious. You can check it,

but also to what I love about Plug Share is not only you find the charger with the location,

but also where in that location. Often the Plug Share, the charges might be in a car park or a

shopping center, and it tells you on level four and up here and photos. Otherwise, it's hard to find.

Yeah. So I highly encourage you to use Plug Share and contribute, especially in public charges in

remote areas. Very useful for people to have and do. And if anything's broken, please report it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you do that, it'll probably expedite the repairs.

They might not know it's down. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, and I think the speed of charge,

that's sort of one of the misconceptions of EV charging is that it takes hours and hours. That's

not true. On a road trip, by the time you go to the bathroom, buy a coffee, get a sandwich, eat it,

you'll be ready to go. Yeah. Like you would on an ordinary trip. And again,

that comes back to that really important thing. We'll touch on it again, the 80% real, right?

Yeah. You don't have to charge 100% on your way. And it's a fun thing to do on that screen. The

first time you go to a public, if you're at 20% or 30% battery, and I do recommend you drive,

drive, drive your car until you get to like 20% or something, right? Yeah. And then go to a public

charger. And then on the screen of your car, set it to 80%. And it'll say reaching target in 23

minutes, right? It'll say something like that. And then drag that little target up to 90%. And

it'll say 37 minutes. And then drag it to 100. And it'll say like 47 minutes. And you'll be like,

wow, that's a lot of, that's like double the time. Yeah. And it's a good thing to help you

understand why it's not actually important to get to 100%. You get to what you need. So again,

I'll go back to my road trip. Yeah. I mean, Goldman, I've only got another 150Ks to go. Yeah.

But I also need to charge when I get there and I need to have a bit of bit of buffer zone. So I

want to be at 250Ks. I want to be able to come back as well. So I go to 80 and is that enough?

And it's critical because 80 is probably going to be enough for you.

That's important too to discuss. That's sort of part of the etiquette of charging. So there's

EV charging etiquette where if you want to charge to 100% and you don't need it, you're just wasting

your time at that point and potentially wasting the time of someone else who's waiting to charge.

So I think it's a good idea to take what you need. It's like topping up your fuel. You're not

going to fill her up. You're just going to put 20 bucks in and that's going to get you there.

I've been, I've sat at 80% on a road trip on my own and gone, I'm in no rush. I'm going to take it

to 90 or I'm going to take it to 95. But if someone pulled up and I was at the only charger and I

didn't need the extra, what you do is you go, stop, pull out and go. It's etiquette. It genuinely is

important to respect other drivers. Part of that is that respect is something you've got to learn

as well. But also too, once you've finished charging, don't sit there. There are some

chargers that give, that charge you an idle fee. So I think that that's, that's to

encourage people to get out of there. Once you finish your charging, clear the space up for

someone else. So the final thing on charging, and this is probably, we could have said this

in the first 24 hour thing as well. The first thing you do when you buy an electric car,

but you can do this beforehand as well. Download the apps. Well, on an iPhone or an

Android front, it doesn't matter. All the apps are available. Create a folder called charging

and you download an RMA, charge box, EV, Tesla and plug share, put them all in there, BP.

Those are your core ones. You might hear of others and there are definitely some smaller ones

around, but those ones are going to do your big and charging and you download them all,

but don't just download them, log into them, create an account, put your credit card, set up

a payment card. Yes, very important. And I will say it's a touch on the nerdy side,

but it is very, very easy to do. If you have no knowing about NFC or you join the Australian EV

Association, you can order a card, a single looks like a credit card, a single tap and go card,

and it has a number on it. And on some of these apps, EV and charge box, you can actually

put that number into the app. And so that card, you can just tap on the charger to initiate the

charging process. And that's a game changer. So you don't have to use an app or anything like that.

I'm trying to look for it. I thought I had it. I thought I had it with me.

Oh, you don't have it. And so it doesn't work on every charge of the tap and go, but

it could be an easy way to charge at some points. So EV, for example, has a thing which Tesla has

had forever with Tesla cars, but on some of their charges, probably 50 to 60% of them,

if you set up an auto charge, it will recognize your car and you won't need to even use the app.

You just plug it in. It doesn't work on all cars, but it's a very cool thing to do.

Good idea to sort of pre-register. Pre-register, get ready, get ready to pay.

You turn up at the charge and you think, oh, I've got to put all the info in.

Well, when I turned up, it saves you a bit of time.

At Taronga Zoo, I was with someone else and they were charging their car as well.

And I went, what are you doing? They go, I downloaded an app and I went,

haven't you got a charge box? And they go, this says JetCharge. I went, no, no, that's the company

that built it, but it's actually on the charge box network. So you don't need it.

And so having the app being logged in and setting up the payment authority straight away

means you're going to have a breeze and go and do it. Don't wait till your first road trip to

publicly charge. Just go for a coffee somewhere. Go to Woolies and charge. You know, go somewhere

and learn how the app works. So once you've done it the first time,

I think people are a little bit nervous, but you do it once and then it's no problem.

It's easy after that.

Absolutely. That's what they all say.

Absolutely. Once you get it out of the way for your first time.

Charging is very easy. Don't let it struggle you or stress you out at all. Now,

the third thing we want to talk about is the difference in driving.

The drive. Yeah.

And mate, I've said a million times I didn't buy an electric car to be green.

I'm excited that I'm doing my bit for the world, but I'm doing it because they're great to drive.

I love the sound. I love the fact that it's a quiet drive. I don't miss

the revving of an engine. I didn't have a V8.

That's one thing when I got my first EV many years ago. That was one thing that took a little bit

of time for me to get used to was how quiet the car is. Yeah.

And because there weren't many other EVs on the road, you've got to be very careful about

other people. Yes.

Because I'd be driving in shopping centre car parks. There'd be people walking in front of my car.

Yeah, we had that yesterday, big garage. We can't hear us. I'm about to go and gravel.

Tooting your horns a little bit aggressive. So you just got to be really mindful that

people might not be able to hear you. Absolutely. Yeah.

Now, there's a thing called one pedal driving. And I want to be clear, this is not in every car.

It's something you could ask at the dealership or while you test drive.

For some cars, it's the default. So Nissan Leaf, for example, it's like the default.

And it's a gear shift. For other cars, it's a button.

For some cars, it's a part of the regenerative braking settings.

And we'll talk about that in a minute. But basically, it needs to be turned on.

The idea of one pedal driving, the best example I can give is scalar tricks.

If you ever drive a scalar tricks, you know, the cars on the racetrack,

you squeeze your trigger and the cars go, as soon as you take your finger off, the car stops.

It goes slow down. Yeah.

Right? It doesn't slow down. It stops. As soon as you take your finger off the trigger,

the car stops. If you do that in a one pedal driving car, if you're going,

like if your foot's at 30% acceleration and then you take your foot off,

your car will very promptly come to a stop. It'll slow down. Yeah, that's right.

It's not like slamming on the brakes, but it will very promptly stop.

You'll notice. The idea of the one pedal is to take you to a complete stop,

so that you're only using the accelerator to drive the car. You'll obviously use the brake in

emergencies and when you feel like you need to stop even more promptly. But it's actually

a brilliant thing because, and we'll talk about this, but you're using the brakes less.

So it's saving you money in the long term. Yes. But one pedal driving is sensational.

But the idea for the recuperation, what brings the car, what slows the car down,

is the motor's going into reverse. So I don't think it's only going to reverse. It's the

technology of the entire car pushing the power that it's able to regenerate.

The regeneration, sort of the reversing of the motor, recovering the energy.

It's the reversing of the energy flow. The difference. So it's basically putting that

energy back in your battery. That's it. And if you do it enough, if you're on like a downhill run,

you may see the percentage of your car increase by one or two percent. Well, I think the bigger

example is when you drive somewhere, so let's say Sydney people, you drive from Sydney to Bathurst,

you may drive there and go, I use 60% of my battery to get here. On the way back,

you'll probably only use 30% because it's downhill. So that's, it could be a huge difference. But one

of the things about regenerative braking, a lot of cars use the pedals, which used to be used for

shifting up and down gears. My Mercedes does that. Hyundai KIAs do as well. So it's like you're

shifting up is like going down on regenerative, shifting down is adding regenerative choice.

Normal, strong, iLaw is too strong. A lot of cars have three modes. So in a Hyundai and a KIA,

it's like one, two, and three levels. And the fourth level is one pedal driving. So one, two,

and three just basically means how much will the car regenerate, which means how much will the car

brake when you take your foot off the pedal. Short trips you hardly touch the brake. And so

the reason it's a really important setting to know about is because it was a real off-putting

thing for my wife the first time she drove the KIA. It's like, what is it? Why is it doing that? So

I would put my wife's setting on one so that it just felt like a normal car, just drive it like a

normal car. And then over time, if that's, if that's frustrating to you to have the regenerative

feeling, because it is a feeling. It takes, it takes getting used to it. It's not something

you think, oh, this is right. You literally have to move your foot, your pedal, very, very differently.

But the key is if you can bring yourself to go into full regenerative mode or iPedal or one pedal

driving if it's available, you're doing the best for the battery. You're doing your best for your

efficiency and you're doing the best thing for your brakes. Absolutely. But it will, it is a

feeling. And please remember your passengers. I've been in Ubers that are EVs where the driver

has definitely got a regen on. And dude, I'm like, mate, what are you doing here? I'm,

because I'm not driving, I'm feeling every bit of it. So,

Trev doesn't like not driving. You're the worst passenger. I'm not a fan of being a passenger.

I think too, another thing, another attractive thing for people before they buy the car and

even when they're test drivers, the acceleration. EVs have instant torque. So off the mark, they're

pretty solid. Some cars, depending on the sort of car you buy and how much you pay,

that instant acceleration could be as two seconds, zero to 100. This is crazy. But others,

in general, on average, about four to seven seconds is zero to a zero to 100. Like the new

BYD Shark with a bigger motor that's coming out this year has a 5.5 second 0 to 100 for a big

Ute. Are we kidding? That's crazy. You know what? That's, that's plenty. Yes. I know there's a lot

of people who think they spend more to get a much faster off the mark. The point here is,

we're talking about driving differently. Yeah. Be careful. Yeah. Because you might get some

red and blue lights coming behind you with your heavy right foot. But that also leads us to the

fact that you can actually be quite efficient in your driving. Yeah. It can be a very smooth way

to drive. You can, you can really, with that pedal, you can control so much more of the car

than you normally would with gearbox and brakes and acceleration. So be, be thinking about that

as well. And we've said, mentioned many times on the show about the driving, the driving conditions

and how that affects your range. Yeah. We've said many times that batteries, EVs are the opposite

of a petrol car. Yes. A petrol car on the highway, that's its most efficient way mode of driving.

Whereas an EV loves the stop and start of city driving, that's its most efficient. Highway

driving is less efficient because it's constant high speed and that, that draws on the battery

slightly more. Yeah, exactly. So just, just remember that when you hit the open road,

the range is going to dip. You may think you've got 500 kilometres range, but at 110 kilometres

an hour, that car is going to go 400 kilometres. It's just not going to go as far. Make an even

little differences. Like sitting in the left lane at 100, that could add, that could add a lot of

Well, for some conservative drivers, but it can make a difference. If you, if you're wondering

why the Tesla is going 90 on the freeway, it's because it's more efficient to drive. And they've

realised that, you know what, that 10 kilometres an hour is not getting me there any much faster.

It's really not. It's like, you're getting there five minutes earlier. What are you doing? It's

crazy. You'll, you'll have a bit, a bit of range, a bit more percentage left on the battery when

you arrive there. So now another big one here, this is something you may not have been told at

the dealership or learnt in any reviews is the weather can affect your range. Yes. Exhibit A.

I took a Hyundai Ioniq to Bathurst in many years ago, 2018, 2017, something like that. And we

didn't make it. It was very cold that day. It was snowing outside of Bathurst and the car didn't

make it to Bathurst. Even though the range was 196 kilometres and the drive was only 190,

we fell 25 kilometres short because it was cold. A uphill, B freezing cold. It's like George

Costant. There's a bit of shrinkage. There's a bit of shrinkage in the battery range. So you can,

and a lot of cars will inherently do this. You get in a car on a cold morning in winter,

it will show you a lower range than on a summer's day. Yeah. So your car will, your car will tell

you this, but the heat isn't really that big a determinant, but a stupidly hot day can also

affect range because the battery needs to moderate itself for safety as well. Is it also charging?

I know, I know the Tesla's and other cars do, they preheat the battery to speed up the charging

a little bit too. So that's another factor. Charging can be affected by the temperature

as well. But that goes to our last point about how the drive is different. And again, you never

used to look at range. You only ever used to look at a fuel gauge. And you can still do that.

Just look at the, just look at the battery gauge. That's okay. But you'll want range because you're

worried about where you're going to charge. I know on the Tesla, you could choose to have

either a percentage reading or a kilometer reading. So some, my car has both. I want both.

Yeah. If I only, if I had the choice of one, I would put kilometers. Yeah, case just saying,

no, it's only good to go 100%. But just remember, as we said earlier, that, that number will vary

based on your weekly driving, based on the weather and based on how you've been driving even that

day. So just keep those things in mind when you are experiencing the difference of driving

and EV. Another great thing about the EV is just how much different it is to look after.

In some ways, vastly different in other ways, not much at all. You should ask the question

about the servicing schedule of the car. Yeah, before you buy your car, that's a good question

to ask. Yeah, what some brands may include free servicing. They may. Some brands may not.

It's unlikely. But yeah, you may, you may have, I think it's a good question to ask. What's the

servicing like? Roughly even ask what the cost of the servicing is going to be. Yeah, like in my,

in both my cars, I chose to just prepay for five years with the servicing. It's like,

it's better to just have it locked in and done. But you'll find it's different. You're not,

you're not having to get a service every 10,000 kilometers. It's more likely to be an annual

thing than it is a kilometers thing. If that, if that, my Tesla, very rare for anything other

than Tesla. I booked it in for my first 12 months, just out of habit. And they said, well, how many

cars in the car? And I told them, they said, no, yeah, okay, we're cancelling your service,

which is rare, very rare company. We've only ever heard that from Tesla. So just be clear.

And don't, Stephen will tell you, he'll get very angry about it. But don't get too angry at them

when they stuff it up because they send you an invoice that has oil change on it. The systems

that some of these dealerships are so old that they're just inherently ticking a list. They've got

to get with the times. They're going to have a list, a checklist for a normal car and a checklist

for an EV. You won't get this with an A on or a Gilly because they don't have established service

principles anywhere else. This is a subject for another day. But Mercedes Benz, I thought the

servicing of an electric car was a touch on the high side way above what I expected. Yeah.

And look, and that's the problem is if you don't ask the question up front, you don't know that

actually it's not better off. Like that, that's a decision making thing. And we should have covered

it last week if we didn't. But you know what, if it's no cheaper to service, then you're not

getting the true benefits of the EV other than the petrol side. So think about that. We talked

about how regeneration and one pedal is a great thing for your brakes. Yeah. And you're using

them less. My experience has been they've gone, oh, they're looking great. The brakes are fantastic.

They're a lot friendlier on the brakes. So even if you're going in for a service, you know, let's

say it's a $400 service, we all know that it's a $400 service and then they'll charge you for the

brakes and the, the, the, the, the, the, the good thing is the $400 service on an EV might be the

same as a petrol car, but you're going to be getting your brakes refreshed much fewer times.

And that's a positive. But we have both noticed tires can be an issue. Yeah, that's right. And

what we learned to be heavier, what leave we learned is inflation. We were told just go a

couple of PSI up because it over inflate it over inflate. Otherwise your car sits and kind of hits

the, the very sidewall of the, or the very curved edge of the tire and can wear it much quicker.

So you better off to over inflate. And for the same reason I check my tires far more than I ever

did before, because even though your car's not saying, hasn't got an alarm going off saying

tire pressure issue, you're, that's because you're in the normal range, but you actually want to be

just above the normal range is what we've learned in our experience. That's, that's the best advice.

But yeah, just, just know an EV is much heavier car than what you drove before because the battery

is along the bottom of the car. So yeah, check back, check pressures often. Yep. Don't forget

your electric vehicle has two batteries, the big booming thing that powers the car. And then there

is still, and this is still mind blowing to me, there is still a 12 volt battery under the hood

or in the boot. It's wild to me that that still exists, but it does. They are very different

systems, the high voltage system and the 12 volt system, very different systems. There have been

known issues with some cars, Mike here included, where the 12 volt drains through software updates,

they fixed that or they're fixing that. But just know that leaving your lights on can still drain

the battery, not the big battery. What about my big battery? Just the little one, right? And the big

battery is nowhere connected to the little one. So even when that little battery is dead, you can't

jumpstart it with the big one. You're not going anywhere. So I actually am testing one of those

C tech battery, you know, jump starters, because it's a great thing still to have in your home.

Absolutely. Without question, the 12 volt can still be a problem. I get warnings on my car,

as you do. So I've checked the 12 volt battery and it's not, it's never, it just,

just got to drive the car again. Yeah. So I get that because of the dash cam.

I get that because the dash cam is using it in the car. I would too, because I've got parking

there. And the car's going, mate, that's the 12 volts being used while I'm not driving. And so

again, just one drive and you're sort of getting my warning to just know the 12 volt is there.

And you know what? This is another, like, I remember when I first got my first electric car,

I'm thinking, oh, it's just another thing I've got to remember to charge. But it's also another

thing you've got to remember to update. You get software updates as well. And I remember the

famous story when I got my Tesla, the guy said to me, today is the worst your car is going to be.

It's going to improve over time with software updates. And, and he was right. Yeah. So just

to remember, we spoke earlier about maybe having Wi-Fi connected into your driveway, connect that

because there might be an OTA and over the air update that you can run on the car. But run the

updates. I know people get annoyed. They get annoyed. They got to update their iPhone or their,

their Android phone. But you got to do it because you know what? It helps with the efficiency,

security, save deal for your car. These updates are for the best. And the last thing about just

looking after the car, you're still going to get warning lights and errors. Pay attention to them.

Don't ignore them. You still get tire pressure warnings. Look up the manual. Find out what it

is because it might be worth going back to the dealer on. It's really that simple. Yeah. A lot

of cars have more information now and that's fine. But don't ignore warnings because they could be a

big difference for you. Just finally, Stephen, and I think this is a really important one.

The mindset shift. It's a complete change. It really is because the biggest one is

you go from, oh, when the tank gets to a flashing lighter at a quarter, I'm going to go to the

station and fill it up. You don't need to do that. You do not need to take your car down to

whatever your number is, a 30%, 20%, whatever it is. Just charge it whenever you can. I know

there's a lot of people, my mother included, when they see the little red, the warning light to come

on to fill up. They go, oh, I need to fill the car up. That is not necessarily the case here.

You run the risk of if you need to sort of go out quickly in your car, you've only got 10%

charge, you're going to get caught out. So it's a good idea to top up the battery whenever you can.

Just like your phone. It's what we always say. Just keep charging it whenever you can. We should

mention too that you are charging at home. There are a lot of electricity plans and offers. I've

got OVO energy, which offers free electricity between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. and overnight charging

between midnight and 6 a.m. It's like eight cents per kilowatt, which basically means you can have

a fully charged car for like eight bucks. It's really cheap. So that's enough. Once you've

settled in your car, start talking energy with the energy providers. We can have a whole other

show about solar and the benefits of having solar panels. It's not a necessity though. We hear a lot

of people saying they call us and say, I've got solar panels, so a lot of people equate that well.

Do I need to have solar panels to drive an EV? No, you don't. But it helps. But it's not a necessity.

No. But if that's something you want to do to maybe to make yourself more power efficient

and spend less on electricity, then go for it. We mentioned this in the start. You don't need

anything but the trickle charger that was provided with the car or that you can buy at Bunnings.

You can absolutely get by with that for life, especially if you don't do any of the road

trips. It's totally fine to charge a car using that. It's also totally fine to charge your car

regularly on a high speed charger, but stick to the 80% in that case. We've had great research

from Brent and Green at Pickles who has appeared on this show many times showing us that a lot of

the data coming from the used cars they're seeing is actually showing that battery life is not,

battery health is not actually degrading. If you charge fast charge every week, there's no battery,

there's no evidence of battery degradation. But the most important thing is if you're charging

your car on a slow charger all the time, you are absolutely not degrading your battery. It's totally

cool. Keep topping it up. Don't worry about letting it go down and up again. Range anxiety will drive

you insane for many months. It will. You'll think about it. You worry about it, but it will fade.

It will fade over time, especially after you've done your first couple of cool trips. You'll

realize very quickly, ah, there's cars that that one, like you drive past it. So on my trip at

Merulon, there's one BP charger. You don't drive past, there's someone there where you get one of

the kids in the back to check the app and it'll show you whether it's in use or not. It's in use.

I'm just going to drive onto the next one. There's another charger 50 kilometers away.

They nearly always is. So yeah, it's like, you know what, how much range anxiety do you have

when you drive a petrol car? Never. Because there's more stations everywhere. But the good news is

that there are more charges. When I got my first EV eight years ago, charges were, they weren't as

frequently found as they are today. So today you're buying an EV today. There are plenty of

charges. I think the just a few weeks ago, the New South Wales government also announced a bit

and they're going to put more charges in more places to give people that option and drive the

push to EVs. No matter what you think of Elon, don't be afraid to use these charges because

they are it is the best charging network. That's like saying I'm never going to use BP and Shell.

They've got they've got petrol stations everywhere and they've got more boursers than anyone else.

The Tesla Supercharger Network is the best thing about the Tesla brand going and don't be afraid

to use it. And while you're there, it's not something I do, but it's something Stephen does,

be part of the community. Talk to other owners. Yeah, I did that a lot when I've had my Tesla

and I was connected and we were just chatting away to other drivers and they sort of gave me

some advice and tips on how often they charge. You know, we were at Sutton's Forest at an EV

charger once and we pulled in charge and then I noticed the person next was having a problem.

It's like, you know what? Oh, no, this is the first time probably. Just have a chat to them,

find out and help out, help out where you can, learn where you can. It's a really nice thing.

There's a bunch of, we always say this, join the Facebook groups for your car. It's a great

way to learn more about your car. You'll hear a lot of wingers as well, but that's fine. It's good

to know everything that's going on. Yeah. And if you want to have a chat about an electric car,

that's what we're here for. Talk to us. Yeah. We've had plenty of great calls where we learned

stuff and what's the text line number, Stephen? 047657657. I've never heard you say it,

actually. I was just thinking out loud. There you go. That was a test, but I'll pass the test.

047657657 send us a text. I've heard it enough, mate. And you know, the other one is, and this

will happen at Christmas time, Mother's Day, Easter, barbecues, whatever it is, you are going

to get quizzed. So you might want to, you might want to listen back to our myth busting. You might

want to do reading, whatever, but just remember, you are going to get narks. They're going to,

they're going to, they're going to, you're also going to get the opposite, which is just questions.

It's fascination. Yeah. I have that. Fascination. There'd be people like, I remember plugging the

Tesla in years ago and people say, well, how, and the questions were all the same. How long

does it take to charge? How far can you go? And how much is it? Yeah. That were the questions.

100%. Yeah. And so once you've, once you've experienced it for a little while, you will

have those answers and you will, I can't imagine you won't become an advocate because

they're just great to drive. And most of the myths are absolute rubbish. But you know what,

after a while, it won't feel like an EV. It'll just feel like your car. That's right. It's your car.

And that's the moment when you realize that you've converted yourself. That's it. You're just,

you're just happy to be in your car and you love driving your car and you won't notice other than

the fact that your friends are whinging about petrol prices and you're not. And look, just

finally, I think for me, you know, we bought the Cooper first, didn't we? Yeah. Cooper was the first

EV. Like I knew as soon as I drove it, I wanted it and I'd driven plenty of cars before that.

But it was weirdly the moment for me, and we talked about solar panels not being required, but

given I was lucky enough to have solar panels or put them on, I only put them on two years ago,

that was the moment I was converted forever. When I went, wait a minute, it's December,

it's sunny, plug in, cars charging and I'm getting free driving. This is, that was the moment that

tipped me over the edge. I'll be honest with you. I had panels before I got my car too. I had it

been before. And what was the moment that made you go, I'm never going back to a petrol car?

I just think, yeah, we'll see in the fuel prices that that was one. But I just think in the air,

I can, I can charge it at home. I've got plenty of power coming through the panels and plenty

of charges around. I had, at the time I had the deal with the, they used to have a code and

my car had free supercharging. So hello, I was charging. It wasn't a problem to do a fast super

charge and it cost me nothing. It's part of the deal of my car. So that was, I'm thinking, well,

why would I drive a petrol car ever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let us know as an EV owner, what was the

moment that you knew you'd never go back? And I think for some people, that moment was when they

test drove one. The first time you drove an EV, for a lot of people, the moment they tipped over

the edge. And despite the fact that, and why we had a text the other day from someone that said

something lovely about EVs and then said, but I'm still going to keep the V8. And I wrote back,

I said, if I had a V8, I'd keep it too, like just in the garage. I'd love to own a V8 that I could

bring out every month or so. Fine. But I never owned a car that made the great sounds or anything

like that. So I was happy to move on from that. It's a fascinating world to be in. You now own

an electric car. You'll love it, but just take it easy, take it simple, take it slow, do the basics,

download the apps, and you'll have a great time. You'll never look back. You'll never look back.

And if you want to talk to us, we'd love to hear from you. 0-4-7-6-5-7-6-5-7. Send us a text. And if

you know someone who's just bought an EV, send them a link to this show. We'd love to talk to them

as well. Steven, let's do it all again next week. We'll take your calls next week, folks.

117 - You just bought an EV? Everything you need to know!

About this episode

charging at 80% vs 100%

charging at home vs at work

fast charging vs slow charging

charging at home vs public charging

Chatham

BP

Australian EV Association

EVs are opposite of petrol cars (city vs highway efficiency)

range vs fuel gauge

EVs are much heavier

C tech battery

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