268 - The EV 101 Episode Part 2

Hi, I'm Gary, and this is Evie Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles,

and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.

All on the show today, we'll be looking at going back to basics.

In the second of our series of episodes, I like to call Ev 101.

This season of the podcast is sponsored by ZAPMAP, the go-to app for EV drivers helping you find and

pay for public charging with confidence.

Before we start, I have a quick question. Now, I often get requests from PR companies

recommending guests for the podcast. The vast majority of them are not suitable

guests for the podcast. They're either trying to push a product which isn't aimed at my

audience or they're discussing a topic which I don't believe is of interest to you.

But I do have one potential guest, and to be honest, I'm not sure about them,

so I want to ask you. Now, this particular guest works for a company that deal with industrial

recycling of batteries. Now, we've had episodes on batteries in the past, most notably with Dr

Ewan MacTurt, battery electrochemist extraordinaire, so I'm not 100% sure whether a discussion

around industrial-scale battery recycling is one that would be of interest to the podcast.

So here's my favour. If you want an episode on battery recycling, including the discussion on

black mass, which is the concentrated mix of critical battery metals

introduced into the EV battery supply chain to support compliance with EV regulations,

then let me know. Info at evmusing.com. Thank you.

Our main topic of discussion today is EV basics. This is the second of three episodes in a series.

Across this series, we're going to be going back and laying out the whole EV thing

for absolute beginners. Let me explain. I've been putting out podcast episodes for about

seven years. In all 260 episodes, I've covered all sorts of EV-related topics from your first

day with an EV, charging, roaming, the grid, the AA, range anxiety, insurance, safety, everything.

There's a good chance that this is a topic related to electric vehicles. I've got an episode on it,

or even two if it's a big episode in a fast-moving part of the sector. But if you're someone who's

sitting outside the EV sphere or bubble and you're thinking about getting an EV,

it can look like a complicated thing to get right. I mean, we've got charge curves and

preconditioning and roaming cars and public charge point regulations 2023, not to mention

expensive public charging, CCS, Chatham-O, rapid charging, ultra rapid charging, fast charging.

It's also complicated. Who wants to sit and listen to 260 episodes of a podcast

to learn enough to be able to drive a car? There's got to be a better way, right? So

I put together these three episodes to look in some detail at everything you need to know.

It's a distillation of all of the 260 episodes. So in the first episode, we looked at who should

and shouldn't be buying an electric car, we looked at the buying and financing process,

and we looked at the test drive. So you've gone through all the rigmarole of sorting out

your financing, your choice of vehicle, your options, your colors, all that sort of stuff.

And that brings us to where we are today. For the purposes of this episode, I'm going to assume

you've done your due diligence, you've ordered a car and it's either arrived on your driveway

on the back of a low loader, or you've gone to the dealer to pick it up.

So what now? Well, in this episode, we'll be looking at home charging

or not, taking delivery at day one of driving your car, at regen braking apps,

all that sort of stuff. So let's start with home charging. For a large proportion of people who

get electric cars, they'll probably be able to park the car in their driveway, run a charging

cable from a source of electricity to the car and drive it, and that's home charging.

And it can happen a number of different ways. You can run your car off a

3-pin plug and charge it that way. There's now technology where you can have a wireless pad

installed in your driveway, have your car adapted to wireless, and when you arrive home,

the charging will start automatically no cable needed. Or you can do what the vast majority

of home owners with EVs do, and let's have a home charger installed. Now a home charger is

the unit that fits either on your outside wall or inside your garage and it supplies power

to your car for charging. Now the difference between a home charger and a 3-pin plug is quite

simple. It's the charging speed that you can get from it. A 3-pin plug will supply power to the car

slowly and steadily. It might take quite a long time to fill your car, depending on the size of

your car's battery, but it will work. And I know it will work because I ran my Kia Soul EV

off a 3-pin plug for several years when I first got it because I had a relatively small

battery and I didn't, in the big scheme of things, do great distances every day. It was rarely, if ever,

an issue. But you have to be warned with 3-pin plugs though. They do need to be checked regularly,

especially if you're in an older house with older electrics, and they need to be good quality

devices. The sockets themselves tend to get worn. They can overheat and melt if you're not

careful or if you went for a cheap socket. As I said, I did this for a number of years

without any issue, but I did check the plug regularly. A home charger or warbox, as it's often

called, allows you to charge your car much quicker than a 3-pin plug. Now, depending on what sort of

power you have in your house, it could be 22 kilowatts if you're running 3-phase electricity,

although 7 kilowatt tends to be more usual. This means that a battery that needs to top up

35 kilowatt hours overnight will take about five and a half hours on a 7 kilowatt charger.

If you take anything up to 11 or 12 hours on a 3-pin plug and with a 22 kilowatt charger

and 3-phase, it'll take about two hours give or take. Now, there are many, many different types

of warbox chargers available for purchase. The top brands include Zaptek, Omi, MyEnergy,

and Indra, and they each provide different functionality and different price points.

For example, the MyEnergy Zappi produces a product which allows you to use

solar power from your roof to charge your car when there's a surplus. A Zaptek

produces a version that allows you to use your battery and your car to power your house,

which is a concept known as VTG, if your car can support it. Now, the easiest way to get one of

these chargers is to get on the relevant company website and check out which installers they have

in your area. It's always possible to get your friendly electrician to install this,

but for safety's sake, it's best to get one who's done some specific training

by the company providing the charger. And we will come back to this a little later.

Remember, as I said in the episode on EV fires, that fires in electric vehicles are extremely rare

and a normally operating electric car connected to a compliant electric car charger that's installed

to relevant wiring standards by a qualified and experienced person cannot cause a battery fire.

Now, for full disclosure, I paid about £1,100 to have my charger installed,

but this was because it was also integrated into my solar and battery setup.

It was a little more than I was expected to pay, but I did buy a good quality device,

and I had a professional to install it. And that's what it costs.

But you might be one of these people who doesn't have a driveway, but you can park

outside your house. Now, in that case, you need to look at some of the things we discussed

last episode. Kerbo charge, gully, charge bridge. Now, these are solutions to allow you to

pass your charging cable across a pavement without causing a hazard.

The government has recently announced that it's relaxing the rules on installing these options,

and it's also looking at providing central funds to help this happen.

Now, I know when we had the guy from Kerbo charge on the show, he said that it would be

at that time about £900 to have the channel cut outside your house.

Hopefully the amount you have to pay going forward is less than that.

So once you have your charger, you're probably going to need an EV specific home electricity

tariff to allow you to charge your car. Now, don't get me wrong, you can just plug in and charge

whenever you want using your standard charging tariff. That will probably be at the time

of recording somewhere around 25 to 30 pence a kilowatt hour. Because you have an electric car,

you can get access to what's called time of day tariffs, where the cost of charging drops

considerably for charging your car overnight. Most of the UK energy suppliers provide a cheaper

overnight tariff, but it is worth reading the small print and choosing accordingly because

they're not all equal. The main supplier in the UK is Octopus Energy, which provides a set

number of hours overnight at a set price per kilowatt hour, usually around seven and a half

pence. The beauty of this is that all your electricity in your house is at that cheap rate

during those off peak hours. But as a result, your peak rate is a little higher. Oval energy

provide an EV only rate that's seven pence a kilowatt hour all day and night. That's a really

good deal. However, it only applies to EV charging and it can't be used for any other

electricity in the house. And their peak rate is slightly lower as a result. Now, some

suppliers will have higher rates, but longer hours. Some will have lower rates but shorter hours.

Some allow all electricity in the house to be charged at that rate.

Others limit it to just the EV charging aspect. Most of these tariffs will need you to prove

that you have an EV so that you'll have to supply proof either in the form of an agreement

from your car lease company or a copy of the V5 or V5C if you're in the car. So now

we've sorted the charging aspect. Let's move on to the exciting bit, getting the car.

Delivery of your car will happen in one of two ways. You'll either go and pick it up from the

dealership where you bought it or it will be delivered to your place usually but not always

on the back of a flatbed trailer by whichever lease company or dealer you bought it from.

Both of these methods have pluses and minuses. If you go to a dealership it means you get

to have a handover conversation with the dealer. They should show you things like the charging cables,

how the screens work, specific functionality related to that car and generally get you to

sign all the documentation and answer some questions that you've got. Now the problem with this

is that you end up after that being pushed into the car pretty much from the get go

and you don't really have a chance to work out what's what before you have to

physically drive it off the dealer lot. Now if they're a good dealer such as those that employ

a former podcast guest Ben Travis they'll take you through the process of performing a rapid

charge in a nearby charger and they'll explain things such as charging apps, RFID cards and

apps like ZapMap and we'll cover that next week. If they're not a good dealer or should I say

if they're a dealer with less knowledge and drive to sell EVs they might just do the bare

minimum to get you into the car and out of the showroom. On the other hand if you take delivery

on the back of a flatbed or a hand delivered car driven by someone from a logistics company,

both of which have happened for me, you'll probably get the bare minimum handover.

The person delivering the car might have even less understanding of the vehicle than you do

of just the delivery driver mate and any questions could be answered with a blank

The plus side is that you then have plenty of time to read the manual, search the internet,

have a look at some youtube videos, listen to podcasts, do whatever you need to do before you

take your car out for its first drive. There's no pressure to actually move away from the

dealership. My last car was delivered from the dealership by someone who worked for a third

party logistics company. He delivered multiple EVs and he was fairly knowledgeable about EVs

in general but this was only the second of my particular car that he delivered so he had very

little information specifically to impart about the vehicle. At some point you're going to need

to actually get into the car and drive it and the good news is it's really simple,

it's much easier in fact than a fossil fuel car. When you sit inside it you'll need to find

two things to get it to move. You'll need to switch on the vehicle and you'll need to engage

a drive mode. In an old ICE car that equates to start the ignition and put it in gear.

The problem is that most EVs have neither an ignition key nor a gear stick. Yes there are

exceptions but the rule still stands. Usually switching an electric vehicle on involves putting

your foot on the brake and pressing a button on the dashboard that's either marked usually on

or for start-stop but some cars Polestar, Tesla, Volvo, the VW range one or two others don't actually

have a start-stop button. If you sit in the driver's seat with the key inside the car and press the

brake the car will be switched on. The gear stick in most EVs is replaced by a drive selector.

Now this can be a dial on the centre console for cars such as the Kia range. It can be a

stork on the steering wheel for VWs or fords. It can be a little joystick device that points out

from the dashboard for Porsches. It can be a set of buttons somewhere for sunbanks. Usually the

selector whatever design it is will be marked with three letters. It will be R, N and D which is

reverse, neutral and drive. You might also see P somewhere for park. This could be part of the

drive selector or it could be a separate button close by. One key thing to remember about

electric vehicles is that when you turn them on you will often generally not know that they're

actually on because they don't make sounds like a petrol car. It's the lights on the dash that let

you know that the car is on. If it's on and you put it into D and push the accelerator it will

make the car move but before we move off there's one more thing about the drive selector.

On some vehicles there could be a B setting near the D setting and this is for different

levels of regenerative braking. So what is regenerative braking or regen? It's a key concept so

because EVs use an electric motor to drive the wheels they benefit from a law of physics which

means that a motor that is spinning without power being added to it will generate an

electric current itself. When you drive you're putting power through the motor but when you

take your foot off the accelerator pedal and let the vehicle coast the spinning motor will

actually produce electric power that can go back in and recharge the battery. The secondary effect

of this is that the rotating motor will slow the vehicle down without using any of your

mechanical brakes which extends the life of your brake pads. All EVs will have regenerative

braking of some sort. Different EVs allow you to determine the level of regen but with some

it's set within the software Polestar and Tesla for example. With others it's via the drive

selector so my old ID3 had it on there. With the others it's variable using flappy paddles

behind the steering wheel which is standard on the Kia and Hyundai range. Now for the purposes

of this exercise all you need to know is that regen is good around town because it slows your car

for you in traffic and on a long drive you probably don't need regen because it takes

more energy on the faster roads and reduces your range. Speaking of range the first thing you're

going to want to know is what is the range of your new EV right? Well somewhere on the dashboard

will be either a little dial, chart, a graph or a meter showing how empty or how full your battery

is and what the remaining range is for your car. This is called the GOM, the gasometer

and this is as the name suggests purely an estimate. Different vehicles have goms that are

more or less accurate. The early Nissan Leaves were known to be a little optimistic. It says

you have a longer range than you actually do, the Kia Hyundai cars tend to be pessimistic,

you usually have more range than it says you have and a lot of other vehicles are somewhere in the

middle. The key thing to remember is not to trust the figures on the GOM at all. The reason why

is very simple, they can change every few minutes and almost every mile. For example

you're driving along a flat road in nice warm weather, the GOM says you have 100 miles remaining

range on your battery. Suddenly you find that the road you're on has started to climb and you're

going up a fairly steep hill. The GOM has within a mile of actual road distance lost about 5 or

10 miles of range. At the top of the hill you realise there's a headwind, the car's pushing

against it, the GOM has lost another 4 miles then it starts to rain. Suddenly there's rolling

resistance on the road, the GOM's lost another 3 miles. So within 5 miles of actual distance and

having 100 mile range, you now have 78 miles left. Absolute disaster, right? Well ironically

it isn't because exactly the same thing happens with internal question engine cars.

The difference is they don't tend to have a display right in the middle of the dashboard

showing you how many miles you're losing. With an EV it becomes a little bit more noticeable.

But it works the other way too. You can be driving along a nice flat road with your GOM

showing 100 miles left in the battery. Suddenly you find yourself descending a hill. You drop

down for about 5 miles and you hit the flat part at the bottom and then you look at the GOM and

you find that even though you've covered 5 miles of road distance, you now have 103 miles of range

on the GOM and that's regenerative braking playing its part.

Naturally you're going to be confused and anxious that you can't plan your drive without knowing

how much range you have left. But I challenge you that you never knew how much range you had

left driving a petrol car either. So what did you do? You approximated things. For example,

I knew in my old Honda Civic that I could get somewhere between 290 and 330 miles depending

on the time of the year. Did I keep a track of actual distance travelled? No. I watched the needle

on the fuel gauge. And that's pretty much how you should do it with an EV. Keep an eye on the

battery's state of charge, the percentage. This is the display I mentioned earlier that

tells you how much or how little charge is remaining in the battery. My advice is to

drive as you normally would and when you get down to around 15% or 20% as shown on the battery

indicator that's probably a time to look at recharging. Now I did exactly the same when I

drove the Honda. I ignored the fuel into the little red light came on and then I started

to look for a petrol station. So you've got your car, you've got your charger,

you've got your cheap tariff. Now what? Well let's talk a bit more about that. Let's

bring in someone who's actually done this other than me. I want to welcome Michael to the show.

So my name is Michael, I run a children's theatre school, a children's football academy

and I also do a little bit of acting on the side as well. So I'm very much entertainment

and sports based. You're very, very modest. I know you had quite a major part in the

Barbie movie which I'll put the link out to some of the parts where you're there

and I think you and Will Ferrell had a good time didn't you?

Oh I don't get me started on Barbie. It was just the most glorious film shoot and film set

I've ever worked on but I can talk about it for hours so we'll save that for a bottle of wine.

Absolutely. So now we're talking about day one with an electric vehicle. So cast your mind back,

no first of all sort of friendly exercise. What are you driving at the moment?

So I'm on my second Hyundai Ioniq, the 38kWh battery. So I've had two of those,

I'm on my second one and it's just a wonderful drive.

Super, the wind knife, fantastic piece of kit. Love those, love those a lot. So cast your mind back

to day one with your electric vehicle. So what was the first thing you did? Do you take it out

and just go for a drive? I think so. I believe, I mean it was a couple of years back now so

it's hard to recall exactly but I remember getting it and just being super, super excited

the day I arrived on my driveway and just looking at the whole thing and trying to

break down exactly how everything worked and where exactly I did, things like charging and

to be fair to the car itself it has a lot of toys on there so it was kind of getting my head around

all of the kit and how it exactly worked. The yeah, literally car arrived, called the insurance

company, got booked on, jumped in the car, off I went and not caring the world. I think at

that point I didn't have a home charger and I believe it was back when BP Pulse had their

standalone chargers in the odd pub car park near me so I believe I got in it, drove to one of those,

put it on charge, worked out exactly how all that was working. Thankfully that all worked well,

got home, got the three pin charger out, put it through the kitchen window, plugged it in

and did a little bit more charging just to really, I guess, understand and also make

myself very confident that when and if I needed to charge then I could do it comfortably.

Wonderful. I want to come back and talk about your first sort of public rapid charging in a

little bit but I mean a lot of the things that you've talked about there are things other than

the charging obviously are things that you would do with any car whether it was an electric vehicle

or an internal bushing engine. You know, you get in, you play with the toys, take it out,

check the acceleration, all that sort of stuff. For something like an electric vehicle,

one of the things that a lot of people, especially people who are new to this,

have a fear of, well, how far is it going to go and is it going to run out of charge?

So what sort of things did you do to test range and efficiency?

The efficiency on the vehicle is very, it's quite bang-on on the old gasometer so we're

pretty good for that. But yeah, I mean, obviously you've got three settings on there,

you've got region break into play with. So there's a lot of different ways of driving

the vehicle efficiently or non-efficiently if you really want to, you know,

pocket in sport mode, take the region off and hammer it around. So it was a case of just, yeah,

get taking it out, driving it around, keeping an eye exactly where the estimated range was

and keeping an eye on the efficiency and the, you know, the energy efficiency of the

vehicle really more than anything. But yeah, I mean, I'm lucky it's never been a problem.

I've never really been one of those people that's panicked about that sort of stuff.

I've driven many cars and I've driven them on red lights for many, many years

and not had an issue about worrying if I'm going to run out of petrol or diesel or whatever.

So I think there's, it seems to be a very big thing in the world or in the media where people

do think about range anxiety far too much. And maybe if they do drive petrol or diesel,

maybe they should drop it down to the red line a little bit more often and drive around

and see how far they can get before having a massive disaster. Because I mean, I'm sure

you'll say the same, I've never run out of range. I'm sure you've never run out of range.

I probably would think that, you know, 99 out of 100 people have never run out of battery on

my car. So it's just, it's one of those things that media is kind of, yeah, dropping into people,

I think anyway. Oh, I totally agree. I've got a sort of corny question to that is,

what's the lowest you've actually ever run it down to? Because you talk about the little

red light when you, when you have a, you know, internal combustion engine and

the needles down at the bottom in the fuel tank and the red light comes on. And you're

always playing that game of chicken. How far can I actually go? How much is actually left?

What's the lowest you've actually run your, your EV down to?

Do you know what? I think it was, it was really low. It was, we came back from 10B. We went on a

family holiday to 10B, which I live just outside of London. So it's completely opposite side of

the country down in Wales. And obviously my car hasn't got the biggest battery, although it

is very fuel, you know, fuel efficient as such. And when we drove back, it was really

hit and miss. I just kept thinking, oh my God, I'm going to have to stop at Reading and Charge,

or maybe I'm going to have to stop at Beckinsfield, which is a little bit far as a closer to home.

And I think I got home with, it was either 4% or 2%. It was one of the two.

But that's the point where you've kind of dropped down and it is literally a tiny

slither of red. You've got the little turtle on the dashboard. You've got no numbers left.

It's not saying anything. It's literally like, no, game over, you are going to run out

epically quick. And I literally pulled off the M25. I drove to the nearest petrol station,

sorry, the nearest hub, which is a BP pulse. And I just plugged it in for five minutes. And I was

like, I just want to be sure I am going to get home in one piece. And luckily we were fine.

But yeah, that was probably the lowest. And that's the point really where your kind of heart

does start to go a little bit. But you know, that's just part and parcel. I guess I'm

a little bit of a gambler like that. I think the lowest I went was 6%.

So I think I got the, I got the turtle, but I still had, you know, 10, 12, 40 miles left.

And I knew I was going home and I knew it was mostly downhill from where I was to

to the house. So I really wasn't concerned at all. But I could imagine, you know, if you

still had a little bit further to go, and you knew you probably, you probably were going to

be okay. And I suggest, I suspect if it was just you by yourself, you'd have gone for it.

But because she had the family in the car, it was a different situation. Yeah.

So yeah, 100%.

Talk to me a little bit about your home charger and how you went around, how you went about

getting that and what sort of the, what the process was around that, please.

So we've moved house since we had the first home charger fitted. But in our old house,

we, I believe I got it through Octopus, if I remember correctly. So obviously one of the

energy providers that there are other energy providers available, drop the caveat in. But

yeah, so I called up Octopus. I was going to move over to their tariff there. I believe back then it

was 12pm till 4am, four hours off peak charging at five pence a kilowatt hour, which is ridiculously

cheap even now. And yeah, they just, they came around and fitted a pod point. The pod point

itself, very, very simple charger to use. No real smart features all done via the app.

So yeah, obviously set your charge 12 till 4 and pretty much leave that seven days a week.

And then obviously plug in when you need to plug in and don't plug in when you don't want to plug in.

But yeah, I mean, the pod point was very, very simple. Obviously now we've moved.

We've upgraded to a Zappy, which was also installed by Octopus. But now we have,

you know, solar and batteries and the whole shebang. So it makes more sense. Obviously,

as you know, the, the solar can run through the Zappy into the vehicle,

which is by far the greenest way I can possibly think of running a vehicle.

And the cheapest? Yes.

Was there ever consideration of any other sort of charges or was it just,

right, Octopus have this offering. I'm going to use Octopus. I'm going to get the charger from

them. Funny you should say that. So one of my friends is a spark. So an electrician literally

lives around the corner. I saw him the other day. I, you know, watch the football

down the pub with him. And I called him and I was like, you know, what do you think?

Do you know anything about installing home chargers? If I buy one off the internet,

could you fit it for me? And he was like, absolutely no way. Am I touching anything

like that? Because obviously there's a lot of complications and, you know,

there's, I guess there's a lot of things that you have to be trained up to, to fit a home

charger. So it was literally a case of just speaking to Octopus. And they said, obviously,

you can have pod point for 500 pounds, which was and still is really,

really cheap for a charger really, which so it all seemed to make sense really to just go

through the electric company. Yeah, I think you probably know this. But for the sake of the

listeners, there are, you will read in the newspaper of electric vehicles that have

gone on fire while charging and 99% of the time, it's because the charger that they've

been attached to has been putted incorrectly by an unqualified person, which is why when you

put in something like a zappy and some of the other big brands of chargers, they have their own

qualified fitters, their own qualified electricians who've gone through on-site training and they

know all the minutiae about making sure it's earthed and pen testing and, you know, all this stuff

that I really no idea what I'm talking about, but I can read about it in the thing. So yes,

it's absolutely important and vital that you get professional install on a charger at home and

don't get your mate who's an electrician to do it. So what's your usage pattern like

with the Ioniq? You've talked about going to 10, be fair enough, but is it mostly local work,

local stuff you do? Do you do long distance stuff? Is it a mix of both or what?

So I'd say 95% of the time it's my commute and I do a lot of work in North London. So for me,

it's about 40 to 45 mile round trip. And that's pretty much it. So for me, it's so, so easy,

you know, so, so simple to do. We did go to, where do we go to? We went to the beach a

few weeks back, just did a family day trip. And we had a lovely day out, but that was one of those.

It was kind of on the brink of disaster. So when we got there, I just said to the wife,

we're going to, we're going to find a charger. As soon as we get there, we're going to charge,

which we did. And then we're going to zip over, park our car and go and have a lovely day on the

beach. So for me, it's always, I guess, thinking ahead. I never like to do it in reverse and

be like, Oh, I'm going to get there. And then on the way back, when I desperately need to

charge, then do the plugin. Then I come home just because, yeah, I don't know. I've always sort

of it the other way around. I don't know whether that's more logical brain or I don't know, maybe

that's a bit more of the safer side of my brain than the riskier side.

Yeah, no, that's, that makes a lot of sense. Now, you know, if I'm, if I'm listening to you,

sort of as an outsider, because obviously I know you, but a lot of the people who are

going to be listening to this don't know you. They're probably going to go, well,

what does your wife think about this? Because, you know, you've talked about being on,

you know, a little bit on the edge and having to prioritize charging over everything. What,

what's your wife's attitude to the electric vehicle?

So funnily enough, she has just bought a electric course and which we're picking up

next week. So to be fair to her, she, she works in Bloomsbury. So she works in Central London.

She, we live 10 minutes away from a train station. So her commute is a train. She trains

in and out four days a week. One day she'll work from home unless they've got something

really important on in the office where she has to go in. And to be honest,

she only really needs a car for the weekend, run around stuff when I'm not here because I do

work most weekends. So yeah, so she's gone from a little petrol per show, which was crumbling to

pieces. And she just went, I've had enough. We have the home charger. So we may as well

take advantage of that. And, you know, she wasn't interested in getting a hybrid or

anything like that. No plugins, no self charging quote unquote. And so she just

jumped full in. And to be fair to her, the past few weeks, she hasn't had a car because she sold

her car. So she has just been using mine as well. And she, yeah, she's, she's quite happy with it.

I think she's looking forward to having a smaller vehicle because obviously the Ionix

not the smallest vehicle around and she's used to having a little, you know, little hatched,

dipping in and out of spaces and all that kind of stuff. So she'll be happy when she

gets a smaller one. But yeah, she's, she's fully on board with the thought process and

understands how it all works. Thankfully. Excellent. Now we've mentioned also public

charging a couple of times. So told me through your first public charging experience,

was it painless? Were there issues? So back when I started with my first Ionix,

yeah, like I said, I literally picked up the vehicle, went to the local BP pulse,

and I am constantly saying BP pulse, by the way, just because they're the ones

nearest to my house. And I think the first go was fine. And back then they had, I believe

you got something stupid, like three months at some ridiculous charge rate. And it was so,

so cheap to public charge. It was unreal. Before, obviously the past few years, when more

electric vehicles have come on the road and the prices have increased dramatically.

And that's another conversation altogether. But it was pretty painless. It was pretty okay.

But then I remember further down the line using the BP pulse charges just because

they were insanely cheap before while I was waiting for the pod point to be installed.

And it would be quite often where I'd arrived to the charger and the charger was out of use.

And obviously, that's not the situation you want. So initially, it was quite daunting,

because like I said, the two nearest public charges with both BP pulses,

and it'd be quite often you'd go to one, and that would be our border. And then you go to the

other one, and there'd be a queue of three or four cars. And this is a 50 kilowatt hour

charger. So it's not like dramatically fast, but it was so cheap people would happily sit

there and wait. And you'd get there and people would have their newspapers, guys,

we'd be filling up their vans, you'd be there for ages. And you kind of just grin and

bed it. You were like, oh, that's fine. We'll crack on when we crack on.

So initially, it was quite bad, I'd say. But obviously, over the past few years,

in such a short space of time, there's so many more chargers now. Even over the road for me

is the Sainsbury's, which has like 12 Ken Power ultra rapid charges around the corner

of where I live. The facilities now and everything that's out there is far, far better.

So if anyone is kind of worried about charging now, you could not have it better than what we

currently have it. It has never been this good. And obviously, there is still work to do,

and things will so improve with some of the networks still rolling out and rolling out

and rolling out. But yeah, it is funny, though, I did speak to someone the other day and they

were concerned about car charging. And I was just like, you don't understand how good it is.

Like, this is amazing what we currently have three years ago, four years ago was another

conversation. Although I believe back in that time, you did find the odd charger,

which was free to charge. And you don't get that anymore.

I've spoken before in the podcast about my thoughts about free charging, which is,

I don't like it. I don't like it. People tend to abuse it. They'll sit on there for

hours and hours just to get 100% just because it's free. And, you know,

I don't personally think it's a good thing. Although I can understand the appeal of

people who say, well, you know, I'm effectively getting all these miles for free.

I perfectly understand that. But sort of bringing the charging conversation

around full circle and looping back to your home charger. I know you, I don't know whether

you're still out since you moved the house, but you used to lend your charger out to other

people using co-charger. Is that correct? Yes. And it's still the case this week,

funnily enough. So we're recording on Thursday, Monday night, Tuesday night,

Wednesday night and tonight, I've had charge ease in every single night.

So Monday and tonight, I've got a guy who's got an IDs free who uses the car for work.

Tuesday, I've got this amazing Croatian guy who spends summer over here and then lives in Croatia

for the rest of the year. Beautiful BMW and he comes to charge and he has done for years,

even at the old house. And then last night, that's a newer guy with a little Peugeot, but

he's, yeah, he's kind of jumped on board as well. I would say for everyone out there who is

listening with the whole co-charger thing and it's just to, I don't know, for me, if I was going to

be a person who didn't have a home charger and I was looking to use somebody else's charger,

it's just to be reasonable with it because this is why I've ended up getting so many people,

because we're only, I'm only charging slightly above what I pay for my charge normally,

which I think is reasonable and I'm just, maybe I'm being too nice,

but a lot of people out there, like one of the guys came up and was like, Michael, honestly,

we looked at all these other ones in the local area. The minimum one we can get is 50 per kilowatt

hour. And I was like, I don't charge anywhere near that. So it's just, yeah, it's a real shame that

people are kind of like slightly abusing the system because obviously we don't get the 20%

fat and obviously people are doing overnight charge a lot cheaper rates than what they're

charging people for. And they're obviously, that's why it doesn't work in that thought

process anyway. And this is why I end up having loads of people come to me. And I don't mind because

I don't need to charge my car every day, which is probably good news for people who are listening

that, you know, you don't need to charge it every day. The same as you wouldn't need to fill

your car with petrol every few days unless you are driving to Jono Grotes on a weekly basis.

But yeah, it's just one of those things. It is slightly frustrating to hear that other

people aren't, you know, as kind or generous that they can be.

Now, when your wife gets the Corsa and that's a second vehicle that needs to be charged,

is that going to cause any sort of conflict between you needed to charge, her needed to

charge and the co-charger people? I don't think so. Just in the thought process that

most of the people that come and do the co-charging, I let them stay overnight so they

can literally come charging, get their six hours because now it's six hours with octopus,

have their six hours and then come pick up the car and go away. We can still, I believe,

get the cheap rate to 11 a.m. So the worst case scenario is if someone picks up the car, like

the ID 3 guy normally picks his car up about 6 a.m., so I can easily just bug the car in

and get it from 6 a.m. until 11 a.m., which is still a substantial period of time.

And because we both won't be doing that high mileage anyway, it's just top up charging

really unless we are doing massive journeys across the country but they're few and infrequent.

Talking about long distance journeys and talking about public charging, you've talked about BP pulls,

you've talked about people like smart charging apps. Now most of those, and I talk about this in

the next episode that I'm doing, most of those will allow you to charge using a contactless

charger, but there are obviously other apps and other ways of paying RFID cards and specific

apps for companies like GridServe and InstaVault and Osprey. Have you gone down that route

or is it just a bit too complex? I don't need that. I'm just going to use a contactless card.

It's funny you should ask that actually because I don't know if it's the same with other car

manufacturers but with Hyundai, you can order like a Hyundai charge card, so an RFID card.

So I got one of those straight away and that literally can be used at any charger going

if I need to use it otherwise. To be fair, we do have the electriverse cards which obviously

links up with Octopus and there's tons and tons of companies which obviously work with those.

And then I've got a few of the others but I just stopped doing it because now obviously

a lot of the chargers themselves do have contactless payments which I was really impressed actually

the other week when I used a Tesla supercharger with one of the newer ones and I had contactless

payment and I was like, this has blown my mind because obviously I'm very used to using the

old Tesla superchargers when they opened it to the public network and having to use the

app and having loads of problems with the app and going through and not having phone signal

and I couldn't get it to handshake with the charger and it was an absolute headache but now

easy credit card out bang off we go. Love it. Love it lots. Is there anything else you'd like

to tell the listeners about your experience with electric vehicle that you think is important

to them? Yeah, I mean I think with any vehicle you have to understand that things can and

probably will go wrong at some point and it's not because it's an electric vehicle,

it's because it's a vehicle. Things will go wrong with a petrol car or a diesel car

or a hybrid, whatever you've got an electric. I remember first of all with I think when my

first Ioniq there was a problem with the charge ports on the vehicle, very common problem. It had

to go back to the manufacturer, get it fixed, come back to me and it wasn't specific to that

being an electric vehicle although it was in this instance but things can and will go wrong

and they probably will at some point even if you've got the most expensive electric vehicle,

the most expensive car you know even if you've got a Lamborghini there's going to be

things that go wrong with it so it's just understanding that it's not completely bulletproof

but obviously there's a lot less things that can and will go wrong with it than you can with an

internal combustion engine vehicle. Any regrets? No, funnily enough. No, I love it. I think I

worked out, in my old car I used to have a Prius which is obviously a very fuel efficient

vehicle. I think I've cut out about £1,000 a year in petrol costs. That was my old Prius I think I

was spending about £1,000 a year keeping it on the road which obviously I don't have now. I know

even a Toyota so it is funny when people do talk about Toyotas and sorry to single them out

that they are supposed to be very efficient and you know long-lasting and that you know

they nothing will go wrong. They do go wrong like I said anything can go wrong at any point

it does and it will so for the price of the petrol and the MOT tax everything else keeping

it on the road I'm probably spending the same now on my lease of my vehicle which is a maintained

lease so anything that goes wrong with it it goes in it gets fixed and I get it back even recently

I had a nail in a rear tyre a guy came out and changed a tyre and obviously that was included

on my lease and then I realized that I can have my two front tyres needed changing as well

like said on the MOT so he came back and did the two front tyres and I was like this is amazing you

know just parked on my driveway brilliant great service can't complain. I love that I didn't

know I didn't realize that you actually had the maintained lease on there all mine have been

no I'll do the maintenance myself and then you know you end up getting the puncture and

yes you've got to sort that out because of course you've either got to get a guy to come

out to you or you've got to find a way of getting the vehicle to the nearest repair shop

but then you've got to pay for the tyre and his eyes it's a huge palaver isn't it it's ridiculous

yeah unfortunately yeah mind you as you say that's not an EV problem that's a vehicle problem

just generally yeah exactly that Michael appreciate your time it's been a fascinating conversation

thank you very much thank you Michael raised a really good point there about using apps such

as co-charger we've had co-charger on the show before Joel Teague CEO came on and chatted

with us back in episode 139 I think it was link in the show notes co-charger and other

similar solutions are ways of renting out your home charger to people who live locally drive an EV

but can't charge at their own house for whatever reason it's a good way of helping out other

EV drivers and earning a little extra cash charging for the use of your equipment and

electricity likewise if you have an EV but don't have the ability to charge at your house

it might be worth seeing if there are drivers in your area who do have chargers and would

be willing to subscribe to a service such as co-charger to let you charge when they're not

using their units so moving on there's a few things you'll need to remember about your EV

especially when it comes to range the dealership the advertising and the media will all have

told you that your car can do 300 miles of range but the reality is that this is possible only under

specific criteria don't imagine that you can do 300 miles every time you drive every day of the

year and now we talked about this briefly in episode one of this series when I discussed the WLTP

range so the first thing you need to do is to work out what your actual everyday range is

probably going to be do you have a bit of a heavy right foot your range is going to be lower do you

always carry lots of stuff in the boot your range is going to be to decrease do you live in a hilly

area your range is probably going to be lower is it usually colder than average where you live

your range will be lower now again all of these things also apply to internal combustion engine

vehicles too this is not just an EV thing the best thing to do is to get your car charged

to 100% then go out and do some traveling around maybe take a long distance journey do some local

journeys see what sort of efficiency you're getting on your car the better the efficiency

the longer the distance and that's pretty much day one with your vehicle it's arrived you've

sorted out either home charging or nearby public charging you've driven it a bit you've checked

out the power you've checked out the regenerative braking you're pretty much set to go

the only other key thing you need to focus on is what happens when you need to do a journey where

you'll need to charge public we'll talk about that in the final episode in this series where we

cover public rapid charging and planning a long distance journey and that's next week on the show

it's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with you listeners

villains touristic a german sightseeing company has converted 18 sightseeing buses from diesel

to electric fitting a dana motor an adapted allison gearbox and 240 kilowatt hours of lfp batteries

for a range of about 200 kilometers the retrofit removed just two to six seats per bus it cut

noise and vibrations by up to 10 decibels and improved air quality and onboard audio

federal subsidies covered about 80 of the cost making conversion cheaper than buying new buses

and a new funding round is open pending parliamentary approval now for me from an

embedded carbon point of view conversion of existing vehicles is better than building new

so this is a double win in my opinion well done journal

the ev musings podcast is sponsored by zapmap the go-to app for ev drivers helping you find

and pay for public charging with confidence see what charge points are available right now

with live availability and unrivaled uk charge point coverage at your fingertips pay at thousands

of charge points within the app or with the zapmap charging card join over a million ev drivers

download zapmap and charge with confidence i hope you enjoyed listening to today's show it was

put together this week with the help of michael french many thanks for your help michael if

you have any thoughts comments criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me

i can be reached at info at ev musings dot com

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always to my co-founder simon you know amongst these many hobbies is paleontology he loves

searching for fossils and things from the jurassic and cretaceous era his house

quite a selection of them and uh his favorite was a full-sized t-rex frosty ordered off ebay one day

i asked him if he had arrived intact and he said remember getting it and just being super

super excited the day arrived on my driveway and just looking at the whole thing and trying

to break down exactly how everything worked thanks for listening bye

268 - The EV 101 Episode Part 2

Kia Soul

Dodge Charger

Volkswagen Id3

Honda Civic

Hyundai Ioniq

Toyota Prius

About this episode

Original notes