268 - The EV 101 Episode Part 2

Gary :

Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners.

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.

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 wanna 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 McTurk, 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 favor. 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 evmusings.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 Eevee 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...

c charge point regulations in: 2023

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 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. 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 three pin, standard three 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 that'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 three pin plug is quite simple. It's the charging speed that you can get from it. A three 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 three 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 three 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 warm. 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. or wall box, it's often called, allows you to charge your car much quicker than a three-pin plug. Now, depending on what sort of power you have in your house, it could be 22 kilowatts if you're running three-phase electricity, although seven 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 seven kilowatt charger.

If you take anything up to 11 or 12 hours on a three pin plug and with a 22 kilowatt charger in three phase, it'll take about two hours, give or take. Now there are many, different types of wall box chargers available for purchase. The top brands include ZapTech, 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. As ZapTech,

a version that allows you to use your battery in your car to power your house which is a concept known as V2G 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 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. Curb-o-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 pounds 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 gonna 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. But 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. OVO Energy provide an EV only rate that's 7 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 will 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 own 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 the 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 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 former podcast guest Ben Traviss, 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 ZAM app 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. I'm just a delivery driver, mate. And any questions could be answered with a blank stare. 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 we have very little information specifically to impart about the vehicle.

At some point, you're gonna 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 off 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 center console for cars such as the Kia Range. It can be a stalk on the steering wheel for VWs, the Fords. It can be a...

A little joystick device that points out from the dashboard for Porsches. It can be a set of buttons somewhere for some makes. Usually the selector, whatever design it is, will be marked with three letters. There 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

post, 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. With some it's set

within the software, Polestar and Tesla, for example. With others, it's via the drive selector. So my old ID, 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 Guess-O-Meter. And this is, as the name suggests, purely an estimate. Different vehicles have GOMs that are

more or less accurate. The early Nissan Leafs were known to be 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 five or 10 miles of range. At the top of the hill you realize there's a headwind, the car's pushing against it, the GOM has lost another four miles.

Then it starts to rain. Suddenly there's rolling resistance on the road. The gums lost another three miles. So within five miles of actual distance and having a hundred mile range, you now have 78 miles left. Absolute disaster, right? Well, ironically it isn't because exactly the same thing happens with internal combustion 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 could 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 five 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 five 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 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 traveled? 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 the time to look at recharging. Now I did exactly the same when I drove the Honda. I ignored the fuel until 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.

Michael :

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.

Gary :

You're very, very modest. I know you had quite a major part in the Barbie movie, which I'll put a 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?

Michael :

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. we'll save that for a bottle of wine.

Gary :

Absolutely. So now we're talking about day one with an electric vehicle. So cast your mind back. Now, first of all, sort of frame the exercise. What are you driving at the moment?

Michael :

So I'm on my second Hyundai Ioniq, the 38 kilowatt hour battery. So I've had two of those. So I'm on my second one and it's just a wonderful drive.

Gary :

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? Did you take it out and just go for a drive?

Michael :

I think so. 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 it 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 my head around all of the kit and how it exactly worked. But yeah, literally car arrived, called the insurance company, got booked on, jumped in the car, off I went.

not care in 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 kind of like 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 kind of

really, I guess, understand and also make myself very confident that when and if I needed to charge, then I could do it comfortably.

Gary :

Wonderful. I want to come back

and talk about your first sort of public rapid charge in a little bit. 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 internal combustion engine. You know, get in, you play with the toy, you 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 gonna go and is it gonna run out of charge? So what sort of things did you do to test range and efficiency?

Michael :

The efficiency on the vehicle is very, it's quite bang on, on the old Gessa meter. So we're pretty good for that. But yeah, I mean, obviously you've got three settings on there. You've got regen braking to play with. So there's a lot of different ways of driving the vehicle efficiently or non-efficiently if you really wanna, you know, pop it in sport mode, take the regen off and hammer it around. So it was a case of just.

Yeah, taking it out, driving it around, keeping an eye exactly where the estimated range was and keeping an eye on the efficiency and 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 their car. So it's just, one of those things that media is kind of dropping into people, I think anyway.

Gary :

Oh, I totally agree. Now, of course, 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 have an internal combustion engine and the needle's down at the bottom and 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 EV down to?

Michael :

You know what, I think it was really low. 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 efficient as such. And when we drove back, it was really hit and miss. I just kept thinking, oh my God, I'm gonna have to stop at Reading and Charge, or maybe I'm gonna have to stop at Beckinsfield, which is a little bit farther 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 kind of drop down and it is literally a tiny sliver 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 gonna run out epically quick. And I literally pulled off the M25. I drove to the nearest petrol, not petrol station, sorry, the nearest.

Gary :

you

Michael :

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.

Gary :

I that. I think the lowest I went was...

6 %? So I think I got the turtle, but I still had 10, 12, 14 miles left. And I knew I was going home. And I knew it was mostly downhill from where I was to the house. So I really wasn't concerned at all. But I could imagine if you still had a little bit further to go and you knew you probably were going to be OK. And I suspect if it was just you by yourself.

you'd have gone for it, but because you had the family in the car, it was a different situation. So, 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.

Michael :

Yeah. yeah, a hundred percent.

So we've moved house since we had the first home charger fitted, but in our old house, I believe I got it through Octopus, if I remember correctly. obviously one of the energy providers, 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 12 PM till 4 AM, four hours off peak charging at five pence a kilowatt hour, which is ridiculously cheap even now.

And yeah, they just, came around and fitted a Podpoint. The Podpoint itself, very, very simple charger to use. No real smart features, all done via the app. yeah, obviously you set your charge 12 to four 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 Zappi, which was also installed by Octopus. But now we have, you know, solar and batteries and the whole shebang. So.

It makes more sense, as you know, 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.

Gary :

and the cheapest.

Michael :

Yes.

Gary :

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.

Michael :

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, you know, watched a 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 charges? 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, 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 a pod point for 500 pounds, which was and still is really, really cheap for a charger really. So it all seemed to make sense really to just go through the electric company.

Gary :

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 put in incorrectly by an unqualified person, which is why when you put in something like a Zappi 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 have really no idea what I'm talking about but I can read about it in the 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 ionic. You 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?

Michael :

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, know, so so simple to do. We did go to, where did 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 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. for me, it's always, I guess, thinking ahead. I never like to do it in reverse and be like, I'm going to get there. And then on the way back, when I desperately need to charge, then do the plug-in.

then I come home just because, yeah, I don't know, I've always thought 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.

Gary :

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 his wife think about this? Because, you know, you've talked about being on, you know, a little bit on the edge and having to prioritise charging over everything. What's your wife's attitude to the electric vehicle?

Michael :

So funnily enough, she has just bought a electric courser, which we're picking up next week. So to be fair to her, she works in Bloomsbury. So she works in central London. 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 Peugeot, 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.

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 quite happy with it. I think she's looking forward to having a smaller vehicle because obviously the IONIQ is not the smallest vehicle around and she's used to having a you know, little hatch 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 fully on board with the thought process and understands how it all works, thankfully.

Gary :

Excellent. Now we've mentioned also public charging a couple of times. So, talk me through your first public charging experience. Was it painless? Were there issues?

Michael :

so back when I started with my first IONIQ, 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. was unreal before.

Obviously the past few years where 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 Chargers just because they were insanely cheap before while I was waiting for the Podpoint 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 chargers were both BP pulses and it'd be quite often you'd go to one and that would be out of order. 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 would be filling up their vans, you'd be there for ages, and you kind of just grin and bear that you were like, yeah, 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 charges now, even over the Rotoramise, the Sainsbury's, which has like 12 Kempower, ultra rapid charges around the corner from where I live, like the facilities now and the...

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 still 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.

Gary :

I've spoken before 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 a hundred percent 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 still are since you moved the house, but You used to lend your charger out to other people using co-charger, is that correct?

Michael :

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 ID3 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 cold charger thing, it's just to, I don't know, for me, if I was gonna 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 I'm only charging slightly above what I pay for my charge normally, which I think is reasonable and 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 50p a kilowatt hour. And I was like, I don't charge anywhere near that. 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 at a lot cheaper rates than what they're charging people for. they're obviously, that's why it doesn't work in...

that thought process anyway. And this is why I ended 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 was probably good news for people who are listening that, you 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 John O'Groats on a weekly basis. But yeah, it's just one of those things. is slightly frustrating to hear that other people aren't, you know, as kind or generous that they can be.

Gary :

Now, when your wife gets the courser and that's a second vehicle that needs to be charged, is that going to cause any sort of conflict between you needing to charge, her needing to charge and the co-charger people?

Michael :

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, the ID3 guy normally picks his car up at about 6 a.m.

So I can easily just bug the car in and get 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.

Gary :

talking about long distance journeys and talking about public charging, you've talked about BP Pulse, you've talked about people like Smart Charge and that. 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 GridServ and InstaVault and Osprey.

Have you gone down that route or is it just, no, that's a bit too complex. I don't need that. I'm just going to use a contactless card.

Michael :

funny you should ask 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 electroverse 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 Supercharger with one of the newer ones and it 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.

Gary :

Love it, love it lots. there anything else you'd like to tell the listeners about your experience with electric vehicle that you think is important to them?

Michael :

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 with 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 gonna 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.

No, funnily enough, no, I love it. I think I worked out with my old car. I used to have a Prius, which is obviously a very fuel efficient vehicle. I think I've cut out about a thousand pounds a year in petrol costs. That was my old Prius. I think I was spending about a thousand pounds 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 long lasting and that 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 realised that can have my two front tyres needed changing as well because I had sent it 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.

Gary :

I love that. 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 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. And then you've got to pay for the tire and it's a huge palaver, isn't it? It's ridiculous. Yeah. Mind you, as you say, that's not an EV problem.

Michael :

Yeah, unfortunately.

Gary :

That's a vehicle problem, just generally.

Michael :

Yeah, exactly that.

Gary :

Michael, appreciate your time. It's been a fascinating conversation. Thank you very much.

Michael :

Thank you.

Gary :

Michael raised a really good point there about using apps such as Cocharger. We've had Cocharger on the show before. Joel Teague, the 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 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 up 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. Willems Touristik, 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 it 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. Welcome, well done Germany.

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show. 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 evmusings.com. On the socials, I'm on bluesky at evmusings.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at evmusings where I post short videos and podcast extracts regularly. Why not follow me there?

Thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon on a monthly basis and through coffee.com on an ad hoc one.

If you enjoyed this episode why not buy me a coffee? Go to Ko-fi.com/evmusings and you can do just that. Takes Apple Pay, too!

Regular listeners will know about my two ebooks- ‘So, you’ve gone electric’ and ‘So you’ve gone renewable’.

They’re 99p each (or equivalent) and you can get them on Amazon

Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles.

I know you’re probably driving or walking or jogging now. But if you can remember- and you enjoyed this episode drop a review in iTunes, please. It really helps me out. Thanks.

If you’ve reached this part of the podcast and are still listening - thank you. Why not let me know you’ve got to this point by messaging me @musingsev.bsky.social with the words [How do I love thee. Let me count the ways. Two #ifyouknowyouknow] Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co-founder, You know, amongst his many hobbies is paleontology. He loves searching for fossils and things from the Jurassic and Cretaceous era. His house has quite a selection of them and his favorite was a full-size T-Rex fossil he ordered off eBay one day. I asked him if it arrived intact and he said,

Michael :

I remember getting it and just being super, super excited the day it arrived on my driveway and just looking at the whole thing

Gary :

Thanks for listening. Bye.