Is this Range Anxiety?

[APR77]

Hi all,

First of all, I'm new to the forum so, hello from Leeds.

We've just leased a Loft 60, picked up on Friday. Loving the car mostly, beautiful to drive, lovely and quiet etc however...

We picked the car up Friday 27th Oct at 3pm (currently Thursday 2nd Nov).

The dealer charged the car to 80% and we drove about 5 miles in all to get back home. Since then, I drove no more than say 15 miles and then had to charge back to 80% on Monday 30th...costing £19.26.

Since that charge, a few more miles, say 20 max and I've had to charge again today to get to 60% costing £19.26.

Prior to this, we had a Kia Niro 4 hybrid, and didn't spend anything like this in one month one petrol.

Now the vehicle is on lease via Motability as I'm the carer for whom it's leased to. Therefore, we had the option of a charge box install or access to the BP Pulse network (another story).

Where we live, it's a small cul-de-sac so we don't have a driveway, we have about 1 foot of pavement between where the car is parked and the front of lawn. It's an open planned lawn type of area where any Tom dick or Harry can just walk over...so having a home charger currently isn't an option due to trip hazards...and trying to get through to Leeds council to enquire about public charging is a nightmare...

Therefore we have had to go for BP Pulse (hardly ANY points nearby mostly out of order or the places that have them only have 1 in busy areas plus on the PAYG tariff until they sort out the subscription monthly invoice which is apparently 2 weeks)

So back to us this range Anxiety...

I've noticed that if I turn climate control off, I gain around 100 miles.

So where do I stand with this? Do I turn off any air flow sacrificing for miles? Can I continue to breathe and have the airflow on, will the car sacrifice the air for miles as the range reduces?

Am I panicking over nothing, is it a case of it takes time to adjust? I think i read somewhere for the best performance you need to drive 500km for the car to learn your style?

Another thing is, has this been the right choice? As I'm a carer, I'm not loaded with cash so it won't be viable paying that every other day.

If we were able to get a charge box installed, would that be any cheaper, plugging in at night for it to get back to 80% daily than charging for 45-70 mins every other day?

If I've done this correctly I've uploaded 2 pics of the range with climate control on and off.

Sorry about the long rant ...it's almost 2am....I was driving around in rush hour no less yesterday looking for any charging point that actually work and then having to wait for the only one....I just hope you can't be heard much outside the car, like the quietness within......

Al.

[Ken3966]

In my opinion, unless you have an employer paying your costs it does not make sense to run an electric car if you can’t charge for most of your use at home.
I have a vRS so probably uses more power than yours. I get around 3.4m per kW in summer average but that seems to be dropping as temp reduces.
Your car should do 4+ in summer and maybe down to 3.2 or so in winter?
Do your range is around 190 to 220 miles, but that is for a fully charged battery. At recommended 20% to 80% normal use would be about 115m.

Charging at home without a special off peak rate is around 27p per kWh. I pay 7.5p per kWh off peak for all my home charging with Octopus Intelligent as they give you extra time off peak if you need it.
The problem comes charging elsewhere. Cheapest are a few open Tesla sites at 54p, but most seem to be 75p or even£1 a kWh, so getting on for 19 times the cost of home charging or more.
At 3m per kW my car costs 2.5p a mile which is excellent. At £1 a kW that is 33p a mile and far more than a typical ice car at around 16p a mile.

You can pay a subscription and get reduced rates, and I recommend you look into this if you can’t charge at home, doesn’t help me as you need to do a fair mileage and all most charging away from home for it to pay for the subscription.
If you have done 29 miles I would expect that to use around 10% of your battery. I don’t worry about having heating etc on as it doesn’t make much difference, although if you do lots of short trips the consumption will be poor. Wouldn’t matter though if you charge at home.

You could use one of those cable covers where it crosses the walkway?

The range is an estimate based on recent use. If you have only done a few miles with heating on it could be as little as 1.5m per kWh so 50 or so. With heating off consumption looks far better so more range, but do a few miles and get the average up to say 4m per kWh and suddenly you are 2 to 3 times more range.

[Ouvavou]

What temperature have you got the aircon set to?
My car is at 79% charge and showing 164 miles with 19c temperature setting. Every 1c increase decreases the range by a couple of miles BUT when I turn the temperature to max (which is 30c) it dropped immediately to 94 miles range! This is all based I me just sitting on my drive - i think the range would improve a bit once the cabin got upto whatever temperature it was set to ( and depending on the external temperature)

If you have the temperature set very high and are doing lots of reasonably short trips and are paying 59p/kwh (7kw) upto 83p/kwh (150kw) it will be expensive.

Looking at your parking I think I’d start with a granny charger and use a cable anti-trip protector thing covering the width of the path. Alternatively look for cheaper charging option - someone local may let you charge on their drive for much less - check apps like plug share and co charger.

[orrery]

In my opinion, unless you have an employer paying your costs it does not make sense to run an electric car if you can’t charge for most of your use at home...

Whilst EVs are more expensive than ICE, I completely agree.

[APR77]

Thank you all for your responses so far .

I haven't figured out where to check the clocked up mileage so far....been pre occupied with the range lol.


I don't have the temp or fan on high or the actual air con (unless that's turned on by the car when warming the battery). I've mainly kept the air on auto??

As for the home charger...I think we may need to speak to Motability to see if they have sway with the local authority)housing association for the property...

I will look into the apps mentioned also. Thank you

[Lorttrol]

Depending on how far away the charge port of the car is to the wall charger if you get a longer 7m+ lead then something like this in the pavement might help. You could use it with a granny lead too. Not sure if you'd have to speak to the council about getting it fitted in the pavement but it would potentially mean home charging.

https://www.construction-supplies.co.uk ... IoQAvD_BwE

Like many others I now charge at home on Intelligent Octopus at 7.5p per kw this is significantly lower than public charging at 69p per kw and makes it cost effective. I do a round trip of 1500 miles twice a year using the public charging network but the other 15k I do from home offsets the more expensive public costs.

Also download the Octoverse app. You get a 5% discount for using the app to start your charge, plus another X% if you're an Octopus Energy customer. Evee, Bonnet etc all have their own apps that can give you discounts and a lot of them are not tied to a specific network.

I believe all home chargers use a 6mm cable to connect to the car from the wall unit. My calcualtions worked out for the 6mm feed to my garage means I can safely pull 54 amps without issue, the car charger only pulls 32. Im nearly 19k miles in and my feed cable is over 50m from the house and I have had no issues at all. You may find someone selling a 10m cable if you need the extra length you might even find longer ones. I wouldnt advise using a granny charger on an extension cable. If possible I'd get a dedicated socket for the car charger and if you're going through the expense of having a seperate circuit fitted for the car you might as well go for a 7kw wall charger.

If you go untethered something like this will give you a 10m long lead. Looks plenty to reach from the house to where you park the car.

https://www.evcableshop.co.uk/type-2-to ... kkQAvD_BwE

Just need to get the council to approve the cable slot and you'll be up and running in no time doing a full charge for less than a fiver!

[Aragorn]

your initial post doesnt make much sense regarding the charging costs...

A rapid charger might cost 60-70p a kwh, which is expensive granted.

However £19.26 suggests you've put in something like 27-32kwh, which is sufficient charge to drive nearly 90 miles.

Yet you suggest you've only driven 15-20miles...

Are you running the pre-heating a lot? or sitting stationary with the heaters on max for long periods?

Exactly what advantage does BP Pulse give you here? Why sign up for a subscription with them if there arent any around? Get yourself on ZapMap or Plugshare and find out what chargers are nearby and what they cost, and figure out a charging plan which balances cost and convenience.

[Deleted User 2162]

Something doesn’t look right here. There is no way that 49% should equal 54 miles. Ever.

I think either a) the calculation is off as you haven’t done enough miles or b) there is a problem.

You say both charges cost £19.26 exactly which is unlikely. Are these the actual cost or the pre-authorised amount?

Make sure you have no schedules set for departure timing and preheating etc.

[Aragorn]

There is no way that 49% should equal 54 miles. Ever.

Lots of very short journeys with lots of time spent running maxed out heating (and the battery heater in cold weather) would get you there easily enough... I used to regularly see 1.8miles/kwh in my old B250e doing short trips around town in winter due to the battery and cabin heat.

Given the massive jump when the heating is turned off, it would suggest the heating is set to "MAX" rather than a normal temperature.

But yes, the £19.26 both times seems odd to me too.

[CrowSysE243]

You haven't said what charging network you used, how many kWh you were charged for or what percentage charge was added each time, however the fact that the cost was the same each time was the same is very strange. The only pricing I have seen like this has been for some home chargers made available through JustCharge/JustPark where there is a significant element of parking cost.

£19.60 would be enought for 26kWh at the Ionity 350kW ultra rapid chargers at the Extra Skelton Lakes services, which should add over 35%. Even at 1.8 miles per kW hour and taking a pessimistic view of charging efficiency should be enough for over 40 miles. With the average consumption that I am getting I would expect to get over 100 miles. A 60 should do a bit better than my 80. Note that if you are likely to use Ionity at all it is worth getting an Octopus Electroverse (free to everyone) account which will give a discount on the standard charge. If doing it a lot then a subscrition is worth considering.

You can get information on the consumption on the Infotainment system using Menu>Vehicle>Data. You can select the information "Since Start" (since the last gap in use more than 2 hours), "Long Term" (Resets after 10k miles) and "Since Charge".

You do not need to do without air flow. It took me a while to work out how to control heating/cooling when I first had the Enyaq. During all my experiments I never experienced more than about 20% change between having active cooling off and on. I found that I prefer using the Classic air conditioning, rather than the Smart airconditioning. This allowed me to leave Clima on but switch A/C off and control the fan speed to get the cooling/air flow I wanted. I have only turned A/C on for cooling in hot weather or when I wanted to quickly demist windows. I did find that range was affected if the temperature dropped below the set temperature, due to the electric heater coming on while A/C was off so I mostly used the LO setting until the temperature dropped recently. As the temperature now is lower than is comfortable for my passengers I have switched A/C on to enable the heat pump and set a comfortable, but not excessive, temperature. We are finding that it was worth getting the heat pump option as the range reduction is noticably less than with the conventional electric heating.

Have you tried using the ZapMap app to find chargers? Looking at it I can see that there are not many BP Pulse chargers around Leeds and also that there are a lot of chargers which are unknown status or out of order., however there are other options available. If you don't need rapid charging there are even some car parks with free (according to Electrovers) AC fast chargers. Taking into account the cost of parking these would result in costs similar to the standard domestic rate.