Electric Cars:what's available?

[Mandrake]

These quotes arrived today, what do you guys think?

Pricing looks a bit more in line with what I'd expect, I assume that's cost to you after any grant ? I'm not familiar with that particular brand but there are so many different brands of chargers on the market now.

It looks like an untethered charge point - which means it just has a socket and you would use the cable provided with the car, which hopefully is present when the car arrives, otherwise you would need to buy one.

The other option is tethered where there is a cable with plug permanently attached to the charge point - this is what I have.

Tethered or un-Tethered is a matter of preference - tethered is much quicker to plug and unplug since the cable just loops over the charger when finished, which is great for someone like me who is plugging in and unplugging every day for a commute, but has the limitation that the charger can only charge Type 1 or Type 2 cars but not both. (My Leaf uses a Type 1 plug, your Zoe will use a Type 2 plug)

Untethered is a bit slower to use as you have to get the cable out and put it away again after use and have to plug and unplug it at both ends, but has the advantage that any EV can charge there - so if you have a visitor driving an EV they can use your charge point no matter what connector their car needs as long as they bring their own cable.

Untethered also looks a bit tidier when not in use as there is no cable wrapped around it.

I notice it says WiFi required (for the smart features) do you have WiFi coverage where the charge point will be installed, or indeed WiFi at all ?

[Gibbo2286]

They do list the pod point tethered charger on their website but omitted it from the quote, I've replied asking why.

Ps. I do have wi-fi with my computer and solar panels but no smart phone.

[Dormouse]

33 mph would make more sense for UK spec and surely it is only an ecu adjustment to suit market area. 28 mph is 45 kph, so change 45 to 52 say.

[myglaren]

It may be to do with unlicensed young drivers being able to use them in France.

[Dormouse]

These quotes arrived today, what do you guys think?

What precisely does Smart Grid Enabled mean?

Just spotted a pale blue 20 plate Zoe as I came out of B & Q Kirkcaldy this morning. Looks ok and about the size of the Picanto my wife loved driving a few years back.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Ps. I do have wi-fi with my computer and solar panels but no smart phone.

You probably need a smart phone to work the App at the Tesco Chargepoints or out and about on the road unless you make sure you always have a passenger with a smart phone. Of course you could just charge at home an pootle about locally with the Zoe, once you get a charger set up.

I do believe you can plug in for free for 15 minutes without using the pod point app but I could be wrong. Definitely easier with the app. I have only once charged up at a Pod-point 7kW charge point, one of the village hall jobs and on a free vend, but being smartphoneless we had to phone up the help line and they set off a charging session for us. My leaf shuts off at 80% so it stopped the charge properly. There was some thought that had I wanted to stop the charge at say 70 % I may have had to phone them back to stop it.

At all costs you need to avoid the potential charging socket wont release scenario which I am particularly wary of just now.

Cant offer much advice on which one is best as a home charger, or whether tethered is better than plug in with your own cable. I probably should, but rarely do I wrap up my cable and shove it back in its official bag, more likely to be strewn across the boot.

I noticed that the 20 odd Northumberland County Council ABB Rapid Chargers, all have the 43kW AC Rapid Chargers for the rapid charging of Q-Zoes, so if you decided on an epic trip up North you would be well catered for in the County.

Regards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

They have two pod-point chargers at Lydney Tesco Neil one needs the app the other works with a contactless bank card.

[NewcastleFalcon]

The other works with a contactless bank card.

Thats good Gibbo.

The sort of obvious function which should have been mandated on all public chargers from day 1. Yes join the pod-point/BP Pulse club etc etc if you want lower top-up charges or other benefits of being in the club, but plug in and pay with a bankcard should always have been an option.

Regards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

There's a possible sting in the tail of those quotes I posted, in the small print at the bottom it says the work must be completed in two hours and with the set amount of cable, if it goes over two hours any extra time will be charged at £75 per hour plus vat and any extra cable will be chargeable.
So nothing to stop the fitter dragging out the job and adding extra to the bill, maybe that's the plan.

[Mandrake]

These quotes arrived today, what do you guys think?

What precisely does Smart Grid Enabled mean?

Charge points that are eligible for the OLEV grant since around 2018 (not long after I got my "dumb" charge point in 2017) are required to have smart grid features.

Essentially this means that at some point in the future the national grid would have control over turning off individual chargers during peak hours to be able to smooth and manage grid demand by deferring charging later into the evening.

With the number of EV's on the road at the moment it's not a problem if people arrive home and plug in at 6pm or so, but if you imagine a future where most cars are EV's, that would be a major headache for the grid and local power companies if everyone plugged in to charge just after work. There's enough capacity and generation in place to charge a nation of EV's even today, but not all at the same time and not all at 6pm on a weekday.

I voluntarily charge my car in the small hours of the morning with a timer anyway because it's better for the battery to leave charging closer to when you need to use the car. (minimise the amount of time it sits around near full charge)

No doubt when EV's become more popular split rate tariffs will be used as a "carrot" to entice people to charge off peak and save money, (you can do it now if you have a smart meter and a suitable tariff) but the ability to actually control the on/off status of the millions of charge points around the country at peak times will be key to ensuring that the grid can cope and that demand can be smoothed. If a car is already charging when the charge point was commanded off it will just resume again when the charge point is commanded on again, and I would think that there would be a way to manually override it.

As well as just telling a charge point to go off, it can potentially tell it to just throttle down a bit during peak times - for example a 7kW charge point could be asked by the Smart grid control to throttle back to 3kW from 6pm to 8pm for example rather than completely turning off. (Charge points can dynamically request the car to reduce the charging rate all the way down to a minimum of about 1.4kW if necessary) And by controlling how many EV chargers they command to turn off or throttle back it gives the grid operators very fine grained control to balance the load on the grid.

As far as I know none of this is in place or active at the moment other than in trials, so "Smart Grid" features in a charge point are just future proofing for the day when EV's are common. I think it will be several years (at least 5) before any of this load management stuff actually gets switched on at a national level.

I liken this very much to hot water cylinder control in NZ. I don't know if you guys ever had this in the UK but it was common (and I think still common) for hot water in NZ to be provided from a large electric hot water cylinder that primarily heats at night then stores the hot water during the day. The power company had remote control over what times the power for the hot water cylinder was on and they used this for load shedding. In return the rate for the hot water supply was drastically cheaper than normal 24 hour electricity supply to the rest of the house.

I remember it well because if all the hot water was "used up" in morning showers, there was no more hot water for most of the rest of the day...

[Gibbo2286]

I asked the quote company why they hadn't included the pod point chargers in their quote, got this today.

[NewcastleFalcon]

You may have heard of Geely. Yes the Chinese Lotus, Volvo and London Electric Vehicles Company ( yes the taxis) owner.


Geely logo
Geely, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Apparently you can produce and sell an EV for this type of money. Moving too fast Europe?

How does €7,900 sound for this (Geometry is Geely's Pure Electric Brand)
Geometry EX3 Brings Affordable EVs to the Masses

Its got 4 of these

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

That'll do me!!

[Gibbo2286]

Think I could get a good part exchange price on the Zoe for that. If the Zoe ever gets here, a bit of a drag getting the battery lease transferred it seems.

The pod-point home charger is ordered but can't complete the deal until the paperwork for the grant is completed and that can't be done until I have an invoice for buying the car and they won't issue that until the battery lease transfer is complete. a good job I'm a patient man.

EDF offered the best deal on the charger, £599 with none of the strings attached, everything in including an extra small RCD unit alongside the existing fuse board..

One good result yesterday, new mot on the C5 with no advisories.

[mickthemaverick]

Well done on the MOT then Gibbo, as for the Pex on the Zoe, it begs the question who will want to buy 80 mile range used cars when you can get 3 times the range in a new car for less the 8k?