Electric Burgman?

[Filonian]

Interesting letter from a BMW IX ev owner in the March Which magazine, he's not impressed with the range or the charging. Claims the best range he's had is 220 instead of around the 300 claimed by BMW and as low as 150 miles in the cold weather The max charge rate he's had is 70 even on a 350 kW fast charger. Whether people are not fully taught the ins and outs of running an ev on purchase or still problems with the infrastructure who knows.
Personally I can't see the free chargers staying free forever.

[Data]

Currently about 15% of all England's chargers are free. In Scotland it's many more. Like you Filonian, I suspect gradually as ev's become more established they will become fewer. On the other hand while we have them, it's great! One of our family ev's recently covered 860 miles for £8.90, the initial home charge cost. The rest of the journey charging was completely free! My bro has saved in excess of £12k in two years on fuel & servicing alone with his EV. Easily offsetting the slight extra cost of buying it.

I think the BMW driver might need to read his manual. I cannot believe his range is so low unless his battery hasn't yet been fully cycled from new (only charged fully from low charge 2 or 3 times). Or, his battery hasn't yet been calibrated to the car. That's usually all it is. Cold will reduce battery performance but not by that much on modern EV vehicles. If it does the owner might need to read his manual & find out what he's doing wrong.

[MrGrumpy]

I guess the claimed range quoted by the owner is the official one, which is estimated in particular usage which is, I believe, almost invariably far more than real people actually get. And I was reading just yesterday an article comparing cold weather range with warm weather range and the difference was huge. The smallest drop of any car was 16%, the worst 33%, most around 25%. So the BMW IX's owner's figures look entirely believable to me.
I dread to imagine what the range would be in cold weather at 70mph on a motorway the entire way.

Cold weather range test if anyone is interested....https://www.whatcar.com/news/electric-c ... nge/n24274

[Filonian]

I personally think the ev makers should stop using range figures or ridiculous mpg figures ( I don't know or understand how mpg can be calculated accurately). Surely, what most people want to know anyhow is the range of miles per kW, only then can I tell how cheap or expensive the car is to run in relation to electricity costs. The miles per kW also gives a better indication of the efficiency.

[Data]

Some cars are affected more than others, that's true. The E-Niro isn't badly affected in cold weather in my experience but it does lose some range like they all do in very cold weather. Of course all our ice engined vehicles lose range too as the winter petrol & increased cold engine running takes its toll.

Without knowing more facts it's difficult to make any proper judgement about the BMW range. Most EV cars that I've driven (I've driven quite a few different models) have all given better than manufacturers claimed range. Sometimes by quite a bit. Many owners will tell you the same. Unfortunately some owners & the public generally don't have much knowledge about how electric cars work regarding charging & range & fall foul of the often repeated fake news concerning EV's. They don't seem to understand that when you first charge your brand new EV it will take longer than normal to fully charge for 2 or 3 charges. It won't give you the cars maximum range until the battery has been fully cycled a few times. This commonly leads to journos & members of the public making incorrect statements about EV cars & their range. So EV's have become the new "vaccines" by ice engine fans as they pick up & repeat these not true stories

[riders in the storm]

Yes, I quite enjoy reading the comments in the regular articles the Daily Mail publishes, generally with an anti-EV stance......

The comments section is full of, well, comments from people who have clearly never owned or driven an EV. They make me smile, even laugh. I wonder if there was so much resistance when cars started replacing horses..?

[Data]

I don't get out much but I'm pretty sure personal transport in the form of cars & motorcycles will never catch on...same as mobile phones! Just pipe dreams!!

[Data]

I guess the claimed range quoted by the owner is the official one, which is estimated in particular usage which is, I believe, almost invariably far more than real people actually get. And I was reading just yesterday an article comparing cold weather range with warm weather range and the difference was huge. The smallest drop of any car was 16%, the worst 33%, most around 25%. So the BMW IX's owner's figures look entirely believable to me.
I dread to imagine what the range would be in cold weather at 70mph on a motorway the entire way.

Cold weather range test if anyone is interested....https://www.whatcar.com/news/electric-c ... nge/n24274

Again this is a well meant but maybe a floored article. It doesn't actually give us enough detail about whether each vehicle had it's battery reset (recalibrated) to the car before all the testing. If that wasn't done to each vehicle the testing was pointless as any figures achieved will almost certainly be unrepresentative by either quite a bit or by some margin at least. Given that many "experts" don't seem to even know this is quite alarming. However, as said, we don't actually know as I could not see anywhere in the article that the batteries were calibrated to the vehicles. If I've missed that do let me know. The other point is the simple fact the testing carried out is NOT real world. It is similating real world, and we all know what that can do. I can say some of those figures look very unrepresentative of my own experiences. And I've done a lot of EV driving in all weathers and temps in several EV cars. The E-Niros (the ones I've driven the most) often return 315 mile range on trips in summer and around the 255-260 mile mark in winter on motorways. The official figure is 283 miles from Kia and that's an average range figure, as they all are. But an interesting article non the less. Thanks for posting Grumpy.

[smeghead]

Currently about 15% of all England's chargers are free. In Scotland it's many more. Like you Filonian, I suspect gradually as ev's become more established they will become fewer. On the other hand while we have them, it's great! One of our family ev's recently covered 860 miles for £8.90, the initial home charge cost. The rest of the journey charging was completely free! My bro has saved in excess of £12k in two years on fuel & servicing alone with his EV. Easily offsetting the slight extra cost of buying it.

I think the BMW driver might need to read his manual. I cannot believe his range is so low unless his battery hasn't yet been fully cycled from new (only charged fully from low charge 2 or 3 times). Or, his battery hasn't yet been calibrated to the car. That's usually all it is. Cold will reduce battery performance but not by that much on modern EV vehicles. If it does the owner might need to read his manual & find out what he's doing wrong.

Hi Data, I'm interested in where one obtains free electricity. Someone , somewhere is paying for your brothers car to be charged. I'd hate to think it was coming from my pocket, indirectly. There's no such thing as free.

[Data]

Hi Smeg, here's an article that will explain some of it. It doesn't list all the free charging points or where they are. In fact 15% of all chargers are free. Not 11% as the article says. These are mainly fast chargers. Most can be used by the public but many cannot unless you access the services at the charge point address, such as at a hotel or super market. Different apps will show different charging stations. When you buy an electric car it often comes with free charging for the 1st year or a certain number of miles. When you buy an "at home charger" you will often get free public charging as part of a deal too. Some companies offer that, others do not.

The number of public charging stations is growing exponentially each year & will continue to do so at pace. The only people paying for electricity to drive an EV is the charging supply companies, the EV manufacturers, the Scottish government, other government incentives. After all, as tax payers we are all paying for the conversion to ev's. Government has just put in £6.5billion to expand the charging network. So we all pay.

Until recently you could get a free charge at many Tesco stores in their car parks from a Pod Point charger. This has now changed so you have to pay for it.
https://www.zap-map.com/free-ev-chargin ... -are-they/