GM cancelled the EV1 program at the turn of the century, but the world has become so small that Donald Lasell, one of my contacts, used to drive one. So here’s Donald and his EV1
Donald drove one for two years back in 1998-2000, mainly in Michigan, putting about 35,000 miles on it one of those years. That was quite some feat, beginning with lead batteries at 18.7 KWh remember the milk floats, and then upgrading to Nikel Metal Hydrid batteries at 24 KWh. That mean nothing to you? Well by today’s lying WLTP standards that would be 89kms range for the lead and 169 Kms for the NiMH which then only took 2 weeks to charge at home!
What is the EV1 famous for you might ask, well for 3 things
1. Donald drove one
2. It was the favorite of car crushers, GM didn’t sell them, they only leased them out and faced with California law (full after sales, spare parts etc for 15 years) they chose to crush them all.
3. Faced with such forward sighted vision by GM then,Elon Musk, JB Straubel, Ian Wrigh, Martin Eberhard, and Marc Tarpenning (thank you Wiki), formed a new company to make electric cars. Eat your hearts out GM.
So mid-day Wednesday trickle charge up to 235 Kms, well we unplugged it at night to close the living room window! In 20 years time we’ll all laugh at that. But let’s talk about the driving experience: for those that have never driven a modern electric car the four most noticeable things are, in order
1. The silence: move over Simon and Garfunkel, free up space Björk. At first it’s surprising, then it’s pleasant, it doesn’t blow your mind away. How did I drive all those years with that noise?
2. The space: I mentioned in an earlier post that it was like the Tardis inside. There is no engine and Volkswagen have done wonders with this extra space, the balance obtained is noteworthy, more room for the driver and passenger, but more room at the back for the rear passengers, and a good boot size.
3. The battery means that in a “smaller car” the ride is high, like that of a cross-over, most appreciable.
4. And finally, well with the energy recuperation if you lift your feet the car slows down at a programmed rate, soon you hardly ever use the brake!
So fourth day of really useful quarantine, coming from a country with ten times less cases than the UK!
Helicopter hovering above the house, maybe Test and Trace are digging deep
So Amazon, bless their little cotton socks came up trumps with the adapter and the car is now trickle charging from an ordinary house socket……….at 10 Kms per hour which is about twice walking speed….. so for a rule of thumb, if I wanted for instance to drive from Tonbridge to Bristol I would look up google maps, check the time I would need to walk the distance, then if I half it I’ve got the trickle charge time
So 1 day and 22hours divided by 2 is pretty much 24 hours…..easy huh
So yesterday I told you how I was going to trickle charge my French ID3 from my English holiday address…….I mean this has to be standard, I could put “English” diesel in my French Qashqai.
French plug, French to English adapter I sort of guessed this might not be straight forward
How do you think it went? Well not straight forward, my son in law suggested an earthed adapter…….a what I said? I checked my 10 or so adapters and he checked his 4 ( yes, we’re country fluid). Nope, so you can guess this isn’t a common piece of equipment.
We found one on Amazon will this do the job? Well after delivery I’ll tell you.
3 pin to 3 pin adapter, not quite as rare as hobby horse shit but getting there
So back to the one thing that has been in my mind every time I’ve used the car so far, getting elec-trickery into it.
Remember early 70’s Telly, Catweazle and elec-trickery
So this is a municipal charging station from near my hotel in Le Havre two days before I got the car, simple to use it I would need to have previously obtained a card from the town hall….so using this one is reduced to fantasy.
Here’s the one from Laon, you just need a fully charged phone, btw same price as petrol for a quick charge. I wasn’t expecting that.
Why the pictures of charging stations? Well we’re into day 3 of the quarantine and the car is resting. But we’ve given ourselves a real challenge we’re going to try to trickle charge from the house. “Challenge ?” You say. Well yes this only works when you plug in the charger without extension leads etc. “Piece of cake“ you say, well we are in England and I do have a French plug…….
We were getting ahead of the curve, I’d signed for 25000Kms per year and after the first nine days (novelty I guess) we’d already more than a 1000 on the clock.
No panic, GB to the rescue. We have to quarantine for 10 days so this month will be well within the Kms limit including novelty and foreign travel so here’s to Boris! The first ten days of our holidays within four walls despite double vaccination and a negative test (that was my first test, like having a weevil up my nose).
Ecological PCR test
Ok so back to the “Ullo John”
Let’s talk kWs, I thought, should I install a charging point at home? First thing to check is your home installation – Well we have a 60 Ampere installation (everything is electric) at 220 Volts that’s 220*60= 13.2 kWs, so with boxes at 3, 7 or 22 kWs I’m guessing for night time charging the 7kW is going to be ok.
Now our car is a 58kWh version but normally you should begin charging at 20% and finish at 80%, that leaves 60% to charge (0.6) only (prolongs battery life) so we would need 0.6*58/7 hours to charge = 6.6 hours, good for overnight charging……… and is incidentally the charger sizes at workplaces (well you do spend ~ 8 hours at work)…
End of first week, now the real test: off to Blighty. Charged the car to 100% at work, only 360Kms shown on the screen. Far from the WLTP 425Kms…..My VW salesman tells me that this is predicted based on my driving to date. Who am I Jacky Ickx Or something?
Then I remembered there are several driving modes, I checked it out and sure enough I’d been driving in the sport mode, which is fine for short distances and frequent charging but from Paris to Tonbridge I’d need “grandfather” mode, so off we jolly well went, check out the screen as we set off;
Grandfather Mode
110 on the motorway, 80 on other roads, but no matter I cannot express how comfortable a zero engine noise car is for a long drive. Now here is something I haven’t seen for such a long time:
Waiting for the BOAT in Dieppe
We charged up 50 Kms in a low power (7KWh) charging station at the town hall in Dieppe using my new WE CONNECT card whilst we had a pick-nick , just in case. Did we need it? No…..
So here are the numbers, from 100% charge in grandfather mode, distance driven 269 Kms, 30% charge remaining. (124 Kms), so for 425 Kms WLTP in grandfather mode including 80 Kms on motorway yields (269+124-50)= 343 Kms, but we did have the a/c on: REAL LIFE NUMBERS
We’ll talk through the driving experience (positive) tomorrow, let’s talk about what could have been done better in the car purchasing loop.
Sat in the car in the showroom ready to go, to be honest we were delayed by my insurance certificate, we looked over the car and saw that since my Qashqai, the USB connections had become USB C connections, probably not important I thought, but mentioned it to the salesman who said he’d give me a lightning to USB C cable. In the rush well it was forgotten. Why did I mention this? well I,ll explain in a bit.
In an earlier visit the salesman had explained a bit the WE CONNECT, Volkswagen electronic infra-structure for controlling and charging the car, in a nutshell you get a card that opens the charging stations and you are debited the cost, but you can also use We CONNECT on your telephone without the card.
Have you followed so far?
Well this weekend we took it for a spin, we were staying in Laon, 200 or so Kms from home, I’d topped up at work the day before (50 Kms), so I would need to top up in Laon. My first experience of refilling on the road………….This should be easy no?
Pulled up at a municipal refilling point, not compatible with WE CONNECT but walking distance from where we were staying, flash code on the station, telephone connection to a new operator, 50 Euros paid up, but the door on the station wouldn’t open!!!!! (you need a card). Big frustration…………
My VW however told me where the closest compatible refill point was, 5Kms a 175 KW refill point and that’s quite quick (I’ll tell you about that in a later post). As I said before didn’t yet have my WE CONNECT card, well………..I could use my phone, remember.
Here is where the USB c thing comes in: I had used APPLE CARPLAY, didn’t have that on the Qashqai. BUT HERE IS A WARNING it sucks the life out of your I phone battery, 70% in 2 hours. So when I wanted to charge my car without my WE CONNECT card, halfway through the operation my phone died. NOW REMEMBER THIS: NO PHONE NO CHARGE!!!!!
Sucking an I phone dry
The couple running the service station were nice, I managed to borrow a phone lead and charge my I phone enough to charge my car.
Have you followed?
VW could have told me to pre-order the WE CONNECT card or lent me one for 10 days.
VW could have warned me about USB c lightning cables or provided them.
You may say these are small things, but they are not!!
Well yesterday we’d talked about the ID3 range. So now down to hard tacks. How much was this thing going to cost me?
The salesman, good at his job steered me upwind here. “Do you know how many Kms you’ll do in a year?” And as it happens, I do, quite a few actually, 25000 I told him thinking, battery life….that can’t be too good.
“No problem” he tells me, well he is a salesman. “Long Term Lease would be my recommendation” he says, well I’ve heard of these, I’d heard of Yeti as well but didn’t believe in them.
And then the sucker punch….”with the government aid it is actually quite affordable“, obviously a salesman’s idea of affordable and mine might not be quite the same!
“Let’s talk numbers“ he says and to cut to the quick it would cost me a down payment of 4000€ and then 300€ a month for three years, service, replacement car and all the tralala, thanks to the government aid.
In this first half of 2021, the elctric cars are extending their ranges, and the VW ID3 caught my eye, 425 Kms WLTP, for the 58KW version, now that is beginning to look like a car’s range and not that of a milk float.
Longer range than a milk float
But it was still a bit pricey, or was it? So up and off I went to the VW concession in ARPAJON to find out more. In a sort of perverse way, after diesel gate I was pretty sur I could now trust VW.
So first we talked range: I had already checked out my needs:
Back and forth to work 50kms each way, back roads.
Paris to Dieppe (Ferry to Newhaven, about 230 Kms)
Newhaven to Tonbridge about 58 Kms.
Longer distances occasionally where I would need to stop and charge.
Well I said to myself 425Kms WLTP, that should do the job.
So, of course, then we went to look at the car together in the showroom, was I an easy customer for a sales man? Probably. We checked out the big brother, the ID4, “same size as the qashqai” he told me well it seemed bigger to me “that’s the showroom effect” he told me, and maybe it was. But the ID3 seemed big enough to me.
Just got an ID3 