Hi! Potential new owner and first EV

[sparkie1984]

Good morning all!

Have recently signed up to the forum because I feel the time is coming for us to switch over to an EV.

A bit about me, I’m an electrician and spent a bit of time working for Pod Point (no longer) so EVs are not a complete strange phenomenon to me however I’ve never actually owned one myself. We currently have a 330D BMW

Over the coming days I’ll start scouring the forum for information so far, a couple of pages in, I think I’ve ascertained the following:

- tyres are pretty expensive compared to ICE vehicles
- insurance can be quite wild for Teslas, but shopping around should negate this?

Are there any other major things to look out for? I suspect we’d be looking at a Model 3 of some description. Admittedly I’ve not got fully up to speed on specs and what is a must have / good to have features etc…

I guess like all brands it has its issues, any particular models or years that are best avoided?

Thank you for any advice

 

[WannabeOwner]

tyres are pretty expensive compared to ICE vehicles

Interesting

Actually, I find that I've been surprised how long my EV tyres last - I don't drive to be kind to them! except when I'm on motorway, but I guess that is same wear&tear as ICE would be ...

... I did read that there is less wear on EV tyres due to gear change "jerk" on ICE tyres, I find that hard to believe but its what I read! but Regen braking must help. Once you get into the habit of early lift-off to avoid using the brakes that must mean that tyres are not undergoing such dramatic friction slowdowns.

insurance can be quite wild for Teslas

Yup 0-60 time puts Tesla in the top group, sorry about that. I don't think shopping around will fix that part. Tesla also have long lead time for replacement panels etc. which increases insurance (time you need a hire car etc.) Different brand will be cheaper.

Are there any other major things to look out for?

Quoted range is useless. Its a combine-cycle number, whereas (IF you have home charging - you won't run out / need refuelling doing some local errands) the only number that matters is the 70 MPH Motorway cruising-speed range. That's when you are actually going to run out.

I suggest trying your various "longer trips" in ABetterRoutePlanner. You can choose vehicle / model, and temperature for Winter / Summer comparison, then ABRP will show you: range, where & how long to charge, and so on. ABRP will give you a reasonably realistic 70MPH consumption and brand-comparison.

If you can charge at home you would be best to charge overnight and choose the Off peak tariff that suits you best. A 4 hour tariff would give you, say, 27 MPH @ 7kW = 100 miles. If you do more than that, daily, than you might need a specific EV tariff, or Ecconomy-7, If you do 200 miles occasionally you can "replenish" over 2 nights, so 4 hours each night would be fine.

A home charger, installed by Sparky, might be as much as £1,000. Consider where you will park on your drive, which side the EV charges (and how you would charge if it was "other side"), and if you are a 2+-car family what you would do if (WHEN!!) you have 2+ EV on your drive - you might do some infrastructure for that at the time you do the 1st one.

You could consider a Commando socket outside as a backup to 7kW charger ... and if you don't have an external 13AMP socket (car vaccuum / pressure wash the drive / etc.) you might want to put that in at the same time.

Buy the biggest battery you can afford. It makes a difference to how many trips you have to charge at all, and for how long. 3rd party (non Tesla) chargers are, sadly, often broken / slow, and Tesla chargers get busy at bank holiday weekends - and Tesla is opening them up to other brands, and will probably open all of them during your ownership ... so better to have bigger battery if you can. Maybe assume you will get 50% of additional purchase price back on resale, so may you would consider it as having to finance the 50% for ownership ...

 

[redmamoth]

A home charger, installed by Sparky, might be as much as £1,000.

If only he knew someone who could install it for him...

 

[sparkie1984]

Useful info thank you!

I may have misunderstood the tyre thing, I saw a thread on here about the costs of them being around £300 each which compared to my current car is about £100 dearer.

Charger isn’t an issue, I’m a sparks and have a PP charger installed from when I was charging the company van.

Our general use would be mostly the wife’s 10 mile each way commute to work, casual weekend driving with the odd 150 mile each way trip to Norfolk

 

[yessuz]

Good morning all!

Have recently signed up to the forum because I feel the time is coming for us to switch over to an EV.

A bit about me, I’m an electrician and spent a bit of time working for Pod Point (no longer) so EVs are not a complete strange phenomenon to me however I’ve never actually owned one myself. We currently have a 330D BMW

Over the coming days I’ll start scouring the forum for information so far, a couple of pages in, I think I’ve ascertained the following:

- tyres are pretty expensive compared to ICE vehicles
- insurance can be quite wild for Teslas, but shopping around should negate this?

Are there any other major things to look out for? I suspect we’d be looking at a Model 3 of some description. Admittedly I’ve not got fully up to speed on specs and what is a must have / good to have features etc…

I guess like all brands it has its issues, any particular models or years that are best avoided?

Thank you for any advice

welcome.
regarding tyres - no, not really - you need just load rating. do not buy into the foam bs. difference is within 1 dB between normal tyres and "EV".
I consider e-Premacy on my Tesla once current stock will run out (soooooon).. these are same ICE tyre at same price

regarding insurance - yes. but that is for Teslas only. Other EVs are more or less in line with ICE..

there are limited choices of specs, but in reality, IMHO, LR is kind of best of all worlds. it is seriously quick, range is 350 miles with 100% battery...

best cars, most probably, are ones delivered to UK in early 2022 (21 reg) to mid of 2022. as these will already have all bits and bobs (heated steering wheel, vipers, laminated glass, amd ryzen) and swtill will have USS

 

[Kansalis]

If you can charge at home you would be best to charge overnight and choose the Off peak tariff that suits you best.

I would caveat this by suggesting you think about your annual mileage and other home power use. For me, the current overnight "EV" tariffs would be quite a lot more expensive, as I do low mileage (~6000) and work from home. It works out quite a lot cheaper to be on Octopus Agile than either Go or Intelligent Octopus.

 

[WannabeOwner]

range is 350 miles with 100% battery

Is anyone actually getting more than 300 real world miles at a constant 70 MPH?

I do get 300 miles in my MS Raven (but only just), but I've toured on motorways abroad in company with an M3 LR and it ran out before my MS did (although the M3 then charged faster than the MS)

I do low mileage (~6000) and work from home

Good point, and O/P says mileage is low.

 

[yessuz]

Is anyway actually getting more than 300 real world miles at a constant 70 MPH?

I do get 300 miles in my MS Raven (but only just), but I've toured on motorways abroad in company with an M3 LR and it ran out before my MS did (although the M3 then charged faster than the MS)



Good point, and O/P says mileage is low.

around that figure. well, at least car shows 350
I travel mostly motorway miles, AP is set to +2 mph over limit (so 72 mph...).. office is 150 miles from home, depends on the route. I could probably get a bit few more miles if I set AP at 70 mph or even under
during summer it is as low as 45% of battery, during winter - close to 55%

i.e. last drive to work according Teslamate:
distance: 148 miles. Battery consumed: 48%
energy used: 36.65 kWh (consumption 249 Wh/mi) - but I preheat my car only during winter...
outside temp: 14 C

 

[debrooker]

I may have misunderstood the tyre thing, I saw a thread on here about the costs of them being around £300 each which compared to my current car is about £100 dearer.

Recently paid £280 from kwik fit for P-zeros on a M3P (20s) - I would expect to pay less on the lower models

 

[sparkie1984]

Some great info here, thank you!

So it seems it’s not such a minefield as with some ICE vehicles in trying to get all the spec you want?

I’m not sure if 2022 models will be in our budget to be honest, are the previous ones a serious downgrade? As I say I’m green to Teslas but I have seen discussion on a better infotainment set up.

I have to say when I was out repairing chargers at Tesco and domestically people usually raved about their Teslas, there was the occasional bad experience. Some mentioned the build quality was a bit off but others had no issues.

 

[Billbrown1982]

I'm not sure about 2022 models tbh but if at all possible I would try not to go older than 2021. These were the start of the made in china ones and overall the reviews have been far more positive regarding build quality, panel gaps, paint etc than we were used to seeing from the american produced ones.

 

[yessuz]

well one massive positive for older models - is better "leather" - not so squeeky...

 

[sparkie1984]

I'm not sure about 2022 models tbh but if at all possible I would try not to go older than 2021. These were the start of the made in china ones and overall the reviews have been far more positive regarding build quality, panel gaps, paint etc than we were used to seeing from the american produced ones.

That’s interesting !

So quality went up when it switched to Chinese production?

That’s good advice though, I don’t want a car I’m unhappy with and if that means waiting a bit and putting a bit more aside for a “better” car then so be it.

Does that switch coincide with what the poster above said when they say it’s got the Ryzen chip and heated steering wheel etc?

 

[WannabeOwner]

So it seems it’s not such a minefield as with some ICE vehicles in trying to get all the spec you want?

negligible number of options on Teslas ...

... no model year, so changes are rolled out all the time, and without warning. Some good ... some not so good. So finding exactly what might exist on a particular vintage car isn't entirely straightforward (if you specifically want something - e.g. Heat Pump model, or Bigger battery, or LFP battery)

are the previous ones a serious downgrade?

In recent times: Older ones had USS, new ones use software and cameras. Huge discussion in this forum about that being a retrograde step. But on an old 2nd hand one such software delayed-delivery issues would likely have been fixed (or well documented)

No rain sensors - cameras used for auto-wipe. That has improved recently (but its been years since Tesla swapped Rain-sensor for "Cameras+Software" so gives you an idea of what Tesla's "Coming soon" means ...) but "dry wipe screen in summer" is a thing, and recently-ish Tesla decided that AutoPilot could only be used with AutoWiper - which made the dry-wipe unavoidable (or stop using AP)

Some people have significant "phantom braking" on Auto-pilot - e.g. when passing a juggernaut (identical to every other one you've passed in last 100 miles) there is a sudden braking. Or the shadow from a bridge. Personally (and for plenty of others) I have very rarely had that (and I've had 4 cars from Tesla), but others complain they get it all the time. No obvious reason we've been to ascertain, but it might be "config settings choices"

Summon isn't useful in real life. Only time you might actually REALLY use it is if your car becomes blocked in very tightly in a car park, or a thunderstorm means its now sitting in a puddle. Summon is too slow, and fiddly, to use at any other time.

Auto Pilot (the one that comes inclusive with the car) won't change lanes - you have to "steer" to change lanes, and that disengages AP .. and it goes Bing-Bonk (and again when you re-engage it). Annoying for sleeping passengers (use Joe Mode to reduce volume). Some drivers find it annoying too!

But AP massively reduced driver-workload, and means you arrive far more refreshed on long journeys (IME - I've done something like 150K miles on AP)

EAP upgrade changes lanes without Bing-Bong, but most drivers find that it only works (i.e. effectively) some percentage of the time ... and the rest of the time you do it yourself and get Bing-Bong of course. EAP is quite expensive for what it is.

FSD ... very expensive and no indication of when that might ever actually be available in UK. Whilst I'm a fan, the videos I watch of beta testers in USA make me question if I would every be able to feel relaxed if I was using it.

Tesla customer-service is shocking. Generally getting something fixed is ok, but they throw curved balls all the time, and repeatedly treat customers very badly during the time they implement a new changed. Latest one is "Inventory cars". Cars advertised, people (not unreasonably) snapped them up. Then there were repeated delays (as in the day before collection, having arranged time off work, being told "There is a 6 - 8 week delay" or "You car is not at Corby its in Aberdeen"). Then it turns out that the cars are undergoing significant fixing - in some cases resprays .... probably not what you thought you were buying. That said, most people have been very happy with the car on collection, just completely screwed-over by the lack of COMMs and unannounced delays.

So quality went up when it switched to Chinese production?

Yes, significantly

 

[sparkie1984]

Oh crikey, thanks for all that info!

ok seems a good deal more research is needed on my part then. The main thing is I don’t want to end up with a car that’s got a rubbish system in it that’s slow to use etc. also if there’s a particular year that the battery tech improved or heat pumps came with the car etc then I want to try get that if budget allows.

With regards to autopilot it’ll rarely get used to be honest as it’ll be the wife using the car primarily and she wouldn’t use the radar based cruise in our old Tiguan, something I may use on the longer drives though. Is it standard on Teslas or is it an option worth looking out for ?

 

[yessuz]

Oh crikey, thanks for all that info!

ok seems a good deal more research is needed on my part then. The main thing is I don’t want to end up with a car that’s got a rubbish system in it that’s slow to use etc. also if there’s a particular year that the battery tech improved or heat pumps came with the car etc then I want to try get that if budget allows.

With regards to autopilot it’ll rarely get used to be honest as it’ll be the wife using the car primarily and she wouldn’t use the radar based cruise in our old Tiguan, something I may use on the longer drives though. Is it standard on Teslas or is it an option worth looking out for ?

AP is standard. and is more than enough.. only if they would get rid of that audible notification....

heatpump was started to be included in 2021 models, and much more powerful and nicer to use CPU for infotainment/screen is from 2022 (AMD Ryzen).

 

[sparkie1984]

Thanks, is the CPU a dealbreaker in your opinion?

Would they ever offer an upgrade for it in the future for cars without it? I assume a 21 model will be largely the same functionality wise?

This is the sort of thing I worry about getting wrong where I’m missing something decent because of a hardware revision somewhere along the line

 

[yessuz]

Thanks, is the CPU a dealbreaker in your opinion?

Would they ever offer an upgrade for it in the future for cars without it? I assume a 21 model will be largely the same functionality wise?

This is the sort of thing I worry about getting wrong where I’m missing something decent because of a hardware revision somewhere along the line

it is not a deal breaker. it is really a very nice to have upgrade.

i doubt if they offer an upgrade

but yes, 2021 will be same as early 2022 (late 2022 will not have USS.)

 

[Mrklaw]

I'd try and get the 60kwh LFP which is ok going to 100% whereas for daily driving the LR prefers not to, so the effective range difference isn't huge. For daily driving both will be fine charging at home. For 150 mile each way trips I think even a LR I'd assume would need at least a splash and dash at motorway speeds so if you can charge at the destination the RWD should be good enough.

2022 Feb onwards was the ryzen CPU but I don't know when the larger RWD battery came in

 

[Dilly]

I have a March 2020 Fremont 3LR. No paint or panel issues. No heatpump or heated steering wheel.
Resistive heater warms car up quickly.
It came with 300 mile range and still has 300 mile range after 10K miles.
mine has passenger lumbar support and centre console USB data ports which have subsequently gone from newer models.
I wouldn’t dismiss a 2020 model.