Electric vehicle has ruined my day

[Bletchleyite]

£335 for a Model B in 1981 which, according to the BoE inflation calculator, would be about £1400 today.

Interesting, puts it in the same sort of price bracket as a Macbook. Certainly not a budget item, though; £300 laptops from Tesco are today's ZX Spectrum (and at a real-terms £71, in a similar price bracket to said rubber keyed Speccy).

Anyway, back to EVs

 

[Dai Corner]

Had a giggle about that. That may have been the reason husbands justified buying one to their wives (usually that way round back then), but as a child of the 80s I can confirm that a rubber keyed Speccy plugged into a cassette recorder and black and white portable telly had no homework or schooling-related purpose whatsoever, and an expensive BBC Micro (about £500 then, which probably means about £5000 now) wasn't much better.

What they did do is enable an entire generation of the IT industry, which 1980s and 1990s schooling did very little for at all.

MJ Hibbett and the Validators (they of the Birmingham New St song and the one about Midland Mainline's lost property service) refer:

I can testify to that. I spent a lot of time and money on my hobbyist computers in the 1980s, got my first IBM compatible PC around 1990 and used the knowledge gained to get a job in the industry which earned me a reasonable living until I retired in 2016, having decided moving everything to the Cloud wasn't for me.

 

[edwin_m]

Had a giggle about that. That may have been the reason husbands justified buying one to their wives (usually that way round back then), but as a child of the 80s I can confirm that a rubber keyed Speccy plugged into a cassette recorder and black and white portable telly had no homework or schooling-related purpose whatsoever (other than enabling playing games instead of doing it), and an expensive BBC Micro (about £500 then, which probably means about £5000 now) wasn't much better.

What they did do is enable an entire generation of the IT industry, which 1980s and 1990s schooling did very little for at all.

However a BBC Micro did serve me very well during university days, mostly for word processing but also running some actual software. I also made quite a lot of money programming it as vacation work!

This often seems to be the case with this poster. They don't let it hold them back from jumping in feet first, but always have an interesting tale to tell afterwards, usually about how things somehow didn't fall into line with their very specific requirements.

I think the OP does have a point, in that EVs need to be easily useable by the average punter if they are going to supplant IC vehicles. They came unstuck by using official information such as the quoted range of the vehicle and availability of chargers.

 

[Meerkat]

An issue on this is the differing speed and spread of good and bad news.
Lots of people may say they haven't had any problems but it will be the disasters that people will remember when wavering about whether to go electric.
One thing that occurs to me is that if I ran out of petrol I could walk/get a lift to a garage and buy a can full. Is there a portable equivalent for charging or are you stuck waiting for the AA?

 

[Bletchleyite]

An issue on this is the differing speed and spread of good and bad news.
Lots of people may say they haven't had any problems but it will be the disasters that people will remember when wavering about whether to go electric.
One thing that occurs to me is that if I ran out of petrol I could walk/get a lift to a garage and buy a can full. Is there a portable equivalent for charging or are you stuck waiting for the AA?

Is running out of petrol really a thing except when it comes to people who are so tight on money they won't be getting an EV for many years yet anyway? I never have. Further to that, on many diesels running out will require manual repriming of the fuel system so you'll need the AA whether you have a can or not.

 

[bspahh]

I did a search for Zoe Eastleigh "car club" and found https://www.eastleigh.gov.uk/parking-travel-and-roads/car-club

Given that range anxiety is a common worry with hiring an electric car, I'm surprised that https://www.co-wheels.org.uk/member-help doesn't mention how much charge you can expect the car to have when you pick it up.

 

[Ediswan]

One thing that occurs to me is that if I ran out of petrol I could walk/get a lift to a garage and buy a can full. Is there a portable equivalent for charging or are you stuck waiting for the AA?

This was announced a few months ago https://www.zipcharge.global/. A portable powerbank/charger. This is not their declared target market, but it has the appropriate characteristics. Whether it would ever be practical is a different question.

 

[Bletchleyite]

This was announced a few months ago https://www.zipcharge.global/. A portable powerbank/charger. This is not their declared target market, but it has the appropriate characteristics. Whether it would ever be practical is a different question.

That would just get nicked. But something similar that would sit inside the boot while in use would be a perfect solution to the issue of terraced streets without off-street parking for typical day to day use and emergency top-ups.

 

[Dai Corner]

This was announced a few months ago https://www.zipcharge.global/. A portable powerbank/charger. This is not their declared target market, but it has the appropriate characteristics. Whether it would ever be practical is a different question.

A larger version of the powerbanks people carry in case they need to charge their smartphones. Both are just workarounds for the shortcomings of battery technology though.

 

[DelW]

I have some sympathy with the OP. I have a plug-in hybrid which normally gets used on battery for local trips and petrol engine for longer ones. But I have on occasion tried to get a recharge on route or at my destination, and my success rate is disappointingly low.

Among the problems I've encountered have been:

• Chargers not located where the app's map shows them to be. They may be only 100 - 200m away, but that can take a while to find when they might be in any direction.
• Chargers not working, sometimes for months. I suspect a disconnect between the business hosting them and the charger provider.
• Chargers that need you to download an app, set up an account with username and password, and provide bank card details (to a company you may never have heard of). All assuming you can get a data signal, and done at the roadside when you just want to get a move on.
• A hotel with a charger where I'd planned to recharge while having lunch, who told me that it was reserved for staff or guests staying overnight only.
• A town where the only charger shown on the map was at a hotel which had closed down some months previously, and the nearest public chargers were around 10 miles away.

Overall, while I really like the smoothness and quietness of driving on the electric motor, I'm glad I still have a petrol engine on board as well.

 

[miklcct]

I did a search for Zoe Eastleigh "car club" and found https://www.eastleigh.gov.uk/parking-travel-and-roads/car-club

Given that range anxiety is a common worry with hiring an electric car, I'm surprised that https://www.co-wheels.org.uk/member-help doesn't mention how much charge you can expect the car to have when you pick it up.

It was on a full charge when I started.

 

[Starmill]

I'm not trying to be rude, but didn't you say that you were coming from Bournemouth? And swimming in Guildford, orienteering in Wembley and going out in London? All on the same day? Obviously it's your own leisure time and you're 100% entitled to spend it doing whatever you want, but I cannot help but feel that multiple time critical journeys in quick succession, where the lowest possible costs are also a requirement for you, aren't really needs that can be met by British public transport or car clubs. Perhaps you could do all you want to do if you were to hire a chauffeur to drive you everywhere you need to be. That way you'd be able to use your time productively while on the road, and you'd be in the right places at the right times more often.

When it comes to the car club particularly, I'd suggest that any car club that's using EVs but doesn't have them charged between users is on a terrible losing streak. Perhaps you can complain to their customer service department that you'd expect to be picking the car up charged.

 

[DelW]

When it comes to the car club particularly, I'd suggest that any car club that's using EVs but doesn't have them charged between users is on a terrible losing streak. Perhaps you can complain to their customer service department that you'd expect to be picking the car up charged.

The OP did say the car had a full battery but was only showing 60 miles range when he collected it.

Part of the problem may be its age - a 2015 car is 6 or 7 years old. While that's not a great age, car club (or hire) cars are likely to be used more intensively than private ones, and often by people with little knowledge of how to look after them and get the best out of them. It may just have had a hard life in many different hands.

 

[Starmill]

The OP did say the car had a full battery but was only showing 60 miles range when he collected it.

Part of the problem may be its age - a 2015 car is 6 or 7 years old. While that's not a great age, car club (or hire) cars are likely to be used more intensively than private ones, and often by people with little knowledge of how to look after them and get the best out of them. It may just have had a hard life in many different hands.

Hm I see yes. In which case I would suggest it probably depends on precisely how the car club vehicle has been marketed and sold.

If 60 miles in typical use is the genuine maximum range then that really ought to be being made clear before the customer books the vehicle. Was it an Enterprise car?

 

[skyhigh]

There isn't an EV which can do a round trip between Eastleigh to London without charging

There wasn't one for you to book or you don't think one exists? Because I assure you there are EVs out there that will do that distance.

The official number is 100+ miles, or 70 miles for older model, so I expect a single charge somewhere in a car park in outer London, outside the congestion zone.

Part of your issue is expecting it's realistic to do over 70 miles in a car with a quoted range of 70 miles.

 

[Vespa]

Problem with electric cars is very much a chicken/egg situation, to encourage electric cars you need the infrastructure to support it, without it you would struggle to sell enough cars to justify investment in charging points.

Another journalist did a similar thing and encountered the same problem, not all charging ports are working or won't accept charging cards etc.....

You would struggle to raise enthusiasm in such circumstances.

 

[PeterY]

The thing that worries me with an electric car is the battery life. Just giving a mobile phone as an example, I can probably get two years out of a new battery and it needs charging more and more frequently and doesn't hold the charge for long after a while, so I get a new battery. With electric cars I expect the same sort of things to happen. How much will a new set of batteries cost and how long will they last?. I'm no expert.

 

[CBlue]

Gotta say there's quite a few things that spring to mind here, OP.

I look online and can't find any reference to a 2015 Renault Zoe with a range of over 70 miles! Unfamiliar car, unfamiliar journey and cutting both timings and the range of the car very tight indeed....I'm sorry to say that most of the blame rests with yourself. If you were trying to cram all that into a day, it's also likely your driving wouldn't have been relaxed or efficient - reducing your range further.

Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be the first time this has happened when you've travelled - admittedly by car this time rather than train. I'd like to respectfully suggest the following:
a) Not trying to cram what looks like two days' worth of stuff into a single day.
b) Learning from your earlier mistakes.
c) Research your journey before you travel!

There have been multiple attempts by posters on here to explain why things don't necessarily fit into your perception of how they should - but you still seem to be unhappy with that!

For example, I do travel by train on occasion (with a bus connection to contend with first) and always throw an extra hour or so into the travel time in the event of the bus links going haywire. I'll then use that time to grab breakfast or a coffee and just relax before catching what is usually a rather busy train at that time of day - or jump on an earlier and quieter stopper with said coffee and just enjoy the time travelling. No stress involved and plenty of time to rearrange plans if things go wrong!

 

[thejuggler]

The thing that worries me with an electric car is the battery life. Just giving a mobile phone as an example, I can probably get two years out of a new battery and it needs charging more and more frequently and doesn't hold the charge for long after a while, so I get a new battery. With electric cars I expect the same sort of things to happen. How much will a new set of batteries cost and how long will they last?. I'm no expert.

Batteries are warranted for 8-10 years so it isn't an issue. Once an ICE car gets 10+ years old there are plenty of items which can fail meaning the car is scrapped as a repair isn't worth it.

 

[Stompehh]

Car Club cars are primarily intended for nipping about the local area, hence they tend to be small hatchbacks (whether fossil fuel or EV) and range is unlikely to be a big issue. The cars live in specific parking spaces around the town/city, and presumably the EV ones have chargers.

For a journey like the OPs I would have been renting something via one of the traditional rental agencys.

 

[david1212]

While the charging network will improve over time there will also be many more electric vehicles. Also car charging requirements need to be standardised. One-size-fits-all probably is not practical but each individual charger must be able to match several vehicles plus even the smallest charging point have at least two chargers with each format to cover one being out of service. For payment there also must be more than one method at every charger.

People can not be expected to spend time finding an available compatible and working charger as the OP experienced in Guildford.

8 years is not a long time to get an adequate network installed.

 

[Meerkat]

Is running out of petrol really a thing except when it comes to people who are so tight on money they won't be getting an EV for many years yet anyway? I never have. Further to that, on many diesels running out will require manual repriming of the fuel system so you'll need the AA whether you have a can or not.

People don’t run out of petrol because of all the advantages petrol has over batteries. However you have the backup plan of buying a can of petrol.

That would just get nicked. But something similar that would sit inside the boot while in use would be a perfect solution to the issue of terraced streets without off-street parking for typical day to day use and emergency top-ups.

It’s big, and it’s 25kg for 20 miles (If true). They also want £49pm to lease it!
it also doesn’t say how long it takes to charge (3 pin socket job so not quick) - are you suggesting you have to get up early to plug your car in every day, once the huge lump had charged?

 

[Starmill]

There wasn't one for you to book or you don't think one exists? Because I assure you there are EVs out there that will do that distance.

I was thinking that. A small model from 7 years ago that's been with a hire car operator, and thus likely had a hard-working life, is worlds away from what someone who has £35 - 40k to spend today can get. Of course, that's if you can get a delivery date for a new vehicle of any motive power source right now, but that's another matter!

 

[Bletchleyite]

People don’t run out of petrol because of all the advantages petrol has over batteries. However you have the backup plan of buying a can of petrol.

It’s big, and it’s 25kg for 20 miles (If true). They also want £49pm to lease it!
it also doesn’t say how long it takes to charge (3 pin socket job so not quick) - are you suggesting you have to get up early to plug your car in every day, once the huge lump had charged?

Umm, lump plugged in during the day, car charging overnight.

 

[Trackman]

After my swim, I returned to the car, and I was shocked that the car wasn't charging at all! I tried plugging out and in again but the charge post didn't work. I called the customer service, mentioned the symptom, and they suggested me that the charge post was broken. I drove to another one in town and exhausted all the on-network posts in Guildford, found none working at all, which left me no options but to pay for an off network post.

Was it showing as charging, like the green light on your car?

but as a child of the 80s I can confirm that a rubber keyed Speccy plugged into a cassette recorder and black and white portable telly had no homework or schooling-related purpose whatsoever (other than enabling playing games instead of doing it), and an expensive BBC Micro (about £500 then, which probably means about £5000 now) wasn't much better.

What??? It was loads better. .. I feel a new thread coming on ..

 

[Lucan]

in time the charging infrastructure will be improved to the point that issues like this don't occur, and there is less chance of a mechanical breakdown than an ICE car.

Fine. I shall wait until the infrastructure improves. My last three ICE cars (over 20 years) never broke down anyway.

Chargers that need you to download an app, set up an account with username and password, and provide bank card details

Indeed. Those encumberances (marketing people call it "friction" *) are no way to encourage EVs, moreover entwining the usage with tracking and marketing BS, and likely malware too. You should just be able to buy the EV charge with no more than a credit card, like petrol.

And swimming in Guildford, orienteering in Wembley and going out in London? All on the same day?

I think he stopped at the Lido to charge the car, maybe having a swim while he waited. I don't swim, and I don't like sitting in coffee shops either - the usual recommended way to kill time while charging. But perhaps this will be a boost for railways with EV journeys taking so much more time.

I believe charging en-route is a wrong approach taken by car makers. They should have gone for battery exchanges at wayside facilities (added to petrol stations). Exchanging could be done in a few minutes. Mrs Lucan might have an EV next time as she only does short journeys and can charge on our driveway, but otherwise the appeal of EVs is limited as things stand.

* I guess the marketing people think the advantages of tracking you outweigh the disadvantages of friction in this case.

 

[miklcct]

Part of your issue is expecting it's realistic to do over 70 miles in a car with a quoted range of 70 miles.

Gotta say there's quite a few things that spring to mind here, OP.

I look online and can't find any reference to a 2015 Renault Zoe with a range of over 70 miles! Unfamiliar car, unfamiliar journey and cutting both timings and the range of the car very tight indeed....I'm sorry to say that most of the blame rests with yourself. If you were trying to cram all that into a day, it's also likely your driving wouldn't have been relaxed or efficient - reducing your range further.

I have looked online and the number I have got is 210 km (approx. 130 miles) - more than enough to get from Eastleigh to London, and possibly enough to get back as well! I didn't expect it would only last from Eastleigh to Guildford!

Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be the first time this has happened when you've travelled - admittedly by car this time rather than train. I'd like to respectfully suggest the following:
a) Not trying to cram what looks like two days' worth of stuff into a single day.
b) Learning from your earlier mistakes.
c) Research your journey before you travel!

There have been multiple attempts by posters on here to explain why things don't necessarily fit into your perception of how they should - but you still seem to be unhappy with that!

For example, I do travel by train on occasion (with a bus connection to contend with first) and always throw an extra hour or so into the travel time in the event of the bus links going haywire. I'll then use that time to grab breakfast or a coffee and just relax before catching what is usually a rather busy train at that time of day - or jump on an earlier and quieter stopper with said coffee and just enjoy the time travelling. No stress involved and plenty of time to rearrange plans if things go wrong!

It's absolutely unrealistic for me to put an hour in the schedule in my travel time. Even for my most important events, I generally put about 30 - 45 minutes before my scheduled start time, and this never failed me in my whole racing life in Hong Kong, as any problems on the transport network never cost me more than 20 minutes unless in the most extreme cases like a multiple-vehicle crash on a motorway. But just a few months I started racing in the UK, a failure-to-call caused a 100% delay repay resulting me having to call someone to drove me from the train station to the race venue when I scheduled a bus ride afterwards that could catch back some time.

Yesterday I was supposed to travel by train and had already collected my train tickets from the station, and only on Friday I could expect disruption across the network so I needed to find a way to continue my journey if the railway was blown out. I looked for coach possibility but there was none, and I looked for possibility for hiring a car and I found out that I could hire one at Eastleigh in case I could not continue my journey when I reached Southampton Airport so I did that. A similar case happened last October when the railway was blown out under a weather warning, but as on that day I was going to London direct so I could buy a coach ticket immediately and reached my destination without delay.

Car Club cars are primarily intended for nipping about the local area, hence they tend to be small hatchbacks (whether fossil fuel or EV) and range is unlikely to be a big issue. The cars live in specific parking spaces around the town/city, and presumably the EV ones have chargers.

For a journey like the OPs I would have been renting something via one of the traditional rental agencys.

I have no idea about how I can rent a car from a traditional rental agency last minute in the middle of the night on a weekend next to a train station. One of the advantage of using a car club is it operates 24/7 anywhere, with the disadvantage that I must return the car to the original parking location as each car is assigned a fixed location. A traditional rental agency can be good for a holiday, but it's never good as a last-minute replacement to failed public transport.

 

[Starmill]

It's absolutely unrealistic for me to put an hour in the schedule in my travel time. Even for my most important events, I generally put about 30 - 45 minutes before my scheduled start time, and this never failed me in my whole racing life in Hong Kong, as any problems on the transport network never cost me more than 20 minutes unless in the most extreme cases like a multiple-vehicle crash on a motorway. But just a few months I started racing in the UK, a failure-to-call caused a 100% delay repay resulting me having to call someone to drove me from the train station to the race venue when I scheduled a bus ride afterwards that could catch back some time.

Delays of more than 20 minutes in all transport networks are commonplace in the UK. Indeed, delays of one to two hours are rare, but absolutely not unheard of. Typically I might be delayed by two hours or more several times per year before the pandemic.

 

[miklcct]

Delays of more than 20 minutes in all transport networks are commonplace in the UK. Indeed, delays of one to two hours are rare, but absolutely not unheard of. Typically I might be delayed by two hours or more several times per year before the pandemic.

The most extreme case encountered for me was me being unable to get on 5 consecutive departures of a certain express bus route because they were all full (there was a parallel, lightly-used, non-express route, which ran every half an hour and 12 minutes slower than the express, while the popular express came on average every 7-8 minutes so I didn't board the slow route), causing me 40 minutes delay to arrive Shenzhen as planned to miss the ticketing deadline of a high-speed train from Futian to Shenzhen North (8 km) to connect to a sleeper from Shenzhen North to Beijing (mainland China trains work on an all-reservation model with only few exceptions, even including regional high-speed trains, mentioned above, with less than 45 minutes journey time for the whole trip - at that time the high speed train wasn't extended to Hong Kong yet and the online ticketing system couldn't be used without a mainland Chinese phone number which I didn't have one - it was only when the high speed train was extended to Hong Kong the ticketing system was made easier to use).

And the reason why I ran tight on time on that day was that I ran out the time limit of my previous competition (and hence I couldn't get a score), so I avoided using the most straight-forward routing which involved taking a bus through traffic congestion, but instead changed between multiple frequent buses running on motorways which were known not congested. I posted my experience on a forum and it caused 30+ pages of replies blaming why I didn't use other routings (including, e.g. routings which were known to be congested, routings which involved a half-hour wait for an infrequent bus route, circuitous routings wholly on the railway which were slower than using motorway buses, connections involving a 20-minute walk through the city centre without connecting transport - my practice was to always use the routing which produces the fastest planned time on the timetable when time runs tight).

And here, the transport network is so fragile that a blown railway can basically leave us with no practical option to get anywhere - this only happens in rural areas in Hong Kong where there is a single road to the outside world, although for extended disruption the government will procure emergency ferries - in urban areas there are always competing mode of transport, and councillors are concerned if network change will make the whole district over-reliant on a single mode! In developed regions of mainland China, there are always multiple parallel railway lines and a multitude of fast and slow coaches and buses to get around the region, but here such thing only exist in London (that people can easily rerouted around a closed railway line in London) despite the UK is a developed country!

 

[DelW]

I have no idea about how I can rent a car from a traditional rental agency last minute in the middle of the night on a weekend next to a train station. One of the advantage of using a car club is it operates 24/7 anywhere, with the disadvantage that I must return the car to the original parking location as each car is assigned a fixed location. A traditional rental agency can be good for a holiday, but it's never good as a last-minute replacement to failed public transport.

You might well have been able to get one from Southampton Airport itself - although it's one of the smaller airports, most have car hire desks which are geared up to business travellers arriving at unsocial hours and wanting to pick up a car for business visits.

I agree though that what's apparently easy with hindsight often isn't so when having to be arranged at short notice and outside normal working hours.