What car did you get?
Are you feeling better about the electric car now, Rachel? Even I didn’t find it hard to get used to. 
We were given a Renault Zoe - an electric car.
Excellent. Had one for five years until we changed it for a 5E.
Stuart does all the driving in this house so I can’t say but he said it wasn’t too bad. We just have to get used to it being a bit smaller than our Captur II so I will have to reduce my shopping trolley contents and go more often than usual.
I think the manager is being rather optimistic when he says to charge it after 200/250 km. Some friends of ours were given a small electric courtesy car which would not do anything like that amount of mileage on a full charge. Think 150km at most. Also, on a domestic socket the car may need a couple of days to get from empty to full although it isn’t supposed to take that long. So I would recommend just plugging the car in each time you arrive back home so that if you do need to use it again the following day you will be able to do so. The car will automatically stop charging when the battery is full, so there’s no need to worry about unplugging it until you need to use it again.
Keep in mind that the official mileage capabilities on a full charge are often obtained on a flat test track, at a constant optimum speed, with no goods, luggage, or passengers, a driver who weighs 9 stone soaking wet, and in dry daylight on a warm day when there is no need to use the lights, wipers, heater, or heated rear screen.
So, coming back to the real world, when you have two people in the car, 3 or 4 bags of shopping in the back, going uphill and down dale on windy country roads where you are constantly both braking and accelerating, on a cold wet day with heater, headlights, wipers, and heated rear window switched on, you’ll be lucky if it will go more than around 125km. The mere fact that the weather, and thus the battery, is cold will adversely affect the travel distance available. Therefore, each time you get home just plug it in, as you never know when you may have need to make a previously unforeseen longer journey.
Good luck. Our friends who had an all electric loan car will never accept another one.
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Well, that would apply to my 40kWh Leaf, which is a bigger & heavier car than a 41kWh Zoe, so not at all unrealistic, even in winter. We don’t know what battery size is being offered to the OP, & there are bigger capacity ZOEs out there.
That is simply not true. A ‘granny charger’ runs at about 2,3kW, therefore delivers 23kWh in 10 hours. Extrapolate that up to 40kWh & you get 17,4 hours, nowhere close to 2 or 3 days. OK, I’ve ignored the slowing down of charge as a battery nears full, but it’s minor on a slow charge.
Also, not many people are going to be charging from absolute zero.
Unlike ICE vehicles that is less of a range spoiler for EVs as due to re-gen braking they actually gain charge back on descents etc.
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I’ve just been told that if you have a Carrefour loyalty card you can have an hours free 11kw charge, every day, anyone know if this is genuine?
Yes its true. Most large Carrefours have a (one) free charging point or loyalty card holders
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Thanks Mark, I’ll pass that on to a friend that’s just bought a holiday home, they have an EV and a local Carrafour.
Apologies. I had omitted to do the math. (I will edit my previous post) I was going on anecdotal evidence from two friends who have had to use EVs where the ‘electric car’ rapidly became ‘that bloody thing’. One of the cars was an Ioniq where they just about made it home on Tuesday, plugged it in, and it was Thursday before it was fully charged. The other was a small Renault courtesy car (precise model unknown) that ran out of juice on the way back home from the garage where they had picked it up. Perhaps it wasn’t properly charged beforehand, but the end result was a recovery truck. Then a couple of days later, ‘the bloody thing’ having been plugged into a standard house socket during the interim period, they had to go to an appointment in a town about 60km away, and the car ran out of juice again on the way home. So another wait for a recovery truck. It just seems to me that what is supposed to happen, and what actually happens in real life, can be markedly different. Perhaps there is some special driving technique required in the same way that driving an automatic is different to driving a manual gearbox vehicle.
Definitely something wrong if it was plugged in for that length of time. Any EV should do that distance easily if plugged in for days. I only charge mine during the Tempo night hours on a granny charger and have never had this kind of problem.
Forgetting to plug it in on the other hand …
Perhaps the battery was just knackered. It was a courtesy car after all so I suppose anything is possible. The battery was indicated as being full when they set out but depleted at what my mate found to be a surprising rate. Now one could ask as to why they didn’t stop to charge it up, but that’s a bit of a problem when there are no charging points along your route across country. Having to go miles out of your way to find a possible charging point (that may or may not be working) isn’t always welcome.
Always a dangerous thing…
Did they not think to look at the range on the dash? …in the same way you’d look at a fuel gauge on an ICE car?
I don’t know how far the drive was, but I guess that would have almost certainly been the case. See previous comment though 
See my first comment. They clearly could have worked out that there would be range issue & saved a lot ot time & hassle by charging at their destination or en route, just enough to tide them over until they were back at their cheap home charging setup.
Nope, just the ability to read some figures & do some very basic maths.
Well, when the car has been plugged in for a day or two, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that you can go somewhere that’s 60km away and come home again. No doubt an EV aficionado would know better, and yes, they probably should have studied the dashboard more, but these are folks who are used to fueling their car once a fortnight. Clearly it is a problem for people who are accustomed to taking the shortest route, rather than a route that the car dictates.
That may be true but it should then just report lower range, rather than lying.
There is a possibility that your friends decided to ‘drive it like they stole it’ as EVs are great fun if you want to let rip but that will deplete the battery quicker (in the same way that an ICE will use more fuel if you cane it). Most EVs have an ECO setting that keeps extremes in check - mine certainly does but it still goes more than quickly enough.
The ‘guessometer’/indicated range will update depending on driving style/head or tail winds etc. If the previous user was a careful driver then the range they saw on collection was based on that & thus assumed that they could get home.
It’s clearly a whole different world. In their defense I would just say that when my ancient diesel is showing a quarter full, then it will go about 175km before running out of fuel. Ample for a 120km round trip.
Assumption is always dangerous. I’m guessing that the loan car was probably some early model, maybe with a 24kWh battery.
My 2015 E NV-200 van is only 24kWh & one does have to plan properly. Despite it telling me that it will do 128km on a 100% charge in the summer I would not try to do a 120km round trip without picking up some charge en route. As my daily drive for work the range was never an issue as I never wanted to go further than it’s return range would allow; too much time wasted travelling rather than wiring.
Having said that I’ve taken it from here in western Calvados to Somerset on several occasions.
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So would I Robert. It’s just easier and becomes a good habit 
. Also one never knows when one might need to do longer unplanned run, hospital, whatever, so better topped up than not
I think it’s more their Passcard charge/credit card than loyalty card, but Passcard users do certainly get an hour’s free charging. We’ve Passcards but we’ve never used the chargers. Though the number of chargers, low and higher speed ones (not eligible for the free hour), at our local Carrefour is impressive. Lidl have also had chargers in their car parks for ages.
And they’re very good value.