Lets go back, back in time
Sometime during lockdown I started watching Fully Charged videos on YouTube. It is a long establish (14 years ago) channel all about electric cars which is presented by Robert Llewelyn who was Kryten in Red Dwarf and also presented Scrap Heap Challenge. His daft humour appeals to me, and it is also quite nerdy, like I am.
https://www.youtube.com/@fullychargedshow/videos
I have watched hundreds of videos about electric cars (and trucks and bikes), the videos are usually amusing and informative. The combination of engineering, technology and sustainability made me interested in electric cars, which I never have been before. Mostly for the last 45 years they have been machines to get me from place to place, and driving is a bit of a necessary chore.
Almost always the Fully Charged channel has reviewed new cars, and the cheapest of those cost more than £25,000. I suppose I could pay that, but I just don’t want to.
Then I saw a video, sometime in June 2024 I think, which was about the second-hand price of EVs, and I thought “maybe I can afford that!” A quick look at my bank balance confirmed that I could, and all of a sudden I was looking for a new car!
But of course I had to get the agreement of my wife, Julie. She has seen me watching car videos for years, and has watched a few herself. So she is well aware of my interest in the technology. When I worked for the BBC my job title was “Lead Technologist”. I wasn’t some type of heavy metal worker, I worked with IT and broadcast technology, so I have always been interested in gadgets, especially those which are good for the environment and sustainability. I have long believed that Global Warming is an existential threat to humanity and that I should do what I can to mitigate that threat. So driving a car that doesn’t burn fossil fuels was something I seriously wanted to do. About 5 years ago I decided my next car would be electric, but the time had to be right.
Should I go Hybrid?
The Toyota Prius hybrid car has been around since 2000, and most of the mini-cab drivers in London drive them, so they are a very familiar sight and sound when they hum past on their electric motors.
I did consider buying one as a step towards a fully electric vehicle. But IMHO they are not a good choice. They have both an internal combustion engine and an electric motor, so they have double the complexity. An internal combustion engine (ICE) can has about 2,000 moving parts, whereas an electric vehicle has about 20.
https://www.drive-electric.co.uk/guides/general/how-do-electric-cars-work/
Think about how many parts there are in a conventional motor, all those pistons, valves, con rods, belts and cam shaft whizzing around incredibly fast lubricated by oil. An EV motor has a single moving part, the Rotor. They are 100 times less complex, and there is so much less to wear out and be maintained. There is no need to put engine oil into an EV.
So I waited until I could get the EV that I wanted, when the time was right for me.
The Time is Right
Julie agreed almost immediately that I/we should by an EV – which was nice. I had wittered on long enough for her to understand the benefits of electric cars, and she thought I should just just put my money where my mouth is and get on with it. So next I only had to choose the car I wanted out of of dozens of possible models.
I looked at more YouTube videos, including Fully Charged, Car Wow, Electrify and EV Man. I particularly enjoyed and appreciated EV Man because he is a plain speaking Yorkshireman who explains things about EVs very clearly and simply.
https://www.youtube.com/@ElectricVehicleMan
Since 2022 I have been to three Fully Charged motor shows at Farnborough and Excel. I have driven two EVs, a Nissan Leaf and an MG5, neither of which particularly impressed me. Besides the new price of these cars was too much for me (i’m “careful” with my money). But at the Excel (an exhibition centre in Londons Docklands) EV show in March 2024 I came across a second hand EV garage who had a stand, called Arnold Clarke. They are a big car dealer, which has a dedicated EV garage in Sydenham in South London.
On June 24th we made a train journey across South London to Sydenham. The last time was there was about 40 years for a curry, when I was completely mystified by the names of all the dishes and had to rely on my mate to help me choose something to eat.
A very nice guy called James gave me two test drives in a Hyundai Kona and an MG4. I was more impressed by the Kona, because the higher seating position was more like I was used to in my Nissan Qashqai. I’m quite a big fella, and like a (modest) SUV style car. Arnold Clarke only had higher milage cars that were black, white or grey, not colours we wanted. We have had a silver grey Qashqai since 2016, and wanted something different. The salesman explained to me that the Hyundai Kona is the same car as a Kia e-Niro, there are just differences in styling. Hyundai actually own Kia. I gave the salesman my details, and promised to keep in touch, just like a holiday romance.
We did have another showroom outing to an MG showroom, but the traffic was so bad a test drive was not practical, and the sales woman reminded me of a vampire in a Hammer horror film. It was an omen.
Choosing the Car
After further research and lots of umming and aahing I decided on my purchase criteria:
Less than 4 years old
A 64 KwH battery
Average Milage
NOT grey, silver, black or white
With the Kia warranty
Less than £18,000
So I kept looking on Autotrader and other websites and filtered the results from what I wanted.
The only way to be certain to get the Kia warranty was to buy from a Kia dealership. On June 29th I was perusing Kia Approved Used Car site and up came the car I was after, a 3 year old e-Niro with 21,000 on the clock in Yacht Blue. I rang the sales lady at Snows in Guildford and arranged to see it the same afternoon.
We drove over to Guildford and (accompanied by the sales lady) I took the car “out for a spin”. Dear Reader, I was smitten. It drove like a dream, accelerated like a sports car and I fell in love. We made a deal the same afternoon and I even knocked her down £200, which made me feel very manly and in charge.
Julie was especially pleased with the Yacht Blue, which is pretty much the same colour as my neighbours Tesla Model 3.
Getting Started
My first outing was almost back to Guildford to take my mates on an outing to Brooklands Museum. I failed to start the car by forgetting to put my foot on the brake first, and flapped about a bit until I figured out the error of my ways. That was embarrassing. Once we arrived my mates disagreed with the Sat Nav, and we drove around Weybridge a bit until we found the Museum behind Mercedes World.
The first long trip with Julie was down to Bridport in Dorset for a couple of days. In a very rainy car park in Dorchester I charged the car up on a public charger for a first time. It was like a first date, and after a bit of a fumble the power lead was fully engaged and the digital clock was ticking up. So we walked up and down Dorchester high street in the rain, there ain’t a lot to see. The car behaved beautifully during the trip and we both enjoyed driving and learning all the systems.
Do you remember 10 or 12 years ago when you first got a smart phone and you thought WTF, how do I make this thing work? An EV is like a big smart phone on wheels which can go very fast and has a gigantic battery that weighs 327 kilos.
There are both a touch screen and a plethora of buttons to learn about. There are alien concepts to master, like Kilowatts (kW) and Kilowatt Hours (kWh). There is estimated range on the display which drops as soon as I put the air conditioning on or put my foot down. It does accelerate like the proverbial shit off a shiny shovel, but with great speed comes great battery depletion.
Getting a Charger Installed
Because I have off-street parking, I wanted my own charger. Thats adds more complexity to ownership. I’m already a customer of Octopus, and they have a tariff called Intelligent Go, which will charge ones car overnight for 7p per kWh. A high speed charger in a service station can cost up to 75p per kWh, and a slow charger on a lamp post can cost 40p per kWh and take ages.
Octopus would install an Ohme charger for £1000, but i would have to give them all my payment details before they would tell me when they would install it. No Thanks Mr Octopus. So Julie engaged a local electrician called Charles to install it for us, which he did very well for £200 less than Octopus. Its a neat little box with a 5 metre cable looped on a hook on the wall.
EV Apps: Intro the Electroverse
When I got my Mini in the early 80’s, I needed an ignition key to make the car go. Now I need a my pocket computer/smartphone and at least 3 apps!
The Kia Connect app lets me do loads of things remotely, including setting the parameters for charging it up. I can set the charging limit so it stops at 80% if I want to. I can lock or unlock the car from my phone, which is quite handy if I forget to lock it and I’m sat comfortably on my sofa and can’t be arsed to go outside.
The Ohme app is needed to make the charger work and it is magically “married” to my Intelligent Go electricity tariff. So I can plug the charge in a 8pm, but it won’t start charging on cheap leccy until 11.30 and then it stops at 05.30. It costs just a few pounds to charge the car overnight because windmills are still turning and not many people are watching EastEnders or making their dinner. So the home charger electricity is cheap, but it cost £800 to install – swings and roundabouts. I also have the considerable convenience of not having to find an available charger and hang around until its done.
The Zap Map app is very useful on long journeys away from home to show me where chargers are along the road, whether they are available and how much they charge.
So you need to be a Technophile to successfully run an EV, its quite a steep learning curve. I have watched several of EV Man’s videos to understand how it all works. If you have ever started using an Apple computer after using Windows for 30 years, you will understand how it feels.
Is the Honeymoon Over?
We brought the baby home on 8th July, almost 2 months ago, and I’m still excited by it. In fact I washed the car yesterday for the third time, I’m that much in love. It’s just so damned nice to drive. There are no gears to worry about. It has Autohold, so when I stop, it just puts on the hand brake for me. It has the best “entertainment” system I have ever owned, with a digital radio and perfect bluetooth pairing. If I drift into another lane on the motorway it will chide me with bleeps and vibrate the steering wheel. It feels much easier and less tiring to drive than a regular car.
But what about the dreaded Range Anxiety I hear you ask ? On a long journey to Nottinghamshire I had a couple of sweaty-palm moments, but I overcame them and learned some lessons for the future, which I will cover in another post
So after about 4 years of thinking about it, I have bought an EV and I’m very pleased with it. The Kia e-Niro isn’t sporty or particularly cool looking, but it does everything I want very comfortably.
But how much did it cost? I got it for about half the new price in June 2021, so you can work that out for yourself. I am very,very pleased with my new Electric Vehicle.
timharnesstravels 