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I've had a rough time with the last two EVs I've owned. I bought a Honda e in 2020 because of its retro-future charm, but ended up being disappointed by several
by M0r13n 7mo ago
I've had a rough time with the last two EVs I've owned. I bought a Honda e in 2020 because of its retro-future charm, but ended up being disappointed by several things:
- the range was miserable
- the software quality was bad
- no OTA updates ever (despite Honda's promises)
- slow charging
- poor public charging infrastructure in Germany
I should have known that a 35 kW battery wouldn't deliver great range or charging speed. But I didn't fully appreciate how limiting it would be.
Last year, I bought a new Mini Cooper e. Larger battery. Better software. BMW's quality actually delivered this time. The car feels objectively nice. The software is polished. There are updates. Few bugs. But the range still leaves something to be desired. In summer it's okay. During winter 30-40% of the range just melts away.
Public charging in Northern Germany still sucks:
- too few public chargers
- chargers are often broken or out of service
- pricing is intransparent
Municipal utility companies ("Stadtwerke") seem especially bad at maintaining their charger fleets. Every second charger that I want to use is out of service. The one next to my apartment has been labeled as "defective" for a couple of weeks now. Nobody seems to care...
I still like (love during summer) my car. It's a cool car. It feels luxurious. It's comfortable. It's fun to tear around corners. It's still compact enough to maneuver through the city. And it looks cool. But it also costs 40-50k EUR and only has limited range. And public charging really needs to improve.
- colechristensen 7mo agoBasically there's an adoption curve. "Western carmakers retreat" is showing they pushed ahead of the curve and got bitten so they're correcting. THIS is where public subsidies makes the difference, finding and spending the way out of the pain points to make the adoption curve steeper.
- speedgoose 7mo agoThe Mini Cooper E, the one adapted from the i3 platform from 2013 but without the nice parts of the i3 such as the light carbon fiber monocoque, the aluminium frame, and the rear wheel engine and rear wheel drive?
- anarticle 7mo agoProbably the J01 SE, an electric model not available in the US due to tariffs, but available everywhere else.
- M0r13n 7mo agoyes!
- speedgoose 7mo agoOh I see. It sells extremely poorly in Norway. Looking at the specs, I could guess why.
- pshirshov 7mo ago> poor public charging infrastructure in Germany Dunno, had a trip through it last year, there are more than enough chargers. Some of them were literally free. I have 70kWh battery though. Also, I paid much less than 40k for my chinese SUV. The software is buggy though, a random reboot on motorway doesn't feel nice.
- M0r13n 7mo agoIt depends where you are. I live in a somewhat rural area in Northern Germany. There are some chargers, but many of them are out of service like the one next door. I've never stumbled upon a free charger though.
- beAbU 7mo agoDo you not charge at home? I charge at home 99% of the time. I only really need the public infra when I'm going to the big city, or when going on a roadtrip. I charge with the granny charger at home.
- thirdsun 6mo agoNot OP but chances are they are renting (like a large part of germany's population are) and therefore don't have the option of installing a wallbox.
- BobaFloutist 7mo agoDoes the random reboot affect the motor, lights, defogger, signals, anything else absolutely essential to driving? Don't get me wrong, I'd be annoyed and unsettled if the sound system or gps or whatever rebooted while I was driving, I'm just curious just how dire it is
- sjducb 7mo agoIt’s just the Android bit that reboots, so maps and music. The rest of the car drives fine.
- 7mo ago
- garyfirestorm 7mo agoInversely I leased a Fiat 500e for a year in Detroit Michigan and had no issues with range ~130 miles. I would plug it in nightly as I had a level 2 charger installed at my house. The experiment was quite successful. I just didn’t like front wheel drive on somedays with heavy snow. I used it for commuting to work, buying groceries and visiting friends nearby. It met my needs and I feel a slightly bigger car with 4 doors and 200-250 mile range should be sufficient for most of the people (assuming it is affordable)
- M0r13n 7mo agoSadly, I don't own a wall box. So I'm dependent on public infrastructure. If I could charge at home I'd be even happier with my car.
- foobarian 7mo agoSadly I think it's kind of accepted by this point that overnight charging is a prerequisite to a good experience with an EV.
- overfeed 7mo agoIt's not a prerequisite: I see lots of people plugging their cars at public chargers in my residential area; I assume they charge once a week while doing groceries or dining out.
- beAbU 7mo agoPublic charging can easily be 2x or 3x as expensive.
- masklinn 7mo agoAnd being in your car doing nothing waiting for the charge for 25mn is frustrating. Even more so when it’s the height of summer (and that was in a car where the AC didn’t block charging). If you can time it with some errands it’s less of a hassle, but that was one of the main non-car annoyances with my EV rental (the other was the flakiness / unreliability of getting a charging session to start).
- dangus 7mo agoI hate to say it, but doesn't a lot of this have to do with your poor choice of vehicles? You bought a 35kW battery-equipped EV and replaced it with an EV with a 32.6kW battery. What did you expect? I don't see poor software as a problem that's related to the powertrain. My ICE vehicle from 2016 has poor software that never gets updates. You overspent on a Mini because Minis are overpriced vehicles. On mobile.de I see a used VW ID3 (82 kW (Pro S)) with 60000 km miles on it listed for 22000 euros. I see a Kia EV6 GT-line with 18000km (77 kW) for 33000 euros. I totally understand the issues with broken and insufficient chargers, as we have that same issue in the USA, but that's why you maybe avoid getting the kind of vehicle that has some of the smallest battery on the market if you need that range.
- M0r13n 7mo agoI agree. Though I replaced it with a car with a capacity of 40 kW and better overall efficiency. You're right, however, that I could have bought a used VW ID.3 or similar. But I can't stand how these cars look or feel. I'm also not complaining. I really like my car. I just wanted to share my experience :)
- oompydoompy74 7mo agoMight I suggest choosing an EV that has more range?
- padjo 7mo agoYou're making me very happy with my decision in 2021 to resist the appealing design of the Honda and buy an id3 with a reasonably sized battery. Also your in winter are you running the heater constantly? I find just dressing for outdoors, leaving the heater off and using heated seats/wheel means I only lose maybe 15% range.
- M0r13n 7mo ago> Also your in winter are you running the heater constantly? Nope. But last winter it got really cold (< -10°C). Also the Honda was aggressively heating the battery
- themafia 7mo ago> are you running the heater constantly? Something every car prior to this has been able to do without any impact on performance. > means I only lose maybe 15% range. Which could be a reasonable sacrifice if you choose to make it. It's certainly not included in the marketing for these vehicles.
- wongarsu 7mo agoRunning a heater is easier the less efficient your engine is, because there's more waste heat to work with. ICEs have the clear advantage there
- 1718627440 7mo agoIf the energy is used for something intended (e.g. hot air) than it is not inefficient.
- Marsymars 7mo agoThat's not really the context of the comment though. The point is just that an EV turns ~80% of its fuel energy into motion (with the rest as heat) and an ICE turns about ~30% of its fuel energy into motion (with the rest as heat). If you need heat, an EV needs to turn more of its fuel energy into heat, while an ICE can just repurpose what was otherwise being dumped.
- sigio 7mo agoPublic AC charging in Germany isn't great, but DC/Fast charging is quite good. I traverse the entire country with a Kia Nero EV, and that's not really a problem using either EnBW, Tesla or Ionity chargers. Besides these networks there are enough others with mostly nation-wide coverage (but not as cheap as these). (EnBW and Ionity for 39ct/kwh, tesla for a bit more or less, depending on time and location)
- inglor_cz 7mo agoOne of the interesting trends in my life (I am 47 now) is the slow collapse of the "in Germany, things WORK!" concept. It used to be actually true in the 1990s, but right now, I definitely expect better public services in Poland than in DE.
- notrealyme123 7mo agoSounds Bad in the north. In the south I have a charger max 10 min away in every direction. And 300kw charger are also the norm for long distance charging. I was surprised to see that even some Aral gas stations removed some of their pumps and replaced them with high speed chargers around here.
- Asmod4n 7mo agoSeams to be a non issue in the south, I can charge near my house, everywhere I have to do something and at work. Aka, every super market has at least one charger. Most parking spaces have 2-3 chargers. From various vendors. Some even for less money then you can get for your own house per kWh. I also had no issues in the north east so far or in north rein westfalia. Chargers usually don’t break but get shut down when the grid can’t handle their load currently.
- PearlRiver 7mo agoGermany is a car country. They live in the cult of ICE. It seems to me that the less people give a shit about cars the more likely they are to embrace EV.
- silon42 7mo agoOr maybe there aren't good EVs... however, ICEs are becoming worse, so the crossover might be happening eventually.
- giardini 7mo agoTwo bad purchases from normally high-quality companies and you're still good to go for more! Amazing!
- georgefrowny 7mo agoI really don't know why EVs necessitate a new software platform. Car makers are shit at software. Actually nearly everyone is shit at software. I know they want to turn their cars into mobile subscription-based analytics platforms for the money but combining it with the concept of the drivetrain power supply is just unnecessary and it's actually potentially lethal for the future company. Yes it's a nice try to bamboozle people into thinking that it's normal and actually somehow necessary for a car to be a wheeled iPad when it's electric, but that only works if the iPad side actually works. When people see you your EVs are a bug ridden mess and say no thank you, they're not rejecting your electric cars because they're electric. The answer isn't to retreat from electric and then excrete the same shitty software from the shelved EVs into the legacy ICE models. Now you just made people annoyed by the remaining cars that you do sell.
- silon42 7mo agoYeah, I don't want OTA or "software"... Just make it simple and make it work. For everything complicated that needs"fixing" there's a phone.
- tetris11 7mo agoYou buy a car, and it lasts maybe 10 years, and then you sell it on to someone else and they drive it for maybe another 10 years. Updates should not be neccesary. An update can affect the resale value of my car by downclocking it "for safety"
- ndsipa_pomu 7mo agoIf the manufacturer downclocks your car for safety, can't you sue them for the loss of value? Surely they're admitting that they sold you an unsafe vehicle.
- tetris11 7mo agoSee Google and the Pixel4 battery debacle. In theory if you bought your phone from one of their vendors you could get your cash back. In practice, the phone was old enough to have already been resold and there's no way you could claim that rebate