2 cars to 1 ZS EV - Hi from a potential new owner

[shikoku14]

Hi all,

first off great forum, I’ve been stalking it the past couple of days back reading threads and have enjoyed the good nature of the conversation.

Ive been driving EVs since 2018 and in that time I’ve had a 30kWh Kia Soul on a two year lease, a Nissan Leaf 24kWh that replaced our second car that I traded in for an e-Golf last September (at the time I was an original deposit holder for a ZS EV but was swayed by the deals on the Golf). However thanks to the lease running out on the Soul in April (should have ended in July but cancelled early due to COVID-19) I thought I’d still need two cars, a mate had a 10 year old BMW 320D Touring that had been parked up a fair few months after he’d got a company car that I got for buttons, but yeah 10 year old BMW Diesel is not really my scene, but it would do me a few months till we had a better steer on the virus and it’s implications, and work as an effective tip wagon (when the tip opened post lockdown)

Well for me and my wife the implications are we won’t be commuting 10 and 30 miles each way (in the opposite direction) into our offices in Leeds and Manchester for the considerable future, in fact I can see me full time working from home. So we don’t need two cars. Now I could just sell the BMW and not loose any money on what I paid my mate, but have to say as a single car the e-Golf has a few issues due to luggage capacity and 40kW charge speeds on CCS compared to the ZS if we want to do 150 mile+ round trips.

So as daft as this sounds i’m taking the wife (and 4 year old) for a test drive over the weekend and thanks to swappage and a pretty decent trade in offer on the e-Golf I could well be swapping into a ZS after all, it was 1 year since I had a very early test drive over at Chorley with Miles.

I’ll update on how the test drive goes, but if it’s as good as I recall (and less bongy than it was back then) I can see us going ahead with the deal. One thing I’ll get to try this time is MG Pilot which wasn’t working on the pre-production tester Chorley had last year.

 

[Mark Holmes]

Good luck and welcome to the forum. I use the MG pilot, but it took me time to get used too, from a confidence perspective, but seems to work well.

 

[shikoku14]

One thing I’ve been spoiled with in the e-Golf is the ACC (no LKAS) which made my commutes over the pennies on the M62 to and from Manchester a breeze, and it’s one of those things that once you’ve had it you don’t really want to go back to bog standard cruise. Having the additional safety systems in the MG should take that up a notch, although I’ve noted Mike Proctors extensive video on the various settings and will be testing it against the way the VW does ACC.

 

[BobsEV]

After the Comfort 2 update, MG Pilot works really well in my mind (apart from it not using regen when braking, but small thing I suppose in the grand scheme of things). The auto stop and start in traffic works good too (even if it still makes me nervous when in use...foot over the brake pedal in case!)

 

[Mark Holmes]

Agreed....I believe the Regen element is being looked at, sure I’ve seen this on one of the YouTube reviews along with battery heating..

 

[shikoku14]

I’ve just driven 50 miles to York with ACC on the golf and although I had mild regen on it barely got used. On Motorways apart from a few in West Yorkshire and Lancashire coasting will be more efficient that regenning. Where an update to MG Pilot will make a big difference is in <40mph traffic

 

[shikoku14]

And the deal is done, will be picking up a red Exclusive from the excellent Chorley Burnley dealership on 5 September. Had a really good test drive with the family, my four year olds Wow when he saw the sunroof was the longest one I’ve heard since Christmas Day!

I had a couple of niggles with getting carplay to work (this forum helped out while my wife drove and i was fiddling around under the centre console) and will need to get used to what you do to engage and disable ACC/MG Pilot, but that aside it was as good if not better than I remember, to be fair last August it was the pre-production model.
I’ll be spending the next four weeks absorbing as much info as possible before pickup.

 

[Happy Zappy]

Apple CarPlay was very intermittent for me to start with. Totally cured by using a genuine Apple cable.

 

[Nibloprice]

I had a couple of niggles with getting carplay to work (this forum helped out while my wife drove and i was fiddling around under the centre console) and will need to get used to what you do to engage and disable ACC/MG Pilot, but that aside it was as good if not better than I remember, to be fair last August it was the pre-production model.
I’ll be spending the next four weeks absorbing as much info as possible before pickup.

If you haven't found it already, the hole for the phone charging cable in the centre console is a nice little touch. Enjoy the car!

 

[KasEV]

@shikoku14
Hi and welcome to the group.
The ZS EV is an excellent car for build vs cost.
My main issue is with range. I think the range is low. For the type of car it is the Battery size should have been at least 52.5kWh. That said the price is OK and hence range acceptable.
With all the recent software updates in place it is proving quite popular.
If you use the motorways a lot, you will have to forward plan your journey in relation to charging. ZapMap is a help in this regard.
Remember also to make time for destination charging and use of free charging facilities. Welcome to the EV World where Charging is the Master and Range is the Bully.

 

[shikoku14]

Coming from a 32kWh (usable) e-Golf and previously having had 30kWh Soul and a 20 kWh (usable at 3 years old) Leaf the range is better than all of them (admittedly you are talking only 10-15% better versus the e-Golf on the motorway due to drag / size, although the Golf is 200kg heavier at 1700kg, VW must like their EVs on the Huskey side). What is better than all my previous EVs is the charge curve (I’ve been following Bjørns videos on the MG, especially his three parter 4000km trip to North Cape) if i go beyond the range of the car. Now yes public rapids can be a bit of a ? shoot if you use certain vendors (yes I’m talking about your mob Dale), but for a family car and given events in the world I’m not going to be doing many 200+ mile sojourns it makes a lot of sense.

 

[KasEV]

@shikoku14
I see you have caught the ZS EV bud alright. It is excellent as a family city car. My problem is that I strongly believe in charging once a week. In my personal opinion until we are all charging our EV's only once a week or less we will not be in the position to promote charging infrastructure or electricity capacity to support the mass switch over to EVs.
MG could have put massive production stress on Tesla if their battery for ZS EV was bigger.

 

[shikoku14]

@KasEV
Given my driving requirements I'm at the one charge per week stage with a 32kWh battery (and I imagine a lot of others are too). But I take your point you always want more, but there is the weight penalty of adding more cells so range increase is not linear to battery kWh added, but to play devils advocate (or the sneaky Toyota marketing spin defence as it may be called), there is a lot to be said for having say 4 smaller EVs v 2 large EVs on the road for the vast amount of people, smaller batteries are quicker to charge overnight and put the same amount of stress on the grid (but spread thinner, its unlikely all four would be on the same street), I would also advocate that the power operators / government mandate what Octopus offer to incentivise all EV drivers to mainly do their home charging outside the peak and flatten the demand curve for energy. With joined up thinking the move to more electric miles will also have a positive effect on power generation and storage (I look on with interest to Teslas battery day next month, 1m mile batteries would allow you to use your car for Vehicle to Home, coupled with home solar would create loads of mini grids and peaker plants out of peoples EVs).

 

[Frank]

You know guys, I can't understand the one charge a week thought. If you are lucky enough to have off road parking and a home charger, plug it in EVERY night once you are finished with the car whether you think it needs a charge or not. The only reason why I would think of not doing this if is I was concerned about local neds doing damage to the car or trying to nick the charging cable. It is always best in my opinion to start every morning with a full tank for the unexpected journey you never knew you had to make.

Regards

Frank

 

[shikoku14]

It is a joy of EV ownership that some people soon forgot and focus on the exceptions to regular travel patterns, the fact that you never have to plan for stopping off at a petrol station for the vast majority of your journeys is just bliss as it takes 30 seconds of your time to plug in when you park up and forgot about it. Especially if you used to run two ICE cars and had a partner who was expert at fuel chicken litterally I think my wife filled up the car around 3-4 times in the 8 years we had ICE cars (it was actually part of the reason I started looking into an EV to avoid having to stop at a petrol station on a cold dark morning because she'd managed to leave me with the light on). Funilly enough that light would have been good for 50 miles, its shows how your psychology changes based on the amount of available range. In an EV I'd be starting to get worried at 10 miles

 

[Kithmo]

You know guys, I can't understand the one charge a week thought. If you are lucky enough to have off road parking and a home charger, plug it in EVERY night once you are finished with the car whether you think it needs a charge or not. The only reason why I would think of not doing this if is I was concerned about local neds doing damage to the car or trying to nick the charging cable. It is always best in my opinion to start every morning with a full tank for the unexpected journey you never knew you had to make.

Regards

Frank

Agreed, if you do a fair amount of miles a day, but a bit of a faff when you only do about 8 miles every other day like me, I still have 82 miles on the GOM from my last top up charge nearly 3 weeks ago.
I also have a Prius sat on the drive with 3/4 tank of petrol in it in case I need to go on an (unlikely for me) unexpected journey.
To me, plugging the charger in more often is more wear on the plug, socket, charge door hinges/catch and the (dodgy) locking pin.
Also IIRC, I think I read somewhere that rechargeable batteries of all kinds have a finite number of times they can be charged recharged, but I don't know if that means flat to full or includes top ups so it might be a mute point.

 

[KasEV]

OK Folks, the once a week charge issue does not affect me personally but I am told that most young independent adult people who are the people we should be getting into EVs won't get into one because they do not have personal off road parking and do not have a lifestyle that lends itself to daily top up charging. Same applies to low income households.
The once a week issue is not one of convenience. It is actually a complex issue of cost and human behaviour.
One can not really equate it to buying petrol as such. To do so in a very crude manner, you have to imagine what will happen if petrol prices during peak day time hours was 3-4 times above the base value and at night petrol becomes 4 times cheaper than base value. Most low income families will then be forced to wake up at night to go and buy petrol. Now just imagine such a situation worsens to the extent that the period when affordable petrol is available to the lowest paid now shrinks to 3 hours at night. Unless the lowest paid are able to tank up once weekly they will now live in perpetual sleep deprivation. This is a crude comparison.
The current modeling of what will happen to electricity pricing and consumption patterns and human behaviour, housing and infrastructure in the future make one weekly charging and a 350 to 500 mile battery capacity almost mandatory.