peteg
Standard Member
Sadly, we have decided to sell our ZS Trophy Long Range that we bought new in June this year. Mostly happy with the car itself, but the issue for us has proved to be charging away from home. Most of the time we have been charging at home without any problem and if we were able to do that all the time there wouldn't be any issue. In recent weeks however we've had a number of occasions away from home where we have needed to charge at public charging points. One issue has been lack of availability - in some of the areas we've been there just have not been very many. Another issue has been that quite a high proportion of those we have tried have been out of action.
We live in a semi rural area in Scotland and bad weather in recent weeks has caused diversions due to roads and bridges being closed, meaning longer journeys and unexpected need for charging away from home. Other times we have been out for the day and have unexpectedly had to drive somewhere else, making for a longer journey. Another issue in the past couple of weeks has been the drop in battery efficiency due to the cold. When we bought the car in the summer a 100% charge gave about 270 miles range. One cold day last week when the temperature was just below 0 Celsius (and we would expect colder temperatures over the winter) I charged to 100% and had a stated range of less than 180 miles. I knew from simple physics that battery efficiency drops in colder temperatures but that's a significant loss.
I'm disappointed to be selling as I was very keen to make the switch to electric but in many ways it hasn't worked for us. If we lived in a city and used the car mainly for short journeys it would be different, but we have needed on occasion recently to use our other car, a diesel, and it seems an extravagance to keep an electric car if it can't be used almost all the time.
I have no doubt that we will be back to an electric car in the future, by which time our personal circumstances will probably mean less long journeys. Hopefully also, public charging infrastructure will be both more plentiful and more reliable. If not, the 2030 target seems even less likely!
P.S. On the plus side, we have agreed a deal for another car (sorry, another diesel!) and are losing very little on what we paid for the car new. Very different from "normal" times, where if you sold a new car after less than 6 months you would have lost a lot more.
We live in a semi rural area in Scotland and bad weather in recent weeks has caused diversions due to roads and bridges being closed, meaning longer journeys and unexpected need for charging away from home. Other times we have been out for the day and have unexpectedly had to drive somewhere else, making for a longer journey. Another issue in the past couple of weeks has been the drop in battery efficiency due to the cold. When we bought the car in the summer a 100% charge gave about 270 miles range. One cold day last week when the temperature was just below 0 Celsius (and we would expect colder temperatures over the winter) I charged to 100% and had a stated range of less than 180 miles. I knew from simple physics that battery efficiency drops in colder temperatures but that's a significant loss.
I'm disappointed to be selling as I was very keen to make the switch to electric but in many ways it hasn't worked for us. If we lived in a city and used the car mainly for short journeys it would be different, but we have needed on occasion recently to use our other car, a diesel, and it seems an extravagance to keep an electric car if it can't be used almost all the time.
I have no doubt that we will be back to an electric car in the future, by which time our personal circumstances will probably mean less long journeys. Hopefully also, public charging infrastructure will be both more plentiful and more reliable. If not, the 2030 target seems even less likely!
P.S. On the plus side, we have agreed a deal for another car (sorry, another diesel!) and are losing very little on what we paid for the car new. Very different from "normal" times, where if you sold a new car after less than 6 months you would have lost a lot more.
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