Ever run out of charge?
Discussion
I haven't but up here in NW Scotland people do, and it's a PITA for them. Usually means getting AA or RAC out with fast charger to get them to a charger.
The problem is, very few chargers here, and some of them are bust ..and there are 10,000 mlles of roads in the Highlands!
I have a hybrid, so running out of juice is never a stress for me. Charged every night, I generally never need petrol, but when I do, it's there.
For the first time I'm looking for a 2024 EV only car, but only as it says 435 miles per charge (I know it won't do that), but that is starting to get do-able.
The problem is, very few chargers here, and some of them are bust ..and there are 10,000 mlles of roads in the Highlands!
I have a hybrid, so running out of juice is never a stress for me. Charged every night, I generally never need petrol, but when I do, it's there.
For the first time I'm looking for a 2024 EV only car, but only as it says 435 miles per charge (I know it won't do that), but that is starting to get do-able.
Never ran out of charge either. i3 REX though, so a quick fuel stop and I am back on the road again!
Daughter managed to 'forget' to plug it in and got it down to 2% one time - the REX is good, but re-charging the battery from the engine isnt something that it was designed to do. Drive it carefully and slowly and it will slowly re-charge the battery, but its really designed to hold the charge state. So she managed to get it down to 2% and 5 miles range left on the REX - that was cutting it fine! Filled up with petrol and charged it and all good.
Daughter managed to 'forget' to plug it in and got it down to 2% one time - the REX is good, but re-charging the battery from the engine isnt something that it was designed to do. Drive it carefully and slowly and it will slowly re-charge the battery, but its really designed to hold the charge state. So she managed to get it down to 2% and 5 miles range left on the REX - that was cutting it fine! Filled up with petrol and charged it and all good.
My old manager did last year, thought he had enough range to get home from Costco in his Jag iPace 400 but ran out around the corner from setting off. He apparently asked Mercedes if he could use their chargers as he "broke down" outside their dealership.
I took it with a heap of salt as he was known to chat absolute rubbish
I took it with a heap of salt as he was known to chat absolute rubbish
Was on 0% on the way to Le Mans last year for 5+ miles after I took a wrong turn and had to go to the next junction and back on the Autoroute. Made it to the Supercharger though. I'm a fraction more conservative with my arrival buffers now but on road trips I regularly let it get to 3-4% before hitting the Supercharger.
No but its coincidental that I just got back from a journey with 1 mile showing (e-tron) which is probably cutting it a bit fine.
We were actually in “negative” territory at one point but after climbing and as predicted we managed to claw that back upon descending. The wife was getting a bit upset about it.
We were actually in “negative” territory at one point but after climbing and as predicted we managed to claw that back upon descending. The wife was getting a bit upset about it.
I've stretched it a couple of times out of laziness about stopping for a five-ten minute bump charge...
But only when I knew I'd be basically at home, if not actually making it all the way to my drive
I don't really understand how anyone can run out without fully expecting it. I ran out of petrol a couple of times in 20 years of driving, but that was ages ago when cars didn't give a warning as such, at most a little light would come on that was easily ignored.
In an EV... You can't not be aware. The car goes into low power mode if you even get close so it feels different to drive, warning messages pop up, the sat nab throws up charger locations and so on. You'd have to be asleep at the wheel to not be very much aware you're running out of juice.
If I was ever seriously low and really couldn't find a charger that I could use, I'd like to think I have the intelligence and negotiating skills required to locate and beg/pay for use of any 13a socket via the granny charger that all EV's are supplied with. I certainly wouldn't crawl on until the car stopped in the middle of nowhere with a befuddled look upon my face
But only when I knew I'd be basically at home, if not actually making it all the way to my drive
I don't really understand how anyone can run out without fully expecting it. I ran out of petrol a couple of times in 20 years of driving, but that was ages ago when cars didn't give a warning as such, at most a little light would come on that was easily ignored.
In an EV... You can't not be aware. The car goes into low power mode if you even get close so it feels different to drive, warning messages pop up, the sat nab throws up charger locations and so on. You'd have to be asleep at the wheel to not be very much aware you're running out of juice.
If I was ever seriously low and really couldn't find a charger that I could use, I'd like to think I have the intelligence and negotiating skills required to locate and beg/pay for use of any 13a socket via the granny charger that all EV's are supplied with. I certainly wouldn't crawl on until the car stopped in the middle of nowhere with a befuddled look upon my face
I almost did. I got down to 2 miles range.
I had a Polestar as a rental. It was dropped off with 220 miles remaining, which was good as I only had about 150 miles to do, with a charger at the hotel I was staying in that I planned to recharge at that night. What I didn't consider was that 220 miles is the best case range, not typical range. It started raining. The car started misting up, so I put the demisters on (possibly onto AUTO, I don't quite recall the HMI). I was on the motorway, so I was keeping at around 70mph. 99% of the journey was motorway so nice and predictable. I was chatting away to my colleague, not keeping an eye on the range gauge. After all I left with 220 miles of range to do a 150 mile journey, why would I have range anxiety?
About 30 miles from my hotel the "you've got 30 miles, d
head. Find a charger" message popped up. Ah. So I thought about why the battery was running down so quickly, turned the demisters to full OFF and tucked in behind an HGV at 53mph. I got to the hotel with about 10 miles to spare, drove up to the charger section and... all of them were broken. I had work to do, I didn't have time to drive to some other charger and babysit the car for an hour. Knowing that there were chargers at the place I was visiting the next morning, I nursed the car there and pulled into a charging bay with 2 miles range remaining. Fortunately that charger worked... But as the Polestar can only ac charge at 11kW I only got to about 40% battery before leaving and had to DC fast charge at a motorway services. This took an hour... Most of which was waiting for a charger to become available.
I told the story to a colleague, who it turned out had been in the same situation and ran out of charge about 2 miles from a charger. Flatbed truck the remaining 2 miles and then 11kW to get things started followed by a trip to a service station.
Unless you use your EV for local journeys where you are never beyond the range from your own charger, EV driving definitely requires more planning and carries greater risk when the plans don't work out. If you have nothing else to do you could get to the hotel, find the broken chargers and then drive a couple of miles to the next charger. But, you simply can't do that when you have meetings planned, and you simply don't want to do that if you have leisure plans.
I had a Polestar as a rental. It was dropped off with 220 miles remaining, which was good as I only had about 150 miles to do, with a charger at the hotel I was staying in that I planned to recharge at that night. What I didn't consider was that 220 miles is the best case range, not typical range. It started raining. The car started misting up, so I put the demisters on (possibly onto AUTO, I don't quite recall the HMI). I was on the motorway, so I was keeping at around 70mph. 99% of the journey was motorway so nice and predictable. I was chatting away to my colleague, not keeping an eye on the range gauge. After all I left with 220 miles of range to do a 150 mile journey, why would I have range anxiety?
About 30 miles from my hotel the "you've got 30 miles, d
head. Find a charger" message popped up. Ah. So I thought about why the battery was running down so quickly, turned the demisters to full OFF and tucked in behind an HGV at 53mph. I got to the hotel with about 10 miles to spare, drove up to the charger section and... all of them were broken. I had work to do, I didn't have time to drive to some other charger and babysit the car for an hour. Knowing that there were chargers at the place I was visiting the next morning, I nursed the car there and pulled into a charging bay with 2 miles range remaining. Fortunately that charger worked... But as the Polestar can only ac charge at 11kW I only got to about 40% battery before leaving and had to DC fast charge at a motorway services. This took an hour... Most of which was waiting for a charger to become available. I told the story to a colleague, who it turned out had been in the same situation and ran out of charge about 2 miles from a charger. Flatbed truck the remaining 2 miles and then 11kW to get things started followed by a trip to a service station.
Unless you use your EV for local journeys where you are never beyond the range from your own charger, EV driving definitely requires more planning and carries greater risk when the plans don't work out. If you have nothing else to do you could get to the hotel, find the broken chargers and then drive a couple of miles to the next charger. But, you simply can't do that when you have meetings planned, and you simply don't want to do that if you have leisure plans.
TheDeuce said:
I don't really understand how anyone can run out without fully expecting it.
You would have to ignore warnings to fully run out, however I suspect that most people running out of charge do so because the range when they set out was significantly greater than the journey they intended to do, then the car used more energy than it thought it would need to. Maybe because it assumes you'll drive at 53mph, maybe because it is optimistic about the weather. I've heard anecdotes of similar situations to mine when people have used an unfamiliar EV in winter. Maybe the batteries are cold, maybe it's the heating. But the car should be allowing for use of the heater when it's 10 degrees, and should know how its batteries are affected by the cold too.
TheDeuce said:
I've stretched it a couple of times out of laziness about stopping for a five-ten minute bump charge...
But only when I knew I'd be basically at home, if not actually making it all the way to my drive
I don't really understand how anyone can run out without fully expecting it. I ran out of petrol a couple of times in 20 years of driving, but that was ages ago when cars didn't give a warning as such, at most a little light would come on that was easily ignored.
In an EV... You can't not be aware. The car goes into low power mode if you even get close so it feels different to drive, warning messages pop up, the sat nab throws up charger locations and so on. You'd have to be asleep at the wheel to not be very much aware you're running out of juice.
If I was ever seriously low and really couldn't find a charger that I could use, I'd like to think I have the intelligence and negotiating skills required to locate and beg/pay for use of any 13a socket via the granny charger that all EV's are supplied with. I certainly wouldn't crawl on until the car stopped in the middle of nowhere with a befuddled look upon my face
Whilst I agree with the rest of your post. Not all EVs come with a 3pin charger. We have two and neither of those did. But only when I knew I'd be basically at home, if not actually making it all the way to my drive
I don't really understand how anyone can run out without fully expecting it. I ran out of petrol a couple of times in 20 years of driving, but that was ages ago when cars didn't give a warning as such, at most a little light would come on that was easily ignored.
In an EV... You can't not be aware. The car goes into low power mode if you even get close so it feels different to drive, warning messages pop up, the sat nab throws up charger locations and so on. You'd have to be asleep at the wheel to not be very much aware you're running out of juice.
If I was ever seriously low and really couldn't find a charger that I could use, I'd like to think I have the intelligence and negotiating skills required to locate and beg/pay for use of any 13a socket via the granny charger that all EV's are supplied with. I certainly wouldn't crawl on until the car stopped in the middle of nowhere with a befuddled look upon my face
Have a quick look on YouTube at CarWow - they have done a series of videos about "how far and what happens" in various group tests.
In short even when the car is screaming 0% at you it seems there's a buffer of a good few miles in most cases. It's certainly not a sudden stop in lane 3 from 80! More a steady reduction in power and speed. Frankly the amount of bonging, beeping, and flashing messages would convince me to charge long before just to shut the damn thing up.
Oh, and between Mrs KK and I we've done about 160,000 EV miles and not run out once. Got below zero a couple of times in the old Leaf, but not as far as the "turtle of doom" so I wasn't really close even then
In short even when the car is screaming 0% at you it seems there's a buffer of a good few miles in most cases. It's certainly not a sudden stop in lane 3 from 80! More a steady reduction in power and speed. Frankly the amount of bonging, beeping, and flashing messages would convince me to charge long before just to shut the damn thing up.
Oh, and between Mrs KK and I we've done about 160,000 EV miles and not run out once. Got below zero a couple of times in the old Leaf, but not as far as the "turtle of doom" so I wasn't really close even then
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