New car!

In my previous post Bye Bye Zoe, I talked about my last car, which was an electric car (a Renault Zoe) and how I had got it on a lease as an experiment to see how viable EVs were for me and to understand what it was like to own and use one.

That three-and-a-bit year long experiment came to a conclusion last week when the lease company came to take the Zoe back.

Since I posted it, I've had a few people ask me what I got to replace it. Did I go back to an ICE car?

The day my Zoe was taken away, my new car was delivered. I have it on a lease again for a number of reasons, but this will be the car I drive for the next 3 years or so.

And here it is, a shiny new BMW i3:

As you can see, it's another EV.

You see, three years of driving in the Zoe has made me realise how unpleasant and clunky ICE cars are. EVs are quiet, clean, and a pleasure to drive. And I really do not miss the visits to the petrol station.

So, why the BMW? The main reason was that the lease cost of the BMW, despite it being a more expensive car, was actually slightly cheaper than the Zoe. This is because lease costs are largely based on residual values of the vehicle at the end of the lease, and the BMW retains it's value more than the Zoe.

And, yes, I have it on a lease. The way I look at it, this stimulates EV usage. A huge number of the second hand cars on the road come are ex-fleet or lease cars. Most people don't get brand new cars and one of the complaints that I hear about EVs is that there are few "affordable" ones, by which people mean they can't get a second-hand one easily. People like me getting EVs on a lease eventually expands the pool of second-hand EVs in the long term.

Another point is EV technology is still in a relatively early phase of development. My new car has around twice the range of my old Zoe. In three years time, the battery technology is likely to improve significantly.

Plus it means I get a shiny new car every 3 years or so.

The BMW is a lovely car. I do miss the speed limiter that the Zoe had (the cruise control really isn't the same thing) and the passenger doors take a little getting used to, but in the week I've had it I'm very impressed so far.

The ride is comfortable and, if anything, it's even quieter than my Zoe was; I think the acoustic insulation against road/wind noise is superior. It's also a pocket-rocket! My Zoe was really responsive and quick-off-the-mark, but the i3 has noticeably better acceleration.

I also have the petrol range-extender. This is a onboard petrol generator, fed from a 9 litre tank, which kicks in when the battery is low to keep it charged. It can extend the range by around 70 miles and, of course, you can pop into a petrol station to refill it. I don't anticipate using it very much, but it's there if I need it. Again, the residual values factor meant the lease for the range-extender version was no more than the non-range-extender version.

One thing I love about the BMW is the remote control actually works!

The Zoe had the ability to check charge status and level, and to remotely set the preconditioning to heat or cool the car before a journey, but it never worked properly. The charge indicator worked, but it had an update resolution of about 20 minutes, which is useless when a charge may only take 30 mins. I could schedule or turn on preconditioning from the app, and it seemed to work, but the car never preconditioned.

The BMW app actually works. The charge status is relatively up to date, and the preconditioning (and other controls) show you the status, including communication with the car, so if it fails you know. You can also GPS locate the car, which is useful if you have parked in a large car park.

The bluetooth also works well. The Zoe bluetooth used to cut off the first few seconds of audio. In the last few months I've been using Android Auto with my phone. The bluetooth issue on the Zoe made it tricky to use as you always lost the first second or two of the audio responses. The BMW doesn't have this flaw.

However, I am a bit pissed off that BMW have withdrawn their plans to natively support Android Auto. Apparently it's because they want to "control the whole experience". What this actually means is they have committed themselves to a path of legacy, out of date infotainment systems. It's a shame as I would have happily paid them for an Android Auto add-on application.

One nice thing is that, when I have my phone connected, the voice control button activates Android Auto voice search, so I don't need to shout "OK Google" at it.

I will continue to use Android Auto on my phone and relegate the BMW infotainment system to being a bluetooth receiver.

Bye bye Zoe

Last week they came to collect my Renault Zoe electric car. The lease period ended a few months ago, and I had extended it for a few months until I had arranged the replacement.

I got the Zoe as a bit of an experiment, at a time when EVs were a bit of an unknown. I wasn't doing much mileage and we had another ICE car to use. I wanted to see if living with an EV was possible and sensible (for me) and also to gain an understanding of the issues and what is involved in EV ownership.

I'm glad I did it. I learned a lot.

In the last 3 1/2 years I did approximately 24.5k electric miles. Most of these miles were journeys of 20 miles or less. I probably did no more than 5 or 6 journeys of more than 100 miles in the car in that time. Partly because on the occasions we had longer journeys we used the ICE car. But those occasions were few and far between.

I've come to understand that "range anxiety" is hugely mitigated by home charging. Basically, despite having a limited range, my car was almost always full without me having to search out a fuel station. In fact, I remember having "range anxiety" far more often and regularly with my old ICE car.

I also got out of the habit of getting fuel for an ICE car, so on the few occasions in the last 3 1/2 years I've had to fill up an ICE vehicle, I found it was no longer something I could do without thinking about it. In fact I had to think quite hard to remember what to do. It all felt quite alien.

Charging an EV can vary from very straightforward to a complete ballache. Most of the time it is the easy, but when you are on a long journey and desperately need a mid-journey charge, and the chargers are all out of action, or are in use or, worse for a different charging network it can be very painful.

The biggest issue is the charging networks. Imagine all the parking lots required you to pre-register and receive a parking card by post before you could use them. You could drive to a new town and find nowhere to park even if you had registered with half a dozen major parking companies. That's what charging is often like. And it's ridiculous!

Why is it EV chargers don't have any way to pay at the charger, even if it's by installing an app and registering a payment card? If I can do that at a random car park, why can't I do it for a charging point?

The other issue is that none of the charging networks have 24x7 support. So if you find yourself stranded at a broken charger at 9pm on a Saturday night, you'll be on your own.

Whilst the charging network in the UK is now massively better than it was 3 1/2 years ago, there's still a long way to go.

On the positive side, I have learned how smelly and uncomfortable ICE cars are in comparison. When you drive an ICE car you get used to the vibrations, and accompanying slight rattles. You stop noticing the subtle, but pungent smells of petrol, oil, antifreeze, etc.  You get used to the noise of the engine. But these are all noticeable and, to me, distinctly unpleasant, to an EV driver after a few months of using an EV.

The drive quality in EVs is also noticeably smoother and more responsive. When I put my foot down to pull away from traffic lights in my Zoe, it responded immediately. I never noticed until now that even relatively high-performance ICE cars have a slight lag before they respond. The torque and acceleration at lower speeds (under 50 mph) were extremely good also, rivalling most other cars on the road

It was a little sluggish at higher speeds but, frankly, great acceleration at 60 mph is a nice to have. I know people say it's important at higher speeds "to get you out of trouble" but, if they really mean that, they are just admitting they are terrible drivers. In reality, how many accidents are caused by a car not being pokey enough at higher speed? I've never heard of one in all the years I have been a driver.

Talking of speed, one of the things the Zoe had, and which I will really miss, is the speed limiter. I could set set the limiter to, say, 30 mph in a built-up area, and know that I didn't have to worry about speeding. It was interesting how many people would tailgate me when I used the speed limiter, trying to bully me into going faster than the legal speed limit.

I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Zoe in-car navigation and entertainment system. It had no DAB (which for a car of it's era is strange) and the navigation system was a Tomtom variant, which worked OK, but was nowhere near as good as Waze or even simple Google Maps navigation. I find Tomtom to have a really clunky user-interface which requires far too many keypresses on a sluggish screen to be anything but frustrating to anyone who has used a modern sat nav system. It's also, IMO, dangerous to use when driving. Arguably, of course, you shouldn't mess with any sat nav when driving, and the Zoe Tomtom does give you warnings to not use it unless parked, but there are times when you really need to reroute, or do some other small route tweak, and the Tomtom really requires far too many focussed key presses.

But overall, I loved my little Zoe. It was a joy to drive, cheap to run, and I never tired of getting into it, even after more than 3 years. The experiment was mostly a huge success, and I'm not sorry I gave it a go.

But now the Zoe has to go back and it's time for a new car. I will miss it.