I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
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@f4grx I didn't know that Dacia even had an EV (perhaps because I have been looking second hand?)!
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@neil I have a hybrid, but I also have a driveway and my own charger, I think a key factor for me is being able to charge it on my own tariff rather than pay the much higher amount for a public one. I think it costs me 60p to charge it all the way, well okay its range is 20 miles for that but that ticks off most of my journeys here.
@RobeeShepherd Great!
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@neil yes, thankfully as I have a 1st Edition ID.3, it is from before VW realised that they could rip everyone off. But newer VW cars are being charged (I think) about £125/year for "connectivity" so that stuff like preheating can work, which is ridiculous. Owners really should have the right to use an alternative provider instead of being locked into one vendor.
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@f4grx I didn't know that Dacia even had an EV (perhaps because I have been looking second hand?)!
@neil I think they have, I should double check. I am also interested by an EV since my current car is a 11yo diesel, but I absolutely do NOT trust the usual brands for privacy.
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@neil @pmcdonald Interesting two part video here about a similar-ish situation.
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@steve Well, you can have a standalone auxiliary heating/venting system for Diesel vehicles. I have got one. It doesn't talk to any server, I just pre-program and/or remote control it. (This is not meant to denigrate EV's, I just wanted to chime in on the fact that preheating is not a unique EV feature).
@tobifant presumably only of use when at home though? My car will preheat for things like leaving the pub, driving home from swimming, my wife leaving university in the evening, etc.
ICE vehicles generally use their waste engine heat for heating, so you have to wait until the engine has warmed up before you get any useful heat from them. Conversely, my EV has a 6 kW PTC heater that will get the cabin nice and warm within a couple of minutes and certainly deice the windows in 5.
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@tobifant presumably only of use when at home though? My car will preheat for things like leaving the pub, driving home from swimming, my wife leaving university in the evening, etc.
ICE vehicles generally use their waste engine heat for heating, so you have to wait until the engine has warmed up before you get any useful heat from them. Conversely, my EV has a 6 kW PTC heater that will get the cabin nice and warm within a couple of minutes and certainly deice the windows in 5.
@steve Well, in the pub scenario, I could hit the remote control like 15 minutes before I leave and the car will be de-iced and warm by then. The auxiliary heating system burns Diesel specifically to generate heat for pre-heating the motor and cabin. -
I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
I am less keen on the idea of a car which spies on me.
@neil so the early Leaf is the car of choice then, as the 3G network turning off means it has no telemetry?
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I am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
I am less keen on the idea of a car which spies on me.
@neil As I'm sure you know, it's not just electric cars, it's new cars in general. A breakdown of connected car security issues from a few years back: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/connected-cars-are-a-privacy-nightmare-mozilla-foundation-says/
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I have an electric bicycle, which I love, and use as often as I can. But I am looking here for a car.
I kind of like the old Nissan Leaf, and it might *just* fit the bill, range wise. But I've also read various concerns. So I umm and aaah about them.
Newer electric cars leave me with a sense of "nice car you got there. Shame if we changed something about it or spied on you".
@neil - I have a 2021 Kia Niro which I'm generally happy with, although I've probably done less due diligence on the privacy than I should have done. I can get comfortably get from Cambridge to London and back on a single charge, or Cambridge to Oxford if I charge while I'm there, and I'm very conservative about how close to 0% I'll let it go. For normal driving we change it about once a week, but we could get away with much less.
Kia have recently made the associated app much shittier, but there's no real need for me to use it. Annoyingly, at the same time the Ohme (charger) platform stopped being able to connect to the Kia platform which means my charger can no longer automatically schedule charging to get the battery up to a specific level - I have to manually tell it the starting value each time.
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@wendyg I love my electric bicycle.
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I have an electric bicycle, which I love, and use as often as I can. But I am looking here for a car.
I kind of like the old Nissan Leaf, and it might *just* fit the bill, range wise. But I've also read various concerns. So I umm and aaah about them.
Newer electric cars leave me with a sense of "nice car you got there. Shame if we changed something about it or spied on you".
@neil I had a 2018 Hyundai Kona, it and the Kia Niro from that year, and possibly 2019 model too didn't have apps, so no onboard SIM, etc. The original Hyundai Ionic was the same. All of them very decent cars IMO.
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@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk @sarajw@front-end.social I had a 2009 model Jazz. Kept it for eleven years, then got a 2021 Jazz Hybrid. The EV charging infrastructure is not great in the extremities of rural NW Wales.
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@not_a_label @neil just curious what you consider affordable? I've looked into converting my 1988 Suzuki Samurai to electric, looks like it'll be about $12,000. The car cost me $5000 six years ago, so $17,000 for an electric car seems like a good price.
For comparison to something similar here, the BYD S1 Pro starts at $30,000.
@nabeards @not_a_label @neil Out of interest, where are you getting those numbers from? Here in the UK £10k seems about the minimum for the draw conversion kits themselves, entirely ignoring fitting/equipment/labour costs.
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@fooflington@infosec.exchange I appear to have neglected to take a photo of the dashboard indicating 60mph while stopped in a car park, but you can pretend I've replied with that.
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I am not a car person.
I drive, but I don't enjoy driving particularly. It is a means to an end for me.
I much prefer to take a train but, sometimes, is either not possible, or else does not make sense (generally, time or money-wise).
@neil I'm lucky in that I have almost no need of a car. My current car is an old diesel, which is not ideal, but it moves very rarely (walk/bike/public transport covers almost everything I want to do) and seems likely to be the last car I own. At my rate of car use, renting one a few times a year would make more sense.
I did consider a cheap small electric car and might end up getting one if my needs change. The Dacia Spring is pretty basic and not very surveillance encumbered, I believe; not luxurious or exciting but maybe worth a look? The VW e-up looks quite nice too, not sure how creepy it is though
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@MikeFromLFE@cupoftea.social @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk Neither has anyone else...
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@neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org Yes. I refuse to pay £8/month to enhance the functionality of the buggy app to checks notes turn the pre-heating on, flash the headlights and unlock the doors. (Without the subscription, it logs trip mileage (except when it fails to), and presents you with a battery charge gauge in 'miles' which reflects the state of charge when it last successfully connected over Bluetooth.)
IMHO all three of these could and should be done with buttons on the keyfob. Two of them already are.
