Neil BrownI am quite keen on the idea of an electric car.
I am less keen on the idea of a car which spies on me.
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".
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).
Michael Kohne@neil I very much wish I was in a tax bracket where I could afford to have someone do an electric conversion of an older vehicle. Though now I wonder if there are services out there that mod your car to cut it off from the mothership and put it more under your control?
poleguy looking for lost tools
Olivier Mehani
Alanna 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️@neil and the price of an electric car that would replace my current diesel is a huge reason I won't be able to change right now.
The Penguin of Evil@etchedpixels @neil last time I looked something that would replace my Diesel is well over €25k even second hand.
Molly@mollysdailykiss @signs I quite like the i3!
signs@mollysdailykiss @neil always happy to offer any insights :-)
Robee? Na! 🌈@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.
Tom Dewar@RobeeShepherd @neil I think public charging costs track more closely to the price of petrol than the price of electricity, so, if switching to save money it only makes sense if you can charge at home (or work). Edit: even more so if you have home solar, obv.
Geoff Mackenzie@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
Missingtale@neil if you need a car (as we do living in a reasonably populated area with almost no public transport. aka outside London) an electric car makes a lot of sense if you can charge at home.
Second hand ev's seem good value at the minute and I think they actually last better than liquid fuel equivalents.
Early leafs do have very little range and the early leaf and Zoe are showing signs that the charge port is the weakest link and expensive to replace. Good luck.
Second hand ev's seem good value at the minute and I think they actually last better than liquid fuel equivalents.
Early leafs do have very little range and the early leaf and Zoe are showing signs that the charge port is the weakest link and expensive to replace. Good luck.
DianeThere's apparently a bunch of companies that do EV conversions of older cars in Britain.
https://insideevs.com/features/735220/uk-ev-conversion-industry/
I've seen videos of EV conversions where the car instrumentation is all analog.
@alienghic I doubt that my budget stretches to that!
andybrwn@neil My wife got a used 2022 mustang mach e. It was cheaper than my toyota rav4, and a much better value, not including the cost of gas.
As for spying from the govmn't. You can disable a lot of that garbage on this car, set things to not auto update, opt-out, etc.
If you are very concerned you can pull the antenna to prevent any spying/changing of stuff.
Maybe also consider the honda that was out of my budget.
I kept my old accord and am starting an ev conversion.
NickApparently some of the older Nissan Leaf models are losing their connectivity options, which has caused some discontent.
But that may be exactly what you're looking for. Plus it probably reduces their second hand value.
Jack@[email protected] @[email protected] I kind of want a first or second generation BMW i3 but the range is just a little too short without a battery upgrade, and then the price point isn't fantastic anymore. Also dreaming of the Slate truck despite its rumored ties to Bezos/Amazon. Amish EV for me.
Peter McDonald@neil A elderly friend tried to do the right thing a few years ago and bought a old Leaf that had come off of a lease. Unfortunately the usable battery range was less than 40 MI, and the closest dealer for service was 50+ miles away with no charging point between. After a few strandings and several long distance tows, he wound up having to sell it. Due diligence would have saved a bit of a disaster.
@pmcdonald Ouch :(
Colin H.@neil @pmcdonald Interesting two part video here about a similar-ish situation.
Dead battery! Can we resurrect this 30kWh Nissan LEAF? Part 1
Phil@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.
Stephen
Ross Wintle@neil The thing with the old leaf is they have a different charging socket (Chademo) that’s harder to find chargers for.
I’m really glad we didn’t buy one on that basis alone. We were in a toss up between a long-range Leaf and a Hyundai Ioniq.
We are really happy with the Ioniq.
It’s probably spying on us.
jan klarname ullrich@neil I made a little terminology cheat sheet if that’s helpful:
https://rosswintle.uk/2023/06/my-simple-ev-terminology-cheatsheet/
AMS
Anton Piatek@neil the old leaf is on 3g so can't do any spying as they turned that off. You also can't remotely control charging or pre heating though
Tim Stoop 
@neil
I own a 2019 Leaf ZE1, which is fine, but... Nissan shuts down the remote server by the end of this month and they're not offering an alternative at all. Quite pissed about it, as I depend on the remote battery SoC to make decisions about charging (when it's cheapest or the panels are generating more then we're using).
If you're fine with that, it's a nice car and a good tool for the job. Not amazing, not great, but good enough.
I own a 2019 Leaf ZE1, which is fine, but... Nissan shuts down the remote server by the end of this month and they're not offering an alternative at all. Quite pissed about it, as I depend on the remote battery SoC to make decisions about charging (when it's cheapest or the panels are generating more then we're using).
If you're fine with that, it's a nice car and a good tool for the job. Not amazing, not great, but good enough.
@timstoop Have you found (or looked for) a workaround for remote charging? Because I'd be reliant on that to charge off peak etc.
@neil OVMS3 seems to be the best option, but not cheap. OBD might be a cheaper alternative, but requires a phone running a prorpietary app.
I'm running into the issue that all these solutions require one to be comfortable rewiring their car, which is not me. Trying to find a mechanic that might do it for me.
Main issue is that the CAN bus does not get power when the car is not turned on, which it usually isn't when I'm charging. Seems like that's weird design, but what do I know.
I'm running into the issue that all these solutions require one to be comfortable rewiring their car, which is not me. Trying to find a mechanic that might do it for me.
Main issue is that the CAN bus does not get power when the car is not turned on, which it usually isn't when I'm charging. Seems like that's weird design, but what do I know.
Stephen Mather@neil I don't have specific recommendations for spy-free EVs, unfortunately, but the Toyota Avalon I had a few years back was one fuse removal away from not having a cell signal, with no other impact of removing that fuse.
The hard part is figuring out which cars are so easy to mod.
Sadly, the IONIQ 5 / EV6 and probably other eGMP cars from Hyundai et al are not so easy to modify as the cell signal is built into the head unit:
https://electronics360.globalspec.com/article/19251/techinsights-teardown-hyundai-ioniq-5-head-unit