Testing the range of the Trophy MG4

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

You see these announcements all the time. In reality, what goes into your regular EV is improving incrementally. Manufacturers can’t economically develop a model and replace it the next year with a new one that has a revolutionary new battery chemistry. They’d quickly go bust. Models such as the ID4 and MG4 have no greater range than the 2017 Kia Niro EV. That model has just had a refresh with only a marginal gain in range. What’s really improved in practical terms over the last five years is rate of rapid charge. It’ll be many years before today’s battery breakthroughs filter down to the cars we buy and you can be sure the first ones will be very expensive.

Indeed.
The announcement I linked to was posted only 4 days after (and probably in retaliation to) the one @jpk posted.

 

[ukslim]

I think range of much more than 250ish miles will end up being pretty niche.

Yeah, everyone thinks they want more range, but when they're given a choice between "enough range and cheaper" versus "more than you need but expensive", I think the market for the former will be by far the bigger. Especially as (ultra) rapid chargers become more ubiquitous.

One 20 minute charge during a 6 hour journey doesn't seem so bad...

 

[tsedge]

Yes, people think they need more range than they actually do. Most people do very short journeys and few long distances - of course there are exceptions.

Being able to charge from home (or work or street) is a game-changer in terms of range, starting always full means required range is less.

So much depends on whether people adapt to shorter ranges with EVs - which is how cars used to be, after all, long ranges are a modern phenomenon - or whether bigger cheap batteries arrive before that happens.

 

[Rolfe]

I think the realisation that can be slow is that you probably don't need to care how long it takes your car to charge from (almost) zero to 100% on a public super-fast charger "while you wait" because you almost certainly aren't going to be wanting to do that. That's ICE car thinking.

I did my first foray away from home charging yesterday, and what surprised me was how fast the Gridserve charger on the motorway got my car up from about 60% to 80%. I'd only had time to find the food hall, order lunch and sit down. I still had to eat the food and find the loos. I think I was at 92% before I was ready to leave, and that was way more than I really needed to get to my destination (which has type 2 chargers available).

I'm realising that if you pick your stopping place right, then you can take advantage of damn fast charging from a relatively low state of charge, just put in enough to get you to where you're going with enough to spare to prevent any anxiety, and get going in little more time than it would have taken to fill the tank of an ICE car and go to the loo. Yes you will also have to charge when you get to your destination, but that's a separate plan and something that should be happening while you're doing other stuff or sleeping, not hanging around waiting for a green line to creep eastwards.

We're all so used to filling our cars up then forgetting about it for the next 400 miles, and I think it takes time to adjust to a new way of driving. If we don't normally drive further than the range of our cars in a day, and we have home charging, we can forget about it forever. We only have to think about it on the relatively rare occasions when we do travel further, and then a relatively short stop just to give us enough to get to our destination will often be all that's needed.

I just discovered that I have to go to a funeral next week, a trip that involves a ferry crossing. The round trip is possibly only 160 miles which should be easily possible without charging at all, in an SR in summer. However since I'll be staying away overnight, I've ascertained that the petrol station just down the road from my hotel has an Instavolt 50 KW charger on the forecourt. Five or ten minutes on that will be enough to give me enough leeway that I can do whatever I want on the actual day of the funeral without worrying about anything. If I'd been in my ICE car there's a sporting chance I'd have had to take it there anyway.

I'm sure as my experience with this game grows I'll be able to calculate how much extra charge I'll need for any given journey so as to get me to my destination with enough to spare to avoid anxiety, and the best place(s) to get that with minimal stopping time, and do this without really having to think about it. And in between journeys like that, which is most of the time, I don't have to think about it at all.

 

[Rolfe]

It's quite reassuring to see the potential miles I could get when I collect my trophy inside the next month but I do feel that if we drove our ice cars the way a lot of us will drive ev's then the mpg increase & pence per mile drop of the ice would be much closer to that of an ev.

This is very true, but who would want to drive an ICE at 55-60mph?
I’m not willing to sit at that speed on any long journey, that’s my personal hell right there.

Yes, this is a paradox. I didn't want to drive an ICE at 55-60 mph. I had a GTi for goodness sake. I now have a car which is significantly more economical than the GTi even when driven the same way, and which also has a performance that isn't so far from what the GTi could do. Why would I now start driving like Miss Daisy to get even more economy, when I was in the habit of belting along the motorway as fast as I thought I could get away with even though I knew very well that it was playing havoc with my mpg?

I did nearly 200 miles yesterday, a fair bit of that on the M74/M6, and while I was on the motorway I drove my MG4 in just the same way as I would have driven my GTi. And yes there were a few times I looked at the speedo and saw a number that made me realise I better cool it in case there were speed cops about. In the afternoon the car heated up and I put on the aircon and it was very nice thank you, less fierce than the Golf's, and only decreased my predicted range by about eight miles.

I'm perfectly happy with the way this is working out. It's certainly no more expensive than the same trip in the Golf (even at the rip-off prices Blink Charging is charging for its type 2 chargers), the car is a joy to drive, and this morning I realised I was much less tired than I have usually been after driving the same route in the Golf.

EVs give us a lot of advantages. We don't have to be squeezing every last electron of efficiency out of them for them to be worth buying.

 

[Ian Key]

My brother has a gite in Brittany and he said that an EV wouldn't be any good as they don't have the range. I pointed out that mine would get him from Derby to the ferry in Portsmouth and if he charged up just before he got to the ferry port he'd have enough on the other side to get to his gite.
He replied that he wasn't prepared to get up 30 minutes earlier just to charge the car on route. At that point I gave up.

 

[bowfer]

My brother has a gite in Brittany and he said that an EV wouldn't be any good as they don't have the range. I pointed out that mine would get him from Derby to the ferry in Portsmouth and if he charged up just before he got to the ferry port he'd have enough on the other side to get to his gite.
He replied that he wasn't prepared to get up 30 minutes earlier just to charge the car on route. At that point I gave up.

Could you guarantee him a charge?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a 6 year EV driver and love them, but only for limited distance use.
Basically I don’t go anywhere where I know public charging is going to be needed.

 

[Derek25]

Could you guarantee him a charge?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a 6 year EV driver and love them, but only for limited distance use.
Basically I don’t go anywhere where I know public charging is going to be needed.

I've also been driving EVs for six years. Never stopped me going anywhere. I've taken EVs to all corners of this country, to Paris, Belgium, South of France and Italy. Never failed to get a public charge, never had to use a granny charger. Does that count as a guarantee?

 

[bowfer]

I've also been driving EVs for six years. Never stopped me going anywhere. I've taken EVs to all corners of this country, to Paris, Belgium, South of France and Italy. Never failed to get a public charge, never had to use a granny charger. Does that count as a guarantee?

Er….no, absolutely not.

 

[Derek25]

Er….no, absolutely not.

I think you've set the bar way too high ?

 

[bowfer]

I think you've set the bar way too high ?

And I think you’ve maybe become over confident.
I know how I’d feel if I were him, rocking up at the port and finding the chargers busy or broken.
Personally, when asked about EVs, I hope they don’t ask about long distance use as I’m not going to say that will always be easy.

 

[Ian Key]

And I think you’ve maybe become over confident.
I know how I’d feel if I were him, rocking up at the port and finding the chargers busy or broken.
Personally, when asked about EVs, I hope they don’t ask about long distance use as I’m not going to say that will always be easy.

There are plenty of options to charge before even reaching the port which would still give enough range.

 

[bowfer]

There are plenty of options to charge before even reaching the port which would still give enough range.
View attachment 17411

See, this isn’t helping….it’s pre-planning and you have to accept that there are people out there, even EV owners, that simply do not want to have to ‘plan’ a journey ahead.
They just want to get from A to B asap.

 

[Derek25]

And I think you’ve maybe become over confident.
I know how I’d feel if I were him, rocking up at the port and finding the chargers busy or broken.
Personally, when asked about EVs, I hope they don’t ask about long distance use as I’m not going to say that will always be easy.

No. I've learnt from the early days that a couple of minutes' planning is everything. You wouldn't turn up at a port just before a ferry desperately needing to charge before getting on it. What's the worst that can happen if you're in a bind? You have to call your breakdown provider to get you to a working chargepoint and, as I said, I've never been in that position after six years and 72k EV miles.

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

I'm realising that if you pick your stopping place right, then you can take advantage of damn fast charging from a relatively low state of charge, just put in enough to get you to where you're going with enough to spare to prevent any anxiety, and get going in little more time than it would have taken to fill the tank of an ICE car and go to the loo. Yes you will also have to charge when you get to your destination, but that's a separate plan and something that should be happening while you're doing other stuff or sleeping, not hanging around waiting for a green line to creep eastwards.

Wait until you try one of Osprey's Kempower chargers. They display a QR code (one of those square barcodes) that you can scan with your phone to bring the charger screen into the restaurant with you!

 

[Ian Key]

See, this isn’t helping….it’s pre-planning and you have to accept that there are people out there, even EV owners, that simply do not want to have to ‘plan’ a journey ahead.
They just want to get from A to B asap.

You sound like my brother. He's also very adept at putting obstacles in the way of a solution

 

[tsedge]

I think @bowfer is quite right that we are not at the stage that people don't have to plan where to charge, nor are we at the stage where chargers "just work", nor that there are always enough available.

Some people are either incapable or just won't plan ahead, these people will struggle with EVs today. As early adopters, we are mostly not those people by nature, though some have tales of crawling along at 1% to get home.

I also think the situation isn't as bad as people unfamiliar with EVs think, so @Derek25 makes sense too, that there's always/often a solution if you look for it.

But judging by the number of people who still run out of petrol/diesel and need rescuing, I have strong doubts that the infrastructure is ready for all - it is too incomplete, too inconsistent, too hard to use.

 

[bowfer]

You sound like my brother. He's also very adept at putting obstacles in the way of a solution

That intimates irrational barriers.
These aren’t irrational, these are actual.
You absolutely cannot guarantee he could rock up at the port and find unoccupied, working chargers.
You just can’t ?‍
So he waits until chargers are prolific and reliable, or cars improve in range to the point it’s not a concern.

 

[ukslim]

I've waited until an EV arrived that I could afford, and which could do Warwick to Aberystwyth on a single charge. And that's a journey I make perhaps 6 times a year. Probably with my enthusiasm for new and shiny, if it was just down to me, I'd be OK with a rapid charge in Newtown, Shrewsbury or Telford. But I wouldn't want to explain it to my family - "this journey we used to just blast through, now needs a break; also we can't just break anywhere, it must have a charger".

If I was regularly doing a journey involving a scheduled ferry, then yeah, I wouldn't want a car that made me have to get up half an hour earlier, and have anxiety about getting to the ferry on time.

Although aren't there rapid chargers on the other side?

 

[ukslim]

Wait until you try one of Osprey's Kempower chargers. They display a QR code (one of those square barcodes) that you can scan with your phone to bring the charger screen into the restaurant with you!

Info you can see with MG iSmart anyway...