A belated update on our Kia Soul which we we took delivery of at the end of September last year.
The home charge point was fitted by BP Chargemaster in December. The chap who did the installation was very good and did a nice tidy install.
If I had to install another chargepoint I wouldn’t use BP Chargemaster again. They haven’t been particularly efficient and have made admin errors which have taken time to sort out.
Initially they got the address of the install completely wrong presumably mixing it up with another customer. Then they got the postcode wrong and our street address.
This was carried over to the electrical certificate and the buildings regs certificate despite being told the correct information.
The installers charge point installation package with the essential items to to install the charge point was missing a vital part. As a result the installation had to be done over 2 days instead of one.
The experience with Kia has been mixed. I suspect that the combination of an electric vehicle and a motability lease hasn’t helped. There is no doubt in my mind that motability customers don’t get such a good overall service.
Parts of the service when we purchased the car were good and parts were pretty bad.
Earlier this month we had a safety recall for the vehicle, something to do with the the brakes and the sensors. My husband has rung Kia four times now to try to arrange a slot with the technician to update the software. No return call so far. Very poor.
Having a charge point at home is very convenient and something that we really like about having an EV. It costs just under £9 to charge from 20% to 80% and takes just over 6 hours. Every few charges we charge up to 100% to condition the battery.
We haven’t yet changed our electricity supplier as the smart meter has only recently been installed. But it is something that I am looking into and the Octopus go tariff looks good.
The Biden administration appears to to be pointing in the right direction with electrifying federal vehicles which hopefully will help push innovation in the right direction.
Although marketed as a city car the Soul is great for majority of our journeys in this rural area. Having a decent capacity battery means that we don’t have to charge that often and we also have flexibility if we want to go on longer journeys.
It is let down by its boot size, but so far it hasn’t been an issue. My husband loves driving it. Overall we are very pleased we have gone electric. We plan for our next car also to be electric, just with a bigger boot! In 3 years time there will be much more choice but in the meantime the Soul is doing us just fine.
I’ll post a photo of the charge point shortly when I can remember how to do it.