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<p style=”text-align: left;”>This shows how if you live in certain cities, or built up areas Motability makes so much sense. Even with over 6 years no claims and being over 50 I got quotes for my current car and it was over £2500 a year (BMW i4) which makes Motability a no brainer for me</p>
I’ve had issues with my Ohme home pro, but it looks like it’s an issue with my electric supply. The charger was showing error and not charging and when you switched it off and on it showed overvoltage. After a few calls to Ohme, Octopus and my energy supplier I’ve had a monitor fitted for the past 3 days which will be collected this morning and hopefully it won’t take to long to sort out the reduction in power supply to my property which is what’s apparently causing the issue. I’m looking forward to once its fixed being able to plug the car in and leaving it to do its own thing and as others have said getting cheaper electricity at other times of the day than just 23:30 to 05:30.
I have a question if anyone can help. I’ve calculated that my car charges between 7.2 and 7.4 kwph so it adds roughly 10% charge per hour, I have a 67 kw battery, so in the 6 hours off peak charging with octopus I can add around 60% to the battery but if I plugged the car in to charge at for example 20:00 with a departure time of 09:00 from what I understand the charging may happen at anytime during those 13 hours so if the battery was at 10% and set to charge to 100% it could charge the car by 90% and it would all be charged at off peak rate as it’s been set to intelligent charge? Also anytime it decides to charge the car all your electricity used during each half hour period is also at off peak rate?
Like a lot of people who have or are making the change to electric this can all seem a bit bewildering, but once you get the hang of it and everything’s set up correctly the benefits are massive and I’m sure that within a few weeks it’ll be second nature.
I’ve just had a look at my charge sessions and the times they have chosen to charge out of off peak are adjusted and charged at 7.5p pkwh I’m new to this so I can only tell you what’s happening with my readings and everything I say isn’t fact, just my unexperienced opinion. Are you on Octopus intelligent and is your car recognised by Octopus? It seems strange that if you calculate your cost per kwh the reduction hasn’t been accounted for. Hopefully others on the forum with more knowledge than me will be able to help, also there is an Ohme Facebook page that you may find useful, I’m not on Facebook but others have said it’s helpful
@LordMuc I had an Ohme charger fitted and Since picking the car up I’ve only needed to charge at home as I’ve only drove locally. I’m just about to do a write up on my issues on another thread so I won’t go into detail here. But if you have any questions, please ask.
One function on my CLA was comfort seats which let you set the driver and passenger seat to move slightly changing the angle of the seat back and base every minuteor so while you drove. At first it felt really weird, but really helped and stopped your back from getting stiff.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>@AKX I’ve done 650 miles in the first two weeks of having the car and I’ve averaged 3 miles per kwh. To put this into context, I do tend to have a heavy right foot and in my CLA I averaged 31 mpg over 67000 miles. Most of my driving in the i4 has been done as if it’s an ICE car heating set to 21 and I have no need to drive economically, but I must say you don’t need to have it in sports mode all the time as it’s too much at times. I did a little half an hour trip including some motorway driving a few days ago and drove normally, 70 on the motorway and didn’t flood it from the lights, but at no means was I driving sluggishly and I averaged 4 mpkwh. As I’ve said before I feel if I was going on a long trip with mainly motorways I’d easily averaged 4 so that would be 268 miles or more, but I’m sure others could push this much further. Due to my disabilities I can’t drive far without having to stop for a rest anyway so stopping for the odd 20 minutes quick charge suits me. I have no problems with paying to fast charge as it still works out cheaper than petrol and the savings I’m making is unreal. By my calculations I’ve saved nearly £100 in just 2 weeks and have never had so much fun driving.</p>
@Mikeydarlo Yes it comes with park assist and reverse assistant which when you stop if you select reverse assistant it will reverse back over the route you drove for 55 yards. I’ve only had a little play with it but I think it could help if for example you’re driving down a single lane country road and had to reverse for oncoming traffic. Hope this helps
I’ve just changed my CLA and I loved it. Mine was in October 2020 and was a cancelled order so I picked it up straight away, which was the only way I would have got one at the time due to problems that had just started with semiconductors. I can understand why some customers were annoyed as they ordered premium plus but most the features were missing. I didn’t have the best of times with the dealership, but I couldn’t knock the car, apart from bad mpg.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>@Mm7 thanks, the car was at 100% when I went to see it on the 22nd March and 98% When I collected it on the 1st. I’ll keep everyone informed on range as I go. I’ve only done just over 100 miles but I think it’ll be more than adequate for me as I don’t do long distances, but if you did I think 300 miles would be achievable on a charge. I’ll do a write up on ohme/octopus intelligent charging as it was a pain to work out the best way to combine the apps.</p>
- @pauld I received two cables so that was a bonus, I don’t think I’ll ever use it though. I knew about the seats and had previously mentioned it. If anyone’s interested the socket for the wheel nuts is under the cubby hole on the left side of the boot, the one with the net the plastic at the bottom lifts up and the socket and attachment for towing is there. Hope this helps
Just to add, the dealer did ask if I’d had a charger fitted by Motability, I never asked the question about the £750 credit as I did get a charger fitted, but I’d assume that Motability customers must qualify for it otherwise why would she have asked me the question
I picked my car up at 10 o’clock and have just registered the BMW charging card information above. I’ll post a review later on tonight as I’m having to much fun at the moment!
@Rowein I’m picking mine up in the morning and can’t wait. Good to hear that you’ll keep everyone informed on your thoughts of the car, it seems like lots of people come onto the forum a month or two before they order and once they’ve picked up their new car that’s all you hear from them for 3 years. It would be nice if everyone that’s able leaves a little review of their new car, no matter what the car is and no matter how short or long the review, all information helps. It’s hard to find good real reviews, and it helps to hear about things that are of more relevance to people with disabilities. But really I just like looking at pictures of shiny new cars ☺️ I hope the wait for others goes quickly and everyone’s happy with their cars
BMW charging card shows up on my invoice. I’ll find out tomorrow if it includes the free subscription and I’ll post an update then
I’ve just had the invoice for my car and there were two, one for Motability which didn’t include the sun protection glass and the price to pay was just the advance payment and a separate additional invoice to me for the glass. So it makes sense that Motability have no knowledge of extras as they weren’t mentioned on their invoice.
I agree that they should give you an option to separately insure your options. I would never add anything too expensive as an option, not that I haven’t wanted to in the past and there are a few packs I’d have added to my current order if they were insured, but I’d be absolutely gutted if I’d purchased thousands of pounds of options and the car was written or PIP cancelled.
@Silverfoxx60 That’s great to hear, as you say range won’t be a concern as it will just get popes on charge each night. It’ll be good to be able to have some fun without having to worry about mpg dropping to below 20!
@Kezo I was told the seats had a base you could adjust the angle on, number 3 in the image, the car I test drove had it but the i4 edrive 35 sport doesn’t@Silverfox48 thanks for the update, it is mineral white and tinted, no lumbar support as I’ve had it on my last few cars and due to my problems it seems to make things worse. It’s good to hear your loving the car, I know what you mean about s*it of a shovel! I had an extended test drive for a weekend and I’ve never smiled so much in sports mode, but the other half wasn’t happy because she kept banging her head on the headrest when I put my foot down!! How are you finding the range, what’s your average mpkwh?
<p style=”text-align: left;”>I’m just about to pick up my first ev and I don’t feel the need for a back up car. I probably do at most 6 trips a year that are over 150 miles round-trip and even then due to my disabilities I need to stop every hour or so, so I have no problems with rapid charging. I’d much rather do that a few times a year than go to a petrol station 60 times a year to fill my car with petrol. Although I don’t drive long distances much I drive lots of short distances several times a day just to distract from pain, so a full tank (40L) only lasts 6 days. Then there’s the cost, people moan about paying 80p per kwh to rapid charge but I’m more than happy with that for the convenience, plus the savings I make through the rest off the year will be massive. I currently pay £56 every 6 days for 40 litres of petrol, which on average gets me 265 miles, charging at home saying I average 3 miles per kwh at 7.5p per kwh it would cost me £6.63. So to summarise, I’ll save over £2500 a year after allowing for what little rapid charging I’ll do, I’ll spend around 3 hours at rapid chargers compared with a very optimistic 5 hours at petrol stations (60x5min).</p>
I do understand that ev’s aren’t for everyone and a few years ago I wouldn’t have gave one a second thought but for me it’s the perfect option now.As for WW3, I can remember not so long ago having to drive around searching for petrol stations and then only being allowed to buy £10 due to fuel shortages because of covid. You can produce your own electricity, its a lot harder to make your own petrol!
I did have issues over pick up with the salesperson adamant that the car could not be held and had to be registered straight away, I asked to speak to the manager to complain as my argument was that I’d been told when ordering that the car would be ready in November that if I had to wait 3 months longer than they said then they could wait a week longer for me to collect. The manager was excellent, he couldn’t apologise more for the fact the salesperson gave me incorrect information on the seats and told me he’d have the car ready for me to come in and see whenever I want to make sure the seats where OK. I thought he might have been funny over a handover date and say the first was fully booked, but he took me into the sales office and I was given the option to pick any time to collect so I’ll be picking the car up at 10 o’clock on Friday the first. He told me that it’s purely down to the managers discretion whether to hold a car and it’s obvious that the dealers that won’t just want to boost February’s numbers. I’d advise anyone having problems to ask to complain to the manager, especially mentioning the fact that they are months late on delivery anyway.
