KhunDon

True, it could have been worse, I could have swung for her. 🤪 I was always the poor bugger who had to drive on the 260+ round trip, now I just stuff her and our son into a taxi both ways, it’s way better for my nerves. 😉

I picked up her majesty late in the evening once from T3 Heathrow, after her flight home from Thailand and after putting her luggage into the car off the trolley, off we went along the M4 and then South on the M25 and joined the M3. After a few minutes on the M3 she reached around to the back seat to get her handbag and it wasn’t there. 😢f**k!!! It seems she’d left it on the handle of the trolley in the car park. f**k. SO, eventually turn off the M3 and get back on it going East and eventually after about 2 hours arrive back at T3 car park and we’re praying the trolley and handbag are still there. Of course they ain’t. PANIC as all her cards and passport + money are in it. She ran down to the security office and luckily someone had handed it in and left their name and address along with a phone number. Anyway, later, on the way home, she rang the number and spoke to the old lady to thank her. Then pretended to sleep for the next 3 hours so she didn’t have to listen to cuss her for her stupidity. 🤨 The next day, the wife arranged for a big food hamper and a case of wine delivered to her as a thank you and feckin paid with it on my card. 🤬 Women!!!

I did try the MG4 Trophy and liked it, but felt it was just a bit too small for us and the material's and infotainment systems weren’t up to those of the Kia’s. But if all I wanted was a cheap to run runaround, then they would be close to the top of my list. The problem with BYD vehicles isn’t so much the cars themselves, but their dealership/service centre's. There are 2 equidistant from me, each a journey of 145 miles round trip, which isn’t something I’d want to be doing for services or to repair faults etc. Also BYD as a brand, is relatively new to the UK, so I’d like to see a few years of their products here before I look harder at them. Kia however is only a 50 mile round trip and the wife prefers their vehicles. 😉

Cool Water is what her majesty usually says suites me best, as for aftershaves, I’m not sure. 😎

Were there no curtains that you could have used? 😉

I don’t, I’m from the deep, deep South. Cornwall. 🤣

Anytime my wife is anywhere near a duty free she gets me aftershaves that she thinks would make me smell nice.😘 Her trip back home to Thailand in August is bound to mean I’ll get a year’s supply of “smellies” as she calls them and several different perfumes for herself. 👍

“The undulating, electric hum while the car charges for seven hours permeates our entire home and yard. Is that healthy? – Needing to exit the vehicle for 20 minutes at the Supercharger because it feels very unhealthy to be in such a high voltage environment while it’s charging. Rain, shine, snow or sleet – Everybody out!” Never ever heard of anyone hearing an “undulating hum” whilst charging their car on a home EVSE and it’s certainly not unsafe to sit in a car whilst charging at a supercharger or any DC charger. Certainly no need to stand outside in the freezing cold whilst charging, that’s just paranoia. I charge my car every night and it doesn’t make a sound. Maybe they need to get their Tesla checked out, as some of the times for charging look very suspect to me. Tesla of all EV’s are usually the fastest to charge, especially on superchargers and get the humming whilst charging issues sorted at the same time. As for the degradation, there’s so much FUD rubbish on the internet about this, I don’t bother reading it anymore. EV’s especially Tesla’s are extremely good at not degrading their batteries and many have 300k miles with minimal degradation and many other EV models, with even more miles on the clock have minimal degradation. My vehicle (Kia Soul MY 21) was checked for degradation a week ago and it was at 98%SOH after 3 years and almost 60k miles and I ALWAYS CHARGE to 100% every night. Even at its coldest here in UK (0°-6°) winter, I only lose around 8-12% range in battery which I factor in for any journey.

It would easily be possible to charge your car with a decent size PV array or from batteries charged from Solar. I charge ours in the cheap, four hour period overnight from the grid, on an 7 kWh home EVSE and get more than enough charge to do the daily usage, which is around 60+ miles. I’d like to install a big PV array and batteries with a large inverter, but not sure we get enough sunlight during the winter months to make it viable, with not enough storage in house batteries to power house and charge the EV. Summer time is different, but the payback would be 20 plus years for the system I’d like. Of course in Thailand the sun shines a lot more, so things would be different for you. Maybe as new PV designs come on stream, things could change enough for me to invest in a solar system. At the moment here in the UK, it’s all about Air Source Heat Pumps replacing Combi Gas Boilers that heat the house and provide hot water, but luckily we’ve just refurbished the whole house and that included installing extra insulation in walls and roof to save heat from escaping.

You do know that you can precondition the batteries and car when charging at home don’t you. Leave it plugged into the EVSE in a warmed garage and you’ll be fine. No different than an ICE vehicle during extreme weather. If your battery is flat, just like an ICE with an empty tank, neither will start. Cold batteries with a decent charge will work fine. “Quite mild and pleasant sometimes”. 🥶 It can also be extremely cold, pretty much all the time. 🤣

That FB Page won’t load. 😟 Trouble getting charged? Why would anyone buy an EV that they can’t charge at home, or at least at a nearby DC charger, seems extremely stupid to me, especially as the distance between public chargers must be high, compared to the UK where distances between chargers are very low. How stupid to rely on a charger 100 miles away, especially if when they get there, it’s broken. Obviously range will be lower in winter, if they didn’t understand that when they purchased the vehicle, that’s their fault. Didn’t they try googling anything about EV’s to do their due diligence? A few clicks on a pc would have told them about range in winter conditions. Bad dealerships are all over the place, we have them here in the UK for both EV’s and ICE vehicles, but that’s got nothing to do with how EV batteries work in cold temperatures. 😉

Obviously they’d arranged for getting a charge from a portable electric source, such as a generator or battery bank. How do all the snowmobiles and big tracked vehicles get their “fuel” at the North and South Poles, at a fuel pump of course.🤪 But this isn’t about charging is it, it’s about EV’s working in the freezing temperatures and it seems it worked for them, both at the North and South Poles. As for the “press in Minnesota”, how many intrepid reporters actually went to check that the stranded EV’s were actually broken down due to a cold battery, I’d lay good money that none of them got off their assholes to check, just made up the stories in their nice warm offices. Of course it was a publicity stunt! why else would Nissan front it, but then, so was Clarkson and Mays trip by ICE pickup to the North Pole, I think that could have been in a Nissan truck as well, or maybe a Toyota. I seem to remember they had a special fuel heating system built into their fuel tanks to stop the fuel freezing and “BRICKING” the ICE vehicle. 🤣

I was up and down those elevators like a daddy rabbit, on a 3 day stop over to Australia, back before I got married. Stayed at The Commodore Hotel FOC courtesy of Singapore Airlines. 🤣 Quite a few Thai girls in the bars there back then. 👍

Why do her and her husband have different names?