This car is not yet delivered but has just been ordered and the adventure has just begun. Our first electrical car, no hybrid but a fully electrical Volkswagen ID.3. Follow the adventure here. We will write about how we ended up buying this car, the order process, delivery and our first experiences once we get to drive the thing. So far we have only had a short test drive before ordering the car.
The ID.3 is the second electric car I have taken for a test drive. Previously I tested the electric Mini. That was very nice to drive but decided not to order that mainly due to the more limited range. Based on the short test drive of the ID.3 it seems this also is great to drive. The ID.3 offers a clearly longer range and also more space. It seems the ID.3 as a completely new design better considers what electric power brings along.
After the delivery date had been agreed with the local Volkswagen dealer, they informed that a software update is needed and that the delivery date has to be moved a few days. This is as such not a big issue for us, however, a bit of a disappointment, in particular as the car was already paid for and insurance taken. It is probably a good thing if there are software updates as this should mean fixes to issues and possibly new features. However, hopefully it is not an indication of any more serious problems with the car. Remains to be seen.
The car has now been delivered and driven home from the dealer. First thing will now be to read the manual on charging. Another thing will be to purchase winter tires as these were not delivered now. Driving the ID. 3 is a real pleasure. It's almost as if one tries to find a reason for taking a ride.
It appears owning an electrical car all in all feels quite different from owning a traditional car. The cost of charging, say per km, is quite low compared to cost of petrol. Ok, the purchase price compared to a similar sized traditional car is of course higher but the ID.3 really appears more than spacious enough for our typical daily use. Do people really need all that space of their current or alternative car or can they take one size smaller and in this way reduce purchase price? The purchase price you can "translate" to fixed monthly cost given external financing. The actual cost will of course dependent on the depreciation of the car which of course is so far unknown. So, in a way you drive for a "semi-fixed" monthly cost and can then drive with zero emissions and low fuel costs. We have also signed a service agreement for a fixed monthly cost of 22 EUR/month. This is less than half the service cost we had the previous traditional car.
After a few weeks driving it' time for some comments on experiences. First of all, all-in-all everything has been working well. I had been expected to find some "bugs" in the software but must say there has not been much problems. That said, I have noticed a few odd things though. Initiallly we had a setting where the mirrored "turn inside" automatically when leaving the car. Once it happened, however, that the mirrors did not turn back out when driving away. What I had to do was to "touch" the mirror adjustment controls whereby the mirrors got activated back out.
Another thing that happened once is that the air condition setting screen suddenly did not look fully normal but lacked a few of the normal on-screen buttons. That wouldn't have as such been a problem, but what also happened is that the fan was deactivated and even though I adjusted to more power, this did not take effect. After moving to an other screen and then back, the fan adjustment was back a the low setting. Only after parking the car and when next time starting the car again did everything work normally again. In other words these two small software issue we have experienced.
The general comment after the first few initial weeks is that I would never switch back to a combustion engine powered car. The smooth silent driving. The immediate power when hitting the pedal. No expensive stops at the petrol station. A greater feeling of "real freedom" of driving without having to worry about petrol costs or additional emissions.
Regarding charging we have adopted a similar routine as what you have with smart phones: As a rule always charge over night! That said, even though we only have a regular 220V AC plug at home, there has not been a need to charge every night. Our daily trips are often far less than 50 km. No need for quick charging really.
We are currently especially following the electricity consumption and hope I can soon write about the our experiences in this area. So far I can comment that temperature, up-hill or down-hill as well as the way you accelerate appears to have a major impact on the electricity consumption and thus the range. The official figures are to be regarded as a "standard measure" and ball park figure for comparison perhaps, whereas you will probably with time learn what these figures will be in practice; in summer, in winter, in city driving, on high ways and so on.
The last few days the temperature has been around minus 2-4 degrees Celcius. We don’t have really statistics yet but can give some indicative figures: After a fairly ”careful” driving style lately the car showed an estimated remaining range of 230 km at a charge level of 66%. That would imply a total range at 100% charging level of 230/0,66= 348 km. That would actually not be too far from the ”official” range which I believe is measured at around plus 22 degrees temperatures. We will continue following this up and also record data in the Realitemz logbook page.
We have now further driving in low temperatures. Added some pictures of consumption display, take a look. A 40 km trip in around -4 C degrees gave an average consumption of 26 kW/100km. That equals a total range of 230 km. More or less the figure for 80km drive in same temp.
Same 40 km trip at -16 degrees Celsius resulted in an consumption of 31 kW/100km. This would mean a total range of 58/31=187 km. In other words, the outside temperarure heavily impacts the consumption and range.
The first kilometers in cold weather, before the batteries warm up it would appear, the consumption can be huge; 3km in -7 degrees gsve 65kkW/100km! If you do many short trips inncold conditions, be prepared to charge often it would seem.
It has now also snowed a lot and I can tell about some experiences; how is it to drive and is snow causing problems?
It appears that ID.3 copes with snow and slippery roads quite nicely and driving feels safe. Thanks to the traction control is seems the car will not easily start drifting by mistake. However, a slippery driveway with a bit more snow can be challenging. Compared to our earlier Merceded Benz A which is front wheel driven car it seems that the driveway in front of our house and in a mild slope is more challenging for the ID.3 This may be dependent on the winter tyres which in the ID.3 are of size 215/55 R18. But partly it would assume a rear wheel driven car like ID.3 more easily gets stuck than a front wheel driven car with a combustion engine in front.
Snow also caused a small problem when the car had been left for charging while it was snowing; snow and ice prevented the lid from being closed. We had to spend some time removing the snow/ice by hand before the mechanism worked again. Perhaps there could be a better design which would prevent snow causing problems.
