In reply to Keith Tanner :
One of the things we ran into is charging stations with dual plugs but the pieces were too close together to actually plug in to our car.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
One of the things we ran into is charging stations with dual plugs but the pieces were too close together to actually plug in to our car.
Where's the charging port?
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Left rear. It's identical to the fuel door, just on the other side.
You are assuming I know where the fuel door is on one of these :)
I wonder if the dual plug chargers were intended to charge two cars, or if they were two different charging connectors sharing a single power source. That seems a really odd oversight if the cords are too short to charge two cars at once IF they're intended to be used that way.
It'll be interesting to see how often you decide to charge when you're away from home (or mid-trip in Portland), since you don't actually have to. It'll be a matter of convenience - is the charger easy enough to use and cheap enough that it's worth filling up the electron tank? With the hybrid, the barrier to charging needs to be pretty low for you to decide to do it instead of just saying "fine, I'll burn some more premium instead". Do you expect to charge while shopping or while out to dinner?
In reply to Keith Tanner :
The cord wasn't too short, it had 2 connectors on the end which did not allow the compatible one to be plugged in to the car. I'll have to find one like that and take a photo.
RE charging connectors, I'm guessing it's a difference between J1772 and CCS type 1.
Most PHEVs use the J1772. Most full EVs use the CCS- Type 1 these days. The CCS- Type 1 is the J1772, plus the high voltage pins below. The 2 pins on the bottom are what allow for DC fast charging, so those fast chargers probably won't be compatible with a PHEV, and the PHEV likely couldn't charge at that rate anyway.
So, you can charge a CCS vehicle slowly with the J1772, but you can't physically connect the CCS charger to a J1772 port on a vehicle because the port can't accommodate the high voltage pins of the CCS-Type 1. Realistically, it means that DC fast chargers are off limits for most PHEVs.
I got to do some driving in the Q5 e this weekend including highway. The all electric possibilities are really intriguing. On Saturday we drove from our house to the next town north and back on pure EV to pick up dinner to go. It was about 21 miles round trip. The next day we went on a 40 ish mile highway trip for a few family things and did great on the way there. If you plug your destination into the NAV, the car will maximize the hybrid usage over the course of the trip so that you arrive at 0 miles electric but also use the electric where it's most efficient based on traffic, speed, stops, etc.
The sucky part was no chargers available in that small city at all. We would have had to go 10 more miles to the bigger sister city to get a charger and 20 miles of unnecessary driving seemed counter productive. This is where the real world range anxiety of pure electrics comes from. By being a plug-in hybrid, we were able to just drive home. That said, the gas motor did manage 36 mpg on it's own the trip home, which isn't bad!
Of course another great thing about this car is that it's not just a fuel miser, it also has 369 HP and it can downright hustle. I don't feel like I'm being penalized for wanting efficiency.
Alright first road trip / destination vacation update. We took the Q5e on a ~75 mile each way trip with a 2 night stay. We started from home fully charged. One thing we have learned is that it is way more efficient overall to have it in hybrid mode and let it decide when to use up the EV juice than go pure EV until it runs out.
We drove to the destination which involved some downhill that got us 1-2 miles of range back and then switched to EV about 10 miles out from the destination. Ended up arriving with about 8 miles of EV left. We used up those 8 miles over the course of the stay and on the last day plugged into a blink charger.
That was interesting as it had 2 spots and 2 cords and 1 spot was taken by an abandoned 1st gen Nissan Leaf (which I don't think is even compatible with the charger) that had been there all 3 days. We pulled in at the same time with a new Tesla Model Y so we ended up street parking and running one of the leads out to our car.
We had an interesting conversation with the Tesla owner, who was also new to EVs. Turns out Teslas can charge on other networks with adapters and the Supercharger network is going to be open soon to other EVs which will need adapters. Anyway, we got plugged in.
It was neat seeing the power meter click up on both connections as the Tesla recharged at about twice the rate our Audi did. We went and did some more shopping, tasting, and eating and came back to this.
Almost 11kwh for $4.26 and took 44 minutes. We then drove home on hybrid mode and gained 4 miles of EV on the downhills back! Once again we didn't quite use all the EV coming home. I think the car tries to stretch it over the whole tank of fuel. You have to be an active manager to maximize or input your destination into the factory nav and select arrival with 0 battery.
We are averaging about 43mpge, which is increasing as we get to know the car and how best to use it. It's supposed to get up to 65, but even 43 beats the socks off the 12 the Cayenne gets!
Interesting, I've run across the "abandoned car blocking a charger" situation as well. In my case, it was a Model S and not a Leaf, but it was also in Colorado ski country where a Model S is economically equivalent to a Leaf :) Seems like that's an easy solution for the charger owner, just tell the towing companies to look for unplugged, unattended vehicles and they'll happily drag them away for ransom.
Teslas ship with a J1772 adapter, they can all use that natively although their charge rate is limited by the capabilities of the Level 2 chargers. This is great for destination charging, the compatibility problem only really exists for high speed chargin. Newer Teslas can use a CCS adapter that's still in beta testing - I have some friends in the industry using them. It does look like the Supercharger network may be opening up in the US which would be a game changer for non-Teslas that can take high speed DC charging.
Modern hybrids and EVs sure don't penalize you for efficiency. They're a legitimate performance option.
The all-electric Etron looks like it could be a game-changer. I have not tried one yet but I am looking forward to seeing what it is all about. I have seen some in person and they are one of the best-looking cars that I have seen in a while.
In reply to dean1484 :
I was looking at one of those when looking at options for replacing the i8. It really is a good looking car, with some colors much better looking than others.
There are some really good assumbly videos on Youtube, and I saw the size of the brakes used. I just couldn't get past having my "sporty" car weight 5000 lbs though.
There was a dark blue Etron GT at the Audi dealer when I was test driving a Q8 and it looked incredible. The Etron was already sold so I couldn't test drive it, unfortunately.
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