Greg & Wayne’s eXCellent XC40EV adventures

Philia_Bear

@carnut222

If I had off peek

I would have a 30-50kwh lifepo4 pack at the house. If pack is running at under 50% or whatever from just solar... top off the pack during off peek... then zero usage during anything but off peak times

Yeah, we’ve looked at batteries before but price-wise it didn’t pay off very quickly...probably because we have low usage to begin with...even with the EV charging. Of course with the new EV we’ll be using that more as the range is more practical, so I would expect the usage to go up a bit. As you can see below our average daily usage is less than 6 kWh (3 kWh in summer, 9 kWh in winter). We’d still have to pay the supply charge...we also do send excess to the grid (especially in summer) so we get a credit for that...based on the peak/off peak rates we currently have, I’d make a guess we’re probably averaging about 25 cents per kWh...so annually that’s 365 days x 6 kWh/day x $0.25 = $547 per year. We still have to pay the daily supply charge regardless (which is probably covered by the solar exports credit)...so even if we were able to go to zero net usage by going to an optimised battery system, we’d only be saving around $550 per year give or take. Yeah, I guess you could pay that off in 10 years if you could get something for $5500...and it would give you independence for grid outages which would be nice. Given our average usage is less than 10 kWh per day, we probably could get by with a 20 kWh battery pack. Oh, hey we already have one in the old 240EV...may be time to re-purpose that pack? So just need smart inverter-charger. I do think it would be sad to retire the 240EV though given it was such an epic project. Wonder what the bits would be worth if we sold them or sold the whole going car to fund a new LiFePO4 pack? Hmm...decisions!

Philia_Bear

I would be very interested in the ev 240 without the existing pack so I could put my own pack into it and daily it!

I’ll keep that in mind if we decide to sell it! :)

A thorn between two electric roses?

I really love bright car colours. The Fusion Red is also called (or used to be called?) Ember Red. I like the orange tint. The XC40 really has some nice body sculpting.

Plugged the car in at bedtime last night and started charging (10 amp max charge current with the provided cable). We have the battery charge limit set to 80%. We'll allow up to 90% or even 100% if we want to maximise range on a longer trip. Car was finished in the morning after breakfast and took 27 kWh. It's kinda strange to see that fairly large figure as the electric 240 never takes more than about 12 kWh on a charge (but we usually charge when it drops to 50%). Difference between a 19 kWh pack and a 75 kWh pack!

Philia_Bear

I wished they offered the EV in yellow as an EV only color.... the electric bumble bee!

Yeah a guy on FB bought one and got a wrap. Originally he was going to go for an orangey-red but it ended up being a Porsche red and it looks pretty similar to the bright red model car in this pic. He photoshopped a bunch of different colours and it looked good in yellow and orange for sure!

Just found the pic from FB of the guy in the UK who got his wrapped. He also de-badged the back...not sure I like that.

Took the XC up to the shops today. Need to run the numbers but looks like it uses about the same amount of energy as the 240EV...guess it weighs about 750 kg more and has dual motors, 20-inch wheels and all the mod-cons, but with the regen braking I thought maybe it would be a bit better. A few comparison pics - I’m planning to do an article for the Volvo Club magazine (“Rolling Australia”) soon. The vision out of the 240 wagon is so awesome...it feels safer to drive. The cameras in the XC are a must for reversing! When I hopped in the car this AM it had no mobile connection so the Google maps were complaining. Hmm, when I got to town I tried re-setting the LTE/modem (didn’t seem to do anything?) and also re-booted the IHU. Still no mobile connection. Went in to do grocery shopping and half hour later when I got in the car, all good. The Volvo Cars app where you’re supposed to see the car’s status (locked/unlocked, climate, state of charge) doesn’t work too often. I think if the car goes to sleep or is parked in the shed where the mobile signal is poor, the car and server and phone can’t all communicate. Too technical for my mechanical engineer’s brain LOL! Hopefully the car will improve with OTA (over the air) software updates as time goes forward. Given this Android Auto Operating System is rolling out in all the Volvos starting for 2022, they had better get it sorted ASAP!

A few comparison pics below. When we were building the 240EV, Tesla wasn’t even on the radar, and we had no thoughts of making a front boot (“froot” or is it front trunk “frunk”) [As I read that it sounds like I have a speech impediment, not that there’s anything wrong with that!] Anyway, looking at the pics, if we had re-positioned the inverter and not fitted the decorative strut brace, we could have had a frunk large enough to take a large suitcase...or another 20 kWh of batteries. Hmmm... I think I have a Volvo emblem and diagonal from a Volvo bus/truck kit...wonder if I should put that on the 240...it looks kinda naked without it!

Did a “big” loop trip today...dropped the dog (COVID contactless of course!) at Wayne’s mum’s, then met up with another Volvo mate in Castlemaine for a leisurely picnic lunch at the botanical gardens there (very pretty!) From there down to Supercheap Auto in Ballarat (needed a windscreen sun shade for the new car plus some coolant and oil for the ICE - internal combustion engine - cars). Then a stop at Bunnings (misc bits and pieces plus another bag of wall insulation for the shed project). Then a quick charge to test the 50 kW chargers at Ballarat Central Big W. They are RACV/Chargefox collaboration chargers and there’s quite a few including some 350 kW chargers (the Volvo can do 150 kW but we didn’t see the need and the higher charging rates can be harder on the batteries). For example we were charging there for 19 minutes while picked up a few Chinese items at Big W and the car was charging at close to 50 kW and was showing over 200 km/hour added at that rate. Our overall efficiency for today’s drive of 246.5 km was 21.9 kWh per 100 km at an average speed of 69 kph. This trip was mainly on rural back roads, with a stretch of 110 kph freeway between Ballarat and Wayne’s mum’s place in Ballan.

At one stage I overtook a B-double and put my foot to the floor (or nearly) and we were up to 1xx kph in no time flat...and another time in Ballarat we were in the left lane at the front stopped at a set of lights, and the lane ended shortly after the lights. When the light turned green I punched it and we were gone - Wayne said all the blood rushed to the back of his head LOL! This is pretty much the first time we’ve driven it without the dog - until we get the rear seat hammock/protector set-up we’ve been folding down the seats for Penny and putting her bed on top...if we nailed it she’d fly into the tailgate pronto! :)

Another thing - I checked the tyre pressure yesterday and as delivered the car had 34 psi in the tyres. Spec is 41 psi loaded, unloaded or ECO...so I pumped them up to 41 psi. Of course the ride isn’t quite as supple now but the range should be better.

Friday we plan to meet up with some neighbours down near Anakie for an orchid walk and picnic, so another run and this time probably on some unsealed roads. I washed the bugs off the front tonight when we got home and I will put a coat of Meguiars high-tech wax on the front & mirror housings tomorrow so the bugs don’t stick as well!

Fun times and some learning along the way. The Volvo Cars app is pretty useless. I think my phone has only shown the state of charge once...and you’re supposed to be able to lock and unlock the car from the phone - my phone won’t...I think Wayne’s might have given that option at times. About 90% of the time my phone just says “pair a car with your phone” when I log in to the app. I might lodge a call/complaint with Volvo - maybe they’ll give us some free mud flaps or another umbrella? ;) Good news is no trouble with the mobile connection or maps today. The maps tells you the estimated state of charge at your destination and it was within about 1% at every leg of our trip today. “Hey Google: what’s my range?” will give you the estimated driving range (to 0% I assume) at any given time, but “Hey Google, what’s my speed?” - “sorry, I didn’t understand that”...”Hey Google: how fast am I” (it missed the last word “going”) and she replied “I can run at the speed of light” ...LOL

Forgot to mention we were a bit early getting to Castlemaine so detoured past the chargers at the Castlemaine “Maxi SUPA IGA”...couple of Evie 50 kW chargers. Nice to see options in country towns...and great to have the at the grocery store, shopping centre etc. where you typically might want to spend a bit of time while charging.

Did another “road trip” today. We charged up a bit overnight to 80% and then before departing pre-heated the cabin (it was only 6C when we left home! Met neighbours in Steiglitz and from there went into the Brisbane Ranges for a walk to check out the wildflowers and a picnic lunch. The neighbours were nice enough to take some pics of us driving thru a ford...probably as close to off-roading as we’ll ever go LOL! I did give the car a sponge bath and wax yesterday to make the bugs and crap easier to get off during future washes.

We started with 81% SOC, did 143.7 km and our efficiency was 22.7 kWh/100 km. Hoping that the new V1.7 software update arrives soon via the airwaves as it’s supposed to improve range and efficiency by a bit due to optimisation of various systems in the car.

The Volvo Cars app is still working very sporadically and often doesn’t show SOC etc. I’m going to ring the Volvo Aus help number about it.