Well, I see it’s been a while since our last update. A lot has happened - my parents visited for a month so we used it to pick them up and drop them off at the airport, plus a bit of local touring. I had to laugh as when we picked them up, we put most of their luggage in the back, but dad put his large backpack in between them in the back seat. I said we should have used the frunk (froot?) On the way back to the airport to drop them off, I said put it in the frunk, which he did. When we got to the airport and parked and unloaded everything, I said to Dad “Where’s your backpack?” He panicked as he forgot we put it in the front LOL! I didn’t let him go too long as I didn’t want him to have a heart attack.
We miraculously also got our first over-the-air (OTA) update in February. Interestingly we got notifications through the Volvo Cars app on our phones that the OTA update was ready to install. The app generally is pretty useless for the Android Automotive Operating System - AAOS - cars, compared to the Volvo Cars app for the Sensus infotainment systems, but they seem to be improving the functionality with updates. When we took the car to the dealer they updated it to V1.8.1 software, which includes an app on the car’s centre screen called “Range Assistant”. All it basically does is tell you what’s contributing to the energy usage - with 3 small dials - “Speed”, “Climate”, and “Driving Style”. It also gives a range estimate (previously you had to ask Google “what’s my range?”) and an upper and lower bound on that predicted range. It also allows you to turn on eco climate, which limits the amount of heat/AC and I think puts the climate system into the recirculate mode. We never really use that function, and in fact I found with the temperate weather, we can set the AC to “off” and the temperature to “LO” and the fan speed to 1, which basically just draws in fresh outdoor temp air at low fan for some circulation. This means the heat pump isn’t running at all so you’re basically not wasting any energy. I found that if it’s say 17C outside, and you set the climate to 20C, the heat pump will actually run and bring the temp up to 20, so you waste a bit of battery when in a typical car you’d be using excess engine heat to do that, or in a 240 you’d have the heater control jammed over to the left and hope you don’t bake LOL!
Anyway, a few updated statistics. The average energy consumption as reported by the trip meter is about 216 kWh/100 km in just over 5000 km. We’ve charged 95% at home using excess solar, with a few public charges just to try it out. We’re laughing now not having to stop for petrol with the high prices, but of course it is false economy having spent so much on the car. I figure the petrol savings will take close to 100,000 km to make up for the difference in price between the XC40T5 R-design and the EV version. That’s at $1.80 a litre and assuming 10 L/100 km in the petrol version, both of which might be a bit optimistic!
Most of our driving is 110 kph freeway or 80-100 kph rural roads…at those speeds the max range from 100% to 0% would be about 350 km. Of course you’d not want to do that, so the practical range is about 300 km if you charge to 90% and drop down to 15%. In city driving at slow speeds, the max range would be about 400 km. I do know I can make it from our place down to the Volvo Club meeting in Moorabbin with about 20% remaining when I get home (from 90%). If it were winter and using the heat, that might be a stretch unless I charge to 100% before leaving.
We pretty much keep the car charged to 80% so it’s ready to go, plugging in at about 10AM when the solar cells are producing enough excess solar to cover the charging. The slow charging works fine for us as we don’t take long drives back-to-back so we can charge up over a few days after we take a long drive.
I did look at what it would take to get to Sawtell - would be easily doable with a few charging stops, but I decided it’s too much driving since we already committed to the SA Cruise/Rally in Broken Hill/Quorn/Adelaide at Easter. So hope everyone has a great time iN Sawtell and I look forward to the pics! Unfortunately we can’t take the EV to the SA Cruise as there’s no charging stations between Broken Hill and Quorn, so we’d have to backtrack to Mildura, then cut across to Adelaide and back up to Quorn. If we were just heading from Melb to Adelaide, it would be no drama. Early days yet - let’s hope the charging infrastructure grows faster than the number of EVs on the road or all hell will break loose when trying to take a road trip!
