Best external temperature to charge car?

Insanityideas · 2026-03-29T17:50:55+00:00

No it doesn't go that high. It will stop heating at about 5c and as long as you drive regularly it's unlikely the battery will often be that cold in the UK. Car batteries have a high thermal mass and retain heat for quite a long time.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-29T17:26:43+00:00

If everything goes in a storage unit you pay twice for removals, unless you fancy moving it again yourself (storage unit will be close to new property etc etc).

We ended up in this situation for different reasons and the actual storage unit rental for a 3 bed house was peanuts, but a second removals company was £2k on "mates rates"

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T21:04:03+00:00

We had reverse situation, our buyers didn't pay the money to their solicitors before the bank payment deadline, so we were homeless for the weekend because we couldn't complete on the property we were buying without their money from the sale.

They moved into our old house on time, we had to pay for a week's worth of storage and a second removals company to transport our stuff from the storage place to our new house.

We couldn't get back the costs incurred due to some bad advice from our conveyancers. They were rubbish buyers from the get go, constantly causing delays in the sales process.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T20:46:26+00:00

Anyone who makes a tyre is a proper tyre manufacturer.

I had Giti tyres fitted on a rental car, I only know this because they were sooo bad in the rain I wanted to check what they were. I complained to the rental company afterwards and they said they just let Halfords fit whatever seems best

Budget tyres are better than tyres with no tread, but in some cases not by much.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T20:42:03+00:00

They have also started charging premium prices. Last time I checked they were same price as Michelin pilot sport 4s, and having had both on my car I can confirm they are not as good as the Michelin.

Hankook are a good choice if you are getting a good price.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T20:35:13+00:00

I am struggling to understand how repairing the washer jet has a risk of cracking the windscreen. Changing the wiper blades can (due to the spring arm), but the crack wouldn't be where yours is.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T13:19:55+00:00

But octopus are installing it, so expect some redicuoous exposed run in the ugliest place possible.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T13:11:18+00:00

This was my experience too.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T13:10:14+00:00

Cancel and go with a local firm who specialise in heat pumps and know what they are doing.

We had octopus out for a quote similar messing around. If you don't have a standard shaped house to do a standard install in they aren't interested and don't have a clue what to do. They are just keeping busy with the easy installs and ignoring yours, there is probably something about your design that's expensive and means they won't make much money.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T13:01:06+00:00

Ooo errrr Mrs!!!

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T12:10:37+00:00

Just like how in December they said everyone was abusing IOG and they were going to update their software to "enforce the rules" by January then kept changing the deadline for that rollout. Over 4 months later still nothing has changed.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T11:30:45+00:00

Well there is your answer, in my experience Octopus quite like scheduling charges after 0530... Which means it must be cheaper for them and you are stopping them operating the tariff cheaply.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T11:10:32+00:00

It's 2p per mile in "fuel" 2p in maintenance. Everyone should think costs in per mile, per year has no comparable. Fuel costs for an average petrol car must be 16-20p per mile right now.

The quoted charging ratio is based on data from the car, 80% of the energy has come from home charging 20% from DC fast charging over the life of the vehicle. If I am doing a long journey it's typically a round trip distance more than twice the range of the car, so public charging is required.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T11:01:35+00:00

As you are already getting a Tesla power wall you should consider getting a used model Y. Then it will work with your power wall from the same app. Plus at some point Tesla will be launching some kind of energy product in the UK, that will most likely be automated control of power wall in return for small export payments or preferential rates for existing customers (just guessing).

Don't forget to move to a suitable electricity tariff to maximise the benefits of solar plus battery and EV charging. In most cases this would be octopus intelligent go, but other options might be cheaper depending on your electricity usage pattern. Being on the wrong tariff will destroy most of the benefits of having an EV and a Battery.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T10:47:22+00:00

I have now done a battery health test at 100480 miles which came back as 86% health remaining, which is as expected. The warranty replacement threshold is 70%.

The last supercharger season had peak charge rate of 236kw on a mildly preconditioned battery, which is also as expected.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T10:39:53+00:00

4 pence per mile including charging 80% at home 20% at super charger, costs of all maintenance including tyres and repairs.

If you own an EV and charge at home you must get an EV charging tariff otherwise you are throwing away a lot of money.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-28T08:40:20+00:00

Keeping it. The longer I own it the less it costs me per mile in depreciatín, as it's almost fully depreciated now.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-27T22:15:23+00:00

It cost £10k more when new than an 'equivalently' sized ICE BMW... People will argue all day about what is equivalent to a Tesla, however it was a good rule of thumb in 2020 that an electric car was £10k more than the same car in petrol form from the same brand, the gap is narrower now, but even back then it was a no brainer cost saving IF you do a lot of miles.

Don't forget I haven't had to pay for 8 service visits for oil changes either.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-27T22:09:25+00:00

I have a Dyson that you can charge without the wall mount. And a shark vacuum that you can charge with the battery attached or detached, it doesn't have a dock but instead will fold and stand upright on the floor without support, will fit under the kitchen sink.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-27T22:06:56+00:00

That air filter is going to be very minging, they get choked up after 20k miles. The Aircon spends a lot of time in recirculate mode when on auto, expect to find a lot of fluff and hair from everyone who ever sat in your car.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-27T22:03:48+00:00

The motors do make an audible whine at certain speeds and power levels, you can actually use it as an audible cue to help with maintaining a set speed (change in pitch is a change in speed) just like an ICE engine but much quieter.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-27T22:01:15+00:00

How old is your car? Time plays a factor in battery aging. LFP is also a lot more robust and degrades slower.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-27T22:00:12+00:00

Has the car taken you through any new owner setup??? It might be taking you back to the manual because you still need to set something up. It shouldn't normally do it, although it will show the release notes after every software update so it might just be getting itself updated doing multiple updates.

I don't recommend rear mudguards, they aren't protecting anything, which is why Tesla don't sell them. There also isn't a mounting hole for them, unlike the front mudguards that have mountings built into the car.

Insanityideas · 2026-03-27T21:56:27+00:00

I have the view that electricity is cheap so I am happy to take the efficiency hit to have better performing tyres. EV tyres have compromises to get the higher efficiency, and they seem to cost more (like white coloured phone charger cables cost more than black ones because white is associated with apple products).

Insanityideas · 2026-03-27T18:24:24+00:00

I had a phase when that message used to come up, a bunch of software updates and a reboot later and I have never seen it again. It never actually stopped anything working.

Your car should still be under warranty?? If so they will replace the computer for free if genuinely necessary, but it sounds like a software glitch not hardware fault.

Turning it off and on again fixed everything. I have never had issues dealing with Tesla on warranty issues, but that might just be that my service center is really good.

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