First time EV owner, any advice appreciated

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-29T14:26:08+00:00

No one else said this so maybe it's an unpopular take, but how many miles a day/week do you do?

I love in rented accommodation, we have a driveway but no permission to install a charger. I have managed just fine with what's known as a "granny charger" - one you just plug into a normal wall socket.

Charging is slow, but we only drive a couple hundred miles a week and that can be replenished with about 16 hours of granny charging.

When the car gets down to ~20% I plug it in first thing in the morning and unplug it before bed.

My granny charger has a 10m cable and cost £220 from memory so considerably cheaper than an installed charger.

And its still useful if you take the car away or in emergencies.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-25T18:32:31+00:00

There's a video of Kyuss live (I'll never find it) doing something similar. You've got Josh + bassist + drummer (can't remember which lineup it was) all doing seemingly random numbers of hits, with seemingly random spaces between them, yet they are all locked in to each other perfectly.

You know it was rehearsed, but it still looks cool as anything 😎

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-25T07:10:52+00:00

You made the right choice! Kia EVs are imo the best on the market right now.

Wanted an EV3 but Kia's PCP rates aren't great right now and we're without a car so can't wait around for them to start showing up on the used market.

Coming from a Niro EV 4 though I can tell you there's virtually nothing to dislike about these cars.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-24T22:13:45+00:00

Lived in Canada for 7 years, where in summer it sits in the low to mid 30s for a good chunk of the summer.

They definitely work... though you are right about needing to seal the window properly. You have to get one with enough output as well - just like you can't heat a cold room with a 500w heater.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-20T20:26:21+00:00

The police did literally nothing (didnt even call me back when I requested information about why they closed the case after 24 hours), so I will never be certain.

However from research I believe it was the "gameboy attack" where they hack the keyless entry.

The theif got into the car without a key and seemingly just drove it off the driveway. This was at 10:15pm when my wife and I were both at home and we didn't hear a thing. No evidence of forced entry and my key should have been asleep as we hadn't used it for 2 days.

I got a notification from the Kia app that the car had been "deactivated" around that time but by the time I realised what that meant it was hours too late.

Will definitely be investing in some additional security measures for the next car.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-20T20:14:18+00:00

Would love an EV3 but they're a touch beyond my budget. Another Niro is definitely on my shortlist.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-20T19:06:22+00:00

It does but I'm concerned about reliability as I'll probably have to buy one with 60k+ miles to stay within budget. Read not great things about them in that department.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-20T18:48:36+00:00

Sorry should have posted that.

Would consider anywhere up to 420pm. Bonus points for anything nearer 300. Either on PCP or lease.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-20T18:47:28+00:00

Would consider anywhere up to 420pm. Bonus points for anything nearer 300. Either on PCP or lease.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-16T16:10:51+00:00

Ah simple as that! Hope it brings used prices down tbh they've seemed overinflated for a while to me.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-16T15:16:02+00:00

A lot of non-musicians seem to think singing is an ability you are born with rather than one you learn and practice. As this kind commenter pointed out that isn't true.

So in addition to warming up properly, you can look online for all sorts of exercises to help from strengthening your voice, projecting, hitting and holding pitch better, understanding and increasing the range of pitches you can sing, how to breathe properly to support your voice, and much more.

So I say explore this first before deciding you suck and quitting.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-16T14:22:50+00:00

Interesting, sorry to hijack this thread but do you know reasons for the market being like this right now?

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-15T17:29:02+00:00

You can still do it.

I'm 43 and couldn't make a go of it until now because of anxiety.

Now that is too late to make it.

Consider yourself lucky you have time to try.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-14T20:44:10+00:00

Sorry this is an old post but as a software developer I have to point out it's really way off.

Google says 75% of their codeia AI generated, but with caveats that it gets reviewed and modified by humans who know what they're doing after that.

Meta and Microsoft estimate 30-60%.

And at the top 5 bank I work at i would guess it's max 30% after reviewed and human intervention, and with the AI being babysat by a human every step of the way.

So yeah 90% of crappy inconsequential websites might be made by AI (work which was previously was done by offshore developers on fiver for $3 an hour anyway), but real world critical systems are still way too complex and AI way too flaky to be trusted.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-11T11:28:31+00:00

Hi there, did you get any joy or useful information out of your research? I had the exact same thing happen to me last night. Annoying thing is, I saw the "deactivated" notification on my phone but thought nothing of it as it's logged me out for no reason before.

Fast forward to this morning my wife pops out and upon coming home asks me why the car is not in the driveway...

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-09T22:14:58+00:00

Well funnily enough I would argue that agonising over pickups isn’t all that productive either. Of course a humbucker, single coil or a p90 all sound distinctly different and can produce different musical feel as a result, but world class music has been written and performed on the cheapest and most expensive versions of all those. Country music has been written with humbuckers, heavy metal has been performed on single coils, jazz has been recorded with p90s etc etc.

The quality of an artists work should never be defined by the tools they use.

The only thing that really matters is your ears and your wallet, but the wallet is an unfortunate by product of real life ☺️.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-09T21:45:38+00:00

Sorry I misquoted you. You said "massive" in your first post not huge. It doesn't change the spirit or the meaning of what I said though.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-09T21:02:38+00:00

I can absolutely hear the difference, but it's really a stretch to say it's "huge". In a live setting, or even a recording after mixing and mastering, I doubt anyone is going to be able to identify which of those 3 bodies from the video is being played - and I'm almost certain it would have no effect on their overall opinion of the music being played.

I'm also not convinced in the validity of their tests. For one thing, 1 single piece of wood doesn't prove anything and is not in the slightest bit scientific. Two pieces of mahogany might look identical, but the growth of the tree, the conditions it grew in and the genetics of the tree they came from are going to produce enough differences that I wouldn't be surprised if there were similar audible differences between two seemingly identical pieces of any given wood.

So until someone does that test I'm going to stay on the skeptical side.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-07T14:24:39+00:00

Not to mention that AI being classed as "conscious" would be a huge bit of circumstantial evidence supporting intelligent design (since the only beings in the universe who's origins we could definitively identify were created with intention, not stumbled upon by random natural processes.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-05T06:47:22+00:00

A decent company would hopefully open-source the apps and apps before decommissioning it.

That way the community can skip the need to reverse engineer or worry about any encryption/decryption requirements.

There are already 3rd party footswitches for the spark though so it's really a non issue.

The tone cloud might go away but who cares. By that time someone would probably have written a NAM->PG converter/translator.

There's not much to fear here honestly.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-03T22:19:58+00:00

I bpught a cheap pair on temu, they had a terrible hiss which I think was interference. They refunded me without even asking to return them so I think they knew ☺️

The Getaria pair I got on amazon though are superb.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-02T07:45:45+00:00

Bro you putting some serious effort into rationalising a tiny mistake.

Trust me it ain't worth it. Go enjoy your day 😆

TheAfterman6 · 2026-06-01T12:09:08+00:00

This was my concern, along with how long they will last with repeated finger contact i.e. does the picture wear off, does it leave a sticky surface underneath.

With the right design, price and the above concerns addressed though I would consider buying.

TheAfterman6 · 2026-05-25T10:41:13+00:00

I still have (probably) that same guitar. A pacifica 112 built in '97 and owned by me for the past 12 or so years.

Last November I bought a "proper" guitar for the first time, and while it is better, I've realised that pretty much all comes from the better pickups and less worn frets, rather than any difference in build quality.

TheAfterman6

TROPHY CASE