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I think it depends on what you are travelling for. We weren't in a rush as we were on holiday and we had expected our travel days to take up the full day. We didn't find the stops inconvenient as we felt ready to stop and stretch our legs by the time the car needed charging. The charging time takes slightly longer than the time we need to use the facilities. If I was to by another car I'd not feel the need to increase range but increase rapid charge speed. But honestly the family are fine with the pace of the trips. We are doing another trip to germay this summer. The Kona has a flat tyre right now and had to use the petrol this weekend for a 125mile motorway trip south and I hated every minute.

Just checked, yes and it looks like they have improved the mud guards too. www.adoebike.com/en-gb/products/ado-a20-20-inch-folding-electric-bike?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwzIK1BhAuEiwAHQmU3jL-ewIFhsoLc4NK7O2W7rvvhPmpxXi6Y6H5Uu3k7A6eDMdIHmw9IRoC8SMQAvD_BwE

Sorry to hear the video has given you doubts. The video was supposed to do the opposite. Chargemap is a roaming card, one card to use on many networks. Having such a card will make long trips easier if contactless is not available. Tesla have opened up many of their Superchargers to all EVs. I would recommend downloading the tesla app to see which chargers around you are available for everyone to use. They usually have more chargers and are also cheaper than most. The best app to make long road trips easy is 'a better road planner' you need this app

@@MikeHarEV thank you for your reply and your reassurance. I now feel a lot better about it. I'll download the Tesla app as suggested.

Bonjour. I live in the Deux-Sevres and have been running a Kia e-Niro since 2019. We use the Chargemap card and have been to the UK 4 times, Switzerland a couple of times and all over France. 2019 and 2020 were sometimes challenging but the app always found us a charger to use. The last couple of years has been much easier with so many chargers to choose from on the main routes.

@@kiae-nirodiariesencore4270 thank you. That's very reassuring.

@@robertpenning3501 Are you planning to buy the new Kona EV? Or is it a used one of the first generation Kona? I test drove one of the new ones in Poitiers a few months back on my channel 'Kia e-Niro Diaries Encore'. I have been recording the experiences of owning the e-Niro since 2019, with trips back to the UK, to Germany, Switzerland and Spain as well as long hauls within France. You're welcome to take a look there.

Thanks for the sub :) I also used to have the Ioniq 38kWh. I did love that car and wish they kept it going with a larger battery pack. It was an efficiency beast. I do see 6 miles to the kWh in the Kona but it was the norm in the Ioniq. I hope you enjoy the new car. I know a EV driving instructor in Notts. He say the type driving and the type roads used on lessons, work really well for range and efficiency. We will be driving to Germany this summer, maybe the longest Euro EV road trip yet. Video probably out late September :)

That's really impressive, especially given how accurate Hyundai's GOM seems to be. I rarely charge to 100% but I think 315 miles was the most I've seen. I've not seen much about the EV3 but it looks nice. Let's see what the price is.

@rodden1953 you can change it so the dash stays with any theme you want and not change with driving mode. I like the sport theme but rarely use sport mode 🙂

Does make it less obvious which mode you are in though, I forgot to put it in eco for they trip south and only put it in eco on the way back up.

@@MikeHarEV thanks i didnt know that .

@@MikeHarEV They are great for range .

I've not weighed it but 20kg feels about right with the pack in. It's much easier to lift and manoeuvre folded if you take the battery pack out

I got mine direct from ADO at adoebike.com

Reason?

It’s what regular use looks like, I assume people such as yourself don’t even take things out of the box 😂

@@WoahthereIan😂😂👍

I forgot to mention the mudguards. Not sure if they are adding to the rusting issue, but this is my first ever bike to come with mudguards and they are a revelation. No more water flicking up in your face and no muddy streak up your back on wet commutes :)

You don't know until you try. Hope the videos give you an idea of what to expect. The public network continues to grow and sales have slowed a bit. I'm not expecting issues this year. We also keep playing with the idea of selling the second car. But it's the rare occasion when we both need a car at the same time that is putting us off, not the road trips. The kona is a much nicer car to road trip in, even with the charge stops. I forget how noisy the petrol car is a 70pmh. I double check I'm in 5th because at first it sounds too loud! My petrol also doesn't have the auto steer for the motorway, which I really like.

@@MikeHarEV yes you have given me some confidence that we would be able to cope with the extra stops, the days when we did 1000 Miles in a day have gone, that was 18 hours! Thanks for the video

You can put some foam pads at top or bottom of the battery and you are good to go

I'm not sure it was available on Octopus at the time. But now it is and would be 5% cheaper than using the Charge My Hyundai card. Just looked up Baie de Somme which was the first Ionity stop we did on this trip. It would be 48p per kWh on Octopus. It was 59p on Charge My Hyundai last Summer. I'll probably use Octopus for Ionity and Tesla this summer for our planned France and Germany summer road trip. Prices have narrowed but Tesla still have the edge on price and amount of chargers. But Ionity could be worth a few pence extra per kWh if they are located at the services.

you know I didn't see that mentioned in the manual. But I'd not run power tools from a coiled extension, so it makes sense to do the same with the charger. It's a 10 metre cable (just in case we get a car with a rear charge port) so there is more coiled than most too.

@@MikeHarEV i always on extension cables saying do not use when coiled. id love to do the French tour

How much time do you waste having to have a service and whats the cost

It works out about a stop every 200 miles and we were ready to stop and stretch our legs and use the facilities. Yes you HAVE to stop more because the range is less than a diesel, but we would have stopped anyway and actually wasted very time sitting waiting for the car. Yes prices last year on the public network could be comparable to diesel prices. I don't have a diesel though, my other petrol car is too old to be trusted on this trip and gets a crappy 31mpg. But for the other 50 weeks of the year it is much cheaper due to home charging. The car is currently topping up for free off homes solar.

Totally agree. Our kerbo was installed by a company called Via on behalf of the council. They're going to be so many flavours of the same install done different ways across the UK. Via were still learning what best to stick the unit in the ground with. They are trying rapid drying concreate in Nottingham. It's not holding up too well close to the road IMO, because cars mount the pavement. I have not heard anything official but the pilot application page is still live and I would hope they'd come and asses how the gully is holding up after a year first.

The charger was installed by a trained MCS registered electrician, and of course the charger is earthed. As part of the agreement with the councils pilot is that there is insurance covering a potential trip hazard. But the whole point of this is to avoid trips. I won't be running a cable further than the two potential spots the gully covers, the cable wouldn't reach past the rear of the car even if i wanted to.

​​@@MikeHarEVyes of course its earthed (to your property)but because the lead, plug and load is not on your property it requires a common earth. (Check electrical regulations) as I said the regs etc are being overridden by politics. In no other circumstance would this be acceptable. But of course they have to make their mandate workable. I can also assure you that when you don't notice a stone trapped in the cable cover ,and someone trips the local authority will claim its due to your negligence. Layman's terms, a pedestrian can touch both your car and the lamppost behind it. Your supply and the lampposts supply do not share a common earth. This does not comply with regulations. Your RCD/earth leakage protection will not function correctly if someone is in contact with the car and the lamppost. Public safety is being overlooked. Politically the green agenda and ev mandate are more important.

@@carlkuss8300 Negatives are there to be overcome, otherwise we'd still be living in caves.

​@@alexmckenna1171 true. Surely you would agree that the negatives should be overcome before production though? And that progress isn't attained by just ignoring safety regulations? If today I'm not allowed to run power tools from my light fitting, tomorrow I am allowed to , is that progress or stupidity?

Thanks for the tip. I didn't know semi hydraulic disc brakes were a thing. They sounds just the job, I'll look into that upgrade for sure. I've got Schwalbe Marathons on my manual bike and they are great. But I've been enjoying a bit more off road grip during the winter on the dirt path section of my commute. I may get something like these Big Bens for the summer.

1. No official prices yet but Kurbo are offering the full solution with charger included for £1000 in other council areas. 2. The cable track follows the gradient of the pavement. So if there is already a gradient, then the track will have one. No real gradient on ours but I've had no build up of debris or water so far.

I did put the cable in one handed, its easy and quick to set up with both hands free. When you don't have a drive, this thing is a great simple solution that gives you access to the cheap charging available to most. We just charge whenever we get parked up in 1 of the 2 spots either side of the gully. We don't let the car get low on energy. It's not our only charging option. So although it would be frustrating if we needed a charge, it's not the end of the world.

Oh and no rfid. Its able to be locked via the chargers app. I've also signed up to the Co charger app. So if someone wants to charge on our charger we can make a little money back.

Compared to driving to a petrol station it looks very easy

@@OneGuyPoliticsdo you drive to the petrol station every evening?

@@mprebbz no one charges every day .

Yeah parking two wheels on the pavement is common in England. It's an old Victorian street. Everyone does it on both sides, so you can still get something wide down the middle. Although it's just been banned in Scotland, so it may be rolled out UK wide at some point. I'll be keeping an eye on how the kurbo holds up with tyres rolling over it. I held off buying an EV until several public chargers were installed within walking distance of home. Jobs can change and didn't want to be caught without any charing option. The public charging options in the UK have grown massively over the last few years.

if you do that here, a lot of roads would become useless

Pleased you liked it 🙂 unfortunately the Kona doesn't automatically switch to kph when GPS recognises you're are in France. That would be great. It's in the general settings on the centre display. Pretty easy to find at least

@@MikeHarEV Thank you for your reply. My model is 2020 and I am struggling to change speedometer from miles to km.

Hope this quick video walk through helps. photos.app.goo.gl/9pyDhzC4QXdpy8pi8

@@MikeHarEV Hey Mike, thanks for sharing it. I have updated software with USB stick so it looks like yours. But I am unable to see Units option. I am not sure why is that. My Kona is from 2020, perhaps it has older system. Even the speedometer looks different than yours. Thanks for finding time and trying to help me.

It was worth a go. Last thing i can think of is I think the 2020 Kona had a very similar speedo to my old Ioniq. Maybe try this video. It is very well hidden. th-cam.com/video/CxLWu9Kvoiw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=XHEtiuMluLct-S5G

We did phone the helpline for these temperamental chargers. They rebooted them which helped. Ionity helpline where very good. Especially as it was a French support line and they switched to English for me with no hesitation.

Thank you so much for this comment... this fixed my problem 🤝

Thanks, you might like to check out my video from this year's France trip, using mostly open Tesla supercharger sites.

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