6 month review / wall charger shenanigans

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Deleted User 2786

Post by Deleted User 2786 »

Some observations on XC40 experience after 6 months.

My wife absolutely ADORES the car. She has a old S40 and is looking to buy out the XC40 when it comes up for company car renewal in 2.5years.

CarPlay experience is good but a bit cramped in the portrait orientation infotainment display. This is the second car I've had with CarPlay and being able to seamlessly lift and shift the infotainment experience from one car to the next is brilliant. Worth the extra £££ for the smartphone integration and double USB port though disappointed it wasn't standard on the Inscription.

The two creature comforts I miss most from the last car are keyless unlocking and a little ceiling cubby for sunglasses. First World Problems.

In between lockdowns, we managed to get away for a short, self isolated self catering break and... my dear wife packs ALL THE THINGS. Moving from a larger SUV to the XC40, I was a little concerned about boot space but I needn't have worried: it happily accommodated everything we needed for 2x adults and 2x kids, for a week away, including food.

I'd noticed that other drivers (mostly Audis?) were more likely to tailgate on the motorway than in the old car and I was starting to think it was the XC40 but then I refitted my dashcam from the old car and it all but stopped happening . It turns out that people are just a**holes unless they think they might be recorded.

Other than that? From a practical perspective, its a properly nice little SUV. Good for long and short trips but otherwise.... meh?

Charging:

XC40 hybrid was chosen very carefully based around my driving habits: 95% school runs and 5% 100s mile business trips, the odd jaunt into the Highlands, and 1000s miles holiday trips through Europe. We are successfully making 100% of the school runs (2x a day, single charge) on pure electric. As a result, we've filled the petrol tank 4x in the last 6 months and only because of the longer trips we make that aren't school runs.

We'd been using the 3pin plug charger while we were in lockdown, waiting for the wall charger to be fitted but we now have a wall charger.

Big shout out to https://www.bmm-ltd.com/ who did the fitting: they crawled under the house to run the cable from the consumer unit at the back of the house, to the porch at the front, did a very tidy job, cleaned up after themselves and were polite and considerate, throughout.

Some notes:

Because we park our cars one in front of the other and we can't guarantee who will already be parked closest to the house, I'd asked if we could have a 10m tethered (i.e. permanently connected to the wall charger) cable. Unfortunately, that specification didn't make it into the quote or the work order and the fitters installed a standard 5m cable. In actual fact, unless the car is parked right in front of the charger, 5m isn't really enough either. Wallbox, who make the charger, only do a standard 5m cable or an optional 7m cable. 7m wouldn't be long enough for a car parked furthest from the house, nose to the street. So, we got an EV Type2 extension cable from https://evonestop.co.uk/collections/extension-cables - beware: EV extension cables have a different build to regular Type2 charging cables (something to do with one pin being shorter?) - the implication is that you can't use them for charging from public charging stations. That's ok for us because of the way we use the car and range anxiety isn't a problem with a hybrid.

With the extension cable, we charge comfortably now and, as the extension end is locked to the car, no-one can wander off with it. It's as much faff as a wall charger with socket, its just that our socket is on the end of a tethered cable :lol:

This is all a roundabout way of recommending that you don't buy a tethered charger: get a wall charger with a socket, then buy a cable of whatever the hell length you need and use it for both home and public charging.

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