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I was rather disappointed on charging the Funky Cat that the predicted range was just 147 miles. I wonder if this is down to the cold weather we’ve been having, combined with using the heater.
The last time I charged to 100% it was 157 miles. Usually it is higher, and has been 185 miles.
I have now had my Funky Cat for four months. This means I have been driving an electric car for four months, driving a car with no gears and an automatic transmission, driving a car with an electric automatic handbrake (well a parking brake). I’ve also had to get use to not having a rear windscreen wiper.
Prior to getting the Funky Cat I drove manual petrol (and diesel) cars for over thirty years. These had gears, manual transmission, a manual handbrake, and a rear windscreen wiper.
As a result, it isn’t too surprising that in some instances I still do things that I did driving a petrol car that I don’t need to do with the Funky Cat. I still have muscle memory based on those thirty years of driving experience.
For example, driving off from a roundabout, sometimes my left hand drops to change gear. Now and again, I try and put the handbrake on, where there isn’t one. When it’s raining, I still try and turn on the rear windscreen wiper. I smile when I do these things when driving the Funky Cat.
When I got my Funky Cat I found it useful to fold the side mirrors into the car when I parked.
Looking through the manual, I realised I could set this automatically when I locked the car.
You can set the side mirror functions in
【Vehicle Settings】→【Body】→【Side Mirrors】on the multimedia screen.
【Fold Side Mirrors】: Set the side mirror folding mode to automatic mode.
When set to automatic folding mode, the side mirrors are automatically folded and unfolded when the doors are locked and unlocked.
This made life much easier. It also gives me a visual cue that the car is locked.
No, I still have my Funky Cat, the story is that Ora are losing the Funky Cat moniker. Ora 03 is the new (European) name for the Ora Funky Cat.
I liked the fact that the car was called the Funky Cat. For me the quirky nature of the car, the name and looks was why I got the car in the first place. I was a little disappointed that my Funky Cat didn’t have Funky Cat on the back.
It also looks like the Lightning Cat will also be renamed to Ora 07.
In a recent post I blogged about my experiences of using Bluesky on the iPad. I found that sing busky.app in the browser useful on the iPad instead of using the native iOS app I was recently recommended using deck.blue to access Bluesky.
This service provides a multi-column layout and support for hashtags when using Bluesky.
Reminded me of Tweetdeck which I have used now and again (in the past) to access the Twitter.
I recently used deck.blue when using Blueksy at a conference and found the user experience much better than just accessing Bluesky on the browser or using the native iOS app.
I recently drove to a hotel in London and parking in the hotel car park I saw a couple of Mercedes Benz cars, which didn’t look quite right.
I took a closer look, these were self-driving autonomous vehicles, they had German number plates.
Not sure what they were doing in the hotel car park, but they looked interesting.
When I had stayed in Ealing before I had parked my car in the Q-Park at Dickens Yard. On those visits I had remembered seeing the EV charging spaces as I drove through the car park to park.
So on my most recent visit to Ealing, driving there in the Funky Cat, I needed a place to park, so I decided I would try out the charging points in the Q-Park Dickens Yard Car Park.
Having first parked in a space with a non-functioning charger, I moved my car to a different space and, using my own cable, plugged the Funky Cat into the charger.
The process is different to other chargers I have used, you need to walk towards the pedestrian exit and there is a machine there. To be honest I nearly missed it. You then scan the barcode on your ticket and select the right bay on the screen. Then the charging starts.
The bill for the charging is added to your parking charge. So when you come to pay for your parking, your EV charge is added to the parking charge. This is nice and simple. The charge is 35p/kWh. These are Type 2 (7kW) chargers so won’t be charging your car that rapidly, but useful for adding charge to your car whilst shopping (or as I was eating). I got something like a 25% charge in just under two hours.
The Bluesky app on the iPhone works well for me, but there is no native Bluesky app for the iPad.
I have found the user experience quite poor as using the iPhone app on the iPad.
Some iPhone apps work fine on the iPad, Instagram is a good example. The Bluesky app doesn’t, well it doesn’t for me. The main issue is that landscape mode shows only a couple of messages in the stream. In portrait mode, it’s okay, but I generally use my iPad in landscape mode.
As a result I have moved to the web app, using bsky.app in the browser.
This is a much better user experience. Does remind me of the Twitter web experience.
I had charged to 100% on Friday, with a resulting 159 mile predicted range.
After a weekend of local driving and a 50% charge left, I once again charged to 100% and the predicted range rose to 185 miles
Did some driving after charging, and as I write this, I have a 80% charge with a predicted range of 155 miles.
This is an interesting figure as 80% of 185 is 148 miles, so I am driving more economically than predicted. Of course if you inverse 155 miles at 80% to 100% you get 193 miles. This is the published range of the Funky Cat.
The other day I charged up to 100% and had a predicted range of 168 miles.
Yesterday I charged to 100% and this range went up to 185.
Today I charged again to 100%, but the range dropped to 159 miles.
Despite the driving being quite similar, I still don’t quite get why it varies quite so much.