Category: funky cat

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Now it’s just 157

funky cat headlight

I recently charged my Funky Cat to 100%, the predicted range was 157 miles. Just a bit under from what I reported in December.

The predicted range is based on how the car used energy for the last 100km. Over the last few weeks it has been cold, so I have had the heating on, the windscreen has been misting, so I have had both the heating and the air conditioning on as well.

Batteries perform less well in colder weather and last week it was right down at zero, even if we did not have any snow.

I’ve not drive the Funky Cat in snow and I think it would be either an interesting experience or an utter nightmare.

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Well it is getting colder…

I recently charged my Funky Cat to 100%, the predicted range was 159 miles.

I haven’t charged to 100% for a while as I haven’t been doing that much driving.

When I first got the Funky Cat in August 2023 whenever I charged to 100% my predicted range was usually 185 miles. Not quite the 193 of the advertised WLTP range but pretty close. However in the winter it did drop quite dramatically.

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Out of order

I use Tesla Superchargers for my Funky Cat because they are significantly cheaper than other public charging options. I was on my way back from Birmingham, and though I didn’t have enough charge to get home, I did to get to the Gloucester Services. On previous trips back from Birmingham I would visit Frankley southbound services on the M5 and use the Tesla chargers there, which would then get me home. However, my preference was to head to Gloucester as the services there are much nicer than the ones at Frankley and I did fancy getting something from the Farm Shop at the services.

When I arrived, I had a 12% charge left on the Funky Cat. I drove around to the Tesla chargers, and it looked like most were free, and there was a reason for that. I did my usual process of starting the charge on the app and then plugging in the cable to the Funky Cat. This appeared to go okay, but then as I waited for the charging to initialise and start, I saw there were problems. The Tesla driver next to me was having a similar issue. It appeared that the chargers were temporarily out of order.

The Gloucester Services have a set of other chargers in their parking as well. However, all the other chargers were all busy. 

I popped into the services anyhow as I needed the loo. My new plan was to go to the northbound services via Junction 12. However, when I came out I saw a car was about to leave the (other) chargers, so I quickly took their place and put the Funky Cat on charge. At 69p kWh not as cheap as the Tesla chargers, but certainly cheaper than Gridserve or InstaVolt at other motorway services.

I went in to the services to get some coffee and browse the shop.

By the time the Funky Cat was at 84% I saw that the Tesla chargers were now working. Was it worth moving the car, well the ones I were using were 13p more per kW. So, using the other chargers and with my 31.3 kWh I was charged £4.07 more than if I had used the Tesla chargers at 56p kWh.

However, moving the car for probably another 5 kWh would save me 65p, so I didn’t bother. I had enough charge to get home, so I unplugged the Funky Cat, took a photograph of what I had been charged and headed home.

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Made it by minutes…

pocket watch
Image by Bruno from Pixabay

I often use the Tesla superchargers when charging the Funky Cat, as they are often significantly cheaper than other public chargers. The last time I used the chargers at Cribbs Causeway I had an issue with one of the chargers so I missed the cheaper charging window.

On my way up the M5 and needing a charge I tried again, though this time I arrived with about ten minutes to spare (not quite the fifteen I planned for). However this time I used the charger that worked last time first and it just worked. This meant I got my charge at 32p kWh rather than 56p kWh. This saved me over nine pounds on my 39kW that I put into the Funky Cat.

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Missed it by minutes…

I often use the Tesla superchargers when charging the Funky Cat, as they are often significantly cheaper than other public chargers.

For example the Gridserve chargers often charge around 85p kW, however the Tesla chargers are not only cheaper at peak times, but much cheaper off-peak. It does vary, but at the time of writing the Tesla superchargers at Cribbs Causeway in Bristol are 56p from 9am to 8pm, 37p from 8pm to midnight and for the rest of time they are just 32p.

To put that in perspective, charging my Funky Cat and putting a big charge of 32Kw into the car could cost £27.20 from Gridserve, but if I put the charge before 9am at Cribbs on the Tesla chargers, then the cost would be £10.24. That is a big difference. 

I decided to head to Cribbs and use the cheaper rate for charging by Tesla. I arrived with about five minutes to spare. This doesn’t matter as the rate you pay is the rate at the point you start charging.

However, the first charger I used, did not work. I have had this issue before with some Tesla chargers. I tried starting the charge again, once more no luck. I then needed to unlock the charging pin, move the car to a different chargers and try again. By the time I moved the car, it was now past 9am, so, I had to pay the higher rate. The difference was that my 33.9Kw charge cost me £18.63, but if I had managed to get the charge going at the cheaper rate then it would have been £12.54, a saving of just over £6.

I think the next time I try this, I need to get there at least fifteen minutes before the charging window changes so I have time to move the car if I need to.

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Why so slow…

I have to say that I still get confused what to call different kinds of chargers, what with fast chargers, rapid chargers and the like…

I was needing a quick charge after a slip road closure had caused me to make a twenty mile diversion. When the Funky Cat gets down to a 10% charge then the range and battery usage seems to be unreliable. I only wanted to add 15-25% extra charge on the battery, it was getting late, and motorway chargers are expensive. I stopped at the southbound Sedgemoor Services, firstly hoping that they did have chargers, and secondly they would work!

Unlike other services on the M5 they only have a few Gridserve chargers. The Exeter services on the other hand have over fifty chargers!

I have the Gridserve app, and despite having the app, I always seem to have to log into the app. Why is that? I always have an issue with that as the username and password are not saved in my iCloud passwords, I always forget that I used Apple to sign in… Once I got past that hurdle I plugged the car in. 

It was an CCS 50kW charger, so I thought, well this should put on enough charge in 15 minutes… 

Other Funky Cat owners have had issues with Gridserve chargers when the car was initially launched, however a software update (on both sides I believe) sorted that out.

It took a while for the charging to start, I was a little nervous about that, but eventually it got going.

It started off at 26kW which isn’t the best I’ve had from a charger, but with a 50KW charger I was expecting to get above 40kW. I went to get a coffee, and then looking on the GWM app I could see the car was charging slowly, more slowly than I was expecting. So, I checked the Gridserve app and was a little surprised (and a little annoyed) to see the charging level had dropped to 13kW. Well I had little choice, so I left it charging. As the charge level got closer to 25% I could see the charging level had risen to 26kW again.

Overall it had taken 30 minutes to get from just below 10% charge to 25%. At this point, it was getting late, so I stopped the charge and headed home.

Not sure why it was slow, was it my car, was it the charger? There was no one else using that charger, though other cars were charging on the other chargers, would that make such a difference? I don’t know. All I will say is, it was frustrating when all I really wanted to do was to get home.

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Falling range

When I first got the Funky Cat in August 2023 whenever I charged to 100% my predicted range was usually 185 miles. Not quite the 193 of the advertised WLTP range but pretty close.

For pretty much of 2025, well the warmer months, when I have charged to 100% I now have a predicted range of 175 miles, well with the odd exception.

I have noticed over the last month or so that the predicted range as now dropped to 172 miles when I charge to 100%. 

It’s known fact with electric vehicles that they do deteriorate over time and the storage capacity of the battery is reduced as it is used and charged.

The ORA Funky Cat I have is the original First Edition model and has the Lithium Ion Phosphate battery, which is fine to charge to 100% on a regular basis (or so I read on the internet), this is the battery in the newer ORA PURE. The newer ORA 03+ or even newer ORA PRO has a Ternary Lithium battery, which has a 30% increased capacity and range, however the advice from the internet on this kind of battery is not to charge to 100% on a regular basis.

As my car is a lease car, I will be returning it in just under a year, so I won’t have to worry too much about the falling range.

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Mapping it badly no more

Last year I blogged about some mapping issues I was having with Apple CarPlay on the Ora Funky Cat.

I have noticed a glitch with Apple Maps on CarPlay on the Ora Funky Cat ever since I upgraded to iOS 18. Starting CarPlay, opening Apple Maps I am in completely the wrong location.

Over the next few months I would have the same glitch with Waze and Google Maps. I would start the car, CarPlay would start and though I knew where I was as far as the car was concerned I was about 100 miles to the east.

Usually within a few minutes the error would correct itself and I would find that Waze would place me in the right location. It certainly was annoying, also when I actually needed the sat nav to work it was quite frustrating. One solution was to disable CarPlay and either use the built-in navigation (which worked fine) or use the phone separately and balance it on the dashboard.

This also impacted on Google Maps timeline, which would often show me having travelled a hundred miles in just a few minutes!

I kind of just lived with it.

I have noticed over the last few months that the glitch seems to have resolved itself. I’ve not updated the car, so it must have been an iPhone update. Whatever, now I have a sat nav works just fine, which is nice.

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But I don’t smoke…

So the month I took the Funky Cat to France (and Belgium) on a driving holiday. I have (kind of) gotten use to the way in which Ora (the voice assistant in the car) issues verbal warnings. Some are quite useful, most not so much. Please brake as you approach a black coloured car, or when coming up behind a parked car before driving around it, when you didn’t need to brake. 

On this trip though there was one voice warning which I was quite surprised by.

Please smoke in moderation and drive carefully.

One, I don’t smoke.

Two, I don’t intend to start smoking.

Not sure what I was doing that triggered the warning, but it happened a number of times. 

When the sun is shining low in the sky and I can be squinting, I sometimes get Ora telling me to concentrate and not get distracted, or don’t drive whilst tired, this warning however was the first time that she asked me to do something that I wasn’t doing. I don’t smoke and I don’t want to smoke!

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Some didn’t work

On a recent trip down to Plymouth, I had a number of issues with different chargers and the Funky Cat.

I had started off with a 100% charge and we headed down towards Plymouth. My plan had been to charge the Funky Cat in the Drake Circus Shopping Centre which had six Pod Point chargers. I arrived and found that there was only one charger available. Attempting to charge using the app failed. I did think it might be because I needed to top the app up, but even after doing that (well that was £10 lost) it still didn’t charge.  In the end I moved the car to a normal space.

After finishing the day in Plymouth, I started the journey home. The plan was to visit the Nuova Italia restaurant in Ilchester, and I certainly didn’t have enough charge to go straight home either. Having set off, I knew I would be able to charge at the Exeter Services on the M5. 

Having arrived at the services there were plenty of charging stations. As well as over thirty Tesla only superchargers there were another fifty Gridserve charging stations as well. However, upon plugging the Funky Cat into one of the Gridserve chargers I was unable to initiate a charge. Talking to the driver next to me it appeared that put of the fifty odd charging stations at the services, I had picked the one charger that wasn’t working.

After finding another charger and putting the Funky Cat on charge I went for a coffee.