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At The Campus in Weston Village they have a couple of EV charging spaces. One is reserved for local authority vehicles, but the other is available to any EV users.
It is a Mer charger, and as with most (if not all) fast chargers, you will need to bring your own cable.
I used my Shell RFID card. It is a fast AC charger. It was a simple matter of connecting the car, tapping the card reader and letting it charge. I was connected for two hours and it added about 50% to the charge.
Nice and easy.
I wrote recently about the longest journey I had done in the Funky from Weston-super-Mare to York, a total distance of 250 miles. As the range of the Funky is 193 miles (and realistically is actually less than that in real world conditions) I knew I would have to charge up on the way up and back.
Going up I had virtually no problems, coming back though, it was not as straightforward.
I set off from York and headed to Moto Ferrybridge services to charge up the car. This didn’t feel as straightforward as it did on the way up.
Anyhow after getting a good charge (not 100%, but around 90%) I headed back south. I had actually only planned on charging to 80%, but I had a phone call, which went on for a while and spent longer at the services than planned.
I had another online call to do later, and I planned to stop at Hopwood Services on the M42, have my call and charge at the same time. This however did not go to plan due to traffic issues. I didn’t quite make it as far as Hopwood so stopped at Tamworth Services. Alas the charger was in use and I parked in a normal space. So, I couldn’t charge my car while I had my online call. After finishing my meeting the charger was still in use so I headed back down on the M42.
I knew the Hopwood Services were about twenty miles further down the M42, so would stop there to charge and grab some lunch. I stopped off at Hopwood services and was frustrated to see their charger was also in use. There was some Tesla chargers available however non-Tesla cars, though they can use some Tesla chargers, they can’t use the ones at Hopwood. I did notice that they are installing something like twenty new chargers so on future visits this lack of availability will be less of a problem.
However, I was on a 20% charge and still some way to go. The Strensham services only had a solitary charger and I suspected that was probably going to be in use when I got there. So I asked Ora for the nearest charger. There was one in Alvechurch a couple of miles away according to Ora. I asked her to set a route and off I went.
When I got to Alvechurch I couldn’t see it but assumed it was in the nearby car park.There was a charger in the free car park, but someone was using it. They said they would be about fifteen minutes. I had no choice but to wait.
As I went for a walk I saw there was another charger in local pub,The Red Lion, car park. It was free. So I moved the Funky to the pub and set it to charge. I then went to the pub for lunch.
This was a lovely pub, with lots of wooden beams and comfy chairs.
I gave the Funky a good charge and this got me all the way home with charge to spare.
Interestingly my Funky sent me an email informing me that a window was open, well it was unclosed.
I hadn’t quite closed one of the rear windows after accidental opening it earlier. It was only down by 3mm or so so actually wasn’t open, just not closed properly.
Quite surreal for the car to send me email.
I drove to York in my Funky from Weston super Mare. Should add that I didn’t see another Funky in the wild. Only time I have seen another Funky recently was at the dealer where there were loads!
Anyhow depending on how you go this is about 250 miles. More than the range of the Funky.
I had some interesting charging experiences which I thought I would share.
On my way up I stopped at work for some meetings and took the opportunity to do a full 100% charge. The predicted range was 169 miles.
Once I set off again I had planned to stop at the Hopwood Services on the M42. These have the troublesome Gridserve chargers but having checked the map I had a backup plan to use the InstaVolt chargers at the Corley Services on the M6.
As I approached Hopwood I realised I had a fair bit of charge in the car and seeing that the next services on the M42 were just thirty miles away I kept going and headed onto the services at Tamworth on the M42. They also had Gridserve chargers, but the Corley Services were still an option.
Once I was at Tamworth and having heard about the issues people have had with Gridserve chargers you can imagine my hesitation when connecting my Funky to a charger on the M42.
So I was quite pleased after connecting to the Gridserve charger all was working fine.
Also impressed with the speed of charging as well. I went from a 35% charge to an 85% charge in just over thirty minutes. Just about enough time for a cortado from Costa.
Should point out that my Funky had two dealer updates recently.
After charging and the coffee I again headed north.
As I approached York I stopped at the Moto Ferrybridge services for another coffee and a top up charge. The hotel I was staying at didn’t have EV charging. Not all the chargers at the services were in operation, but quite a few were available. I did my charge and then headed off to complete my journey. All in all it was quite painless and not much different compared to when I drove to York in a petrol car.
I was at The University of Warwick for a conference. In theory they had car charging places. These weren’t specific car charging ports, just standard three pin plus sockets.
I was down to under 15%, plugged my car in and headed off to the conference.
When I went to get my car, after eight hours on charge it now had a 69% charge.
It took about another eight hours on another day to get to 100%.
Informative experience.
After achieving a 100% charge the range was 165 miles, which was better than the 151 I had the last time I did a 100% charge.
Had a chat with a dealer today about the Ora Funky Cat. They actually had some Ora people in providing some information.
The long range version of the Funky Cat and the GT version are coming to the UK soon.
As we know CarPlay is on its way. However, he did give me this info, which was that CarPlay works 99% of the time. However sometimes it causes the display to go black. This though also causes the driver dashboard to go black as well. It’s this reason why they have delayed the release.
Also said this would be a dealer update and not an OTA update.
Also, the new Lightning Cat or Big Cat (the next Ora) will be available next year but they currently have models in Birmingham undergoing testing.
The Funky got taken to the dealer earlier this week, and as a result they gave Funky two software updates. One was to deal with the motor overheating yellow turtle fault, the other, well not sure, but suspect it was the Gridserve charging issue.
I’ve not seen any other Funky Cats in the wild, so it was quite intriguing to see so many at the dealer (don’t think this counts as the wild).
I was a little apprehensive driving Funky home, but everything was fine and I had no problems.
Well that wasn’t such a nice experience.
Drove off to Sand Bay and as we drove through Worle, I had a fault with the Ora Funky Cat. The reduced power warning light came on. Lost all power to the drive train. Pressing the accelerator didn’t work. I crawled to a halt, but managed to stop safely on the side of the road.
Turned the power off waited a few minutes and set off again. As soon as I slowed down for a junction it came on again and I lost power.
Managed to crawl home, stopping and powering off. Of course when the RAC arrived it had gone and didn’t come on during our test drive. I wasn’t sure though what to do about it.
This is the entry in the manual.
Reading on the web, it was apparent that this was down to the motor overheating. However the motor would only generally overheat either climbing a steep incline or thrashing it on the motorway. I was doing neither of those things. I then read on the web that there may be a software issue where when the motor overheats, the coolant doesn’t do the job.
Spent some time sorting out an appointment for the Funky.
Yes I know it is meant to be a tortoise…
When I was considering an electric vehicle, I was concerned about where I could charge the car. Having failed to use the chargers at Queensway in Worle, I had seen that there electric charging points in the Carlton Street Car Park in Weston-super-Mare.
You can imagine my disappointment when I headed into town to to park at the Carlton Street Car Park and use their charging stations and they weren’t operational. There was no indication why they weren’t working, and no information on if and when they would be operational again.
So, I drove round to Tesco and parked in their car park instead.