Spektre said:
renzo said:
JoulesThief said:
6. If you break a part on an electric car, plan on it being outrageously expensive to fix or repair.
Are there any parts that are fragile or are known to break easily? The vibe I get is that it's a pretty robust car.
It's at least as robust as the ICE Golf for the parts they share. I think my biggest (irrational?) fear could be while using public charging someone could come along and give the plug handle a swift kick/jolt. The damage may not be immediately obvious, but replacing a broken charge port is not trivial.
I'm not sure why someone might do this, but why do some people driving lifted trucks park in Tesla Supercharger spots? People are weird sometimes...
/\ This... VW has a locking charge port. If you go and hit up free electrical charging ports, some other mooch, sooner or later, will come along, and try to yank the locked charge handle in your VW port, or start beating on it or who knows what, to get it free, so they can start charging for free.
A solution to that is either to be near your car at all times at a free charging spot, or charge up at home all the time, or pay for your electricity ate a public charging EVSE location.
IMHO, it's the freebie EVSE spots that cause the most problems. I've yet to see a pile up of EVSE's where you pay to recharge, or trying to steal the handle. Unless it's a quick charger, near a major freeway. If you're filling up at a DCFC station, stay with your car, and stop charging at 80%, if someone else is waiting to use the DCFC station. That's common courtesy. It's a fill up station, not a parking lot to recharge while you multi task. People seem to forget that, especially the Chevy Volt crowd, which recharge as slow as molasses, it's a waste they are hooked up to a 30 amp EVSE unit when I doubt they can even handle 10 amps current. You wouldn't drive 25 MPH in a 70 MPH zone, you'd be going too slow. Same with an EVSE charge station. If it's 30 amps, at least try to recharge at 30 amps or close to it., not 10 or 12 amps. If your charger is limiting you, stay out of the way, you're wasting everyone else's time, hogging the station, that might really need the 30 amp charge rate.