It is hard to believe that in just over a week I will have had my EV for six months, where has that time gone? I jumped onboard with battery EVs after the United States and Israel decided to attack Iran over a month earlier. Quickly it was becoming evident this conflict was not going to be some overnight dust your hands as Trump may have suggested, quickly we saw petrol and diesel prices rising, for me premium diesel hit AUD$3.20/L and supply constraints were imposed. Sadly, the conflict remains unresolved and more recent months drops in those fuels are again being lost.
My swap to electric has definitely seen savings and regained freedom I’d felt lost, where a tank of diesel was going to cost me upwards of AUD$70-90, charging now cost me roughly AUD$22-25 with Tesla Superchargers and membership. It must be acknowledged the diesel still wins out with speed to refuel the car and distance it travels.
Looking beyond energy and cost to refuel the vehicle, distance is one thing I’m noticing the Elexio Elite isn’t quite matching up to the brochure’s stated claims. The claim of 546km at 100% charge is not something I’ve managed, I don’t often charge to this, usually just to 80%, but recently did 100% for a distance trip and the car only reported an available distance of just 485km, this with the car’s aircon turned off; at 80% I typically see just 404km.
If you join the Facebook forums for owners of the car, you will notice a number of users, including myself, who share their experiences of sudden braking as result of the car’s safety system. For me this happened back in June as I travelled home, suddenly at 60km/h the brakes applied despite there being no reason for the system to engage. Thankfully, the car behind me was far enough that no incident occurred. Sadly, one person in the forum wasn’t so lucky and it resulted in their being crashed into. The following month I did get a recall patch applied to my car that was to address this, however, I have had some issues since including this past weekend driving to Canberra where the car slowed down three times, again without reason.
The car has exhibited software quirks regularly, particularly associated with the screen where it has been set to automatically sense the light to determine the level of screen brightness. In my weekend trip to Canberra, the car again decided to forget this setting by the time (evening) when I returned to Wagga Wagga, the screen’s brightness reset to 100% making it impossible for me to see when I turned a left hand corner as the screen would blind me. As I couldn’t touch the screen to change brightness I tried using voice commands but was repeatedly told it couldn’t understand the request.
Other quirks I have experienced include:
- Door mirrors unfolding after you walk away from the car
- Car refusing to turn off
- Driver’s car seat cooling when heating requested
- OTA update says it is available but didn’t show me to do the update — no button
- Refusal to recognise CarPlay requiring deleting the phone and adding again
I don’t know if Tesla has a long list of quirks like this. Do they have sudden stops with their emergency system too? I’ve never had this with any other car before, so it would be interesting to know. Had I known I would have steered away from this car and would have gone Tesla I think, I was turned off by their higher price and the face they don’t have a dealership here in town but think perhaps should have overlooked the latter somehow. Thoughts?
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