Part 6 in Peter Aubourg’s Diary of an EV Driver

I have been testing out my new EV charger for six weeks and the results look pretty good. The Evnex charger has a control system that diverts excess solar power directly to the car battery. This means that the majority of the power for the car comes straight from the solar panels and not from the grid. “Solar Sponge” is one of the terms used to describe how these types of systems lap up all the excess solar power.

Now, I know that I was trying to get “free power”, but there were a few times that we had to charge directly from the grid. Cloudy days, days when it was sunny in the morning and we were out, and then cloudy in the afternoon when we were home.

There were also times when we needed to be fully charged for a longer trip and needed to top up using power from the grid. But as they say, “perfect is the enemy of good” and the results overall were good.

Eighty percent of the power to run our car for 1700km over the six weeks came directly from our solar panels. Based on our current electricity charges, the cost to run the car was $15 (less than the cost of a few cups of coffee!). As a comparison, if we only bought power directly from the grid, it would have cost us $79, and if we had been buying diesel for our previous Nissan Qashqai, it would have cost $228.

The cost savings on fuel alone, compared to running the Qashqai, would be over $1800 per year and I estimate the savings on maintenance would be half as much again.

So, the combination of the MG4 and the EVNEX solar tracking charger has definitely lived up to expectations in terms of cost savings. And, the car itself is quiet, smooth and accelerates really fast when you need it.