Andrew Dwyer

My experience of ordering a TOU meter ( 2nd circuit for EV charging only ) from PEA, if any thinking of going this route. Ordered car Oct 24th, visited local PEA Authority Oct 25th. Docs required: Car booking receipt, car spec ( brochure ), wall charger spec ( showroom sent by SMS ). PEA checked specs of existing meter from house owner id, and checked location of power pole via Google Maps. Received authorisation and job number. Received car Nov 30th, Wall charger installed Dec 23rd, pay 9000 baht flat fee plus 300 baht per metre for extra cable used ( 1st 15 metre free ). Informed PEA Dec 25th. PEA visit to check installation Dec 26th. Return to PEA Authority Dec 27th to sign contract and pay 4,900 baht flat fee. PEA installed TOU meter Jan 8th. 76 days for me, most time waiting for car delivery and wall charger installation, PEA 2 weeks, YMMV.

There is also the option to wrap the front end and then ceramic coat all over ( including the wrap ). Won’t help with any damage from the rusty old pickup opening his door into yours in the car park but will help with stone chips from that old truck full of gravel who pulls out in front of you !!

Does anyone know how to make Google maps open with charging stations already showing ?? I believe it can be done both on phone and on the car version if you have sideloaded ( probably if done on phone then the car version will follow if signed in, not sure ) I can bring up charging stations on both phone and car ( they are slightly different versions ) but cannot save to open with the chargers on the map automatically. Anyone ??

No, I had the AVAS button when I received the car , Nov 30th, but it would have been included in the OTA for posters receiving the car earlier than myself. The OTA update for me primarily was the store and the manual so suspect your version is the same as mine was when i received the car. Before the OTA we established there were at least 3 different versions here in Thailand depending upon delivery date. The OTA just downloads the latest version irrespective of what you had before: for example. 1st time OTA took around 50 minutes 2nd time OTA took 10 even though I had downgraded to a much earlier version ( my browser and karaoke downloads stayed through this process ).

Born under a “ good “ sign ! Ran into that sign ( not literally ) when I was working in Batesville, MS. Kingfish has a very Gary Moore style about him, would have been great to see them together. JB ain’t bad either !

Yup, in the back room of a BYD head office somewhere there’s an old lady pulling VIN numbers out of a hat !! If you want Google maps I would suggest the Sinjet guy in Bang Na ( see my previous post ) he can put pretty much whatever you want on there and knows exactly how to do it. GBox will give you access to the Google Play Store which you can then download apps even after the OTA.

The criteria used for handing out the OTA updates seems a bit of a mystery and judging from FB posts on Atto’s and Seal’s we are not alone. I was an early adopter of the OTA but had received my Seal 2 weeks after and 1 month after a couple of posters on this thread, both received their OTA a week ( two weeks ? ) after me. I downgraded a few days ago to side load some apps, a few minutes after the downgrade was complete the OTA started to download ( just to clarify as some might have missed it, but the OTA downloads automatically with a red dot notification on the bell icon on top centre of screen, once download completes then the red dot notification moves to the car icon on bottom right of screen for you to install ), so i got mine very early …. twice !! Have you not got your OTA notification @kevp ??

I grew up listening to: Steve Howe Ritchie Blackmore Dave Gilmour Paul Kossoff Duane Allman Eric Clapton Joe Walsh Jimmy Page Rory Gallagher Carlos Santana Alvin Lee then came : Gary Moore Robert Cray Kenny Wayne Shepherd Mark Knopfler Doyle Bramhall ll More than enough great guitarists to keep me happy into my old age and I stopped looking for anything new, i can happily live off the classics from the early 70’s, don’t need any new stuff …… at least that’s what I thought until i discovered Derek Trucks !! A breath of fresh air, his unique phrasing brings a whole new dimension of joy. Solo or together with Susan in Tedeschi Trucks , doesn’t matter it’s all good . Check out Layla Revisited for a classic album brought back to life.

Would be good to know which one would be suitable for a LFP 12v battery, do you have a link ? I posted this before but now the Seal family has expanded thought it would be helpful to repost. As the location of the Seal battery is unusual it is useful to know that jumping can be done from under the hood/bonnet. From the on-board manual: Investing in one of these battery packs for any future use seems like a good idea. NOTE: not that i am suggesting the car is susceptible to this issue but as EV’s have an ever expanding range of electronic options better to be prepared.

Thanks for posting, I have ordered the small pen from Lazada, no stone chips yet !! But ☹️, pulled up alongside a coffee shop with decking for a step , I advised her ladyship that the decking was high and she duly opened the door slowly just enough to get out. 5 minutes later she opened the door to enter and saw that the door just cleared the decking, plonked her 55 kilos ( + 1/2 kilo of snacks ! ) down in the seat before I could say anything and went to close the door !! Yup, you guessed it !, the door dropped and made contact with the decking and made a lovely shrieking noise ( although that might have been me ) when she closed the door. Apologies were made, blood pressures rose, bad words were spoken and 30 minutes of sulking was endured !! I can feel the rough edge of the door but haven’t tried to use any product to see if it is car paint or decking paint, today’s after lunch activity !. Meanwhile ordered the touch up paint just in case, thin and watery probably better in this situation.

It does appear that I cannot have my Line account on another device so will delete from the car. Might be the same with WhatsApp ?

So, I added a few more apps from the Google Play Store in GBox app ( FB, Line, GMail, WhatsApp, Lazada, Messenger and Charge Loma ) As said before, these apps stay within GBox and I didn’t see any way to move the icons to the screen. One thing i did learn through this exercise, and had been meaning to try, was as the screen is a big tablet maybe i can rearrange stuff. Sure enough, the additional apps appear on an additional page, you can move them around in that page or to another page. You can create folders by dragging one app on top of another then naming this folder whatever you want ( iPhone or iPad owners will be familiar ) so you can arrange the apps to your liking. I rearranged the new apps in order of preference and put the “ tools “ app in a folder. Very flexible !! So, I decided to bite the bullet and did the OTA update, took just 10 minutes and included: The AVAS button A new wallpaper The manual Byd store Well it all looks good, same as before. Charge Loma and PlugShare maps don’t seem to want to open yet Waze and Google Maps open fine . Youtube continues to play in drive mode and goes into Picture in Picture mode when put into reverse. Youtube Music plays in the background when you open another app, navigation etc One final test, after updating can I download any more apps from GBox ?? Downloaded PEA Volta and Lotus’s, PEA allows me to login and see my profile and credit etc but the map doesn’t seem to want to open. Lotus’s works perfectly well. Soo, will try the apps with location faults ( PEA, PlugShare and Charge Loma) out from under the carport but otherwise we are done ! Happy 😊, anyone want to use this service from Sinjet , now available for Seal, Dolphin and Atto 3 let me know and I will get contact details ( Bangkok ).

1) Don’t forget I am a lowly Premium owner , we don’t have such luxuries ! 2) Yup, it is surprisingly loud and attracts too much attention for my liking. ! Strangely, the warning sounds and the old wallpaper are the only things I have noticed, even the browser and karaoke that came with the OTA are still there !

BYD giveth and BYD taketh away !! https://autolifethailand.tv/official-price-byd-dolphin-ev-bev-jan2024/

BYD had a rethink on the 50k ? Now 100k off till the end of February 2024. https://autolifethailand.tv/official-price-feb2024-byd-atto-3-ev-bev/

I went to see the Sinjet guy in Bangkok to downgrade the cars system version so APK’s could be added. So , he downgraded from 2310180.1 ( the latest version , including the OTA ) to 2307210.1 which is further back than just the OTA as I now have the ice cream van sound with no AVAS button which I didn’t have when picking up the car Nov 30th. Possibly the version @macahoomhad when he received the car as it precedes @Bandersnatch’s ( this could be the reason you are not having success @JBChiangRai ). The latest OTA popped up while driving back, so will try that soon . Anyway, the downgrade was done via a usb and took around 30 minutes . The guy knows his way around this stuff and downloaded pretty much all I asked for except for Charge Loma and PlugShare ( PlugShare I downloaded from the GBox app but had trouble opening due to a password error, will try again tomorrow ) Anyhoo, here’s the apps he loaded ( 12 ). At home I managed to add Waze from my usb using the password GHY0613byd They all worked fine, some are administrators tools and I will see if I can put them in a separate folder ( as iPhone does ). Youtube, YouTube Music, Tik Tok, Brave and Waze. All seem to stay loaded when i put car into Drive unlike the BYD browser and karaoke which will only run in position P . Plugshare having difficulty loading but could be due to gps signal ( car in car port ). Obviously i want to see all the apps still work after the OTA update, which tbh isn’t urgent except for Mr Whippy !! but I want to wait a couple of days as I might think of another app to upload. As a bonus i got the old wallpaper back which i prefer to the mainly blue/purple options. In summary, the guy has some insider information from a Chinese friend at BYD and this lead to him doing the Seal, and now Dolphin, rear view mirror/camera as his “ other “ job is selling electric unicycles out of his shop in Bang Na. Tbh, I think he could have sold this sideloading as a separate enterprise especially as the Seal update has now quashed it. ( I did tip him as he did a great job ). I will return in a couple of days to report back.

so you are saying I should be getting 6.3/6.4 kw .

Went out for lunch today around 11 came back about 2, around 4.30 the little lady and eldest lead weight head out to the local market. But she returns before she even left ( what ? ) saying the new meter is here !! Sure enough the TOU is on the post all wired up and working, the cables to the wall charger are terminated. ( according to the curtain twitcher next door they came around 12.30 ). Not even a phone call !! or a note in the post box, if eagle eyed wifey hadn’t noticed the bits of cable on the ground outside the gate it could have gone days before we noticed it ! Turned the breaker on and plugged the car in and it started charging immediately which I was pleased to see. Pulling 7 kw at the meter and 6.1 kw going into the car, more loss than I expected with an all new setup but I blame PEA , they couldn’t even set the clock right on the meter ( 10 minutes adrift ).

I had heard Gbox mentioned a few times and never investigated, but will now. Tik Tok , also a great idea. thanks .

Well that’s disappointing, i’ll go ahead with the downgrade process and see what happens.

So, when I booked my appointment with the Sinjet guys to fit the rear view mirror/cameras they said they could unlock the screen to accept third party apps also and i should ask for this early in the installation as it could take a while. Well i forgot ( maybe because i had asked them to fit the BYD dash camera also) and he never mentioned it so it never happened. So today we had this conversation: So, I think I will go for it, I will prepare a usb flash drive with APK versions of apps I think will be handy, so far I have: Google Chrome Google Maps Waze Youtube Youtube music Youtube ( hopefully a pre Google Play Services version) Plugshare Charge Loma Will look at some of the charging apps also, PEA Volta, EV PluZ etc Anyone think of any others that could be useful, this could be a one time deal.

Do you have the App Store which has Browser and Karaoke downloads, or the electronic manual ?, both found on last page swiping left from Home Screen ?? These came with OTA update.

Could be, tbh I am in uncharted territory and think that if the Sinjet guy confirms to me that Google Maps and YouTube will play after he has done his downgrade magic I will take the plunge. Although, I do think that BYD will probably find a new way to block third party apps in the future. Been reading some blogs on Reddit about it and someone reckons that the OTA update to 13.1.33.23.10180.1 is where they removed the SilentInstaller and Third Party Apps method along with the USB debugging switch (?). Anyway, looking likely only a downgrade will work for me and am in two minds whether to bother or not .

Well it all seems a little hit and miss, the Malaysian guy’s video on kevp’s post states Google owned apps will have problems but others won’t ?? and other than kev’s podcast app and gweiloman’s youtube app has anyone had any success sideloading ?? My usb didn’t require a password when entering the car but JB and Aussie Paul’s did so points to some definite changes made with the last OTA. Think I’ll hang fire a little to see if my Sinjet guy can confirm that downgrading allows Google Maps and YouTube to be side loaded ( and what happens if you want to upload ? ) before hitting Bangkok traffic.

Okay, when I plug in the usb there’s no request for password , I can see the APK’s , can move them to local, but they will not open. I guess the last OTA stuffed it for us. @kevp will probably come back to confirm.