JBChiangRai

There are lots of complaints in Europe, USA & China that Tesla asked customers to take early deliveries of their cars just before dropping the prices. If they took orders for 5,000 here at launch, for sure they will want to deliver those before harmonising their price reductions. The Model 3 Performance is 50% more here than it is in China which is madness with the FTA.

I think a lot depends on how you use your power. The cheapest battery you will ever get is the PEA Grid if you go Grid-Tied. My battery is only used for power cuts and the other thing about batteries here is the warranty. I made my own and I'd rather buy a diesel generator than strip the whole thing down if a cell fails. How good is the warranty on your battery? Do you really trust them? Is it a household name? Supplied by a global household name who will stand behind their warranty? The batteries are usually the most expensive part of a system, if you're cycling them every day they won't last more than 7-8 years. I spin my meter back 30-50 KwHrs every daytime and draw it back every nighttime. I got my battery cheap from a now deceased friend though his Chinese wife. I paid 80k THB for 28.8 KwHrs, I would need double that if not Grid-Tied.

I suspect Tesla are going to make the deliveries of cars recently ordered here in Thailand, and then immediately lower the price to match the reductions made in the rest of the world.

What you are experiencing at 11am is kind of why I added in Grid-Tied inverters, I didn't want the power of the sun going to waste, I wanted to squeeze as much efficiency as I could out of my system. I have mono-crystalline panels and decided to use the extra power I was generating in running all the air-cons and keeping the whole house cool, even have air conditioning in the entrance hallway and the garage to keep my BEV cool.

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Your brain is leaking, get a brain transplant

Lots of power and smooth is relative, my BEV produces lots more power (680bhp) and is totally silent (you can’t get smoother than that), can charge in as long as it takes you to have a coffee. It’s far superior to any ICE car. Once you have had a BEV car, there’s no going back.

I did something similar, 54 panels of 400w, 3 of MUST 5.5Kw Hybrid inverters, 28.8KwHrs of LiFePo4 ESS, the inverters didn't export properly so I added 3 of MUST 6Kw Grid-Tied inverters and moved all the panels over to that and reconfigured the Hybrid inverters as whole house UPS. Generally, we are producing between 55 and 85KwHr’s per day (more when I charge the car). My total cost was a tad under 500k baht. Lessons I learned, MUST Hybrid inverters don’t like exporting, MUST Grid-Tied inverters can have their settings altered to push more power out by increasing the upper voltage cut off. If I was to do it again, I would have gone Grid-Tied only with a backup diesel generator, either 2 of 6Kw inverters or 3 phase 15Kw inverter and saved half the cost. I wouldn’t buy any export capable inverter unless I could tweak the export settings.

You can check your supply by buying a plug in meter (a couple of hundred baht on Lazada), then drawing a lot of power and see how much the voltage drops. If you have instantaeous showers, turn them on, air-conditioning on coldest etc, you can keep a rough tally of the load, air conditioning is roughly 1 kw per 10,000 BTU, electric oven 2.3Kw microwave & kettle 1.5kw. If you can draw 5 or 6 kw without the voltage dropping too low, you're probably ok. Simply changing the meter for a 30/100 amp unit won't increase the strength of your supply, however, if PEA are doing their job properly, they should refuse to supply that meter if the supply is weak, but I wouldn't bet on it. 9 years ago they refused me a 30/100 meter but after another 5 large villas were built using the same phase, they gave a Thai guy with a smaller mew house said meter on the same phase. An additional TOU meter makes a lot of sense if you strong power, don't have solar, and only charge your car overnight, as does installing a 6Kw grid-tied solar system and charging when the sun is out whether your power is weak or strong. If you have weak power, charge your car slowly with a granny or switchable charger. Whatever you do, you're probably going to want a 40 amp breaker fitting for your charger, I prefer to have blue 32 amp plugs and sockets between the breaker and charger, the charger is then not a permanent installation and any electrician will fit it, you can even buy the switchable chargers pre-fitted with a blue 32 amp plug, I bought 2 of them.

It all depends on how strong your supply is, even upgrading to a 30/100 meter will also depend on this. Some companies won't fit wall chargers on a 15/45 amp supply. My advice would be to get an electrician to fit an industrial 32 amp blue socket where you want the charger (40 amp circuit breaker) and fit the wall charger yourself with a 32 amp blue plug. Don't use a 32 amp citcuit breaker on a 7kw charger, it will trip after an hour. You can draw about 80amps continuously on a 15/45 meter, but it's only calibrated for between 15 & 45 amps and will blow the internal fuse at about 100-120 amps. I also have a 15/45 amp meter in Chiang Rai but we are on a weak supply and I get a substantial voltage drop if I draw 5 or 6Kw, typically down to 180v, but I also have solar and if the sun is shining then I have little problem. We are 200-300 metres from the transformer which is fused at 100 amps per phase. We used to have the entire development of 6 large villas all on one phase. One night we blew the fuse at the transformer, PEA sent out a truck and they sat there replacing fuses every 15 minutes so they brought 3 phase here and now we only have 2 houses per phase. We still have problems sometimes on very hot evenings. They said they would fit a larger transformer, but we're still waiting.

You could rearrange that into DILxDO ABUSER and still have a letter left over

I bought 2 of these, Electric Vehicle Ev Charger Type 2 32 Amp Portable Evse, Cee Plug 220v-240v Car Charging Cable, Iec 62196-2,j1772 - Battery Cables & Connectors - AliExpress Has a 32 amp Blue industrial plug on it, switchable 10, 15, 24 & 32 amp

I wouldn't worry too much about charging at 7Kw, the charging current is a lot less than the discharge current driving the car. I plugged my car in to charge this morning at 8:00am and I am charging at 24amp (5.3Kw) and it will have gone from 26% to the target charge of 80% at 17:20. It's a nice sunny day here and I have 3 of 6Kw grid-tied inverters charging the car and running the house, current solar output at 10:43am is 12Kw. If I charge at 7kw (32 amps), my Hybrid inverters used as whole house UPS crash & restart when charging finishes and my AVR breaker trips if a cloud passes the sun.

Only if you have also paid the taxes on the land for 10 years

If I understand it correctly... It is 2023 for Complete Built Up Units (CBU) i.e. imported as complete items and the manufacturer must make 1 car here for every CBU claiming incentive or 1 to 1.5 in some cases. It is 2025 for cars assembled here from Knock Down Kits (CKD). There are further restrictions on price, but this is for cars retailing at under 2M THB.

This is true, the tents have to charge 7% VAT on a 2nd hand car, however, if you finance it or negotiate, they may choose to lower the price and charge you a net figure. Often, they will refuse a cash deal but they make a lot of commission on the finance.

I think I paid about 12,000 for a 2-tone leather interior (seats & door cards) in my 4 door Vigo about 15 years ago, they did an excellent job.

It's probably only about 20,000 baht or so to have one of the mom & pop businesses retrim it attractively in real leather, pleated, perforated, piped in a nice contrasting colour or whatever takes your fancy. I did it in a Vigo years ago.

I checked with Roojai for my daughter's MG EP+ and they quoted just over 9,000 baht. Their policy has historically been that they don't cover imported cars, perhaps the MG EP+ is assembled here?

I think 10 minutes is perfect, I guess they are aiming for people to book their place in the queue as they arrive which makes perfect sense.

I don't drive a Mercedes, I drive a Porsche Taycan and Porsche are known for understating their performance figures.

The article cites dissatisfaction with Level 1 charging which is non-existent here, Thailand is only Level 2 (4 times faster) or Superfast DC. I expect at least 20 years out of my battery if it's properly looked after. With a starting range of 510km, it should still have over 400km range at 20 years. I will probably be dead by then.

I used to have a Mercedes PHEV, real world battery driving was only about 19km, it had a 3.6Kw on board charger that took a couple of hours to charge it up, there was no DC charge ability, I think the Haval is unique in having that. You could switch the car to "Charge" mode on the Mercedes when the battery was exhausted, but there's no point doing that, using petrol to charge the battery is the worst of both worlds and very inefficient. The Haval having a large battery and fast DC Charging makes it by far the most advanced on the market. Personally, I favour a large battery and very small petrol engine in a PHEV that would allow you to limp along to the end of your journey, nobody is doing that.

How do you find the Haval H6 PHEV for noise? I watched a review and thought it was noisy (tyres and ICE) but it could have been bad microphone placement. My daughter test drove the Jolion, I sat in the passenger seat and thought it was noisy, but then most cars are when you're used to an Electric Car. We flirted with buying something else whilst we waited for the MG EP+ to arrive for her, I'm glad we waited. There is certainly no other PHEV with the kind of electric range of the H6 PHEV.

A year ago when I got my BEV, I was worried how I would drive it to BKK for its first service at 2 years old. Now I am not in the least worried and looking forward to the road trip later this year.