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I always use a setting of 23C in my Toyota Fortuner ICEV and 22C in my Atto. Anything higher than that like 26C is just not comfortable for the wife or I. Now inside our house we run A/C 24/7 and use a 26C setting which is comfortable enough because you are not dealing with a lot of sunlight easily hitting your body like in a car where there is nothing but tinted windows around you and possibly a sunroof that may be letting light thru to heat things up. Bottomline for the wife and I a 24C setting is probably our upper limit in feeling comfortable in a car, but 22 or 23C is better and preferred. At 25C or above we don't feel comfortable. But I know for a fact most of my Thai in-laws set their car A/C temp to 25 or 26C as that's where they apparently feel the most comfortable. Yea, each person will be different in "what feels comfortable to them"....and when it comes to A/C that means how hard (or not so hard) the EV's electric A/C compressor will have to work/spin....the harder it works/the faster it spins means more compressor noise. Preaching to the choir I know.
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And so far the only charging app that would not accept my Bangkok Bank Mastercard debit card was the ReverSharger app; but it gladly accepted my U.S. credit card. But now that the ReverSharger app has a Wallet like the PEA and EA Anywhere charging apps you don't even need a card loaded as you can just add funds to the ReverSharger Wallet via QR code payment top-up.
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I've played with my BYD Atto A/C temp setting between a 22C setting (where I normally set it) and a 26C setting on hot day over the last year.. it makes a BIG difference in how hard/how fast the electric A/C compressor spins along with the compressor noise level (a whine)....and how long it must spin at a high speed to initially get the cabin temp down. And of course if you crawling along in city traffic wihch cuts down on air flow over the A/C condensor coil in the very front of the car that also going to make the electric compressor work harder compared to zipping along at highway speed with good airflow.
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Yes.
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Maybe consider going to Bangkok Bank to swap the UnionPay card for a Mastercard. Heck, Bangkok Bank even has branded Visa debit cards now...except those branded one typically have a higher annual fee. I did that years ago and I got very little resistance from the bank....swapped the UnionPay basic card for a Mastercard basic card. By very little I mean they just pointed out that the "annual fee" for the UnionPay card was only B200 compared to the Mastercard Bt300. But I think now the annual fee for the basic debit cards for either UnionPay or Mastercard is Bt300. And a Bt100 "initial" issue fee. Go try a brief charging session using Elexa. If I don't even allow you to start a charging session until getting a card loaded then that would indicate they want you to at least have a card paying option loaded. But if the charging session does start, you end it after a few minutes/kilowatts, and then the payment screen will pop open....I bet it will offer the multiple payment options. And even if you can't complete a payment option at the end of the charging session you can still unhook the charging cable and contact Elexa Customer support afterwards regarding the outstanding payment you owe. All it will do is "not" allow you to do another charging session using Elexa until the previous session outstanding balance is paid. Go for it....give it a try.
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Yes...it should offer multiple payment options. But I expect without a card loaded it mihht only offer 3 optons (QR code, SCB, and Max Me). Or it might still offer the card option which you could try to get accepted while paying. The card I have loaded is my Bangkok Bank Mastercard debit card which I did use for an actual Elexa payment about a year ago on my 1st test of Elexa charging...card worked fine. I haven't tried loading a foriegn card nor plan to since I now have the debit card and QR code payment options which I know work for me.. I don't like loading more cards than necessary due to site hacking concerns.
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Being way too curious many times and not afraid to incur self-inflicted pain, today I decided to give a Elex by EGAT DC charger thats about 5 minutes away from my Bangkok home a try since the Elexa app was working quickly vs a "painfully slow" like it's been working for the last two Sunday afternoons when I tried it at the Elex charger in Nakhon Pathom. The charger I used today was also at a PT station like the one in Nakhon Pathom...and neither of these rather plain looking PT stations had an EV mini sign/logo on their main roadside sign. Only if you looked in the Elexa app was the charger shown. As I've described before my Samsung S24+ and the Elexa app are not 100% compatible when using the Elexa map function when ever you also have another app opened-up in the background....like say Google Maps, email, browser, banking app, etc. Because if you have the Elexa app open and showing its map if you switch to viewing another app running in the background and then go back to the Elexa app the Elexa map has turned into a solid white screen....the charger locations and your location are no longer shown....to get them to show again you have to completely close Elexa and reopen it. None of my 5 other charging apps have this issue. So, today before starting the short charging session I ensured only the Elexa app was running to begin the test. I plugged in, scanned the charger QR code, within about 30 to 45 seconds my BYD Atto was charging....and charging at a 87Kw rate on this 150Kw charger which also had another EV charging on its other DC connector. Now the charging curve of my Atto allows a max charge rate of approx 88Kw over part of its charging curve. I started the charging session at around 50% SoC which is within the part of the Atto's charging curve where the max rate allowed is 88Kw....at around 65% SoC the Atto charging curve will throttle back the charging rate to approx 58Kw max. As mentioned I was pleasantly surprised I got this high rate since another EV was also charging, but I expect it was charging at around 60KW "max" depending on its charging curve, SoC, etc. OK, I charge just for around 5 minutes and it's time to stop the charge "and pay." I'm really interested in the "payment part" because I remember from using the Nakhon Pathom charger I used the "QR code option" and could remember around 4 payment options was offered. 1 - my debit card I had loaded in the Elexa app, 2 - QR code payment, and then two more options that used a wallet or maybe a banking app. And the only time you can see all payment options is when actually making a payment....if not making payment you can only see the payment by "card" option in the Elexa settings. Or if there is a way to see all 4 payment options while not doing an actual payment then I haven't been able to find it anywhere in the Elexa app....can only find where you can load a debit/credit card for payment. When the 4 payment options screen popped open I took a screenshot this time....see at bottom for the 4 payment options allowed. Once again I chose the QR payment option, Elexa displayed a QR code, I saved it, then opened my Bangkok Bank mbanking app and made that QR payment, closed the mbanking app to go back to the Alexa app, and within a second or so the Summary screen below changed to another screen saying it received the payment, thanks, and immediately sent me an e-tax receipt. AND THEN I went to the Alexa map screen expecting it to be all white, but no, it was still displaying my locationand chargers locations/pindrops. Awesome. However, after closing all apps, moving my car away from the charger, and parking nearby I did another test of opening the Alexa app to get its map showing, then opened my mbanking app again, closed the mbanking app, and went back to looking at Elexa and the map was now all white again. Strange the Elexa map didn't turn white while I was completing the charging session, but after completing the charging session it was back to having that glitch with its map function on my Samsung S24. But that's just an issue between my Samsung S24+ and Elexa that will hopefully be fixed in future updates. Bottomline the charging session went great....high charging rate....Elexa moved along just fine....and I made below snapshot of available payment options you can only see when actually paying for a charging session....you can not see this unless making payment which can make a person think they must get a debit/credit card loaded in Alexa in order to use/pay.....but not much use in signing up with charging app/network if you can't utilized any of its available payment options. My next short test of Elexa may occur later this week like Thursday or Friday at that Nakhon Pathom charger. And I bet if the Alexa app is not in its turtle mode of being painfully slow like it been on the last two Sunday afternoons that it will work just fine like my Elexa charging session today/Tuesday in Bangkok. Yeap, so far, I like Elexa and its chargers "if" the app is not in turtle mode...and they have quite a few DC chargers along many major highways for long trips with a lot of them being at PT Stations. The 4 Payment Options Currently Available When Paying for an Elexa charging session.
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Well, it's not a BYD Seal that can accelerate to 100KmH in 3.8 seconds and impress high maintenance women, but at least it's a start into the EV world. 😜😁😉 And I was really surprised that little 1/2 ton pickup truck's front wheels didn't leave the ground when lowering your red machine to the ground.
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Yea....agree. I expect BOI would look at how much the cap gain was and if they thought it was not a fairly steady annual amount, just a "one time" BIG amount cap gain, etc., I expect they might ask for additional income proof/docs covering a longer period. But hey, who really knows how BOi fully evaluates cap gain income as I expect they keep that internal procedure close-hold. Bu I do feel BOI is fair "and flexible" for many applicants.
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And regarding one other piece of important red text regarding "maintaining" your LTR visa is ensuring you "continue" to meet the requirements thru the visa period. See BOI LTR snapshot below. An applicant maybe shouldn't try to "short term peak" his LTR income for a year or two just before applying for an LTR visa while "knowingly he can not maintain" the required level of income and other LTR requirements after the LTR visa is approved/issued. Maybe kinda like doing some large cap gain sale for a year or two just before applying for an LTR visa in order to meet the LTR income documentation requirements while knowingly can not maintain anything close to those couple of big sales in ensuring years; therefore, knowingly not being able to maintain the LTR requirements after it was issued. Now when it comes time for the LTR visa "mid-term" renewal/revalidation/whatever you want to call it., that is, time to get the 2nd 5 year period of stay issued for the 10 year LTR visa how and even if BOI will require documents to prove you "maintained" requirement throughout the 1st 5 year period is really unknown at this time. Hopefully, they will just look at the previous one or two years just like when initially applying....basically be a streamlined repeat of when initially applying and of course with no fee since you already paid for the entire 10 year visa when first approved. But we probably won't know for sure what the mid-term review requirements will be until around mid 2027 just before the very first LTR visas were issued in Sep 2022 and are due their 2nd 5 year (mid term) issue period. Time will tell.
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Sometimes the loudest and pitch of a sound greatly depends on your location in relation to the source of the sound. You can be in one spot and a sound is loud/high or low pitch and move just few meters and the sound may very significantly change. Heck, just last week when my neighbor directly across from me was doing his annual cleaning of his driveway with his high pressure washer that sound from the high pitch sounding washer would come across the soi "between" my house and my adjacent neighbor's house and then bounced off the fence wall behind my house making it sound like my home water pump close to my back wall was constantly running when in fact the water pump was not running. It was really strange how that high pressure washer's sound was being amplified a little as it was focused between my house and my adjacent neighbor's house and then being bounced on my back fence wall....made the sound louder and also a higher pitch than if I was standing in the soi much closer to the actual source of the sound--the pressure washer. A similar thing happens occasionally when some one a couple hundred meters away plays a music source loudly with a LOT of low frequency bass which most Thai just love...that is a lot of low frequency bass that can rattle your bones. When that occurs just me moving a 5 or so meters to the left or right can make a big difference in how loud the sound is.. I expect it's because of where the echoes of the sound reinforce or suppress each other depend on where the echoes happen to meet as those echoes bounce away.
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Even no whining when the inside of the cabin is hot? Like it has been setting in the sun making the cabin fell like inside a oven.....or it's just simply hot weather even in the shade (not to be confused with the cool weather we have right now). And what temp do you keep you A/C set to? If like something around 26C (which some of my Thai in-laws prefer) then an electric A/C compressor will rarely have to work hard..."spin fast" which can cause a whining noise since scroll type compressors (vs a piston type compressor) can have a whine when working hard/spinning fast. But set the A/C to something like 22C or lower the electric compressor will have to do more work/spin faster "if" the cabin temp is hot.
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Yea...I would agree as I saw that in the BOI announcements that implied to me at least at a minimum a part of the Chamchuri Sq Immigration Office should be collocated with the BOI one stop center. It sure wouldn't be too convenient if a person really had to bounce between two building kilometers apart to accomplish certain tasks/get certain paperwork related to a person's BOI related visa. But hey, the Chaeng Wattana (CW) Immigration split its operations between buildings kilometers apart for a year or two years but I realized that was driven by the COVID pandemic. I guess all of CW Immigration are back into just the main CW building now, but don't really know or track such after I got my LTR visa issued 2 years ago and since then have only used the Chamchuri Sq Immigration Office to do my 1 year address reporting, getting Residence Certificates to renew my drivers license, buy a car, etc.
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I'm not sure if @JohnnyBD is saying/implying is saying in his quoted post below there has a been a change in LTR WP "income requirements regarding cap gains" based on the very recent HQ BOI announcement about the hopefully soon to occur and Cabinet approved changes to the WGC, WFTP, and Dependent LTR visa categories. But where JohnnyBD provides a current snapshot/quote from the BOI LTR website regarding the "red text" talking cap gains for the WP category is really no different than what has been on the BOI LTR website for a long time....at least going back to mid 2024 where it also mentioned cag gains in red text. The 1st snapshot below taken from the BOI LTR website 31 May 2024 talks what kind of income is acceptable to meet the LTR WP visa category....it shows "cap gains" even back then. However, since then the red text about cap gains was actually toughened-up a little to specify it must the "realized" cap gains vs just saying cap gains which a person could say that means even "unrealized" cap gains (a.k.a., gains on paper only which are unrealized...gains a person has never really realized by selling to actually realize the cap gains...gains that typically become taxable....get the gains sent to his bank account or maybe immediately reinvested like a lot of people do with mutual funds each year). See 1st snapshot at bottom. Additionally, when looking at the WP Required Docs "Income Evidence" checklist currently posted on the BOI LTR website as of 21 Jun 2025 it still the same checklist from 24 May 2024. See 2nd snapshot for more details. Summary: I don't see any changes to the WP category as maybe JohnnyDB is implying. @JohnnyBD, if you were not implying such then please accept my apologies. Cheers. 1st Snapshot...a snapshot from the BOI LTR website "31 May 2024" talking what kind of income is acceptable to meet the LTR WP visa category....it shows "cap gains" even then. However, since then the red text about cap gains was actually toughened- up a little to specify it must the "realized" cap gains vs just saying cap gains which a person could say means even "unrealized" cap gains (a.k.a., gains on paper only...a person has never been realized by selling to actually realize the cap gains). 2nd Snapshot from BOI LTR website 21 Jan 2025 regarding evidence of income for a LTR WP visa. This is a snapshot of the BOI LTR document dated 24 May 2024 which is still currently used as of 21 June 2025. Heck, it don't even mention cap gains, realized or unrealized....but actually "realize cap gains are accepted.