Fully Charged Live 2022

Despite my near death experience at last years Fully Charged Live event at Farnborough I decided to tough it out and go again this year.

The event was held at Farnborough between the 29th April and the 1st May 2022. I decided to travel up on the Thursday 28th April 2022 and stayed overnight at the Travel Lodge Fleet mainly as they had an adjacent Starbucks with an Instavolt Charger and a MIller & Carter steak house.

Despite nearly choking to death on a piece of steak last year I braved it again and had a lovely steak meal which did not attempt to kill me this time.

The next day I drove the short distance to the show. I wanted to see what options I had for changing my 64 kWh Kona in the coming months. It would be three years old in September and despite it just having a new replacement traction battery I had decided now is the time for a change.

I had narrowed my choice down to a Nissan Ariya and a Kia Niro EV.

Nissan Ariya

Kia Niro EV

I shall not bore you with all the technical specifications but in the end I decided I liked the look of the Ariya better.

Below is a video presented by Quinton Wilson which captures the main features of Fully Charged live and hence I shall not upload all the images I took that day. I will say that since this show started 3 years ago it has now grown out of all proportion. It had hundreds of exhibitors and was a real experience for those interested in all things EV.

So having returned home I decided to order a new Nissan Ariya on the Saturday from the Nissan website as instructed by the Nissan staff at the show. I was told at the show to put in an order before Monday 2nd May 2022 as the prices would be going up by a thousand pound after that date. Below is the screen shot of confirmation of my order.

Later the same day I had a phone call from my local Nissan dealer Vospers of Plymouth. The lady salesperson advised me she would submit the order after the Bank Holiday Monday. I pointed out that I wanted it done today as the prices were going up after Monday. This was news to her.

Alarm bells should have gone off in my head as I had vowed never to buy from Vospers again after they had mis sold me my first Nissan Leaf back in 2017.

I called her again after the bank holiday to ask if the order had been made at the cheaper price. There was some confusion as to the specification options I wanted. She could not find them on her system. It turned out she ordered two vehicles. I checked my bank account and the £99 I paid to Nissan UK was showing as a pending transaction. I queried this with her and she advised it could take 3 weeks to show on her system.

I waited for written confirmation of my order as I had requested.

After three weeks I had nothing in writing from either Vospers or Nissan regarding the purchase.

I checked my bank account and could find no trace of the £99 reservation fee. It had not been taken from my account and was no longer showing as pending.

I rang the lady salesperson again.

She started to talk to me about finance payments regarding the car. It took her a few minutes to realise she had the wrong customer details in front of her. Once she knew who she was talking to she stated she had the £99 reservation fee shown as paid. I explained that that could not be as it had not been taken from my account. There was then further confusion whether both cars ordered would come at the pre price increase amount.

I explained I had not ordered two cars. By this time I had had enough. I said I was thinking of cancelling my order. Her reply was that she quite understood and did I want to go ahead and cancel. This I did.

This I found incredible. She could not careless about losing a sale.

I should have known better and never gone to Vospers.

That left me with a dilemma. Do I keep the Kona or do I now explore the Kia Niro EV.

Well I contacted Rodgers of Brixton and they could not have been more helpful. Within minutes I had ordered a new Kia Niro and had an immediate email with receipt for my deposit and a customer invoice showing exactly what I had ordered including all the options I had requested.

I now wait with anticipation for a delivery date on this completely new model from Kia.

Update – see my new Kia Niro EV 4 Here