New owner thoughts

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ZNuts

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 20, 2020
Messages
46
Location
Puget Sound Area
Well, owned my 2016 baby-blue Spark EV for about 3 weeks now. Love it but I did notice a few things so I thought I share those with you folks and get some feedback.

First the Good stuff:

  • Of course, the speedy response and acceleration.
  • Yes, no fill-ups
  • Price, I got a great deal on it, less than $9k OTD

The "humm"

  • Plastic steering wheel, so slippery. This is one of the worst I ever seen. Any rec for a cover?
  • Radio control, no volume knob and the touch screen is not very responsive
  • The hood prop clip (on the underside of the hood) is broken, ?

The "eeks"
  • weak head lights, already replaced with LED set
  • cheap feel seat with the split cloth/vinyl. I may get some cover for those
  • tiny side mirrors, already installed blind-spot mirrors
  • Found some corrosion on the retaining bolt of the 12V battery but no corrosion on the terminals
  • Speakers, eeks. I got some Alpine recommended by folks here coming
 
Another Puget Sound area owner here. You nailed the major issues and a few that I hadn't considered. My biggest complaint was the sound system. I know not to expect great sound from a car that is on the low low side of economy cars, but :roll: . Got some new front and rears based on another thread in the forums and it's better but still far from great.

Other things:
the fronts wear quickly so be prepared for that
battery range will severely decrease in the winter months... normal AFAICT
If we get a snowy/icy winter, best to park the Spark for a while.
 
ZNuts said:
  • weak head lights, already replaced with LED set
Please think about you LED headlights.
I tested a few brands.
None gave me a proper Lo Beam cutoff pattern.

Shine the Lo Beams on a wall. See how well the area above the pattern is lit up?
The stock lamps create a good pattern that is dark above the cutoff.

You can also test on the road.
Without knowing which car is yours, stand and watch oncoming cars and see which have blinding patterns.
It has to be dark, not in city lights.
Once you start noticing, you can pick out the bad LED replacement lights in stock headlight assemblies.
 
I'll take another look at the light pattern. I'll compare to my Equnoix with OEM HID side by side and report back. I'm not super worried if they are a bit different but if it's shining light onto on-coming traffic then ya, that's problem.

The led didn't give me much pause because I thought only HID retrofit kit had that problem.
 
I checked the low-beam pattern on the LED retrofit tonight. I did two ways, one is to compare the lights on the wall against another car with OEM light and another is just to see the pattern as I drive home at light. Well, I see no issues at all. The low-beam cut off very nicely on the wall and falls about 5-6 car length in front of me, similar to other cars on the road tonight.

The one I got is called "Trueland" and I got it from Amazon Warehouse (open-package) for under $30. I do say the fan on the light housing is loud when I park the car and before the light goes off, I can really hear it.
 
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