Ecotricity to start charging for charging

[Heres Johnny]

gangzoom said:

Heres Johnny said:

Instavolt don't seem to be having the same problems... 72 rapids installed in one month earlier in the year, about 350 across the country and are now rolling out 125kw chargers.

Don’t believe every excuse you read.

And where are they locationwise??

I don't mind stopping at a service station for a rapid charge as is enroute, taking a 5-10 minute detour off the M ways is not what most people want to do. By the time you factor in return route on to the Mway thats a nearly 20 minutes wasted just driving to a charger.

Motorway services are the ideal and logical places for rapids, and on that front Ecotricity has pretty much total monopoly.

Tesla blinkers back on? You'll prety much alwats be nearer an instavolt charger than a supercharger. You might even have made it to Liverpool from your place using them, whereas I recall you or your wife revrted to the ICE

Superchargers



Instavolt

[gangzoom]

Heres Johnny said:

Tesla blinkers back on?

Why do you always go on about Tesla?? Its almost as though you an issue with the brand .

Ecotricity has a monopoly on M way service chargers, and they are fully exploiting that monopoly to every EV owners disadvantage.

They can be as bad, as good, as cheap, as expensive as they like because they know no one else has access to so many locations.

[sjg]

gangzoom said:

Ionity is facing the same problem, they promised lots 12 months ago, but in reality has only been able to build a couple of sites in the UK.

Shell/BP etc is actually well positioned, they have the physical sites in place from petrol stations but why would they promote cheaper than petrol electric chargers? It'll be like turkeys voting for Christmas, infact putting in expensive rapid chargers is a great way to scare consumers away from EVs whilst been seen to be doing the right thing.

That only leaves Ecotricity and their monopoly of motorway services rapid charging. Ecotricity know they hold the best hand by far, and can essentially do what they like. Like all cartels consumers never win, but instead are forced to pay what ever cost is set out.

Ionity have a deal with Extra services now - the new Leeds services first then Cobham, Cambridge, Beaconsfield, Cullompton, Blackburn, Baldock and Peterborough.

BP/Chargemaster/Polar are planning to roll out their 150kW chargers at BP motorway service stations, and let's not forget the rapid charging hub just off J14 of the M1.

The ecotricity stranglehold is slowly easing, but I suspect their charging network will be sold off to the highest bidder within a year or two. They made good use of all the government money going into charging provision but the expensive maintenance of creaking old chargers is all adding up. It's not even like they make much off people using them as they seem mostly stuck in free vend mode.

[gangzoom]

^ It'll be great to see some proper reliable CCS rapid charging on the M-way network. Even the Tesla CCS 'converted' stalls seem to suffer more failure rates than none converted stalls - I've actually experience my first 2 failed Tesla Supercharger experience when trying to use stalls that had both the CCS and Type 2, hopefully that was just an coincidence rather than some kind of built in CCS issue.

I'm actually looking forwards to using the CCS adaptor on our car, but the last tried to Ecotrcity chargers back in 2016 it was a 66% failure rate on even just CHADEMO, and reports suggest things aren't any better now with CCS pumps.

Really have no idea what Ecotrcity is up to, as you say most of the time the chargers are on 'free vend' so they cannot be making any money, why no just sell up / open up the network to companies with more money to invest and give us potential customers a decent service?

We go up to past Leeds quite a bit these days, I look forwards to trying an Ionity CCS charger at Leeds services .

[Smiljan]

I’ve no idea what ecotricity are up to either, bizarre to have that stranglehold on the services and then not to capitalise on it.

Out of interest did you need a mod to your X to be able to use CCS?