Buy an EV they said...
Discussion
So I had to make a trip down to Bulford last week.
I normally take my diesel Audi but I sold it a couple of months ago so had to take the EV.
Here is a rough breakdown of what happened....
Its a c.200 mile trip each way with some driving around the area over a couple of days, a trip that I have done many, many times before but never in an EV.
I knew it was going to be "fun" but not this much "fun".
Trip down, 250mi range at the start so in theory 50mi spare.
Made it to Insta Volt on the M40 for a 125kW splash and dash - was down to 120mi range.
It put in at c.70kW/h and I was back up to 230 ish miles in the tank. Insta volt charging was easy, tap card and go.
Spent about 30 min on charge - got bored after a costa and browsing the web...
Made it to my hotel with about 125mi left. AC was on and was doing 70 most of the way with the occasional "burst" so to speak.
The following day I had a few things to do and knew I would need 120-130 miles of range.
So decided to find a charger.... this is where things went a bit silly.
First try...
Genie point.
Create account.
Verify account.
Register vehicle.
Add £10 credit to new account.
THEN try and connect...
Refuses to connect to its network. Great.
Half an hour wasted.
Second try...
Another genie point.
Got further this time. Said it was authorising..
Then "waiting for EV" or similar....
Tried for half an hour - total waste of time.
Third try, now back over Amesbury and thank god they had an Insta Volt. Tap, charge.
Why cant they all be this easy?
But, down side only 50kW charging so was pulling about 45kW so ended up sat there for 1.5 hours as by this point I was on about 15%.
Following day more driving around but calculated I needed 2 top ups to get home.
So back to Amesbury instavolt for 45 min before starting the trip back home.
Charged up to 190mi which would not get me home but meant only having to do a splash and dash on the M40 plus some reserve in the tank.
My co-pilot thought I was turning into rain man at this point... apparently I was rambling about kW/mi and slipstreaming trucks...
Anyway off we go north.
Pulled into Banbury with c.100 miles left. ONE charge point free... yeah my lucky day eh?
No.
No.
No.
"Out of service".
Well sh**.
So 8 points, 7 in use and 1 broken. Great.
But all was not lost, a few mins later a slot came free.
Pulled in, tap, charge.... charge I said... SH**.
Its not charging.
"Initialising"
I then spent half an hour googling trying to figure out what the problem was.
Plug in, unplug, ignition on, off, drive back, drive forward nothing working... worried now!
Then another point came free and I darted over to that. This time plugged in tapped my card and off it went.
Phew!!
I needed to put in around 50 miles to make sure I got home. I put in 70 just to be safe!
Got home with 19 miles range left.
In short - EVs are cr@p at long distance driving.
I shudder to think how this would have gone in the middle of winter with ambient temps 20-25c lower.
I have no desire to repeat this trip (although I will have too so will hire a car) and over the 3/4 days I spent around 5 hours of my time either on charge or trying to get it to charge.
Plus probably another hour or so driving out of my way to charging points - so call it 6 hours.
Normally I would gas up once during this trip which would take max 10 mins.
So 6 hours faff for maybe 12-14 hours driving. c50% of the drive time putting fuel in the thing. Not good.
All in all just a lot of stress and hassle and drinking expensive coffee.
Insta Volt seem the best chargers.
I have tried Ecotricity before and they are a complete waste of time, as are Genie point so it seems.
I normally take my diesel Audi but I sold it a couple of months ago so had to take the EV.
Here is a rough breakdown of what happened....
Its a c.200 mile trip each way with some driving around the area over a couple of days, a trip that I have done many, many times before but never in an EV.
I knew it was going to be "fun" but not this much "fun".
Trip down, 250mi range at the start so in theory 50mi spare.
Made it to Insta Volt on the M40 for a 125kW splash and dash - was down to 120mi range.
It put in at c.70kW/h and I was back up to 230 ish miles in the tank. Insta volt charging was easy, tap card and go.
Spent about 30 min on charge - got bored after a costa and browsing the web...
Made it to my hotel with about 125mi left. AC was on and was doing 70 most of the way with the occasional "burst" so to speak.
The following day I had a few things to do and knew I would need 120-130 miles of range.
So decided to find a charger.... this is where things went a bit silly.
First try...
Genie point.
Create account.
Verify account.
Register vehicle.
Add £10 credit to new account.
THEN try and connect...
Refuses to connect to its network. Great.
Half an hour wasted.
Second try...
Another genie point.
Got further this time. Said it was authorising..
Then "waiting for EV" or similar....
Tried for half an hour - total waste of time.
Third try, now back over Amesbury and thank god they had an Insta Volt. Tap, charge.
Why cant they all be this easy?
But, down side only 50kW charging so was pulling about 45kW so ended up sat there for 1.5 hours as by this point I was on about 15%.
Following day more driving around but calculated I needed 2 top ups to get home.
So back to Amesbury instavolt for 45 min before starting the trip back home.
Charged up to 190mi which would not get me home but meant only having to do a splash and dash on the M40 plus some reserve in the tank.
My co-pilot thought I was turning into rain man at this point... apparently I was rambling about kW/mi and slipstreaming trucks...
Anyway off we go north.
Pulled into Banbury with c.100 miles left. ONE charge point free... yeah my lucky day eh?
No.
No.
No.
"Out of service".
Well sh**.
So 8 points, 7 in use and 1 broken. Great.
But all was not lost, a few mins later a slot came free.
Pulled in, tap, charge.... charge I said... SH**.
Its not charging.
"Initialising"
I then spent half an hour googling trying to figure out what the problem was.
Plug in, unplug, ignition on, off, drive back, drive forward nothing working... worried now!
Then another point came free and I darted over to that. This time plugged in tapped my card and off it went.
Phew!!
I needed to put in around 50 miles to make sure I got home. I put in 70 just to be safe!
Got home with 19 miles range left.
In short - EVs are cr@p at long distance driving.
I shudder to think how this would have gone in the middle of winter with ambient temps 20-25c lower.
I have no desire to repeat this trip (although I will have too so will hire a car) and over the 3/4 days I spent around 5 hours of my time either on charge or trying to get it to charge.
Plus probably another hour or so driving out of my way to charging points - so call it 6 hours.
Normally I would gas up once during this trip which would take max 10 mins.
So 6 hours faff for maybe 12-14 hours driving. c50% of the drive time putting fuel in the thing. Not good.
All in all just a lot of stress and hassle and drinking expensive coffee.
Insta Volt seem the best chargers.
I have tried Ecotricity before and they are a complete waste of time, as are Genie point so it seems.
I would always advise anyone to do a bit more planning than the op did - get your apps downloaded and set up with payment card in advance of travelling.
Long journeys give me a bit of stress in my ipace, and for holidays in rural Wales and Scotland we take my wife’s car (it has a bigger boot) but I have done 20500 miles so far in it, a lot of which has been long distance (the same 365-mile round trips in a day done around a dozen times), and did 39,000 miles in an i3 before the ipace.
Instavolt are really good (but not perfect), I have found GeniePoint good but only used in three places (others have had big problems with GeniePoint), I never managed to get Ecotricity to work with the jag (but had a fair bit of success in the i3) but Gridserve updates are starting to change that network
Tesla? Am not impressed with the yo-yo prices, and the earliest you can get a new X or S is the end of 2022, so they have ruled themselves out of contention. And i know people who have had cataclysmically awful experiences with Tesla (while others have had great experiences). There seemed to be only just enough Tesla chargers at Tebay when we stopped for lunch (didn’t need a charge) on a 195 mile journey, as the one or two empty slots stayed empty for no more than 5 mins or so - so I am not entirely convinced the Tesla network will continue to be as great as people say it is
What I want to know is what EV I can get big enough for my wife’s (and daughters’) holiday packing and that has a spare wheel. But that’s a different story…
Long journeys give me a bit of stress in my ipace, and for holidays in rural Wales and Scotland we take my wife’s car (it has a bigger boot) but I have done 20500 miles so far in it, a lot of which has been long distance (the same 365-mile round trips in a day done around a dozen times), and did 39,000 miles in an i3 before the ipace.
Instavolt are really good (but not perfect), I have found GeniePoint good but only used in three places (others have had big problems with GeniePoint), I never managed to get Ecotricity to work with the jag (but had a fair bit of success in the i3) but Gridserve updates are starting to change that network
Tesla? Am not impressed with the yo-yo prices, and the earliest you can get a new X or S is the end of 2022, so they have ruled themselves out of contention. And i know people who have had cataclysmically awful experiences with Tesla (while others have had great experiences). There seemed to be only just enough Tesla chargers at Tebay when we stopped for lunch (didn’t need a charge) on a 195 mile journey, as the one or two empty slots stayed empty for no more than 5 mins or so - so I am not entirely convinced the Tesla network will continue to be as great as people say it is
What I want to know is what EV I can get big enough for my wife’s (and daughters’) holiday packing and that has a spare wheel. But that’s a different story…
.
The biggest barrier to adoption will be the charging networks. Having so many disparate systems, payments, accounts etc will just make it a nightmare, and that's before you get to charger availability. If someone suggested now that in order to buy fuel from Esso, Shell, BP, Texaco or wherever that you had to set up a separate account for each one, you'd think they were nuts.
Why don't chargers offer a simple 'Pay at Pump' style affair where you just put your debit/credit card in, enter the PIN, it pre-authorises up to £xx and off you go? Why all this crap about having to set up accounts?
I think Teslas are ugly, poorly-made and have embraced the same walled-garden as Apple - but the charging network is second-to-none and that's why if I had a gun to my head it'd be the electric car I grudgingly chose.
Why don't chargers offer a simple 'Pay at Pump' style affair where you just put your debit/credit card in, enter the PIN, it pre-authorises up to £xx and off you go? Why all this crap about having to set up accounts?
I think Teslas are ugly, poorly-made and have embraced the same walled-garden as Apple - but the charging network is second-to-none and that's why if I had a gun to my head it'd be the electric car I grudgingly chose.
red_slr said:
So I had to make a trip down to Bulford last week.
I normally take my diesel Audi but I sold it a couple of months ago so had to take the EV.
Here is a rough breakdown of what happened....
Its a c.200 mile trip each way with some driving around the area over a couple of days, a trip that I have done many, many times before but never in an EV.
I knew it was going to be "fun" but not this much "fun".
Trip down, 250mi range at the start so in theory 50mi spare.
Made it to Insta Volt on the M40 for a 125kW splash and dash - was down to 120mi range.
It put in at c.70kW/h and I was back up to 230 ish miles in the tank. Insta volt charging was easy, tap card and go.
Spent about 30 min on charge - got bored after a costa and browsing the web...
Made it to my hotel with about 125mi left. AC was on and was doing 70 most of the way with the occasional "burst" so to speak.
The following day I had a few things to do and knew I would need 120-130 miles of range.
So decided to find a charger.... this is where things went a bit silly.
First try...
Genie point.
Create account.
Verify account.
Register vehicle.
Add £10 credit to new account.
THEN try and connect...
Refuses to connect to its network. Great.
Half an hour wasted.
Second try...
Another genie point.
Got further this time. Said it was authorising..
Then "waiting for EV" or similar....
Tried for half an hour - total waste of time.
Third try, now back over Amesbury and thank god they had an Insta Volt. Tap, charge.
Why cant they all be this easy?
But, down side only 50kW charging so was pulling about 45kW so ended up sat there for 1.5 hours as by this point I was on about 15%.
Following day more driving around but calculated I needed 2 top ups to get home.
So back to Amesbury instavolt for 45 min before starting the trip back home.
Charged up to 190mi which would not get me home but meant only having to do a splash and dash on the M40 plus some reserve in the tank.
My co-pilot thought I was turning into rain man at this point... apparently I was rambling about kW/mi and slipstreaming trucks...
Anyway off we go north.
Pulled into Banbury with c.100 miles left. ONE charge point free... yeah my lucky day eh?
No.
No.
No.
"Out of service".
Well sh**.
So 8 points, 7 in use and 1 broken. Great.
But all was not lost, a few mins later a slot came free.
Pulled in, tap, charge.... charge I said... SH**.
Its not charging.
"Initialising"
I then spent half an hour googling trying to figure out what the problem was.
Plug in, unplug, ignition on, off, drive back, drive forward nothing working... worried now!
Then another point came free and I darted over to that. This time plugged in tapped my card and off it went.
Phew!!
I needed to put in around 50 miles to make sure I got home. I put in 70 just to be safe!
Got home with 19 miles range left.
In short - EVs are cr@p at long distance driving.
I shudder to think how this would have gone in the middle of winter with ambient temps 20-25c lower.
I have no desire to repeat this trip (although I will have too so will hire a car) and over the 3/4 days I spent around 5 hours of my time either on charge or trying to get it to charge.
Plus probably another hour or so driving out of my way to charging points - so call it 6 hours.
Normally I would gas up once during this trip which would take max 10 mins.
So 6 hours faff for maybe 12-14 hours driving. c50% of the drive time putting fuel in the thing. Not good.
All in all just a lot of stress and hassle and drinking expensive coffee.
Insta Volt seem the best chargers.
I have tried Ecotricity before and they are a complete waste of time, as are Genie point so it seems.
Red Sir.I normally take my diesel Audi but I sold it a couple of months ago so had to take the EV.
Here is a rough breakdown of what happened....
Its a c.200 mile trip each way with some driving around the area over a couple of days, a trip that I have done many, many times before but never in an EV.
I knew it was going to be "fun" but not this much "fun".
Trip down, 250mi range at the start so in theory 50mi spare.
Made it to Insta Volt on the M40 for a 125kW splash and dash - was down to 120mi range.
It put in at c.70kW/h and I was back up to 230 ish miles in the tank. Insta volt charging was easy, tap card and go.
Spent about 30 min on charge - got bored after a costa and browsing the web...
Made it to my hotel with about 125mi left. AC was on and was doing 70 most of the way with the occasional "burst" so to speak.
The following day I had a few things to do and knew I would need 120-130 miles of range.
So decided to find a charger.... this is where things went a bit silly.
First try...
Genie point.
Create account.
Verify account.
Register vehicle.
Add £10 credit to new account.
THEN try and connect...
Refuses to connect to its network. Great.
Half an hour wasted.
Second try...
Another genie point.
Got further this time. Said it was authorising..
Then "waiting for EV" or similar....
Tried for half an hour - total waste of time.
Third try, now back over Amesbury and thank god they had an Insta Volt. Tap, charge.
Why cant they all be this easy?
But, down side only 50kW charging so was pulling about 45kW so ended up sat there for 1.5 hours as by this point I was on about 15%.
Following day more driving around but calculated I needed 2 top ups to get home.
So back to Amesbury instavolt for 45 min before starting the trip back home.
Charged up to 190mi which would not get me home but meant only having to do a splash and dash on the M40 plus some reserve in the tank.
My co-pilot thought I was turning into rain man at this point... apparently I was rambling about kW/mi and slipstreaming trucks...
Anyway off we go north.
Pulled into Banbury with c.100 miles left. ONE charge point free... yeah my lucky day eh?
No.
No.
No.
"Out of service".
Well sh**.
So 8 points, 7 in use and 1 broken. Great.
But all was not lost, a few mins later a slot came free.
Pulled in, tap, charge.... charge I said... SH**.
Its not charging.
"Initialising"
I then spent half an hour googling trying to figure out what the problem was.
Plug in, unplug, ignition on, off, drive back, drive forward nothing working... worried now!
Then another point came free and I darted over to that. This time plugged in tapped my card and off it went.
Phew!!
I needed to put in around 50 miles to make sure I got home. I put in 70 just to be safe!
Got home with 19 miles range left.
In short - EVs are cr@p at long distance driving.
I shudder to think how this would have gone in the middle of winter with ambient temps 20-25c lower.
I have no desire to repeat this trip (although I will have too so will hire a car) and over the 3/4 days I spent around 5 hours of my time either on charge or trying to get it to charge.
Plus probably another hour or so driving out of my way to charging points - so call it 6 hours.
Normally I would gas up once during this trip which would take max 10 mins.
So 6 hours faff for maybe 12-14 hours driving. c50% of the drive time putting fuel in the thing. Not good.
All in all just a lot of stress and hassle and drinking expensive coffee.
Insta Volt seem the best chargers.
I have tried Ecotricity before and they are a complete waste of time, as are Genie point so it seems.
EV's aren't crap for long distance or short distance driving, there great. The infrastructure for charging them is crap. The good news is the infrastructure is getting better all the time. Just takes a little planning at the moment to do a long journey. Need plan A , B and C when finding a charger. Ecotricity have been taken over by Grid Serve and new chargers and many more of them are going in. The future for EV's looks great.
Evanivitch said:
What was the EV? I missed it.
Unfortunate it wasn't smooth going, but the system is getting better. I'm surprised you found such a busy charging hub too, but I suppose that's the future to come.
It was great on the way down only us there - but it was during the England game. Return was Friday PM... so I guess maybe the busiest time of the week.Unfortunate it wasn't smooth going, but the system is getting better. I'm surprised you found such a busy charging hub too, but I suppose that's the future to come.
Its an ipace.
red_slr said:
It was great on the way down only us there - but it was during the England game. Return was Friday PM... so I guess maybe the busiest time of the week.
Its an ipace.
Unfortunate indeed. I know a few people swear by Instavolt but they rarely put in large hubs and a lot of 50kW chargers at the moment.Its an ipace.
Genie point are generally okay in my limited experience of them, but having yourself already setup for a non-contactless legacy charger is always helpful, if hard to predict (and reluctant when it puts £10 on your account to hold).
Justin Case said:
Why should you have to plan? There should be no reason why you can't just fill up, pay by contactless card and drive off. After all It works perfectly well for petrol and diesel.
Well just like 24hr petrol stations and pay-at-pump weren't immediately available, EV charging is quickly adapting too.Many chargers originally installed didn't have contactless payment capability. New chargers are required by law to accept it as a minimum.
I'm really hoping the infrastructure improves very, very quickly over the next few years.
I have a PHEV, bought partly as an experiment to see if I could live with a full on EV. I bought a cable to connect to the charging network (£150!) and have tried a few times to charge when out and about, just to see how painful it really is. The answer has always been very...from the ones at supermarket carparks to motorway services (definitely the worst, apart from Gloucester which actually worked!) they're either already in use, or just don't work. I've also ended up with loads of different apps, all of which want all of my details and payment info before I then find out the charger won't work.
The other issue is the cost. At 35p or even 40ppkwh it's no cheaper than running my V8 Aston on super unleaded. Admittedly PHEV's aren't the most economical but to 'fill' it is about 13kw, from which I'll get a maximum of 24 miles in summer. I'd like an EV (not a big fan of Tesla's) as for a daily driver I prefer the way they drive, home charging means hardly any fill ups on the go and the pre conditioning is really useful. I'm just yet to be convinced I could live with one full time as I don't have much patience, so an ordeal like OP's would have me trading the car in the next day out of sheer frustration!
I have a PHEV, bought partly as an experiment to see if I could live with a full on EV. I bought a cable to connect to the charging network (£150!) and have tried a few times to charge when out and about, just to see how painful it really is. The answer has always been very...from the ones at supermarket carparks to motorway services (definitely the worst, apart from Gloucester which actually worked!) they're either already in use, or just don't work. I've also ended up with loads of different apps, all of which want all of my details and payment info before I then find out the charger won't work.
The other issue is the cost. At 35p or even 40ppkwh it's no cheaper than running my V8 Aston on super unleaded. Admittedly PHEV's aren't the most economical but to 'fill' it is about 13kw, from which I'll get a maximum of 24 miles in summer. I'd like an EV (not a big fan of Tesla's) as for a daily driver I prefer the way they drive, home charging means hardly any fill ups on the go and the pre conditioning is really useful. I'm just yet to be convinced I could live with one full time as I don't have much patience, so an ordeal like OP's would have me trading the car in the next day out of sheer frustration!
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