Model 3 with no driveway

[manracer]

i had a 7kw home charger installed just before i got my model 3 in august with the intention of only using it in extreme circumstances due to my car having inclusive supercharger access, i have 2 superchargers within 15 minutes of my house and i would visit once a week for 30 mins or so and that would do me for the week.

However....

since it has gotten colder and the usage gone up I got bored of the trip and now just charge at home on the drive once or twice a week

I just top up my electric account once a month online with about £40 and it offsets the additional usage, and time, and effort.

[SWoll]

Horses for courses totally.

Our local rapid charger is 5 minutes from the house and with such a comfortable seat, great heater, Netflix and excellent sound quality I'm happy to spend an hour a week sat charging the car + I get to have a great evening drive the long way back with a fully charged and heated battery giving the full 'Performance' experience without any screaming passengers along for the ride. Doesn't cost me a penny either.

With a busy work and home life it's an hour and a half a week I look forward to.

[squirdan]

gangzoom said:

squirdan said:

to the OP...whilst i am SW not NW, there are so many chargers in London, lack of a drive wouldn't put me off at all

so far I've used:

Source London multiple times (various)
Ubitricity lamp post chargers (slow)
ESB on street medium speed chargers (loads have sprung up near me...think its to encourage electric taxis)
Shell chargers (both superfast at a petrol station, and slower speed eg in a cinema carpark)
Pod Point at Heathrow
and a Tesla supercharger once

That looks like my worst nightmare. Compared to those of us with a driveway, it takes me sub 5 seconds to plug in our EV when I get home and thats it, whilst paying 8p per kWh.

How much time have you wasted looking for all those chargers? And how many charging Apps do you have to manage? The public charging networks in the UK is a shambles at the moment and government appears not to be interested in helping to us legislation to help .

If you took away our home charger I would switch back to combustion without any hesitation.

Edited by gangzoom on Friday 10th January 07:07

horses for courses! i've wasted zero time looking for them - they are on the zap map or I see them on my journeys. I think you've missed my point...I go to the cinema...I charge / I take my kids to the park...I charge instead of paying to park....I go to Waitrose I charge... I park outside the office...I charge.

looking at just the cost of the charge is pointless if theres also a parking charge saving

Its absolute simplicity and they all have apps. when you say "manage them", they arent unruly teenagers, they just sit on my phone and await me FFS !

[mcm87]

Don’t bother. I love my EV and fully support them but it’s a complete chore when you don’t have home charging.

I’m fortunate enough to have several free 22kw chargers and a rapid charger within 10mins walk of home. I tried experimenting with relying on these to penny pinch and lasted about a week. It’s so frustrating. Nothing worse than setting off on a long journey with a low ish charge, stopping to supercharge for a top up, and then realising the battery is cold so the 20min stop becomes 40mins. Or having to go and fetch the car and it’s started raining.

You’ll get sick of it very quickly.

[gangzoom]

squirdan said:

horses for courses! i've wasted zero time looking for them - they are on the zap map or I see them on my journeys. I think you've missed my point...I go to the cinema...I charge / I take my kids to the park...I charge instead of paying to park....I go to Waitrose I charge... I park outside the office...I charge.

I've yet to see a Cinema car park near us with a charger, nor park, nor Supermarket, nor most car parks. It sounds like where you go is been dictated by where there are chargers.

[RichB]

Naive question - when you park at Sainsburys, Cinema, the Office etc. do you have to pay for the electricity and if so how do you do this? Do you have to swipe a credit card or something? Obviously I have no idea but it intrigues me...

[SWoll]

gangzoom said:

squirdan said:

horses for courses! i've wasted zero time looking for them - they are on the zap map or I see them on my journeys. I think you've missed my point...I go to the cinema...I charge / I take my kids to the park...I charge instead of paying to park....I go to Waitrose I charge... I park outside the office...I charge.

I've yet to see a Cinema car park near us with a charger, nor park, nor Supermarket, nor most car parks. It sounds like where you go is been dictated by where there are chargers.

You really do struggle with the concept of other peoples experiences/circumstances differing from your own don't you?

We regularly charge whilst shopping at our local supermarket. Our nearest large shopping centre also has chargers as does the car park at one of our local cinemas.

We visited all of these places regularly long before getting an EV.

[ZesPak]

gangzoom said:

I've yet to see a Cinema car park near us with a charger, nor park, nor Supermarket, nor most car parks. It sounds like where you go is been dictated by where there are chargers.

Here in Belgium this used to be a problem a couple of years ago but not anymore. In the Netherlands you'd have to try hard to find any without this infrastructure. But it depends on how the region is adapted. I can imagine someone in California not having to look for them while in de Midwest they're probably thin spread. (hey I'm not saying you're living in the Midwest but...)

RichB said:

Naive question - when you park at Sainsburys, Cinema, the Office etc. do you have to pay for the electricity and if so how do you do this? Do you have to swipe a credit card or something? Obviously I have no idea but it intrigues me...

All of what I have seen use some sort of swipe card.

I have one from Shell (yes ), and I have yet to find a charge point that doesn't accept it. It's a small passive thingy like the one that opens doors in business centres.

It's pretty clever in terms of design, these charge poles have minimal parts, no keypad, no card slot, no display, just a charge port and some indicating LEDs which makes them very low maintenance.
I think you can have a decent one installed for about a grand that allows charging for two cars.
Something like this, you often see it at private lots:


A local business owner has a pretty good location and at this rate he'll have a ROI in <2 years.

Obviously the ones the city install are the "vandalism-proof" ones which probably cost a multiple of that.

Edited by ZesPak on Friday 10th January 22:59

[SWoll]

RichB said:

Naive question - when you park at Sainsburys, Cinema, the Office etc. do you have to pay for the electricity and if so how do you do this? Do you have to swipe a credit card or something? Obviously I have no idea but it intrigues me...

Most of them app based so if you know where you are going to charge just get the app beforehand and create an account. Then once there just scan the barcode on the scanner etc. and off you go.

Some do use fobs/cards as well but most moving away from that model.

[RichB]

Thanks chaps, I was curious.

[squirdan]

gangzoom said:

squirdan said:

horses for courses! i've wasted zero time looking for them - they are on the zap map or I see them on my journeys. I think you've missed my point...I go to the cinema...I charge / I take my kids to the park...I charge instead of paying to park....I go to Waitrose I charge... I park outside the office...I charge.

I've yet to see a Cinema car park near us with a charger, nor park, nor Supermarket, nor most car parks. It sounds like where you go is been dictated by where there are chargers.

You haven’t looked v hard then

I can’t be bothered to waste more time so I’ll give you 2 factual examples

It is cheaper to pay to charge and park for free at one of the 6 chargers on Prince of Wales Drive, than it is to pay to park in Battersea Park

The other way round also works - It is cost effective to charge for free but pay to park, at one of the 4 or 5 chargers in the Fulham Broadway car park shopping centre.... eg whilst watching a film at the Vue cinema

[poo at Paul's]

ZesPak said:

That's why you need chargers where you park. Like I said, look at the Netherlands. Chargers there have kept up with the massive adoption of evs.

Huh, where are they all? I drove from UK to Antwerp, then Breda and up to Rotterdam today and noticed about 4 or 5 ev cars in Netherlands. About 4 in Belgium!

I know it’s only a few hours driving but even so, ‘ massive adoption’ ? Really?

[ZesPak]

poo at Paul's said:

Huh, where are they all? I drove from UK to Antwerp, then Breda and up to Rotterdam today and noticed about 4 or 5 ev cars in Netherlands. About 4 in Belgium!

I know it’s only a few hours driving but even so, ‘ massive adoption’ ? Really?

It's all relative of course.
Even if 1/10 new cars being electric, since the average car age is about 12 years old, it'll still take ages.

Netherlands is in the top of the world in terms of EV adoption because of more advantages for company cars.

[manracer]

While reading the latest comments it got me thinking of something my dad told me yesterday. A women he knows has 2013 leaf and no home charger, she visits the IKEA that's 2 minutes from her house to charge 3 to 4 times a week. It makes my blood boil, it's like hybrids who hog chargers for hours.

It's rude and so frustrating for people travelling. IMO hybrids should either be banned or have their own dedicated charge points, or hefty fees for staying connected when fully charged.

Equally using them because you choose to not have home charging is just abuse of the system.

Hybrids have a choice and can use the ICE.

People without home charging, mostly, could have a home charger.

[ZesPak]

manracer said:

While reading the latest comments it got me thinking of something my dad told me yesterday. A women he knows has 2013 leaf and no home charger, she visits the IKEA that's 2 minutes from her house to charge 3 to 4 times a week. It makes my blood boil, it's like hybrids who hog chargers for hours.

It's rude and so frustrating for people travelling. IMO hybrids should either be banned or have their own dedicated charge points, or hefty fees for staying connected when fully charged.

Equally using them because you choose to not have home charging is just abuse of the system.

Hybrids have a choice and can use the ICE.

People without home charging, mostly, could have a home charger.

I think you see it wrong. If all the use is just travel charging, we'd see a lot less charge ports. For a lot of people with lower range evs, destination charging overcomes the range deficit.
A some public infrastructure already has idle fees, as soon as it becomes a problem, they'll install more stalls or apply these fees. Tesla is ahead in this and introduced idle fees some time ago on busy SuC.

[anonymous-user]

ZesPak said:

poo at Paul's said:

Huh, where are they all? I drove from UK to Antwerp, then Breda and up to Rotterdam today and noticed about 4 or 5 ev cars in Netherlands. About 4 in Belgium!

I know it’s only a few hours driving but even so, ‘ massive adoption’ ? Really?

It's all relative of course.
Even if 1/10 new cars being electric, since the average car age is about 12 years old, it'll still take ages.

Netherlands is in the top of the world in terms of EV adoption because of more advantages for company cars.

How many company cars are there in the Netherlands? We know it’s quite small in the UK, maybe 3%, so doesn’t affect overall car choice significantly. Is it a greater %age in NL?

[TTmonkey]

I was at a tesla SC point at one of the big service stations last year near Birmingham.
I was admiring one of the big Tesla’s getting a charge as it was a hot day and the gull wings were open. The owner was quite approachable and we chatted for three minutes or so.

I’d never seen so many Tesla’s. I realise that most were getting free fuel. But there was 11 Tesla’s queuing for the next available SC point.

I spoke to the owner and he was very upbeat about his wonderful car. But he did say that they had already been (as a family of four) into the services for a meal and were just waiting for the recharge to continue their journey down to the West Country.

I don’t know how long they were there for, but it’s the last place that I would choose to have a meal during a journey. I was there maybe 10 minutes and spent a penny. Not sure what his free charge cost him, but you will rationalise it against a free charge of fuel, which is fine I’m not arguing that.

I wonder how it’s all going to feel this summer when there’s probably many more Tesla’s waiting to queue up for a free slot?

I guess until every parking space gets a charge point access this will become a bit of a drama.

It would also be interesting to find out how much these cars are costing to refill in real terms now. My dirty diesel will do my whole round trip of 550 miles on one tank full, about £70.
If you set out in a Tesla 3 (no free charging) and have to use public charging points, how much does it cost, and how long does it have to charge? Assuming your destination doesn’t have access to a charge point so you have to use public.

My mate has borrowed a Jag this weekend. He gets free charging at work. But his loan weekend from Jag isn’t on a working weekend (he works shifts 4 on then it feels like 10 off lol) so he texted me from his work place last night, was there for four hours getting a recharge so he could use the jag thisnweekend!!!!)
I’m sure of course that if he buys one he’ll put in a charge point at home or something.

Edited by TTmonkey on Saturday 11th January 09:08

[TTmonkey]

Another question. I live out in the country side with no local charge points.

If my friend in the jag comes to visit me, Is he going to want to plug into my electric in order to get home?

What’s the score there?

[MaxSo]

TTmonkey said:

What’s the score there?

It’s very simple to calculate how much the charge will cost you - he could simply ping you a transfer with the amount each time if it became a regular thing - or, you could just agree that he owes you a pint.

[SWoll]

TTmonkey said:

Another question. I live out in the country side with no local charge points.

If my friend in the jag comes to visit me, Is he going to want to plug into my electric in order to get home?

What’s the score there?

Unless there's no way of him charging within a 100 miles of your home then he should be able to full charge on the way to you or the way home?

How far does he live from you and roughly what area do you live in?