First foray into the wild with an EV
Discussion
So, after about 2.5 years of EV ownership, we (i.e. the wife) decided that it was time to go further afield and venture into the world of public chargers.
We bought the car with the intention of using it for short, local journeys only. And this has been the case, never going too far from home. We have a 7kw home charger as we have a driveway and it has been fine, as you would expect.
The car is an outgoing model Zoe and we have been getting about 140 miles in the winter and 185 in the summer out of it.
The wife wanted to meet a friend about 45 miles from home today and upon a bit of research we discovered there were a number of free to use Pod Point chargers near where she was meeting her friend. With a full charge, she should have plenty to get there and back without charging, even dropping off the children at school on the way. Therefore, there was no real need to charge, but we (i.e. me) agreed she should give it a go to see if public charging works in the real world. If it didn't work, she would still be able to get home, so, in theory, a no loss situation. So we downloaded the PP App, set up an account and checked the recent history of the chargers that she would be using. This all worked well. One charger had been reported as not working, but a number of others had been confirmed as working in the last week and had "green" status.
Anyway, I texted her this morning soon after she was due to arrive to make sure it was going ok and the response I got was as follows: "Nightmare". I then called her to ask why. All I got was a garbled, angry wife ranting at me. The only words I could make out were: "pay money", "disabled bay", "never again". Then she said she was late and had to go.
After letting her cool down a bit, I texted again to ask whether she had managed to connect and charge. The responses: "Yes I have!" "In a disabled bay".
Doesn't sound like it has gone too well so far, but at least she is connected and charging. On first impressions, it sounds like all the chargers are being used (although this is certainly not the case according to the App) or a number of selfish people without EVs have decided to park in the bays. Or the bays are obstructed by something else.
To be continued this evening.
We bought the car with the intention of using it for short, local journeys only. And this has been the case, never going too far from home. We have a 7kw home charger as we have a driveway and it has been fine, as you would expect.
The car is an outgoing model Zoe and we have been getting about 140 miles in the winter and 185 in the summer out of it.
The wife wanted to meet a friend about 45 miles from home today and upon a bit of research we discovered there were a number of free to use Pod Point chargers near where she was meeting her friend. With a full charge, she should have plenty to get there and back without charging, even dropping off the children at school on the way. Therefore, there was no real need to charge, but we (i.e. me) agreed she should give it a go to see if public charging works in the real world. If it didn't work, she would still be able to get home, so, in theory, a no loss situation. So we downloaded the PP App, set up an account and checked the recent history of the chargers that she would be using. This all worked well. One charger had been reported as not working, but a number of others had been confirmed as working in the last week and had "green" status.
Anyway, I texted her this morning soon after she was due to arrive to make sure it was going ok and the response I got was as follows: "Nightmare". I then called her to ask why. All I got was a garbled, angry wife ranting at me. The only words I could make out were: "pay money", "disabled bay", "never again". Then she said she was late and had to go.
After letting her cool down a bit, I texted again to ask whether she had managed to connect and charge. The responses: "Yes I have!" "In a disabled bay".
Doesn't sound like it has gone too well so far, but at least she is connected and charging. On first impressions, it sounds like all the chargers are being used (although this is certainly not the case according to the App) or a number of selfish people without EVs have decided to park in the bays. Or the bays are obstructed by something else.
To be continued this evening.
I've charged 3 times away from home since I got the Model 3 in September;
- Northampton Supercharger - fine, no issues
- Bristol Supercharger - fine no issues
- Milton Keynes - Chargemaster - had to try 3 different chargers to get one to work, and then the app said "trying to connect" or whatever for a few minutes. A guy in a Chargemaster T shirt came over and asked if we were ok, we explained we were struggling to get one to work and he said "yeah we have had a few problems". Eventually started charging.
They have got to sort out the non-Tesla charging, different providers/apps/payment methods, plus the reliability of the chargers themselves :-/
- Northampton Supercharger - fine, no issues
- Bristol Supercharger - fine no issues
- Milton Keynes - Chargemaster - had to try 3 different chargers to get one to work, and then the app said "trying to connect" or whatever for a few minutes. A guy in a Chargemaster T shirt came over and asked if we were ok, we explained we were struggling to get one to work and he said "yeah we have had a few problems". Eventually started charging.
They have got to sort out the non-Tesla charging, different providers/apps/payment methods, plus the reliability of the chargers themselves :-/
I agree on the Tesla thing, probably the main selling point these days for new buyers, though they are only immune to one of the OPs wifes potential issues - non chargers taking/blocking a spot - due to their being placed further away from the usual parking/shopping areas in the UK (or at least the ones I've seen have either been out of town by a Hilton else at a motorway service station, but separated and just slightly further out from the main car park).
Small Tesco I occasionally pop in to in Rickmansworth now has 4 charge points in a square (don't think they are free), however when I do stop there I normally see at least one taken up by either a non-EV/PHEV or by an EV which has not even attempted to fake charging and has no cable connected (not sure of this is as bad or worse). I suppose it's no different from disabled parking spots in that respect.
Small Tesco I occasionally pop in to in Rickmansworth now has 4 charge points in a square (don't think they are free), however when I do stop there I normally see at least one taken up by either a non-EV/PHEV or by an EV which has not even attempted to fake charging and has no cable connected (not sure of this is as bad or worse). I suppose it's no different from disabled parking spots in that respect.
jjwilde said:
And yet you still get people here claiming the Tesla charger network makes no difference to sales. For *reliable* long distance the Tesla is the only real option.
Are you kidding? The one thing that prevented me getting an iPace, is the ludicrous charging network. I'll most likely end up with an M3P. The trade off being decent charging network Vs Paint/finish/customer experience.So. Picking up the story...
Due to user error, shall we say, she left home without a full charge. She left home with just over 100 miles. This immediately gave her range anxiety - i.e. what happens if I can't charge? It would have been pretty close if she had to drive home without charging.
As it turned out, she arrived with about 60 miles of range. She had driven slower than originally planned due to not starting with a full tank. This made her late.
The chargers were apparently spread out randomly around the (large) car park and were not clearly sign posted. Therefore, she just had to drive around looking for them. Also, there were no dedicated EV parking spaces to accompany the chargers. It was almost like they built a normal car park and then thought "crap, better throw in some chargers somewhere". (It is a fairly new car park built in the last few years so you would have thought there would have been some planning of the EV chargers.)
The first charger she found fortunately had a free parking space next to it. The charger didn't work though.
By this stage she was running quite late.
The next one she found worked. The problem was that in order to use it, she had to park in a disabled parking bay. Does this mean it was a parking space only for disabled people who have electric vehicles? Given she was running late and could not guarantee she could secure another working charger, she decided to use this charger and park in the disabled bay. She did feel guilty and I have disciplined her.
She was there for about 2.5 to 3 hours and was only able to extract about 40 miles range from the 7kw charger. This is not as much as we would have got in the same time if we were charging at home. So I can only assume it wasn't delivering to the maximum capacity.
Still, it was enough to get her comfortably home. And it was free - I must have misheard the bit about paying money (see first post above).
So, overall, not a brilliant experience, but it could have been much worse. The main gripe being that the car park and chargers needed to be laid out a lot better. There really should be dedicated EV spaces next to the chargers. I know that they will be empty for quite a lot of the time, but as time goes by, there will be more and more EVs filling them. Forward planning and all that.
In summary and somewhat predictably, I think it highlights the traditional issues with EVs being used for "long" distance - the need for planning, range anxiety and there being no guarantee that you can charge where you need to. On this particular trip, things were exasperated by not setting off with a full tank. But, a lot of the time, people are going to have to make journeys without having full tanks.
All this being fixed by 2035. Mmm
Due to user error, shall we say, she left home without a full charge. She left home with just over 100 miles. This immediately gave her range anxiety - i.e. what happens if I can't charge? It would have been pretty close if she had to drive home without charging.
As it turned out, she arrived with about 60 miles of range. She had driven slower than originally planned due to not starting with a full tank. This made her late.
The chargers were apparently spread out randomly around the (large) car park and were not clearly sign posted. Therefore, she just had to drive around looking for them. Also, there were no dedicated EV parking spaces to accompany the chargers. It was almost like they built a normal car park and then thought "crap, better throw in some chargers somewhere". (It is a fairly new car park built in the last few years so you would have thought there would have been some planning of the EV chargers.)
The first charger she found fortunately had a free parking space next to it. The charger didn't work though.
By this stage she was running quite late.
The next one she found worked. The problem was that in order to use it, she had to park in a disabled parking bay. Does this mean it was a parking space only for disabled people who have electric vehicles? Given she was running late and could not guarantee she could secure another working charger, she decided to use this charger and park in the disabled bay. She did feel guilty and I have disciplined her.
She was there for about 2.5 to 3 hours and was only able to extract about 40 miles range from the 7kw charger. This is not as much as we would have got in the same time if we were charging at home. So I can only assume it wasn't delivering to the maximum capacity.
Still, it was enough to get her comfortably home. And it was free - I must have misheard the bit about paying money (see first post above).
So, overall, not a brilliant experience, but it could have been much worse. The main gripe being that the car park and chargers needed to be laid out a lot better. There really should be dedicated EV spaces next to the chargers. I know that they will be empty for quite a lot of the time, but as time goes by, there will be more and more EVs filling them. Forward planning and all that.
In summary and somewhat predictably, I think it highlights the traditional issues with EVs being used for "long" distance - the need for planning, range anxiety and there being no guarantee that you can charge where you need to. On this particular trip, things were exasperated by not setting off with a full tank. But, a lot of the time, people are going to have to make journeys without having full tanks.
All this being fixed by 2035. Mmm
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