Non-home charging. Had enough.
Discussion
I’ve had my Ioniq 5 for over 4 years now and an ID.3 for about 6 months before that, so I’ve given this a fair crack of the whip but I’ve finally admitted to myself that charging away from home is not for me.
It’s a combination of the cost and the inconvenience, mainly the latter. I’m sick of the spectre of having to recharge the car hanging over every long trip, especially when we’ve been away somewhere and the first job on leaving the airport is hunting down a charger.
My fiancée’s car was ready for a swap so we’ve gone for a PHEV with about 40 miles of electric range. She’ll use that for 95% of her day-to-day stuff and we’ll use it in hybrid mode for any longer trips. Cost wise there probably won’t be much in it, petrol vs kw/h charges at places like Instavolt.
It’s a combination of the cost and the inconvenience, mainly the latter. I’m sick of the spectre of having to recharge the car hanging over every long trip, especially when we’ve been away somewhere and the first job on leaving the airport is hunting down a charger.
My fiancée’s car was ready for a swap so we’ve gone for a PHEV with about 40 miles of electric range. She’ll use that for 95% of her day-to-day stuff and we’ll use it in hybrid mode for any longer trips. Cost wise there probably won’t be much in it, petrol vs kw/h charges at places like Instavolt.
Lasted far longer than I would have, congrats. I read an interesting article about ground rents/licences for ev charging sites a while ago and the extortionate costs the licence demands. I have tried to find it since, without success, but I think the charging costs (£/kwh) are so high due to these ground rent costs.
Depends on your usage, I've no home charger but there is a Tesla one right outside the gym my wife goes to 3 times a week, free supercharging from Tesla makes this is the perfect solution for us. And it's also encouragement to go to the gym on the days where she otherwise might not...
Sounds like you bought the wrong car, as always the answer is a Tesla, piss easy public charging and would probably get you to the airport and back without it anyway.
Love them or hate them, Teslas are the BEST electric car you can buy, not the best car, but miles ahead of the competition because of the charging network
Love them or hate them, Teslas are the BEST electric car you can buy, not the best car, but miles ahead of the competition because of the charging network
I put a 22KW charger in at work - and charge there where possible (only 5 miles from home).
I've attempted to charge outside of my safe space twice :
Once at the local McDonalds which was a fast charger and worked great but cost £40 (55Kw Battery from empty)
Every other charger on all local maps seems to be 7Kw - did try the local Tescos while I did some shopping, but everything I put in the battery was used up by the time I'd queued at the traffic lights to get out the bloody car park!
It's only a Renault 5 - which allegedly has a 220 mile range, which equates in the winter to a useable range of about 140 miles.
As a result any journeys that I need that are longer than about 70 miles, I take the real car as I just can't cope with the stress of it all.
On the plus side - It's fantastic for pottering around within a 70 mile radius of home
I've attempted to charge outside of my safe space twice :
Once at the local McDonalds which was a fast charger and worked great but cost £40 (55Kw Battery from empty)
Every other charger on all local maps seems to be 7Kw - did try the local Tescos while I did some shopping, but everything I put in the battery was used up by the time I'd queued at the traffic lights to get out the bloody car park!
It's only a Renault 5 - which allegedly has a 220 mile range, which equates in the winter to a useable range of about 140 miles.
As a result any journeys that I need that are longer than about 70 miles, I take the real car as I just can't cope with the stress of it all.
On the plus side - It's fantastic for pottering around within a 70 mile radius of home
OP, am I reading it right that you have a charger a home but because if your usage you have to charge away from home a lot?
I'm lucky I don't have to charge in the wild much. Think over the last 14 months as a fully EV household I've only had to on 4 trips.
2 trips, easy-peasy no problems. 2 trips varying degrees of faff.
To be fair I charge so infrequently that I haven't had to work out all the best tools to find chargers and haven't planned much which hasn't helped, but if you are travelling far and wide I can imagine it gets old pretty quick.
I'm not going back to petrol for a normal everyday car for what I do Bev is better in almost all ways but I understand your pain.
The network will continue to improve, but it's still not quite there in some places.
I'm lucky I don't have to charge in the wild much. Think over the last 14 months as a fully EV household I've only had to on 4 trips.
2 trips, easy-peasy no problems. 2 trips varying degrees of faff.
To be fair I charge so infrequently that I haven't had to work out all the best tools to find chargers and haven't planned much which hasn't helped, but if you are travelling far and wide I can imagine it gets old pretty quick.
I'm not going back to petrol for a normal everyday car for what I do Bev is better in almost all ways but I understand your pain.
The network will continue to improve, but it's still not quite there in some places.
TheDrownedApe said:
Lasted far longer than I would have, congrats. I read an interesting article about ground rents/licences for ev charging sites a while ago and the extortionate costs the licence demands. I have tried to find it since, without success, but I think the charging costs (£/kwh) are so high due to these ground rent costs.
It costs a lot more to buy electricity from the grid when you need 24/7 300 kWh for say each of 4 fast chargers than it does to buy electricity as a homeowner in the UK. The grid has to allocate that capacity on a permanent basis even though it might be relatively rare for all the chargers to be charging four cars using that capacity. There will also be a huge infrastructure cost charged to get that supply put in…so whoever runs that charging station has to recover that money from the consumer.Last man standing will make the money as plenty of these charging companies will go bust.
Cheib said:
It costs a lot more to buy electricity from the grid when you need 24/7 300 kWh for say each of 4 fast chargers than it does to buy electricity as a homeowner in the UK. The grid has to allocate that capacity on a permanent basis even though it might be relatively rare for all the chargers to be charging four cars using that capacity. There will also be a huge infrastructure cost charged to get that supply put in so whoever runs that charging station has to recover that money from the consumer.
It amazes me that people can't understand that the massive overheads and other commercial costs incurredby public charging companies is why home charging is so much cheaper; it's like complaining that it costs three
times more to have a meal out at a chain pub compared to heating up the exact same microwave meal at home!
This isn’t good to read. I won’t bore you with our experience as a Tesla owner as it is just boringly easy. But we are considering a non Tesla EV to replace in August. We’d have big exposure to the UK charging network running up to the lakes and down to Exeter each month. Maybe I don’t feel brave enough…
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