Musings on public charging

[dan_b]

I've owned Teslas for 4 years now - I'm completely comfortable with living with an EV without being able to charge at home. I'm also increasingly of the understanding just now easy Tesla has made it to get into EVs - as my last two weekends have been pretty annoying when trying to use non-Tesla public charge points.

Day trip trip to Bristol - did my research, found a car park with 8x 7kW chargepoints, got the App, all seemed fine- was going to be parked up for 4-5 hours perfect for recharging whilst there so could go there and back without needing an en-route charge up. Of course on arrival, 3 are in use and the other 5 were all faulty. So couldn't charge. Ended up doing a 15min Supercharge on the way home so all was ok, but even then, the 4x Gridserve Chargers were all fully occupied so if I didn't have the Tesla I'd have had to queue...

A few days later - needed to charge up overnight so went to the local Source London point - used my Electroverse card to start session, walked 15mins back home and sat down to have dinner. For some unknown reason I checked my App about an hour later to find that the charge session had ended itself and I had added only about 3kWh. Very odd. Walked back to the car - all 3x Source points were offline, and of course my cable was now locked into the charger itself. Phoned Source and there had been a power failure to the site due to it overheating. They would send an engineer out and he could release my cable and drop it home to me (which he did) but would take about 90mins to get there. Ended up going to the brand new Superchargers at Heston on the M4...

So now to this weekend just gone - day trip to Birmingham. Found a car park with 6 EV chargepoints and well history repeats itself. Ended up stopping for a 10min splash and dash at the Open Access Supercharger site at Banbury - which had only one stall empty when I arrived but that was ok as the car told me this so I knew it was ok - the new Osprey Kempower charger site next door was almost completely empty though.

And then yesterday afternoon - went to Tesco and plugged into the Podpoint there - they were all running and working, or so it seemed... Got back to the car an hour later to find that it had only put 3kWh into the vehicle rather than the 7kWh it should have done. Not the end of the world, but another glitch in the Matrix...

Sorry - a rambling, aimless post which doesn't offer any answers, but did just make me realise that a lot more needs to be done on the public charge side of things as more and more people buy EVs and not all of them will be Tesla... No wonder the Anti-EV articles are so easy to write...

[nowty]

We have similar horror stories with the non Telsa EV.

Good bit of info I got from you there about the Source London points working with the Octopus card because there are two in the road our daughter has just moved into and looks like you don't need a parking permit (or pay for parking) to use them. SWMBO always has a nightmare with the lamp post chargers and I end up having to start the charge at my end after about half an hour on the phone and her sending me blurred QR codes. I noticed the Source point with a card reader, but I had not got round to working out which card.

[Stinsy]

I think that as with all things you need to trust the supplier.

I've had good luck with InstaVolt. First time I used them was at Banbury where 32x chargers had 5x cars charging and delivered 135kW. Next time was Rhug, it is the only decent charging spot for miles and miles, 8x chargers only one other car charging again super-simple. I'm going to give Exeter services a go in summer 50x chargers there so hopefully the queue will move fast if it is busy. I keep meaning to give plug-n-charge a go on Ionity but I've always had plenty of charge by the time I pass the one 50-miles from my home...

I wouldn't bother with AC charging points installed by a council, or buy a business that needed green credentials to get a planning application through (If I had any choice at all). Very unlikely to be working and I've got better things to do than waste time on something with such a low chance of working.

[dan_b]

I guess mine were all pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things - I didn't get stranded in the dark and wet in the middle of the night with a hoarde of brain-eating Zombies trying to consume my flesh - but it was certainly not entirely smooth sailing.

According to the Electroverse website, the card also works with Ubitricity, Connected Kerb, Char.gy, GeniePoint, ESB and quite a few others that are in and around London, as well as the high power charge networks like Osprey, Ionity and Shell Recharge.

With Source London, the "parking charge" is factored into the cost of the electricity - which is why on a kWh basis they're much more expensive than, say, Ubitricity.

We have similar horror stories with the non Telsa EV.

Good bit of info I got from you there about the Source London points working with the Octopus card because there are two in the road our daughter has just moved into and looks like you don't need a parking permit (or pay for parking) to use them. SWMBO always has a nightmare with the lamp post chargers and I end up having to start the charge at my end after about half an hour on the phone and her sending me blurred QR codes. I noticed the Source point with a card reader, but I had not got round to working out which card.

[Joeboy]

I guess mine were all pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things - I didn't get stranded in the dark and wet in the middle of the night with a hoarde of brain-eating Zombies trying to consume my flesh - but it was certainly not entirely smooth sailing.

According to the Electroverse website, the card also works with Ubitricity, Connected Kerb, Char.gy, GeniePoint, ESB and quite a few others that are in and around London, as well as the high power charge networks like Osprey, Ionity and Shell Recharge.

With Source London, the "parking charge" is factored into the cost of the electricity - which is why on a kWh basis they're much more expensive than, say, Ubitricity.

We have similar horror stories with the non Telsa EV.

Good bit of info I got from you there about the Source London points working with the Octopus card because there are two in the road our daughter has just moved into and looks like you don't need a parking permit (or pay for parking) to use them. SWMBO always has a nightmare with the lamp post chargers and I end up having to start the charge at my end after about half an hour on the phone and her sending me blurred QR codes. I noticed the Source point with a card reader, but I had not got round to working out which card.

I have had a couple of experiences lately involving tight timelines, non working chargers or my personal fave, 22kW chargers that put out about 6.8kW or if in a loan car you don't have an app for, it shuts down after 5 minutes and you are away on a 2 hour walk.

I think the Octoverse card is an absolute godsend. The odds favor it working for you on a strange network. I now deliberately try to use high power chargers as they cost more and thus are largely free of users in comparison.

Although it is all still a roll of the dice. One of my main drivers for ordering a Model Y was the charging network but I just couldn't gel with the hierarchy within Telsa itself.

Home charging is obviously the solution if possible followed by the higher range vehicle. I'd like my next to be up around the 350 mile range.

The irksome thing about public charging is that it forces you to be close to.... yep the public. In all their selfish glory. Hence blocked charge points and damaged charging units. The best life is I feel, lived as far away from others as SWMBO will allow.

[dan_b]

22kW AC chargers are 3phase, so if the car only has a single phase on-board AC-DC charger, the car will only take 7kW.
Even in my TM3 I get "only" 11kW from 22kW 3phase Type 2s.
I think Tesla Model S/X get 15, along with the eTrons and some of the other German brands.

Is it only the Zoe now that will take 22kW from AC?

[Joeboy]

22kW AC chargers are 3phase, so if the car only has a single phase on-board AC-DC charger, the car will only take 7kW.
Even in my TM3 I get "only" 11kW from 22kW 3phase Type 2s.
I think Tesla Model S/X get 15, along with the eTrons and some of the other German brands.

Is it only the Zoe now that will take 22kW from AC?

Thanks for that Dan, much appreciated!

[greentangerine]

22kW AC chargers are 3phase, so if the car only has a single phase on-board AC-DC charger, the car will only take 7kW.
Even in my TM3 I get "only" 11kW from 22kW 3phase Type 2s.
I think Tesla Model S/X get 15, along with the eTrons and some of the other German brands.

Is it only the Zoe now that will take 22kW from AC?

Thanks for that Dan, much appreciated!

The MG4 has three phase charging but only 11kW as per the TM3. My wife's Zoe definitely gets the full amount available.

[dan_b]

Apparently the Lotus Eletre (22kW) and the Lucid Air (19kW) seem to like 3phase AC as well, but not exactly volume vehicles!.

[Mr Gus]

The "overheating" issue" is something we encountered years ago with a Bedford BMW unit in FULL summer sun, metal clad exterior superheating & the communication was unable to operate (it was around this time someone (a regular apparantly) defecated there & drove away, ...but that's a different story.

Dan, List, if you have a thermal IR thermom or even better a flir type "thingy" i'd recommend you pinpoint the sun at time of visit, & solar exposure as well as take an exterior reading for temp. ..these need shaded & covered areas to function properly, & clearly it is not being properly thought out when sticking heat producing chargers in to chase the £

Norway has snow / sleet covers on a lot of chargers, ..we need to look at busy spots maybe with weather data by it? & see what the tipping point is from both peak use & weather extremes.

We all know that the heat exhaust on a rapid charger is pretty fierce, so intake & the like ought be coaxing car cool + occupant cool + battery cool+ charger cool as a design standard.


It is lucky the superchargers we have used in general are tree covered (& countryside) or if at a busy motorway stop in a thoroughly mature trees & hedging spots which doubtless make a difference under pressure.

Would like to know what the environmental location pre-requisites for chargers currently are, I'm betting pretty skimpy or focussed on noise potential