Electric car charging – is it supposed to be this difficult?

if you had been pumping diesel for 30 minutes, you can be absolutely certain it wouldn’t be costing you just over 2 quid!

No, about £60 with my old Octavia, but I would have got around 500 miles range from a full tank, about a month’s driving…

Tried again. Nothing. So I changed charger and tried to get authorisation again and that was declined. Whipped my Electoverse card out and that didn’t work.

You should just have driven to a Starbucks and whipped out your granny charger. That’s the solution, apparently.

I did have an experience this bad on a charger in North Yorkshire (tough place to holiday in an EV)

My parents live there, so visiting them the “granny charger” is aptly named 🙂

Leaving the warm embrace of the Tesla-verse in a month so I need to get all this sorted. I refuse to go back to Scotland so that’s one issue solved.

I did have an experience this bad on a charger in North Yorkshire (tough place to holiday in an EV). The charge network used the twee system of naming the chargers. Except the little name tags had faded in the sun. No way of telling which was Phillipa or indeed Jonas. My instant rage at the unnecessary idiocy of this was palpable.

+1

Parking Apps are ace IMO

Except when you discover that the machine doesn’t use one of the three parking apps on your phone, and there’s no signal. So you note the machine number, walk up the hill to download the app, hoping you don’t get a ticket, then pay a surcharge for the privilege. Or you could’ve just tapped a bank card.

I know which I prefer.

This thread gave me the fear, since I picked up an EV for the first time yesterday.

Not CPS (got that to come) but first charging experience could not have been easier. Found a charge point on the Octopus app, plugged it in, pressed charge on the app and away it went. Whole experience was easier than filling a tank of fuel. Let’s see if it was beginners luck or if the Octoverse app is just awesome.

I know which I prefer.

And have to walk back to the car to add more?

The number of times it was an App I haven’t got = once

The number of times I wanted to add more while nowhere near the car = many

And have to walk back to the car to add more?

Number of times I haven’t added enough money in the first place = once.

Number of times I’ve physically had no way of paying for parking on an app based machine = more than once.

Number of times I’ve paid a surcharge on an app based machine = many.

No, about £60 with my old Octavia, but I would have got around 500 miles range from a full tank, about a month’s driving…

So sounds like your car is sat idle for huge amounts of time, and you most likely use it for shorter journeys – pretty much the same as me and perfectly suited to an EV. At that sort of mileage the numbers don’t really stack up for a new EV but I would definitely be looking at used options when I come to change my Octavia. Just hope there’s more choice of estates by then.

first charging experience could not have been easier.

99% of charging experiences are easy. It’s only the bad experiences that anyone is interested in talking about though.

It’s unfortunate that EV chargers are almost always unmanned. I couldn’t count the number of times that I’ve been to a petrol station and a pump hasn’t worked or the card reader hasn’t worked or they have run out of whatever fuel I required but because there has been a flesh and blood person on hand to immediately resolve the issue or shrug and apologise then you don’t get the same level of frustration with the sub-optimal experience.

Been looking at the CPS site. They don’t half make it difficult for non UK residents to access their charge points. What a hassle this is compared to simply touching any bank card against a reader and getting charge out the machine

https://chargeplacescotland.org/guidance/account-set-up-outside-uk/

The number of times it was an App I haven’t got = once

Indeed. But now you, like me, have half a dozen apps nicking all your data to be able to use them once a year…

@BoardinBob , just to add to your confusion they just changed from wise to stripe for payments so that link is out of date for us foreigners.

https://chargeplacescotland.org/network-news/new-payment-provider/

It should make setting up payments easier for non uk residents. I hope. I am in Scotland in a weeks time for the first time since the change over so just hoping it all works ok for me.

But now you, like me, have half a dozen apps nicking all your data to be able to use them once a year

What apps?

Are they actually nicking your data?  As in, uploading something to their server when you are not using them?  I’ve only got the Electroverse app, I deleted CPS when the card arrived.  Oh, I lied – I have Charge My Hyundai but it’s really useless, I’ll probably delete that too. I’ve never used it.

“nicking your data”

Whatever, part of life now sadly.

Been looking at the CPS site. They don’t half make it difficult for non UK residents to access their charge points. What a hassle this is compared to simply touching any bank card against a reader and getting charge out the machine

It was never designed for that kind of use. It’s been said before, but all CPS do is manage a single point of payment across a huge network of unrelated chargers. Think of it like AirBnB. You get charged by them but the properties (chargers) are run by the hosts (charger owners). They are there to help out but ultimately responsibility for the chargers rests with the owners. You also have to remember that the majority of these chargers are owned by local authorities, hospitals etc and are slower AC chargers designed for work cars to be left overnight. There’s no money and little need to change them all to suoerfast, credit card chargers. CPS chargers are also usually a lot cheaper than fuel company ones.

If there was money in it the fuel companies would be rushing to put them at every petrol station.

CPS call centre folk have been unfailingly polite, helpful and generally get stuff done. Some of the kit they have to oversee is pretty shonky. I have a CPS card (for old chargers, and now they pre-authorise), Electroverse card and a couple of apps – and that’s in Scotland. ZapMap Pay is pretty handy.

Yes the staff are great, they’re the reason I’m not still in Mallaig 🙂 Even without the card, they ordered one for me online and that allowed them to start a charge remotely.  All was not lost.

I had difficulty charging at a dc fast charger, once. I rung the helpline and they were able to reboot the charger from their office. It didn’t solve the problem but they did try and were polite. They even pointed out where the nearby alternative chargers were even though they weren’t part of the same chain. I had my backup options already so it wasn’t necessary but it was a nice touch.

.

I’ve been quite happy with CPS, but only used 3 of their chargers. New app is a slight annoyance though – you need to login every time you open it.
Fine if you remember, but if not, it takes you through the anonymous payment method so puts a £40 hold on your bank car, then charges you for the amount you actually use and after about 6 days, the pending £40 disappears (you don’t get charged that).
I set up the stripe thing but can’t tell if it is using it or not.

ah, is that why I had to get it to pre-authorise – didn’t realise it was because I hadn’t logged in. cheers!

Have covered over 4000km around France, UK, Holland and Germany recently in the Zoe About 30 charges most of the 30-40 min up to 80-90% and go type.

All but 5 were on Tesla superchargers which just worked – perfectly. Up 24 chargers at key locations and info on the app telling us which location to head to with the most free chargers.

One iec charge, fine and very cheap.

One pod point in a campsite – fine once they repaired the 5g mast damaged in a storm. Expensive.

As for the rest of the useless **** things, see OP’s first post. By the end of the journey I had so little faith in the non-Tesla chargers I went 40 kms off route rather than try to coax another so-called 150kW rapid charger into life and then sit there watching it dribble 20 or so into the car in a miserable location.

Tesla = fast, reliable, well-situated, competetively-priced. Don’t use anything else unless you absolutely have to.

Can any car use a tesla Charger or just teslas ?

Tesla have opened up part of the network to any car. Just download the app and enter a credit card. The app is very simple and works even with intermittent 3g which felt like a miracle when the charger came to life.

In the UK and France it’s just the main traffic corridors that are opened up. In Germany pretty complete coverage and in Holland all of them. You’ll see on the app before you create an account which ones are red and open to all.

Went for a pint at our local last night and spotted they had some charging bays in their car park. This is a much better setup. Actual clear instructions on what to do

Looking from the outside, what a load of cocking about.  Imagine having to get a specific card or pre-reg app with details  to fill diesel when travelling from England to Scotland.

Clearly nobody has been arsed to sort a single user interface that common across the piece.

(How many different charge connectors are there ? It’s like BB standards !)

Looking from the outside, what a load of cocking about.

Not an EV owner but AIUI in England it’s pretty much the same as using a regular pay at pump – just present your payment card and it kicks into action. As for connectors, again it’s no more of an issue than choosing diesel, unleaded or super unleaded – you know what you need and make sure the machine you’re using has that available before you start filling up. The faff seems arise from poorly sited or poorly maintained infrastructure and the CPS stuff above is an attempt to unify a load of legacy infrastructure to make it simpler to use but they’ve inherited a lot of the issues of the legacy infrastructure.

I’d wager that EV charging in England is less complex than parking in a town centre – to do that you need to download the right parking app, set up an account, register your car, find the parking location, book your parking time and enter payment details. Huge faff the first time you encounter a new system, less faff thereafter.

How many different charge connectors are there ?

not sure this has been a problem in the last 5 years? The offerings now are typically Type 2 or CCS which I crudely lump into slow and fast respectively.

Petrol pumps have the advantage of displaying the price. I’d like to bet that charger in Boardinbob’s local costs 83p/kWh if you just turn up without an RFId card and use it with your phone. I reckon that at over 70cents/60p a KWh an EV is more expensive to run than an equivalent ICE car. That’s all the chargers we used as foreigners in the UK except Tesla.

7 years now I’ve had an EV and charging is still the thing that causes me to lose my rag most in an average year. Not since Windows Vista has technology pissed me off more than the average charge point.

1/Check the location of a charger on say chargemap. Read the reviews to check at least some people have managed to charge recently.

2/feed address into Google and maps for navigation and some more reviews.

3/ find charger – this might require some hunting as maps isn’t always accurate.

4/ Read instructions, usually lousy if there are any. Do I plug the car in first? Do I launche the app first? Will I have time to enter the credit card details and launch the charge before either the charger or car times out?

5/ Plug in CCS, flash RFID card, wait – card not recognised

6/ Close trap on car, switch on and off, re-open trap, plug in CCS again and try again with the app. Messages seen in the last two days:

“prise trop chaude” (well don’t put the sodding charger with a black facia facing directly south on a black tarmac surface then)

“communication avec voiture perdue”

“charge arrêtée” (after about 10 seconds)

7/ Take old type 2 cable out of boot and try with that instead knowing it’s going to take over twice as long. Zoe charges at 45kW on a CCS to about 65% on a really hot day and is still at 25kW at 96% – on type 2 it’s 18kW all the way. No joy with Type 2 either.

8/ Sit in car and work out what other chargers are in range at varying driving speeds and find ont which belong to different suppliers to try.

9/ Try two more chargers, one shows red despite being green on the app the other repeatedly dies after a few seconds.

10/ Decide that the Tesla charger that was too far off route is the only sure way not to end up on a tow truck and head for that.

Lesson – decide never to leave the granny charger at home because non-Tesla chargers are even less reliable than they were 7 years ago and it’s nice to be able to negotiate a charge with a campsite owner if all else fails.

That was mostly in Cernay BTW, and the solution was a detour to the Tesla supercharger in Mulhouse 20km in the wrong direction.

Looking from the outside, what a load of cocking about.  Imagine having to get a specific card or pre-reg app with details  to fill diesel when travelling from England to Scotland.

I have not done a lot of charging away from home, but my Electroverse card has worked without any problems in Scotland, and I expect it would be exactly the same in England and Wales, so I don’t think there really is an issue with having to use different systems across the UK.

Does anyone know if the Electroverse card is a straightforward alternative for the CPS card in Scotland now, or are there any differences in pricing and charger coverage? I’m still waiting to get a working CPS card after a couple months, but I’m wondering if it matters when I have a working Electroverse card.

@BoardinBob – you’ve got me there with your picture, your most local must be Coppertrees and then the Gardenhall, but doesn’t look like either !

@ianc it’s the gardenhall

Oh god. I’ve just worked out that the “Thanks very much for your enquiry, we’ll have a read through and get back to you within 48h” email that I got last week was an automatic response from CPS. I had naively thought that someone had actually read my email and was going to look into why (a) my card is not working and (b) I can’t log on to the CPS website and (c) I cannot even get a password reset. But it seems that they just have no mechanism for addressing problems, and no staff reading their email. It’s just a black hole.

All perfectly normal, thecaptain, expect many more such experiences. I said earlier that the IECharge charger worked fine. What I’d forgotten is that I had to use Madame Edukator’s phone to use it because on my phone the app is stuck in a loop of death. I used to say it was really irritating that an electric car needed a working phone and some kind of network to make it go. I need to change that to “at least two working phones”.

Edit: and thank God for STW. For a month now my hatred of EV chargers has been building with each idiosycratic, recalcitrant, overheating, non-communicative, red-flashing pile of junk and finally I have a place to vent where I know a least some people will share my frustrations. 🙂

One newly installed charger had a proud sign saying that the region had paid 22 500e for it. It dribbled out 10kWh then stopped and refused the same credit card for more. It replaced a free 22kW charger we’d used for years. Surely it would have been better for all if they’d just left the old free charger in place because they could have given away around 90 000 kWh of juice and still been quids in –  the old one worked perfectly!

Been back to the same Sainsburys Smartcharge chargers twice now and it’s been seamless. Card accepted , electricity delivered. No drama at all. Maybe it was because I’d never been off the Tesla network before but the next two visits have been easy.

We don’t use public charging very often, but whenever we have had cause to use it, it’s been pretty seamless. Just plug in and tap a credit  card.

We’re doing our first proper long distance trip in a couple of weeks, we’re off to Fowey in Cornwall from Manchester, it seems there are six 7kw chargers in the main pay and display car park in Fowey that take the octopus electroverse card, so was just planning to use those when we get there, with a top up on/along the m5 on the way down and back. We’d normally stop at Gloucester Services, and it seems there are public tesla superchargers there, so will prob use those.

Incidentally, the merc eqc is now doing 220 to 230 miles (at motorway speeds) to a full charge now the weather is warm

Alternatively the Tesla supercharger at Bristol Parkway, John Lewis underground carpark to charge on the way down (second entrance, maps takes you in a few metres too soon), Julians, you won’t find cheaper, more reliable, or less chance of a queue. 🙂 McDo is a short walk away.

Imagine having to get a specific card or pre-reg app with details  to fill diesel when travelling from England to Scotland.

It’s changing, and in England/Wales it already has.

Imagine having to fill your car with toxic chemicals that then get burned and sprayed around the place everywhere you go.

Alien: So you put all this fuel in your car, then what happens to it?

Human: It.. disappears, I dunno, never really thought about it.  But I do actually know – it gets burned.

Alien: Burning it means converting it into a gas. Where does that gas go?

Human: Out of this pipe at the back and into the air.

Alien: The same air you’re all breathing?  Is it safe?

Human: Er no, not really, it’s kind of toxic.

Alien: What the hell?

Human: *shrug* I dunno we’ve just always done it this way

Alien: Surely there’s an alternative way to power your car that doesn’t spray toxic gas everywhere?

Human: Yeah, there is.

Alien: Why aren’t you all using it?

Human: *shrug*

Human 2 (EV owner): Because you see those EV charge points over there, the electricity is slow to fill, costs more than diesel and they’re a complicated unreliable faff. Besides most humans are selfish anti-woke conspiracy theory loving nihilists, but not all of us.

Human 3: yeah but the electricity is generated using fuel that sprays toxic gases into the atmosphere (or is byequipment that is manufactured and transported using fuel that sprays toxic gases into the atmosphere) but as as you don’t ‘see’ it allows some people to be smug gets.

Zero direct emissions =/= no emissions…

Plus, you know, tyre fragments, etc.

Alien: so what don’t you just **** walk?

All humans: because we are all smug ****.