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.

You can’t just turn off down a side road and say “I wonder where this goes “.

Course you can…unless you’re also the type of person who’s ever walked to a petrol station to buy a plastic can to fill after you’ve run out in the middle of nowhere.

ICE cars can also be driven by idiots who lack forward planning skills.

Can you conceive of a situation where it might be feasible?

Caravan site, Air BNB, Log cabin, rented accommodation , relatives house…anywhere that you’re staying overnight and your car is sitting parked for an extended period of time.
I’ve charged the car using the granny charger loads of times when I’m at my static caravan. Never had to use it in an emergency though.

edit: Except one time where an electric works van was run flat by an idiot who ignored all the warnings and I had to plug the granny charger into the V2L on my car  for an hour to put enough charge in the van to get it to a charger.

As a practical matter, if you’re planning a trip, how do you cope with not being able to rely on a charger working when you need fuel ?

There’s always another charger somewhere. Always.

Zapmap or similar will tell you where. Never leave myself with insufficient charge to travel to a few alternatives.

I also always carry the granny charger and a 15m IP65 rated extension in the frunk so that I just need a 13amp socket. Never had to use it but there are an almost infinite supply of fuel sources if you’re not in a hurry.

Also, with a 300-ish mile range you’ll struggle to find anywhere in the UK that’s more than 150 miles from the main road network and commercial rapid charging.

It’s really never been an issue, never mind a problem.

At the risk of being labelled a CPS evangelist they are often the only option available if you are going off the beaten track away from sizeable towns or the main trunk road network. There are CPS chargers in places where commercial operators wouldn’t dream of installing them as it wouldn’t be commercially viable.
Yes, it can be a bit shonky at times (again, usually due to the owners of the chargers, rather than CPS themselves) but my experience has been much more good than bad.

I think it’s important to understand what Charge Place Scotland actually is.
They don’t own, install or maintain any chargers. They are a centralised front end for billing of thousands of separate owners.

I could add the charger on the side if my house onto CPS and open it up for public use and CPS would do all the billing and administration n for me and just send me a payment every month.
The upside as an EV driver is that there are chargers everywhere that you can use with the one card and receive a single monthly invoice.
The downside is that the type, quality and level of maintenance of those chargers varies wildly as it’s down to the individual owners of those chargers.
It’s a legacy of the Scottish Government driving EV adoption and on balance it’s way more good than bad.

It’s just unfortunate that the OP got stuck with one of the bad ones first time out.

Me: a young Shakin’ Stevens

Cougs : Tom Savini complete with cock gun

Drac: Jimmy Nail

TJ : Charles Bronson in a mullet

Binbins : Shaun Ryder

MattOAB : Tim Robbins

Something like a triumph herald convertible?

Would have been my guess. Or a Sunbeam Alpine.
Some sort of early 60’s soft top.

Do guide dogs get a proper holiday?

More to the point, who picks up their shit?

Edit: weird double post

If the agent hasn’t got a result in six months then they’ve had their chance and you owe them nothing.

Shy bairns get nowt.

What do you have to lose by asking?

I went through a period where I would get debilitating, migraine like headaches* regular as clockwork every Sunday afternoon at about 2 pm.
Never missed a day of work as a result but ruined countless weekends.

Am I a malingerer too? (Full disclosure: I am quite fat)

*not migraines. Occipital neuralgia as a result of nerve damage sustained in a car accident but still enough to render me temporarily blind in one eye and utterly useless for a day.

had to Google

I didn’t.
Flambards legend, second only to Ferdi.

Then again, it’s where my (only) house is.

You are Gus Honeybun and I claim my five pounds.

We used to go to Sainsbury’s cafe for tea,

Always took a picnic and ate it next to the duck pond by the mini golf.

I’ve been once too many times.

Never been once. Always twice in the same 7 day period.

Shivering on a bench? I think you’ll find I was getting immersed in the warm , dry but slightly stinky world of the Victorians.

That bloody village has been the highlight of my wife’s holiday for most of my adult life. She absolutely loves it.
Me? maybe not so much.

Love the rest of it and gutted to see it’s diminished

I accidentally body checked Jimmy Saville in the foyer of the Moat House Hotel in Glasgow and knocked him to the floor.
Not sorry then. Even less sorry now.

Flambards is no more..

Reopens 1st July according to the website

I’ve been to the St Ives area 20 times in the  last 25 years, always in the first  two weeks of July to coincide with that golden period where it’s the Scottish school holidays but the English school holidays haven’t started.
It’s always been perfectly fine.  Only problem with crowds we’ve ever experienced have been with school trips to Flambards.

Jennifer Aniston. Pretty sure I read somewhere that Friends is the most widely viewed TV show ever.

Out of interest, how do you deal with partially owned properties

The easiest way is for the contractor to make the private owner an offer to do the works for a bargain price that they are unlikely not to take up.  Usually works and is worth it to the contractor to take the hit to avoid access issues/complaints from potentially disgruntled owners.

[spolier]is the spoiler code broken now?[/spoiler]

Spoiler for

That’s not how you spell spoiler

I’m finding with this new series that there seems to hardly any actual Doctor in it… which is a pity because I thinks he’s the best bit. A very talented actor and will be brilliant at it, more so once he settles into it a bit.

Just on the subject of being monitored without knowing it, some cars ECU record speed / acceleration even GPS and have been know to be used by the police in evidence.

Our fleet of company vans are fitted with trackers that record everything. Speed, excessive acceleration and braking, hard cornering, the full shebang.
If the cops got a hold of the monthly data report they could wipe out the entire business by taking the licences away from 80% of the drivers.

Consider the thickness of the mattress relative to the frame. Beds used  to come with high bases and comparatively thin mattresses. Modern beds come with thick mattresses and comparatively thin bases.
Guess what happens when you put a modern thick mattress on an old thick base?

I need to Fosbury flop into bed at night, it’s so high. I’m considering a bigger set of those steps that they have for Dachshunds to get on the sofa.

I just found it a little confusing that in a situation where you may incriminate yourself, you provide the ammunition through your dashcam.

It’s no different to them seizing your phone, your satnav or any telematics in your car. It’s just data that can establish what actually happened.

Are they allowed to do this?

Yes  It’s evidence of a potential crime.

I dont have an issue with them doing it but what if there was something on that card that incriminated my wife.

Then your wife would be in bother. It’s the risk you take.

Dashcams monitor your own driving much more than they monitor everyone elses.

Faster charging will benefit more people than larger batteries/longer range will.

Absolutely. Which is why I chose my car based on the charging curve first and the actual car second.
I’ve followed the principle that the car, which is a stationary object for the vast majority of it’s existence, should charge whilst parked when charging speed is pretty much irrelevant….unless you need to charge mid-journey in which case it should charge as quickly as possible.

I think free electricity is probably a taxable benefit

It isn’t….currently.

My employer pays for it but I pay back my private mileage on a n HMRC pence per mile basis in exactly the same way that I did when I had an ICE car

The long term answer is widespread destination charging. If there were loads of cheap to install and cheap to use 7kw chargers at workplaces, retail outlets , cinemas, train stations, anywhere where lots of people park for more than an hour at a time then the super expensive rapid charging network would only be required for the main road network to accommodate the long journey

I charge almost exclusively at work where we have 6  11kw chargers which is plenty for the 30-odd EVs in our office. I have a charger at home that Ive never used because Ive never needed to.

Some Osprey chargers already kinda do this. I watched a video about load balancing on their chargers that manages the total available supply over a number of chargers whose total capacity exceeds the available supply.

What does that anecdote tell us about charging speeds ?

That the engineers at Mercedes Benz prioritised charging speed over cup holders.

Mate bought an ex demo Ioniq 5 a few weeks ago and it had 21″ wheels on what is basically a city car, total insanity.

Ioniq 5 is not a city car. They are absolutely mahoosive.
Longer wheelbase than a Range Rover.

Very much a Scottish thing

Outsiders for insiders?

I can’t quite understand the adverts on Auto trader saying they have a 7kW charger I’m assuming that’s their max AC charging rate as they’re also quoting public/DC charging at up to 100kW?

Car chargers aren’t really chargers at all. They’re just electricity supplies for the chargers that are built in to each car. Each car will have an AC charger -usually 7kw or 11kw- and a DC charger, the max speeds of which vary widely from car to car.
Domestic single phase AC on most houses will only supply 7kw max. Three phase AC maxes out at 22kw but very few cars, Leafs and Zoes, will do 22kW

My, effectively Hyundai, satnav has a shedload of filters you can apply to the charging points including by provider.

Going north or south?

Neither, just a quick top up while the family were going round the Outlet Village.
Im at my caravan for the weekend and that’s the nearest rapid charger.

I was at Gretna Services Ionity 5 mins ago. Just at the Gretna Outlet centre looking at the Tesla Supercharging station they’re currently building.

You knows it. Safe as f…