And finally...

IronGiant

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After just over 4 years of EV ownership and being spoiled by having a backup oil burner with a range of 700 miles we finally dipped our toe into the water of charging on the move (don't laugh). Under current conditions and the way we drive our MG it had a quoted range of 144 miles on the onboard display. We had a round trip of 187 miles so a charge would be needed at some point. We found a genie point CCS 50kW charger 9 miles from our destination and to our joy it was empty. Then the problems started. We tried half a dozen times to connect to the charger using their app and each time we got a connection error. We had one last try, unplugged, replugged, locked the MG and the app still said nothing. But suddenly, there was a click, the charging station started humming and the green light on the side of the charger went from green to blue.
The MG will only charge when the doors are locked, so we couldn't check whether it was charging as we thought this might interrupt the charging and we didn't know if we could get it back again. So we wandered over to the Superstore's "Ready to go" section and picked out a really good meal deal and sat on the grass under the trees next to our car to eat our lunch. We also included a toilet break. At no time did the app give us any indication as to how many kW we had had or if it was even connected. There was just a small stop button next to the empty time, kWhrs and cost columns. We guessed we had enough charge as the unit had been active for 40 minutes so Mrs IG pressed the stop button. Nothing happened. She pressed it again and still nothing despite getting a sent notification both times. We unlocked the car, at home this would cancel charging and a big connected but not charging screen comes up. Nothing. Pressed the start button in the car and a small charging icon came up amongst the warning icons. And the bar chart under the main battery symbol looked near to full. So we were good to go. But we couldn't as we were tethered to the charging station and they were locked together and wouldn't let go. Getting a bit worried at this point I spotted a big red button on the charging station and thinking it looked like the panic button on industrial machinery pressed it. The lights on the station changed from blue to red and a small LED screen announced the "emergency stop". I was able to extract the cable and replace it in it's holder but the machine was now to all intents dead. :( I examined the red button and it was embossed with, "turn to restart". It was recessed after me pushing it in so I manged to pull it out and turn it clockwise and the red lights turned green and the original status was restored, phew. We were pleased to see that we had 135 miles under the bonnet and on arriving at our destination had 126 miles left, meaning we had a 26 mile buffer to get the 98 miles home. When we left the in built sat nav picked a different route, which looked a lot easier, but seemed to be the same length, but due to very recent roadworks was 104 miles. So our buffer was now 20 miles. Due to the better roads Mrs IG was able to drive faster (while remaining within the speed limit) and before long our buffer had declined to 10 miles. Then it started raining and the wipers came on. I started worrying at this point and suggested we could turn the air con off. Mrs IG agreed and we gained another 6 miles of range. Once we got within 12 miles of home and were driving at 50-60 and still had 16 miles in reserve we went for broke and turned it back on again. Crept onto the drive with 16 miles left. Phew.
 
I think I will give up driving any distance before I put myself through that kind of thing.
 
I think once you’ve had an EV for a few weeks / months and are comfortable with the basics, you should really force yourself to go out into the wild and use the public network, even if it’s 5 minutes round the corner or just up 1 motorway junction. This will help you get to grips with how it works, what’s different to home charging and which apps you may need to find and use them.
We have an ICE and an EV, but every time I’ve done a good journey I’ve forced myself to take the EV. Not only is it cheaper but I get used to any quirks and also slowly get more comfortable with it. If the first time you take your EV on a longer trip is an important trip, you may ruin the experience for yourself by tripping up on some EV basics or just stressing yourself out.
My dad has had his EV for 18 months or so, we’ve had ours 6 months. I met him today to swap over some contraband, ‘the daughter’, I told him to take his EV and I’d plan a good place to stop, to my amazement he said he’d never charged it away from home and was not sure.
I’ve probably charged ours 20-30 times even though I’ve wfh the last 18 months. The first few test public chargings were well within the EVs range, but I charged anyway so I knew what to do. I then started to drive over the range and then last week we went totally mad and took it for a week in North Wales, where once you go out of England the high power chargers really dry up, like closest 50kw was 40 mins away and no 100kw+. I would never have done this without having first got used to what to do. Tesco’s & ZipWorld free 7kw were great and our Granny charger got used loads.
The issue with EVs is not necessarily directly range anxiety as such, but more just not being familiar with what to do and how to handle situations as you don’t naturally need to fill up outside the home each week, so don’t gain the experience very quickly.
I generally quickly plan my trips and stops before hand, I fully charge before leaving and plan my first stop ‘plan A’ well within range, knowing I have enough range to get to two other well planned ‘plan B’ & ‘plan C’. I’ve usually been ok with A but twice have had to go to B. Once was me accidentally picking a slow charger and leaving without checking the range left and the other was the cars fault as the charger locking pin wouldn’t engage, common fault on our car. I just didn’t know all I had to do was unplug and try again. I guess different plugs may also be slightly worn more or less etc.
Anyway I’d now happily travel from LE to JOG and back in an EV now having gained some confidence. This confidence has to be built up by 10+ or so public charges with a few curve balls thrown in for good measure so you then learn how to solve them without panic.
When I met my dad today to do ‘the deal’ I happily drove all the way there which was 110 miles, charged for 28 mins (to show him what to do) and then drove back and arrived back at home with ~20 miles left with zero range anxiety. I could have charged in public for longer, but I knew I didn’t need to and wanted to maximise my home charging as its cheaper. I had 3 bike racks still left on the roof from last weeks holiday, the heater was on, it was raining, I cruised along at normal speeds, but knew before I left what my expected range would be, i.e. a bit shorter (say ~170 miles) than the dash reported expected range of 230 miles due to above factors. The range was over optimistic and plus I could see the average kWh/100 miles after 30-40 miles and from knowing the battery capacity can easily work out the real range, well my daughter did - few maths puzzles for her to keep her occupied.
I now want to dump our 2nd car which is an ICE (Cupra Leon) and get a second EV. I know they’re not perfect, but feel confident enough now I can easily live with it, with some mild planning which now comes second nature and also knowing the EV charging network is getting massively better each week / month that goes by thanks to Gridserve / Toddington and others.
 
@Thatsnotmynaim the issue here isn't range anxiety, its that aside from Tesla, charging on a public point still fails more often then it should. To be honest it should work 100% of the the time and it should be as simple as plugging in the charger and charging starts as long as the car is registered to that network

Don't know why the MG wasn't giving any useful data, bad design but it goes to show we are still not there yet for mass rollout.
 
In contrast, because I'm "cheap" and because I invariably have the time to do it, I hardly charge at home. Always at public points, preferably those that are free. I have never been tethered to a charger. I have never needed to push an emergency stop button.

I have had a few instances where, for one reason or another, I haven't got the charge I intended, but as a practice I vitually never run the car "dry" so I always have some contingency. Up to press I have never needed to use a premium priced (>25p/unit) outlet.

I do agree that the network should be better maintained. There is an outlet at a supermarket not far from home which has been OOS since February. etc. I find extensive use of ZapMap and PlugShare prior to a visit helpful and, as I say, never arriving somewhere where it will be a last resort.
 
@Thatsnotmynaim the issue here isn't range anxiety, its that aside from Tesla, charging on a public point still fails more often then it should. To be honest it should work 100% of the the time and it should be as simple as plugging in the charger and charging starts as long as the car is registered to that network

Don't know why the MG wasn't giving any useful data, bad design but it goes to show we are still not there yet for mass rollout.
Yes agree to a degree, but we need to keep this in context; we were never going to magically get day 1 an EV network (paid for by us [the tax payer] or by companies trying to make a profit) that mimiks the petrol stations as, A even now EV's only make up ~1% of cars on the road and, B most EVs are charged 80-90% at home, it's cheaper and more convinient for most.

ICE cars have been around for 100's of years, I bet day 1 companies or governments didn't saturate places with petrol stations, they would have taken a while to pop up and evolve.

Having said that though I do think the EV charging infrastructure is pretty amazing given what it takes to create it and also given software and cars change quickly and the fact the chargers are not dumb pumps that just deposit an ammount of liquid, they instead need to know about all different types of cars, software & standards, handshake, talk the the payment infrastructure, work out how fast to deliver the charge to be safe and not damage the car etc.

Tesla had different motives, to sell cars (at a loss - they only made their first profit after 18 years), plus he only had to make them work with a Tesla's.

Today's state is :-
  • We have over 43,000 EV charging connections.
  • These grew 900+ connections last month and continue to do so.
  • In the past ~5 years the EV network grew by ~43%.
  • Toddington Harper / aka Gridserve is in the game and has bought Ecotricity, his primary motive is not profit it's the planet.
    • All the old Ecotricity charger (government funded 10 years ago) will be upgraded by the end of the summer this year to at least 100kwh.
    • In addition he will then do further upgrades to upgrade them to 350khw.
    • He will also add loads on new Ecotricity sites.
    • He will also create 100's of new Gridserver sites like Braintree.
  • I think we're making good progress, although agree not perfect.
  • The govenrment just pumped £300M into getting the network improved, here's one in Oxford.
  • People like VW & Tescos are putting in 2400 free charging points.
 
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(,,,)

ICE cars have been around for 100's of years, I bet day 1 companies or governments didn't saturate places with petrol stations, they would have taken a while to pop up and evolve.

(,,,)
Electric cars have also been around for about the same time. 120 years ago electric cars represented about a third of cars in the USA, they may have briefly outsold ICE cars (around 1900) apparently. The first UK production electric car appeared 137 years ago.
Just saying.

 
Electric cars have also been around for about the same time. 120 years ago electric cars represented about a third of cars in the USA, they may have briefly outsold ICE cars (around 1900) apparently. The first UK production electric car appeared 137 years ago.
Just saying.

First cars where electric, pre-dated ICE by a few years I remember reading somewhere.

carsguide.com.au/car-advice/who-invented-the-first-car-and-when-was-it-made-76976

Robert Anderson misses out on claiming to have made the first car in the world, because his self propelled car, built in Scotland in the 1830s, was an “electric carriage”, not one with an internal-combustion engine.
 
.....but as a practice I vitually never run the car "dry" so I always have some contingency. Up to press I have never needed to use a premium priced (>25p/unit) outlet.

.....I find extensive use of ZapMap and PlugShare prior to a visit helpful and, as I say, never arriving somewhere where it will be a last resort.
I think the above two points are key 'currently' and this is what I do, although in the coming years as the number of EVs on the roads increases and so demand for EV chargers increases, the supply of chargers will also increase. I also think they will all start to be much easier to use so with contactess payment and many of the handshaking issues due to varying car manufacturers protocols will be ironed out.

One thing to keep in mind is EV charging is not exactly the same as filling up cars with fuel and people should appreciate that, yes some aspects are the same (if range is less than journey you fill up on route), but many aspects are different (EVs will mainly charge at home, ICE must charge out and about), however I think people expect and want it to be exactly the same, it's not.
It will get better, more reliable and faster as we evolve, with 350kwh chargers we could potentially charge 20-80% in 8 minutes, but many will still just charge at home at very cheap rates. With ICE cars we did not tend to get home and let the car fill itself up overnight without the need to visit the local petrol station..
 
For about a third of motorists filling up at home is not even an option & is unlikely to become one unless something very drastic happens.
 
Electric cars have also been around for about the same time. 120 years ago electric cars represented about a third of cars in the USA, they may have briefly outsold ICE cars (around 1900) apparently. The first UK production electric car appeared 137 years ago.
Just saying.

Yes, know and appreciate that, but no one had the forsight to leave that old EV charging infrastructure in! :)
I actually read the first few early EV prototypes were more around the 1830's in Scotland, but local railway workers felt threatened for their steam jobs and so destroyed the 'devil machine'!!! :facepalm:

Seriously current ICE cars have had many years and vast numbers of units produced and used to perfect where they are today and we've had UK fuel stations around for the past 100 years, so much more units and time to perfect a much simpler process. Conversly EV's in current guise have only been in the UK for 10 years. Think during those times how many times an ICE car has been fueled and how many times an EV has been charged in public.

I think for the short future to come, say next 2-3 years, CCS at 100kwh & 350kwh+ & contactless payment will make everything much simpler and easier for people. The idea of having to download an app per provider, then register and link a payment menthod even before you can start to charge is madness and much more complicated for people than it needs to be, especially if you only charge once every 4 years!! :D Plug in, pay, off you go...

Currently in the UK we have 15,900 EV public charging locations and 8,400 ICE filling stations. Filling stations decline year on year, ICE chargers grow 900 connections (500 devices) per month..
 
For about a third of motorists filling up at home is not even an option & is unlikely to become one unless something very drastic happens.
More than 80% of cars are at a fixed location on a regular basis. 'At home' is slowly also encompassing kerb side charging though being a shared point can be classed as public charging.
 
For about a third of motorists filling up at home is not even an option & is unlikely to become one unless something very drastic happens.
Many people without off-road parking / charging possible do not actually drive / own cars that's why they don't pay to live in a place with it, as such the figure is more like 25%.
For those 25% there are still options, flats with shared parking can have shared chargers etc and this is actually far more efficient as most home chargers spend more of their time unused than used.
Appreciate it's not 100% perfect, but if 75% are fine and of the 25% left there are many other options so the issues becomes much smaller than people would make out.
Not saying it's not an issue and one size will fit all, but as with anything you will never solve 100% of the issues straight off, things like mobile phone and broadband coverage are still not perfect many year on, but that's not to say the two technologies aren't good progress in the right direction.
I'm usually a glass half full type of guy, so think it's probably better to shout about the 85% success rather than dwell on and moan about the 15% of issues, although not saying they should be swept under the carpet and no plan put in place to solve the issues.
 
More than 80% of cars are at a fixed location on a regular basis. 'At home' is slowly also encompassing kerb side charging though being a shared point can be classed as public charging.
In my area we have a population of some 33,000 people and 8 charging points. A few people are already drapping cables across pavements but mostly no one round here plans to get an EV any time soon.
 
In my area we have a population of some 33,000 people and 8 charging points. A few people are already drapping cables across pavements but mostly no one round here plans to get an EV any time soon.
I presume you must live in London (sorry if wrong), but don't a certain proportion of Londen'ers not even plan to own a car as have great investment in public transport anyway available to them..
Of the people that do have cars how many miles a week / month on average do they drive and so how often do they actually need to charge?
As a side note, I'd happily forgo having a car altogether if we had great public transport and lots of things at our doorstep, even some great off road cycling paths safe for my kids would help, but we have nothing like that near us...
 
I presume you must live in London (sorry if wrong), but don't a certain proportion of Londen'ers not even plan to own a car as have great investment in public transport anyway available to them..
Of the people that do have cars how many miles a week / month on average do they drive and so how often do they actually need to charge?
As a side note, I'd happily forgo having a car altogether if we had great public transport and lots of things at our doorstep, even some great off road cycling paths safe for my kids would help, but we have nothing like that near us...
Well round here; not central London but not an outer suburb either car ownership is high. I would guess near to one car per house & most do not have off road parking. There is barely the room to park the cars let alone have room for enough charging points.
Around here at least we either need a drastic reduction in car ownership or some very rapid development of charging tech*. I suspect other major cities have many similar areas. Ironically they are the ones where EV make most sense in terms of pollution etc.

*Actually my guess is that people in these areas will hang onto older and older ICE cars until they are completely outlawed which is of course inevitable.
 
I guess just because you have an EV does not mean you ‘have to’ charge at home overnight, it’s a benefit to having an EV for many but you can still charge it the same way as we fill ICE cars, i.e. drive somewhere and top it up. Places like Tescos will allow you to conveniently do it for free whilst you shop, people that drive to work may have chargers at work - I know my company now does, but many other options apply. Even if you pay to charge at say 25-30p, it’s still generally 3-4 times cheaper than petrol, plus no emissions and green if the energy is produced by green means.
 
Glad im not rich enough to buy an ev, there not the future, charge points are to few and usually blocked up.

We have customers coming all the time with ev and hybrids and they hate them, i know three who absolutely hate their tesla, and one customer sent his back. Worst car hed owned app.

Atm the hybrids and ev are just tax dodges,
 
Glad im not rich enough to buy an ev, there not the future, charge points are to few and usually blocked up.

We have customers coming all the time with ev and hybrids and they hate them, i know three who absolutely hate their tesla, and one customer sent his back. Worst car hed owned app.

Atm the hybrids and ev are just tax dodges,
Yes totally agree with everything you say there, you have some great knowledgeable and accurate points backed up by real world facts there..
 
Ok

Guy buys brand new tesla, goes to pick first one up and rejected it, pics second car up and it keeps trapping his fingers in the door handles, locking him out and also total dead ipad control inside.

Second customer ran out of charge halfway through their journey even though it had range.

Customer with epac went Scotland. Booked a hotel with charge point, got there. Charger being used through to the next day, he left late at lunch

Hybrids dont mot they have zero emissions, even though they can be bolted to a big stinky diesel. No road tax,

We have to boys, both have landrover hybrids they spend all day plugged into a wall.

You can claim tax back through business with hybrids or full ev.

Oh and to boot there dangerous should the unknowingly work on them think 9yr old prius.

Propper argumentive forum isnt it.
 
Nightmare IG :rolleyes: :laugh: Don't think I'd trust rapid charging reliability or availability at the moment, I'm getting a home charger fitted later in the week.

Also looking to change my other ICE vehicle to EV, looking at either the Kona, 2008, Mokka or C4, going to visit a few garages in the next few weeks
 
People make their own choices and are free to do what they wish / prefer, but bad facts and scare stories don’t help either way. Also one thing to remember is that EVs and charging is evolving pretty quickly right now, many of the horror stories are often from a few years back and would not be so likely to happen these days, although am not saying all is perfect, it’s not, but it’s much better.

To your points :-

I’m sure you’ll equally find a story about a non EV car owner that trapping fingers in the door or a faulty infotainment system, the fact it’s an EV has little to do with it, just crud quality and bugs I suspect.

An EV breaking down before it has run out of charge is just pants, but again I suspect equally there’s people with non EV cars with half a tank of fuel that have broken down, speak to some Alfa owners, I know one who’s brand new Alfa dropped it’s gear box as she was driving off!!! One thing about EVs is they tend to be much simpler mechanical wise than ICE cars, no gearbox, no clutch, no emmision systems or exhaust, there really is much less to go wrong, even the brakes last longer as an EV uses them much less as the motor is often used to brake the car and regenerate power. You’ll often find EV cars brake systems last 2-3 times longer than ICE cars.

If you plan to go somewhere like a hotel with a single charger it’s not ideal to expect it to be free unless it’s a single occupancy hotel, may be an idea to ring ahead and see if it can be booked or better still don’t leave your charge until the last point. If the person was in an ICE car and had nearly run out they would have filled up on-route before arriving or on leaving. Again not ideal, but also a bit naive to expect a single charger to be free.

All hybrids like EVs have to have an MOT just like ICE cars, only a very limited number of early EV vans I think were except, I think because they happened to fall into an old category created for milk floats donkeys years ago, that loophole’s been closed now - my milkman’s peed off! :)
I also think anything that’s produces CO2 has to pay BIK and / or road tax based on the amount of co2, so hybrids are treated just like ICE cars, but may have less tax as they produce less co2, but it’s down to a per car co2 rating rule, not a blanket all hybrids are tax free.
Many cars can be bought through salary sacrifice schemes, but again you pay BIK tax which is based on co2 emissions, making EVs the cheapest, hybrids and ICE cars will often attract hefty tax bills now, making the SS scheme not very attractive for co2 producing cars.

Not sure what you mean by the dangerous thing, although as with anything high voltage / current - if that’s what you mean, you wouldn’t want to work on it unless you knew what you were doing. It’s not to say you can’t but you need to know what you’re doing just like pulling a fuse box apart in your house, EVs & hybrids are different it ICE cars. Having said that you also wouldn’t want people who don’t know what they’re doing working on brakes on your car, it may not be the same dangerous too work on, but if they’ve done it wrong it can be equally be ‘death state’ endearing..
 
I have range anxiety and it will likely be months before I take delivery of my first EV! 🤣

Over the last week I've done a few reconnaissance runs around where I live, and over the weekend on a road trip to Devon.

What I've found so far is the closest rapid charge point to me is a broken Ecotricity, there are banks of chargers over at Reading services that have had covers on for the best part of two years and there seems to be a dizzying array of providers and ways to charge. On the drive back from Devon, at Collumpton Services, there were several Ionity chargers but one had an ICE parked in it. Presumably as it's close to the Extra entrance and the car park was busy, so the prick in the X6 decided it was as good as any other parking space.

On the plus side, also at Reading services are two banks of Gridserve rapid chargers, and there appear to be several 7kWh chargers on Green Park, where I live, so I should be okay day to day. But I'm surprised that it's still hit and miss, and appears to be quite confusing. I'm hoping that once I've been out and about a couple of times it'll be a lot less of a hassle than I'm expecting. Certainly my neighbour - who is also reliant on charging elsewhere as the management company won't let him use the charger he's had installed on his property - hasn't complained about it and loves his e-Tron.
 
In contrast we spent nearly 6hrs on the road today in our EV heading up to the Highlands from Leicester.

There was traffic, closed roads, mini floods to wade through, jam packed services, but our 4 years old EV managed it all with no issue.

We'll be hitting Glencoe in the next few days, cannot wait as the scenery is just getting more and more dramatic.

Our EV is simply the best family car we have ever owned, and its hard to believe come next March we will have had one for half a decade!!! Am looking fowards to it turning 10 years old in 2027 :).

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