These days whenever I have stopped to use a super charger; they were either open to all or there was sufficient provision of other chargers.
The other chargers were at a much higher price mind, many are 2-3x the price but you use them so little if you can charge at home it’s not such a big deal but some people can’t get past this point. That said it doesn’t take much paying 70p+/kwh to dwarf my home charging costs with public charging.
The sufficient provision of other chargers didn’t used to be the case but it very much is now. Sure there are pockets all over the country which are over subscribed but those are getting less and less all the time.
I wouldn’t be concerned about having a car from another brand, I didn’t lease the Tesla because of the charger network, it got leased because it was cheaper than similar cars from other brands at the time (e.g. Kia EV6).
Whilst I partly agree, in that third party chargers are certainly far more prevalent, it’s still quite slanted in Tesla’s favour.
We;ve been travelling up north the last week, Tebay services, we went straight in, with 4-6 bays of the super chargers free, there was a 8 car queue for the ‘cheap’ £0.69pwkh third party chargers..
Then on the way back from Scotland to The lakes, we stopped at Gretna (open to all super chargers), 2-3 bays free but speaking with the BMW i4 owner next to us he was cursing BMW since the super chargers aren’t on his inbuilt map. He has to use third party apps constantly.. The fact people are queuing at tebay when 20 miles on they could be charging for 30p/kwh cheaper with more availability tells you that planning and app usage is not leading to seamless cheap charging.
So it’s a mixed bag, I’m fine using apps, but can’t believe the price disparity on main routes, it’s insane and once again, for the main bulk of the journeys, the Tesla is just fire and forget, only when venturing off the main routes do I bust the apps open, and then will top up at any SC I go near just for the cheaper pricing..
I could manage with something non Tesla, I bought the Tesla both for its relative cheap lease rates and charging since we had too many bad experiences in the ID.3, although I could go very large battery non Tesla next time, I imagine we’d just do the safe thing and get a Juniper Model Y because the car has grown on me and has such few flaws.
