EV general discussion

[tom_e]

Yeah if you're not bothered by intelligent TOU tariffs then that's the way set the schedule on your charger/in the car and just let it charge overnight.

 

[kai]

Sorry for another newbie question
My car as it's currently at the port awaiting delivery to the dealership. I’m holding off on getting a home charge point installed until I get official confirmation from the dealer that the car has arrived on site. In the meantime, my plan for the first few weeks is to rely on public charging points. A colleague recommended Zapmap.

• There is a Fuuse charger nearby listed at £0.70 (up to 360 kW).
• An InstaVolt a bit further away, but at my Gym listed at £0.85 (up to 160 kW).

For connector types : I keep seeing mentions of Type 1 and Type 2 (as well as CCS). Does it matter which public charger I pull up to? Will standard public rapid/fast chargers plug straight into a modern EV without any issues or adapters required?

Also do i need these app's of the provider, or can you just usually pull up and tap a debit card?

 

[john andersen]

Sorry for another newbie question
My car as it's currently at the port awaiting delivery to the dealership. I’m holding off on getting a home charge point installed until I get official confirmation from the dealer that the car has arrived on site. In the meantime, my plan for the first few weeks is to rely on public charging points. A colleague recommended Zapmap.

• There is a Fuuse charger nearby listed at £0.70 (up to 360 kW).
• An InstaVolt a bit further away, but at my Gym listed at £0.85 (up to 160 kW).

For connector types : I keep seeing mentions of Type 1 and Type 2 (as well as CCS). Does it matter which public charger I pull up to? Will standard public rapid/fast chargers plug straight into a modern EV without any issues or adapters required?

Also do i need these app's of the provider, or can you just usually pull up and tap a debit card?

You can also check sites like https://co-charger.com/ and see if any around you are sharing their charger. Any new car should be type 2 with ccs.

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Sorry for another newbie question
My car as it's currently at the port awaiting delivery to the dealership. I’m holding off on getting a home charge point installed until I get official confirmation from the dealer that the car has arrived on site. In the meantime, my plan for the first few weeks is to rely on public charging points. A colleague recommended Zapmap.

• There is a Fuuse charger nearby listed at £0.70 (up to 360 kW).
• An InstaVolt a bit further away, but at my Gym listed at £0.85 (up to 160 kW).

For connector types : I keep seeing mentions of Type 1 and Type 2 (as well as CCS). Does it matter which public charger I pull up to? Will standard public rapid/fast chargers plug straight into a modern EV without any issues or adapters required?

Also do i need these app's of the provider, or can you just usually pull up and tap a debit card?

Zap map, Electroverse and the Tesla app for Tesla superchargers.
Arnold Clark have well priced chargers onsite.

Most you can use contactless, Tesla superchargers you can't, it's all through their app.

 

[dannyjo22]

my wife's Kona charges until it's full because woman "reasons" but it's also on PCP so I'm not particularly fussed about babying the battery unlike the VW which I own but again easy enough to set and forget the limit in the Hyundai app and just let it do it's thing.

Yeah I think I'm just going to take that approach, it's never going to be mine. Plug it in and let it charge to whatever from 11pm to 6am.

 

[chanjy]

Sorry for another newbie question
My car as it's currently at the port awaiting delivery to the dealership. I’m holding off on getting a home charge point installed until I get official confirmation from the dealer that the car has arrived on site. In the meantime, my plan for the first few weeks is to rely on public charging points. A colleague recommended Zapmap.

• There is a Fuuse charger nearby listed at £0.70 (up to 360 kW).
• An InstaVolt a bit further away, but at my Gym listed at £0.85 (up to 160 kW).

For connector types : I keep seeing mentions of Type 1 and Type 2 (as well as CCS). Does it matter which public charger I pull up to? Will standard public rapid/fast chargers plug straight into a modern EV without any issues or adapters required?

Also do i need these app's of the provider, or can you just usually pull up and tap a debit card?

All rapids have contactless except some Tesla ones. And use CCS2 so you'll have no issues.

 

[robj20]

It doesn't need to be complicated, but it's nice to have lots of features to cater for all users.

Using your mum as an example (mine would be exactly the same) set the car to 80% max charge which is a one off setting and set the charger to charge on plug in. Plug the car in, it charges to 80% and stops.

That bit is the easy bit I guess, but then charging out and about I think isn't as easy as plug car in, pay.
And home electric tariffs are hugely different I guess for low milage it isn't an issue but if the vast majority of usage is charging the car you might want a cheap overnight one.
It's crazy how it requires a different way of thinking after all these years of full up, pay drive off.

 

[Will Gill]

Half the reason I went hybrid, less drain on my brain!

 

[Robbo]

That bit is the easy bit I guess, but then charging out and about I think isn't as easy as plug car in, pay.
And home electric tariffs are hugely different I guess for low milage it isn't an issue but if the vast majority of usage is charging the car you might want a cheap overnight one.
It's crazy how it requires a different way of thinking after all these years of full up, pay drive off.

Out and about can potentially be more of an issue, unless you have a Tesla. But using an overnight tariff is far easier than filling up at a petrol station. It's no different to charging your phone.

I honestly don't know how it could be any easier.

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

That bit is the easy bit I guess, but then charging out and about I think isn't as easy as plug car in, pay.

It *should* be that easy but sadly it isn't in some cases.
Slower chargers, sub 50kWh I think don't have to be contactless, so you'd need an RFID fob or card, they're free from Electroverse and you can link them to your bank card or octopus energy account.
Chargers over 50kWh should all allow contactless, except for the ones that don't, looking at you Tesla. Some Tesla chargers are accessible to none Tesla vehicles, some not, some are contactless some need the Tesla app.

 

[robj20]

Out and about can potentially be more of an issue, unless you have a Tesla. But using an overnight tariff is far easier than filling up at a petrol station. It's no different to charging your phone.

I honestly don't know how it could be any easier.

Literally just said how it could be easier. All charging points should be you pull up, plug in your car, chip and pin payment drive off when done, no apps.
Granted out and about is only a small fraction of the time, it needs sorting.
Home charging is more of you change to a EV tariff your then really needing to shift other heavy usage such as washing machine and dryer to night time or your wiping out the savings.

It seems like we need some legislation to force these companies to all just take a bank card to charge and no apps.

 

[chanjy]

Literally just said how it could be easier. All charging points should be you pull up, plug in your car, chip and pin payment drive off when done, no apps.
Granted out and about is only a small fraction of the time, it needs sorting.
Home charging is more of you change to a EV tariff your then really needing to shift other heavy usage such as washing machine and dryer to night time or your wiping out the savings.

It seems like we need some legislation to force these companies to all just take a bank card to charge and no apps.

The legislation already exists my friend

However the vast majority of slow/AC chargers simply don't make enough money to justify a card terminal, payment processing provider etc. so that's why card payment for those types of chargers isn't mandated because they would all go out of business (even quicker than they already are lol)

 

[Robbo]

Literally just said how it could be easier. All charging points should be you pull up, plug in your car, chip and pin payment drive off when done, no apps.
Granted out and about is only a small fraction of the time, it needs sorting.
Home charging is more of you change to a EV tariff your then really needing to shift other heavy usage such as washing machine and dryer to night time or your wiping out the savings.

It seems like we need some legislation to force these companies to all just take a bank card to charge and no apps.

I was talking about at home.

That's not the case with the overnight tariffs unless you barely drive any miles. They seem pretty competitive and save you an absolute fortune if you do a decent amount of driving. Hundreds of £ per month.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Literally just said how it could be easier. All charging points should be you pull up, plug in your car, chip and pin payment drive off when done, no apps.
Granted out and about is only a small fraction of the time, it needs sorting.
Home charging is more of you change to a EV tariff your then really needing to shift other heavy usage such as washing machine and dryer to night time or your wiping out the savings.

It seems like we need some legislation to force these companies to all just take a bank card to charge and no apps.

There is already legislation which requires this.

Any charger over 7kw has to have contactless payment. Frankly contactless payment doesn’t makes any sense on an 11kw or 22kw charger given how few people use them per day, it adds a lot of cost per customer.

The issue is that there are some legacy sites that were built before the legislation was put forward and never had contactless.

There was a clause in the legislation for these sites to be retrofitted and most have but some haven’t. The government seemingly doesn’t want to enforce it because ultimately it will lead to chargers being switched off rather than retrofit and no one wants that. Charging providers are ultimately getting round to the last few legacy sites.

Someone mentioned Tesla above, even a lot of their open to all legacy sites have been retrofit with a payment terminal you can use to active the charger with a card - hardly anyone uses them in practice.

The main benefit of the app passes payment is access cheaper rates, think Tesco club card prices. Quite often those rates comes with conditions like a subscription or they are only available at certain times of day or you have to be with X energy supplier but they are available.

 

[robj20]

Thanks for that, seems it's not as bad as I first thought then.
Guess you still need to use an app, not really looked at Google maps to find suitable fast chargers no point pulling in and finding a slow charger when your in a rush.

 

[Penfold101]

Thanks for that, seems it's not as bad as I first thought then.
Guess you still need to use an app, not really looked at Google maps to find suitable fast chargers no point pulling in and finding a slow charger when your in a rush.

Zapmap and ABRP are your friends - and to be fair you should know before you set off on a journey if you’re going to have to charge in public.

Unless you do hundreds of miles every day (and can charge at home), it shouldn’t really be a problem.

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

Thanks for that, seems it's not as bad as I first thought then.
Guess you still need to use an app, not really looked at Google maps to find suitable fast chargers no point pulling in and finding a slow charger when your in a rush.

Use an app like Electroverse for that. You enter in the details for your car so the app knows the range, start and end points the same as you would in Google maps and it'll calculate your route along with any charge stops required, click go and it'll send it to Google maps to use as the nav route.

 

[robj20]

Use an app like Electroverse for that. You enter in the details for your car so the app knows the range, start and end points the same as you would in Google maps and it'll calculate your route along with any charge stops required, click go and it'll send it to Google maps to use as the nav route.

Wonder how long before Google integrate that into Maps.

Is 80% charge the best or is their a benefit to say 50% during the week I only do 50 miles a day then on a Friday charge to 80% for the weekend would be ideal that's when I generally do the longer 200mile trips.

 

[tamzzy]

Is 80% charge the best or is their a benefit to say 50% during the week I only do 50 miles a day then on a Friday charge to 80% for the weekend would be ideal that's when I generally do the longer 200mile trips.

Keeping the battery as close to 50% is best. If your usual use case scenario is 20%, then keeping the charge at 60-40% is best for battery longevity.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

… while true, in practice the difference will likely be negligible over the lifetime of the car.

You also can’t escape calendar aging so just use the car as you need to use it and don’t worry about it.