Full EV Woes!

[SDK^]

I think we've argued about this before (and I say this as a person looking to get another EV) but nothing beats the convenience of a 5 minute fuel stop. 5 minutes and I've just added 500+ miles. Yes it's great being able to wake up to a car that's both "full" and warm in the morning having charged on the drive, but it hasn't added 500+ miles. It also glosses over the fact that it takes hours to charge overnight ready for the start of a long journey, and depending on the battery size and how you've used the car leading up to that point, you're looking at 7-10 hours to charge. If you have to run out somewhere for some rare emergency, you're stealing range and time from the next day, meaning you'll have to visit a rapid charger for 15-20 minutes before you start the journey.

Don't get me wrong, I know EVs have this compromise, and I'm willing to accept it (and a lot of the public very quickly need to accept this will be the new normal); I just don't get the aversion to fuel stations.

The "I can have 500/600/700/800 miles of range in 5 mins" is only a benefit if you actually need that amount range in one day or trip. Who needs this amount of daily range on a regular basis?

I generally find range is bladder size limited, not fuel or battery size limited.
I (many EV's) can get an additional 200 miles of range in 20mins - which is enough distance before I/we (family) need to stop again.

 

[Ace Modder]

I can get an additional 200 miles of range in 20mins - which is enough distance before I/we (family) need to stop again.

Can you if there is only 1 charging bay open and a queue of 2 cars where the first car takes 40mins and the second card sits charging for 50mins? (which was my case scenario).

No amount of pre-planning can predict for numerous cars rolling up at a charging station 2 mins prior to your arrival no matter what app/mental force you use!

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Can you if there is only 1 charging bay open and a queue of 2 cars where the first car takes 40mins and the second card sits charging for 50mins? (which was my case scenario).

No amount of pre-planning can predict for numerous cars rolling up at a charging station 2 mins prior to your arrival no matter what app/mental force you use!

So why didn’t you go to the 12 bay Tesla charger at the airport which also gives you a live (ish) count of how many free bays there are in the app?

 

[SDK^]

Can you if there is only 1 charging bay open and a queue of 2 cars where the first car takes 40mins and the second card sits charging for 50mins? (which was my case scenario).

No amount of pre-planning can predict for numerous cars rolling up at a charging station 2 mins prior to your arrival no matter what app/mental force you use!

Generally I only stop at charging sites with multiple working chargers : Ionity, Gridserve, most motorway services are the main obvious sites.
As previously mentioned - I plan ahead and find suitable charging areas to use. There are loads of options available today, unless you're in North Scotland, or NEED charging in Mid-Wales

 

[Jonnycoupe]

I think we've argued about this before (and I say this as a person looking to get another EV) but nothing beats the convenience of a 5 minute fuel stop. 5 minutes and I've just added 500+ miles. Yes it's great being able to wake up to a car that's both "full" and warm in the morning having charged on the drive, but it hasn't added 500+ miles. It also glosses over the fact that it takes hours to charge overnight ready for the start of a long journey, and depending on the battery size and how you've used the car leading up to that point, you're looking at 7-10 hours to charge. If you have to run out somewhere for some rare emergency, you're stealing range and time from the next day, meaning you'll have to visit a rapid charger for 15-20 minutes before you start the journey.

Don't get me wrong, I know EVs have this compromise, and I'm willing to accept it (and a lot of the public very quickly need to accept this will be the new normal); I just don't get the aversion to fuel stations.

Never bothered me and i do high mileage. Fuel stations are slow, smelly and expensive!

 

[squerble]

The "I can have 500/600/700/800 miles of range in 5 mins" is only a benefit if you actually need that amount range in one day or trip. Who needs this amount of daily range on a regular basis?

I generally find range is bladder size limited, not fuel or battery size limited.
I (many EV's) can get an additional 200 miles of range in 20mins - which is enough distance before I/we (family) need to stop again.

People who do a lot of business driving?

It's the mindlessness and speed of a fuel stop that's the advantage over EV. Even if your stops are due to bladder and not battery range, in an ICE I could easily do three lots of 2 hours' driving then quick toilet stop before I even need to consider adding fuel. Not only that, it's a 5 minute addition. Please, we can argue hypotheticals all day long, but you need to see that most people want that mindless convenience of a 5 minute stop, and not have to consider how long the car needs to charge the night before, or how long they'll have to sit in the charging car before they can set off again.

 

[Ace Modder]

So why didn’t you go to the 12 bay Tesla charger at the airport which also gives you a live (ish) count of how many free bays there are in the app?

Point still stands 12 bay chargers, what if 24 cars arrive 2mins prior to me arriving? I'm still stuck in a queue of cars to be charged which take 20mins to an hour to charge. It is Heathrow, it can ALWAYS be busy there.

 

[paradigm]

Point still stands 12 bay chargers, what if 24 cars arrive 2mins prior to me arriving? I'm still stuck in a queue of cars to be charged which take 20mins to an hour to charge. It is Heathrow, it can ALWAYS be busy there.

You would have had better odds though. Far more likely to be blocked from charging at a site with ONE WORKING CHARGER. If you'd have scoped that out beforehand with ZapMap or similar then you could have at worst found yourself in a better queue, at best no queue at all.

Even better would have been planning to arrive with a usable amount of range before parking up at Heathrow.

Is the system perfect? God no. Could you have influenced it in a positive way? God yes.

It's pretty evident however that you don't WANT to give yourself a better chance, you WANT to go back to internal combustion.

 

[Nathan]

Is it a mobility or company car? Fail to see why people would buy these, terrible efficiency.

 

[silvagti]

I don’t have one currently but looking at EVs right now it seems as though if you want something with a decent actual real world range (~200 miles) then you need to buy a near £40k car.

Any EV less than £30k with a ‘claimed’ 200 mile WLTP range is basically just a city car as it’ll potentially only be good for 120-150 miles.

 

[Ace Modder]

I don’t have one currently but looking at EVs right now it seems as though if you want something with a decent real world range (~200 miles) then you need to buy a near £40k car.

Any EV less than £30k is basically just a city car.

Pretty much yeah. £40k seems to be the sweet spot for getting a reasonable ranged car in EV land.

 

[ICDP]

I do agree with the OP up to a point because in a perfect world there would be no planning required at all. I recently saw a similar post on an EV forum where someone left their EV at 40% SoC overnight, then complained the 40% meant they couldn't complete a trip the next day and the public chargers were broken.

So it comes down to (IMHO)

1. Poor public charging
2. Poor planning by EV owners to mitigate 1

 

[paradigm]

Brand new that's true, used is a different kettle of fish, plenty of "higher range" EVs for £20-30 used, and most if not all will still have 3-4 years of drivetrain/traction battery warranty remaining.

 

[Ace Modder]

Is it a mobility or company car? Fail to see why people would buy these, terrible efficiency.

Neither, it's the wifes personal car. Not on PCP or finance, bought outright over 2.5 years ago. TBH all the EV cars in the price range she looked at virtually all said 220 ish miles on the manufacturers pages. Remember back then there was far less choice too.

So the premise was all EV cars around 50-55kw batteries around the 150hp mark give similiar range. Seems there is a difference after being given the database EV but still it's not ideal.

 

[ICDP]

I don’t have one currently but looking at EVs right now it seems as though if you want something with a decent actual real world range (~200 miles) then you need to buy a near £40k car.

Any EV less than £30k with a ‘claimed’ 200 mile WLTP range is basically just a city car.

Not true even for new. A less than £30k (before discounts) base model MG4 long range will give 260 miles summer and 200 winter on a combined driving style. Motorway is about 160 winter and 205 summer. Cheaper, bigger battery and and better range than a new Mokka-E.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Point still stands 12 bay chargers, what if 24 cars arrive 2mins prior to me arriving? I'm still stuck in a queue of cars to be charged which take 20mins to an hour to charge. It is Heathrow, it can ALWAYS be busy there.

It doesn’t and you didn’t answer the question. You instead posed a stawman argument back.

Even if that were the case, they are 250kw chargers the chances are someone would be moving on within minutes. Even if people stayed for 40 mins each (they don’t typically), a 16 bay charger will turnover a vehicle every 2.5 minutes.

The Tesla app also has historic usage for their chargers so you can predict if they will be busy or not. These chargers are just not that busy, 12 of 16 are available now.

Going back to the question you didn’t answer, why did you opt for a 4 bay charger over a cheaper 16 bay charger?

When you got to the 4 bay charger and saw a queue with 3 not working, why did you wait and not seek an alternative?

I do agree with you to a point, EV chargers should be better maintained but you could have dealt with the situation differently which would have made your life a lot better.

 

[squerble]

Brand new that's true, used is a different kettle of fish, plenty of "higher range" EVs for £20-30 used, and most if not all will still have 3-4 years of drivetrain/traction battery warranty remaining.

Yep, I'm looking at 2021+ Tesla Model 3s at the moment, and some of the early Made In China SR+ models with the LFP battery are available for around £23k with sub-30k miles on them. That means you'll get another year's manufacturer warranty on everything, and 5 years on the battery and drivetrain. Seems to be a pretty good value spot right now. The SR+ with LFP battery will be around 200 miles of motorway driving (as long as you're driving legally), plus you have the might of the Supercharger network doing most of the planning for you, even routing you to a less busy site if it knows too many Teslas are currently navigating to the one you're due to stop at.

 

[ICDP]

Yep, I'm looking at 2021+ Tesla Model 3s at the moment, and some of the early Made In China SR+ models with the LFP battery are available for around £23k with sub-30k miles on them. That means you'll get another year's manufacturer warranty on everything, and 5 years on the battery and drivetrain. Seems to be a pretty good value spot right now. The SR+ with LFP battery will be around 200 miles of motorway driving (as long as you're driving legally), plus you have the might of the Supercharger network doing most of the planning for you, even routing you to a less busy site if it knows too many Teslas are currently navigating to the one you're due to stop at.

I have a feeling they were picking new so they could prove EVs were too expensive and that £30k only gets you something like the Mokka-E. A 1 year old MG4 extended range with sub 10k miles can be bought for £21k.

Though a 1 year old eC4 or Mokka-E can be yours for £15k as long as it is not your only family car. Frankly if you pay buy such an expensive thing as a car (especially an EV) without doing some basic research on the car and on public charging, then the problem ain't the EV.

 

[Ace Modder]

It doesn’t and you didn’t answer the question. You instead posed a stawman argument back.

Even if that were the case, they are 250kw chargers the chances are someone would be moving on within minutes. Even if people stayed for 40 mins each (they don’t typically), a 16 bay charger will turnover a vehicle every 2.5 minutes.

The Tesla app also has historic usage for their chargers so you can predict if they will be busy or not. These chargers are just not that busy, 12 of 16 are available now.

Going back to the question you didn’t answer, why did you opt for a 4 bay charger over a cheaper 16 bay charger?

When you got to the 4 bay charger and saw a queue with 3 not working, why did you wait and not seek an alternative?

I do agree with you to a point, EV chargers should be better maintained but you could have dealt with the situation differently which would have made your life a lot better.

admittedly we didnt go to the Tesla charger place, but this was the 3rd one we went too in the area. They were all similiar situations.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the Tesla chargers only compatible with Tesla cars, thats what my wife seems to understand as she once tried to charge at a Tesla station when she first got the car and couldn't as the adapters were not compatible with her car.

Personally I have never tried a Tesla charger on her car, because of what she told me. I think I have only charged her car publically 4 times myself in 2.5 years, she does ofc far more often.

 

[mid_gen]

How far is your commute to work?

For sure, there are edge vehicle travel scenario's/use cases which don't apply to EV's and the charging doesn't cover every part of the UK.
Probably similar to when ICE cars first went mainstream - e.g. no fuel stations in every city/town/village

These type of issues arise from lack of research and planning.
If you need to daily travel long distances, with no charging available then don't buy an EV yet ! Buy the car which works for your use case

Complaining about it after, just shows you bought an expensive item with no knowledge of how it works.

It's about 60 miles each way, motorway. No charging at work. No charging at home. I'm not adding 20 minutes or whatever to my commuted to get rinsed at a motorway charger.

I'm not complaining about it after, I haven't bought an EV.....because the charging infrastructure is still ****.