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EV charging greed
Mr Whippy - 29/3/24 at 07:37 AM

You know, I've always loved the EV's, the cars kind of do what you want and their nice to drive. But the biggest let down is the appalling charging fiasco that almost deserves to kill the whole idea, and may yet manage to do so.

Not only is there 3 types of fast charger connections and they can't even sort that mess out, there's also the ridiculous methods used to simply pay for the charge you get. Why is it most of the fuel pumps are not contactless with your bank card but EV chargers use membership cards if only to charge you for the privilege of being forced to use their piece of plastic? I've just cancelled my Charge place Scotland one due to them now asking me for £10 a month regardless if I even used the thing which is total BS. Also the cost of charges themselves have gone through the roof and I'd be as well using petrol... Seriously thinking of selling the Leaf an getting the wife a Corolla auto petrol instead.

minitici - 29/3/24 at 11:53 AM

As far as I know, Chargeplace Scotland do not have monthly fees.
Only charge is a one off £12 to issue the RFID card.
That said, some council areas have excessive minimum connection charges.
Typically £5 minimum charge per session (even on the 7kW destination chargers)
This makes it a no go for my Citroen Ami as I typically only top up about £2 maximum (it has a very small battery)!

Mr Whippy - 29/3/24 at 12:22 PM

quote:
Originally posted by minitici
As far as I know, Chargeplace Scotland do not have monthly fees.
Only charge is a one off £12 to issue the RFID card.
That said, some council areas have excessive minimum connection charges.
Typically £5 minimum charge per session (even on the 7kW destination chargers)
This makes it a no go for my Citroen Ami as I typically only top up about £2 maximum (it has a very small battery)!


They got bought by SWARCO UK and next thing they started charging per month.

[Edited on 29/3/24 by Mr Whippy]

JoelP - 29/3/24 at 12:34 PM

Ami is such a cute little thing.

I've not even been in an electric car yet, but when I get one I'd do everything in my power to not charge away from home!

minitici - 29/3/24 at 03:00 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Mr Whippy
quote:
Originally posted by minitici
As far as I know, Chargeplace Scotland do not have monthly fees.
Only charge is a one off £12 to issue the RFID card.
That said, some council areas have excessive minimum connection charges.
Typically £5 minimum charge per session (even on the 7kW destination chargers)
This makes it a no go for my Citroen Ami as I typically only top up about £2 maximum (it has a very small battery)!


They got bought by SWARCO UK and next thing they started charging per month.

[Edited on 29/3/24 by Mr Whippy]


That does not sound right. Swarco have operated the back office for Chargeplace Scotland (since 2021).

Still no monthly fees.

How long have you had a Chargeplace Scotland Account?

There was some suggestion that legacy accounts had been getting renewal fees added to their accounts.

jacko - 29/3/24 at 03:44 PM

quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
Ami is such a cute little thing.

I've not even been in an electric car yet, but when I get one I'd do everything in my power to not charge away from home!


When or if i get a ev i will do the same as you i dont go far from home know a days

Sam_68 - 29/3/24 at 11:32 PM

quote:
Originally posted by jacko
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
I've not even been in an electric car yet, but when I get one I'd do everything in my power to not charge away from home!


When or if i get a ev i will do the same as you i dont go far from home know a days


On the other hand, I've just completed a (fairly) relaxed and painless 800 mile+ round trip from North Norfolk to Falmouth and back for the grand total cost of £6.75 (the cost of my initial home charge, at off-peak rate), thanks to free Tesla supercharging.

bi22le - 30/3/24 at 01:32 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Sam_68
quote:
Originally posted by jacko
quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
I've not even been in an electric car yet, but when I get one I'd do everything in my power to not charge away from home!


When or if i get a ev i will do the same as you i dont go far from home know a days


On the other hand, I've just completed a (fairly) relaxed and painless 800 mile+ round trip from North Norfolk to Falmouth and back for the grand total cost of £6.75 (the cost of my initial home charge, at off-peak rate), thanks to free Tesla supercharging.


That's great but adds nothing to this topic. There same as me saying I drive 30000 miles a year for free. . . . . in my company car.

You can't get those initial model S agreements and they are non transferable so you are in an unrelated situation.

Sam_68 - 30/3/24 at 08:24 AM

quote:
Originally posted by bi22leYou can't get those initial model S agreements and they are non transferable so you are in an unrelated situation.

It's on a Model X, and it is transferrable (I bought the car second-hand).

bi22le - 30/3/24 at 09:41 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Sam_68
quote:
Originally posted by bi22leYou can't get those initial model S agreements and they are non transferable so you are in an unrelated situation.

It's on a Model X, and it is transferrable (I bought the car second-hand).


It's also on the model S and they are not all transferrable. You are very lucky in your case, whoever sold that must set fire to notes to keep warm. It may not stay for free for ever, enjoy it why you can.

Sam_68 - 30/3/24 at 09:50 AM

quote:
...they are not all transferrable. You are very lucky in your case...


Luck had nothing to do with it: it's simply about selecting the right car (it's not commonplace on the Model X, but they do exist; it's much easier to find on the earlier Model S's). You can check and confirm with Tesla whether it's transferrable on a particular car, before you purchase.

It would be a breach of contract it Tesla removed it independently; they can only do so if the car is sold via the Tesla dealer network.

SteveWalker - 30/3/24 at 06:29 PM

quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
Ami is such a cute little thing.

I've not even been in an electric car yet, but when I get one I'd do everything in my power to not charge away from home!


It's generally quite easy. I do a pretty average mileage, with the odd trip between Manchester and South of Birmingham, and similar. In 12 months, I have only charged away from home once - and even that I probably didn't need to do, but it let me drive back at speed, with heating and not have to worry that the range might be a bit tight.

If we have a particularly long journey or need to tow, we still have an ICE car, but towing, carrying more than 5 people and picking up a cabinet that wouldn't fit in the EV is the only use it has got in those 12 months - and al those journeys were less than a 20 mile round trip.

russbost - 30/3/24 at 07:12 PM

I rarely charge away from home as I can get a 300 mile charge from Octopus at home for £4.80 on the overnight leccy! Just been to Leeds & back (round trip 430 miles or so) & bunged our son a tenner for the charge I put in over a couple of days from an ordinary 13amp socket at his place, total cost for "fuel" for the 430 miles less than £14 - I'd love to see you do that with any ICE car!

I absolutely refuse to get a raft of RFID cards, the only one I have is Ocopus Electroverse & I only got that because they offered £10 of free charge with it. If you put contactless along with your charger type on the Zapmap app then you can see straight away where has the type of charge point you want, we only go to places with multiple outlets & have only once arrived to find all slots taken. As we never leave charging until it's very low, we just drove on 20 miles or so & charged elsewhere using a contactless card

Yes, the charges at public points are an absolute rip off, but if you buy something with a decent range like the Kona has then you simply don't often need to use them!

I would strongly recommend against ever going to a single charge point unless you know you have plenty of alternatives without driving miles out of your way, there are far too many that don't work or refuse to accept payment etc. - the infrastructure's not great, but it is getting better

craig1410 - 31/3/24 at 06:56 AM

We have a ChargePlace Scotland account and the only cost is the one-off £12 fee per physical card. We’ve also signed up for an Octopus Electroverse account but haven’t needed to use it as yet. In fact we’ve not used the ChargePlace Scotland account either in the last 24 months and as a result my direct debit has expired.

Like most people, we charge at home pretty much always and never have any issues with range for our usage. At 7.5p/kWh it costs a small fraction of a petrol or diesel car and is more pleasant to drive. Monthly mileage is pretty much exactly 1000 miles and electricity cost is £25 a month so 2.5p/mile. Our diesel car would need to do 280 MPG at £7/gallon to equal that, or put another way, electricity would need to cost 52.5p/kWh for our EV to be as expensive to run as the diesel. Even our standard electric tariff is about half that.

gremlin1234 - 31/3/24 at 11:19 AM

quote:
Originally posted by craig1410
electricity would need to cost 52.5p/kWh for our EV to be as expensive to run as the diesel.

sadly public chargers generally cost 50p/KWh and up

https://www.zap-map.com/ev-stats/charging-price-index#:~:text=The%20weighted%20average%20price*%20to,24%20pence%20per%20mile%20respectively.

craig1410 - 31/3/24 at 12:27 PM

quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
quote:
Originally posted by craig1410
electricity would need to cost 52.5p/kWh for our EV to be as expensive to run as the diesel.

sadly public chargers generally cost 50p/KWh and up


Yeah I know, which is why I charge at home.

Although, I've had an EV for long enough to remember when public charging was free

30p/kWh is more common near us (central Scotland) but there are certainly some above 50p.

It's still handy to have the ability to charge at public charge stations but it's probably 3 or 4 years since we've had a need to, even with our i3 which has a relatively small battery and relatively low range compared to contemporary EVs. But having a small battery means it is cheaper to charge and lighter to carry around which aides the overall efficiency. My wife's daily 50 mile round trip commute uses 12-14 kWh of energy and the battery pack is 33kWh (28kWh usable) so range is just never an issue.

[Edited on 31/3/2024 by craig1410]

russbost - 31/3/24 at 02:59 PM

quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
quote:
Originally posted by craig1410
electricity would need to cost 52.5p/kWh for our EV to be as expensive to run as the diesel.

sadly public chargers generally cost 50p/KWh and up

https://www.zap-map.com/ev-stats/charging-price-index#:~:text=The%20weighted%20average%20price*%20to,24%20pence%20per%20mile%20respectively.


But that completely misses the point - yes, public chargers are stupidly expensive & despite the fact that electricity has come down in price as have petrol, diesel & gas, public chargers have if anything gone up further during that period with no justification for that increase other than pure greed, but as has already been said charging at home costs naff all & that's why the vast majority of charging is done at home.

If you can't charge at home the bulk of the time, why would you even consider getting an electric car, it would be pointless?

craig1410 - 31/3/24 at 11:04 PM

quote:
Originally posted by russbost
quote:
Originally posted by gremlin1234
quote:
Originally posted by craig1410
electricity would need to cost 52.5p/kWh for our EV to be as expensive to run as the diesel.

sadly public chargers generally cost 50p/KWh and up

https://www.zap-map.com/ev-stats/charging-price-index#:~:text=The%20weighted%20average%20price*%20to,24%20pence%20per%20mile%20respectively.


But that completely misses the point - yes, public chargers are stupidly expensive & despite the fact that electricity has come down in price as have petrol, diesel & gas, public chargers have if anything gone up further during that period with no justification for that increase other than pure greed, but as has already been said charging at home costs naff all & that's why the vast majority of charging is done at home.

If you can't charge at home the bulk of the time, why would you even consider getting an electric car, it would be pointless?


Exactly! Imagine if you could have an infinite sized tank of diesel/petrol at home that was 7x cheaper than what you could buy at the pump AND it filled your car with fuel for you while you slept. How many people would still go to petrol stations?

BenB - 1/4/24 at 09:28 PM

I drive a plug in hybrid. Anything more than 50p/kwh and I'm better off using petrol. Even the cheapest lamppost charger round here now is more than that. So I either drape a cable across the pavement or just burn petrol and lug round a heavy battery lowering mpg. We pay 21p/kwh at work, not sure how it's 50+ via a lamppost. Probably because it's so expensive people don't use them so the equipment cost per charge goes up!

craig1410 - 1/4/24 at 10:05 PM

quote:
Originally posted by BenB
I drive a plug in hybrid. Anything more than 50p/kwh and I'm better off using petrol. Even the cheapest lamppost charger round here now is more than that. So I either drape a cable across the pavement or just burn petrol and lug round a heavy battery lowering mpg. We pay 21p/kwh at work, not sure how it's 50+ via a lamppost. Probably because it's so expensive people don't use them so the equipment cost per charge goes up!


I suspect the price cap might be causing some distortion because I don’t think it will apply to commercial customers the same way it applies to domestic customers. That said, there has to be a compromise between overcharging to the point nobody uses the chargers and undercharging to the point that the chargers are uneconomic to operate and/or always mobbed. But it’s still an immature market and it’ll take some time to settle into supply-demand balance.

Personally I’ve never been a fan of the hybrid approach for exactly the reason you mention. It’s either a petrol car lugging around a heavy battery or a battery powered car lugging around a heavy engine. In either case you have double the overall complexity too. I think it maybe made sense in the early days of car electrification but not for a while now. Either your usage suits an EV or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t then you either need a second car or should just stick to a diesel/petrol car. IMHO anyway.

SteveWalker - 2/4/24 at 12:16 AM

quote:
Originally posted by BenB
I drive a plug in hybrid. Anything more than 50p/kwh and I'm better off using petrol.


You should still benefit, as regenerative braking and electrically assisted acceleration should improve your mpg over using pure petrol. Obviously charging at home would make a bigger difference.

We looked at hybrids, but the battery only range of the available options was just not good enough, so we went full EV, as we have an ICE car as backup (although that is now down from average annual mileage, to under 250 miles - and may get replaced by an old Land Rover for a bit of fun.

cliftyhanger - 2/4/24 at 06:52 AM

I agree hybrids are teh worst of both worlds in terms of complexity etc. However, they have a clever trump card.
A hybrid car can use a little engine, as 95% of normal driving uses very little bhp/torque. 50bhp will have even alarge car going 70 along the motorway. But add an electric motor and it allows a significant extra dose of torque when required, but only for short periods.

Daughter/SIL recently bought an i20 which is a "mild hybrid" (no other choice) but when I was investigating, the hybid system only adds 3% to economy. That is NOT a good return for the added production costs/complexity.

I am pondering the idea of an EV. And solar panels/battery.
Most days for work I do under 25 miles, once a week maybe 100. Daughters live 60 miles away, and soon we will be doing more visits, so an electric would need to have a real world winter range of 120 miles plus a margin.

Longer journeys, we tend to tour in one of our classics. And my Dolomite Sprint is nearly completed. That is a surprisingly capable vehicle, and will manage 35mpg on a long trip. Pretty good for an old, 125bhp saloon capable of 0-60 in a 8.5s Not to mention the lady wife will have her MX5.
It really does look plausable..... And electric cars are getting very cheap at 2-3 years old.

SteveWalker - 2/4/24 at 01:54 PM

A real world winter range of 120 for a full EV is no problem. Lots will manage 180 these days - more if you're willing to only switch the air-con on for a minute when it starts to mist up, keep use of the heater low and keep to a steady 56mph. 180, with heater on 21°C, air-con on and at around 75mph, is pretty common - those with a heat-pump instead of a heater may do better.

craig1410 - 2/4/24 at 02:08 PM

Yeah I think the heat pump does make a big difference and I'm very glad we added that option when we bought our i3 back in 2016. Ours is only the 94Ah (33kWh) model so 120 miles is close to the max unless you switch to one of the "ECO" modes which automatically restrict cabin heating and speed.

Speaking of cabin heating, a tip I have often heard from Scandinavian EV drivers is to favour seat heating over cabin heating in cold weather, and we certainly tend to do that in our car. It's much easier to maintain a warm back and bottom rather than heating the entire cabin which has minimal insulation and is travelling at 60+MPH through cold air! If you do use the cabin heater, I think it is rated at 6kW and without the heat pump that full 6kW is provided by the battery whereas with the heat pump it only takes around 2kW from the battery to produce 6kW of heat, with the other 4kW coming from the passing air. So it stands to reason it'll make a significant difference on a car with a 33kWh (28kWh usable) battery.

But yeah, @cliftyhanger you'd have no problem finding a very reasonably priced EV that would suit the vast majority of your needs. And now is a great time to install PV and batteries for the house too. We've already got PV + batteries and are about to have a heat pump installed and so far it has all been working very well.

David Jenkins - 2/4/24 at 06:04 PM

I was massively unimpressed with Chargeplace Scotland when I was up there a few years back - they seem to have a near-monopoly on chargers (I only saw a few others), they were widely scattered, and they weren't kept in good repair. Other companies were starting to install new ones at some garages, e.g. BP Pulse, so there's some hope.

I've just got an email from CS/SWARCO saying that my direct debit arrangement has expired due to inactivity - I wont be doing anything to re-establish it.

Robski - 23/5/24 at 08:02 PM

quote:
Originally posted by JoelP
I've not even been in an electric car yet...

I had a ride down the road in a milk float when I was a kid.

Didn't think batteries were the future then.
Still unconvinced.

The hydrogen fuel cell makes far more sense.

David Jenkins - 23/5/24 at 09:34 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Robski
The hydrogen fuel cell makes far more sense.


The hydrocarbon industry LOVES the idea of hydrogen-powered cars - because the majority of it will most likely be made from oil. So little reduction in pollution and the mess that the oil industry causes.

Also using hydrogen for motive power involves many issues:

- It is very difficult to store as it has the ability to leak out of almost any container given half a chance.
- it has to be stored at very high pressure, and at very low temperatures if storing in bulk.
- it would still have to be transported to the hydrogen equivalent of the petrol station by a fleet of tankers.

There are other problems, but it's late and I'm off to bed...

Robski - 24/5/24 at 05:44 AM

<Snip>

[Edited on 24/5/24 by Robski]