As it’s Mental Health Week and ranting is good for the soul I thought I’d cleanse mine by having a good rant at some of the UK electric car charger networks!
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It should be mandated that when there is an issue with a charger that isn't a safety issue then chargers go on to free vend as Ecotricity do. It's totally unacceptable that people can be left stranded because a server has gone down or some other communication issue occurs.
Should legislate that charge networks have to default to free vend if problems with payment systems. Bet they fix them pretty quickly if that were the case
Considering every time you need to phone them all they do is re-boot it, why don't they have a re-boot button on the charger?
Worked in IT for 30+ years and my first question is usually have you tried re-booting!
Good to highlight the charging network issues – the biggest barrier to greater uptake of EVs
We bought a Smart EQ as a local runabout but we like it so much we thought we might go for a run beyond the point of no return, which is not far in the EQ! Now, I have watched a few videos on Youtube so decided to try some public 23KW chargers before embarking on our great adventure.
BP pulse – downloaded the App, stuck some money in my account. Sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Twice it caused an alert to come up in the car which stopped me from charging at home – at least until the fault cleared itself after a few hours for no obvious reason.
GeniePoint – refused to charge a couple of times using the App so I bought an RFID card and it seems to work with that (plus only plugging in AFTER starting the charge procedure)
I decided to try Shell Recharge and that said card accepted but then nothing happened – probably because I was not doing things in exactly the correct order? Anyway I tried to start the charge with a coupe of different cards and eventually managed to start it. I had a £20 pending charge on AmEx for 5 days despite the fact that I didn't actually buy any juice using that card! lol. I don't mind the pre-authorisation but why does it have to be in a name that makes no mention of Shell at all and just looks like a random pending transaction that I never made
One good thing that came from the BP Pulse fault messages is that I took the car back and they updated the software. Seems they come out of the factory with old software and the dealer is supposed to run an update. It didn't sort out the charging at one particular BP Pulse charger but I have not had problems elsewhere so it is probably just a fault with that charger? Oh, also when I bought the car I could not find DAB radio and was told that Apple Car Play had replaced it, despite the brochure saying it had DAB and Apple CarPlay. Anyway, after the software updates I DO now have DAB radio !
We are falling behind Norway by a large margin. I watch a Norwegian electric driver just to compare the UK and their services and charging networks look by far better than what we have here, it’s just depressing. I’m in the army and based in Colchester my home is in Edinburgh and I have to drive up the A1 and the network for charging is ridiculously in adequate.
If this was shell or any fuel company the government would step in, in fact they often do, the army does it every time taker driver go on strike so why does the government not step in and force them to operate to the standards we expect fuel stations operate at.