(electric cars) aibu to think that this won't work?

[greenacrylicpaint]

currently stuck at a motorways service station.
there is a long queue for the chargers of which a few are not working.

imagine summer holidays. how is that going to work? train long distance and then cars/bikes locally?

Doesn't use electricity to recharge either.

Of course it does, hydrogen is generated by electrolysis - just at the start rather than consumer end of the distribution.
Hydrogen would of course need its own infrastructure. It's bloody explosive stuff.

There is another problem which I haven't seen mentioned. Fast charging causes the battery temperature to rise - too many fast charges in one long journey may cause overheating which can damage the battery which limits total overall distance of a journey.
Most of our charging is done at home on slow or medium and the garage told us that is the best and our battery condition has not changed since we got the car.
We have learnt to plan ahead, be light on the pedal and take a picnic basket on long journeys.

@Lunar270 but who do you think reports the problems with out of order chargers in the first place? EV drivers, of course. Someone has to be the first to encounter the problem and report it to Zap-Maps, as I have found out first hand.

And how many will bother? When they're busy worrying about whether they can get to the next charger which is supposed to be working.

But that's not what you posted is it? Your OP said you were waiting in a line of cars for a charger. My response was that a look on zapmap would've told you the charger was busy, which it does.

Zapmap receives live data directly from the charger whether it's in use or not.

You're right, that users need to report broken chargers and this works well but is based on people being vigilant. In 5 years of ownership I can't say I've had any issues as people must be pretty good. I do report routinely as it's hardly a problem.

But no-one arrives at a charger (or shouldn't do) without some contingency, in the same way you wouldn't in an ICE car. If you're genuinely the first to arrive at a broken charger then you should already have an alternative.

@MillyMollyMonday

Apologies, I mistook you for the OP so ignore the beginning of my post. Sorry!

@Lunar270 apology accepted 😬
One other thing about zap maps, though… I don’t think it tells you if there’s a car still plugged in ( and space hogging) long after they have finished charging. This was the case with two cars on my route, at my third (contingency) charging point!

But that's not what you posted is it? Your OP said you were waiting in a line of cars for a charger. My response was that a look on zapmap would've told you the charger was busy, which it does.

Zapmap receives live data directly from the charger whether it's in use or not.

yes, apps can tell you a charger is free or not. but by the time you arrive it might be busy or broken/inactive.

going off motorway is also not always wise as at least motorway services usually have more chargers than just the one behind the bakery 10 miles away which only has a slow charge (compared to big brand chargers).

We have found that if you report a fault it can sometimes be fixed on the spot - the computer just needs rebooting - doesn't always work though

@MillyMollyMonday

From Zapmap:

Live data is information that is obtained directly from the charge point data. Updated every five minutes, users can see if a charge point is available, in use or unavailable.

You're right that there may well be a scenario whereby a car that's finished charging shows as being available but I'm not 100%. I can't say it's something I've experienced though as the majority of CCS chargers penalise people if they stay longer than a set time period. I think there's a £40 charge or something if you exceed 40 minutes on most.

Thing is, there's always a scenario isn't there? That's why most people who are seasoned EV owners look for destination charging. It's what I do.

So if I'm going to another town/city I'll look for a car park etc where I can charge whilst I'm doing whatever I'm doing. Or I'll visit a charger before I get on the motorway.

Did you know that hotels are obliged to let you use a charger even if you're not a customer?

Sure I get there are some limited situations where people experience difficulties but I'd imagine that these can often be mitigated with some planning.

But it's early days and currently noone is under any obligation to purchase an EV. Therefore if people don't think one can work for them, what's the issue? You just wait until the infrastructure is good enough for you

We found it quite a challenge to identify which hotels had chargers. Eventually we found one that had a BP pulse in its grounds but when I contacted the hotel to double check it was available to me they said it had been broken for months and there was no way to get it fixed as not their equipment.

FastNed charging stations are brilliant. We used the Sunderland and Newcastle ones when staying in the region and they completely compensated for the lack of charging at our holiday accommodation. (For long distance we definitely prefer the train though).

I’ve had my EV for 6 weeks and it’s been brilliant locally with excellent public charging stations.

I just did 2 very long trips in the last week and am feeling very dispirited. Yesterday there was an enormous queue for 1 CCS charger just off the M74. I only needed a bit of charge to get me home comfortably so used my own AC cable - but the behaviour of some of the other queuers was awful. One lady had been waiting with a baby and toddler for 3 hours - and was next - a man pulled into the space and jumped the queue. I had to confront him - he was initially “snooze you loose” - but eventually relented and “let” her have 20 minutes on the CCS. It was horrible and stressful.

It was clearly a busy driving day with lots of families moving about the country so probably not typical. But whilst - planning works - and you need a Plan B (both bits of excellent advice) - it’s hard and the infrastructure needs improving quickly.

Lots in the news recently about queues for chargers over the Christmas period and distances reduced because of the cold and having to have heaters on. We just have a small one for local journeys, only charging at home and use our diesel to go any distance, the EV is OK for second car but we will be replacing our diesel soon with another diesel, I wouldn't want to use public chargers.

Just driven our EV from northern England to the alps. Easy all the way !

Which is great for you but doesn't mean that the problems currently being reported in England aren't happening.

I don't think that there's any question that the infrastructure needs to catch up with the numbers on evs on the road now

They aren't quite the pancea to fossil fuels yet

Can you set out your itinery of stops, what charges took place and how long they took along the way?

So from when you set off from home, where and when was your first stop and hhow long?

I don’t have to “imagine”

summer 2022 and we took out electric car from the West Midlands to Dover, taking our grandchildren on holiday. Journey to Dover was fabulous. We stopped once for breakfast and fully recharged our electric car. (A2021 Nissan Leaf)

coming home from our 7 days in Europe courtesy of the ship Disney Magic. We stopped for our recharge, of the 9 or so charging units 2 or 3 were not working. A few were being used by people who appear to have left the country or died. The remaining 5 were causing fights, we moved on.

Next services there were at least half of them out of service.

Final stop and not enough power to move to any other power points, at least an hours wait. 2 young children who wanted to see their parents, a 4+ hour journey ended up being about 9 hours. Very off putting.

Im due to go to Heathrow next August. DH driving me. We will use our petrol car.

Seriously live our electric car and shes do economic, but there really needs to be more, faster and better charging points. Especially on motorways.

We first travelled from Matlock (pre cmas weekend break) to home, charged 30 mins at Woodall Services. Put it on the home charger for 3h while we repacked then drove to Hull dock. Next morning charged 45 mins in Antwerp, 45 mins in Metz, 20 mins in Basel then done.

Thank you, so how many miles in between each charge is that and how many miles do each of those charging times get you?

We’ve been electric for 4 years. The amount of chargers out there has risen considerably but not nearly as much as the amount of EVs out there. When we got ours we’d see one or two a week. Now they’re all over the place.

funny how social media has really gone mad with this- I seem to recall long queues at petrol stations not that long ago. I suppose at Christmas time (and summer) long journeys are more common.

they won’t work (yet) for all families, especially those with high mileages. However for families like us who use cars for local journeys plus a handful of longer journeys, and do 99% or our charging at home, we love our EV. I have never waited more than 10 minutes for a charge. I know lots of converts and not one that regrets it.
not yet anyway.

I think the press coverage of the problems with electric cars / charging is the death knell of all electric cars . My car is due for renewal and I won't be getting an electric one . Quite happy with my reliable diesel SUV .

What about the press coverage of the petrol shortages at pumps a few months ago? There will be far more of these in the future.

I think your idea of exponential is a little different from the accepted definition.

The UK is weirdly shit at big infrastructure projects. We talk the talk but rarely walk the walk.