Electric car

[babasaclover]

Going electric. Have picked the car, I only go around town don't leave a 4 miles radius and the range for car days 300 miles. Even if I get much less cause of using heating / air conditioning etc I'll be charging twice a month at home

Any tips / things to avoid? Service station chargers seem extortionate but Lidl is cheap. Where do you charge if you have to outside of the house? For me it'll happen once / twice a year I expect

Looking forward to NOT paying for petrol.

Yeah 8p. 🙃

Ok can anyone help? Need to charge car before home charger is fitted Tuesday tried to use Lidl earlier and it seems to connect then just stopped?

3 goes in and it has held money from my account each time. Finally got it going for about 20 miles in 20 mins. Then it wouldn't disconnect? It can't be this hard surely!

Is it a podpoint charger? I think our Lidl uses podpoint and every time we've used a podpoint we've had hassle! Is there anywhere relatively near to do a rapid charge? Zapmap is good for finding chargers.

Have a look on zapmap and find somewhere with at least a 50kwh charger (I think the Lidl ones are only 22). I haven't had the issue you've experienced but have had smooth charging experiences at McDonalds and Costa (don't know if all Costas are on the same charging network) if you have any of those close by.

Only charge to 80% to preserve the battery

Obviously 80% reduces range. That’s not always a good idea.

Charging woes! Oh dear.

Day to day you would charge to 80% to preserve the battery. We only charge to 100% if going on a road trip. We have a BMW iX.

I know there are cars where they suggest charging to 100% - for some reason I think either the Leaf or the BMW i3 they do, but it’s due to older battery tech.

We charge to 80% unless we are going away too.

Sorry @babasaclover, this is probably a bit late but McDonald's usually has Instavolt charges which are some of the best so I'd go there.

I have had that annoying problem of being charged the deposit only for the charger to disconnect. I wouldn't use that charger again.

One thing to note is that if you are paying by card, the chargers only let you 'tap' (not enter pin). Cards limit the amount you can spend and/or the number of times you can tap before you have to enter your pin again. It took us ages and some hairy moments to realise that this is why we sometimes couldn't charge! Therefore if using a card, always make sure you've made another transaction and put your pin in before trying to use your card at a charger! I believe that if you use your phone, then this isn't a problem.

We've had an electric car for 3 years , range 160 and have only charged away from home a handful
of times , charge one or two nights a week at home on the cheap tariffs running costs are tiny

@babasaclover also probably too late to be of assistance, but assuming this was a Lidl slow charger, you may well have run into the issue that your car is only set to AC charge overnight on that cheap tariff. So you connect to an AC charger somewhere else and the car says 'okey dokey, I'll just wait til 00:30 and then I'll be right on it'.

Alternatively you may have needed to start the charge in an app, it depends on which charging company owns the charger you were trying to use. There would have been instructions somewhere about, unless it was an old school Podpoint where there's literally nothing there but a post with some plug sockets in it. In that case, though, I'd expect you to have got a free 15min charge.

20 miles in 20 mins definitely doesn't sound like you were on a rapid charger. What kind of charging speed did your car tell you it was getting?

The Lidl ones are very slow, I would avoid them unless theres no alternative
While we waited for our home charger we just used an extension in the garage, I think DH got a heavy duty one to stop it tripping.

Yes we also charge from the house with extension lead if needed. It works fine and safe ( a proper extension lead, ours was approved by electrician).

We also have an 11kw charger at home, but also an open garage area further from the house. We park there when we have snow instead of driveway to save clearing snow ( we get lots snow here) and so we have a slow charge extension also set up in case. It still charges plenty overnight if we use that instead ( it’s about 2-3kw an hour), and day to day we just top up on that to keep car between 60-80%.

I go to Tesco and use the pod point ones. Never had a problem with them. Alternatively, see if you have a Tesla fast charger station near you. You can charge any car.

Thank you. Don't think I'll ever go to one again cannot believe how slow it was. Used a rapid charger today and got over 100 miles in 20 mins!!!!

Thanks for info. It's all so new to me.

It was a 22kw charger which sounded good compared to the 7kwh I'm going to have at home. I will avoid in future though as I went to a rapid charger today and it was amazing. Only a few days for the home charger to be fitted thankfully

Great info thanks so much for taking the time. The McDonald's near us don't have any but I will search further afield. Love a McFlurry too!

Has anyone had the problem where the charger gets stuck in the car and it won't release? Had it last night at the Lidl and had it today at the fast charge spoke to the dealer and there were no use.

Are you releasing them in the right order? I have seen people's leads stuck in chargers twice but it's rare. My understanding is you have to take one end first and nothing else causes it to be stuck.

Was the car unlocked? The charger won't release if the car is locked.

@CallMeCrazyButIDontLikeStoreBoughtPesto sorry not sure what you mean by take one end first?

What I did today was press stop on the shell recharge machine to end charging and then it said return plug but it would t come out of car. It just did not release. Wondering if there is something wrong with the car!

@BuzzieLittleBee the car was unlocked yes, I was sitting in car so didn't lock.

I tried the old fashioned way 3 point plug at home and locked far to go inside and it stopped charging so this time I didn't want to try locking it.

So the charger points I use, you have to use your own lead. One end connected to the car and one to the charging point. They have a sticker that says you must release one end of the lead before the other. I think it's the charging point lead first and then the car but don't quote me. If you try to release the wrong end first, it simply won't.

I would try pressing the unlock button on your key, even if the car is unlocked. I think the cable locks in place unless it's released with an unlock event just beforehand. This is to stop someone doing a cheeky steal of the cable.

With rapid chargers, you use the charging machine's cable. With the slow chargers you bring your own cable. You probably won't get 22kW from a slow charger; depending on the car it may only be capable of doing 7Kw or 11kW on AC charging, article about it here. I think yours can do 11kW @babasaclover - specs here.

When you're outside the house, it's only worth the bother of charging on a slow charger if you're leaving the car somewhere for a good few hours - like if you had access to a charging point whilst you're at work, for example. Rapid, as you've discovered, is much better!

Oh I see! These had cable already connected BUT I will store this information for the future in case I have trouble when using my own cable x