Ecotricity Electric Highway

[fraccy]

One thought.... when you plug in the Type 2 connector into the Charging Station is the slide switch on the Roadster connector in the "on" position?

Yeh good point I was thinking about that. The last time I tried I'm sure it was off the first time I plugged it in, thats my normal habit - its the last thing I switch on. I repeated a few times and I'm pretty sure I'd have tried it with it in the on position, but is a variable I'll try changing next time. When I slid it on and off having plugged in, it would appear to "reset" and again flash twice before doing nothing. The thing that makes me suspicious there was a fault with the post (or my equipment of course) is that on previous occasions, I've just plugged in and charged, no thought or fiddling about.

If I get time I'm going to tour 3 or 4 of these points one evening, including a chargemaster little chef one I know to have worked previously. I need to resolve this at least for myself, as the next time I take a longer trip I'm not going to know what to trust. I never previously appreciated reliability as being the awful problem it really is with electric car charging points - as soon as you lose trust that its going to work, life gets a lot more difficult. Its worrying - I'm technically skilled, and passionate for electric cars, and more than happy to put up with problems - but how this could ever go mainstream with people who just want to go from A to B without thinking or engaging with the technology... well, currently it can't, that much is obvious.

I really appreciate ecotricity's charging posts, they're a reassuring presence in useful public locations with 24 hour access, but with question marks over reliability they instantly become useless in terms of planning a journey. When they work they're pretty cool and a lot better than chargemaster's irritating interface on their upright posts, but when they fail they immediately appear hugely over-complex and over-engineered. I'm loathe to comment on what I know is a long running divisive issue and frankly I don't care - I just want to charge my car - but from my perspective as a consumer, I guess the simplicity of ZC's approach scores a major point here. At the moment I certainly trust ZC points the most, despite having only used them a couple of times so far.

[Kevin Sharpe]

"As I was leaving I saw a White Van Man pulling into the reserved EV spaces - sneaky little ICE'r. What did I do? I confronted him, that's what.

'Funny looking electric car you have there, mate.' I said, loud and proud. Ish.

But it all turned out for the best. He was there to start the process of installing a DC rapid charging station. Apparently 27 Welcome Break locations are having them installed by the end of the year.

With that good news I was off on my travels to my next stop."

1000 miles in an Ampera: Day 1

[dpeilow]

Just received in my email from Ecotricity:

We're really excited to announce new DC fast charge technology {CHAdeMO} for our Electric Highway.

We’ve teamed up with Nissan to roll out fast charge technology at 40 Welcome Break motorway service stations.

Hopwood Park, South Mimms and Oxford Welcome Break Service Stations are up and running. This means you'll be able to charge a Nissan Leaf or Mitsubishi iMiev in under 30 minutes.
The first phase of installation will match that of our existing Electric Highway charge points, view the map online for which ones have been installed already and those coming next.

Use of our charging network is currently free - we want to encourage the take-up of electric vehicles and being able to recharge quickly is a big part of this.

Your existing swipe card will give you access to these new DC fast charge points.

[Alexandersims]

Hi all,

Being a relatively new Tesla owner, I have no where near the experience of Kevin, David and others and reading through this forum I can understand the frustration at times, but on how many occasions has anyone actually been 'stranded' (except for the guy whos cable was stuck!)?

I get the feeling that we are blowing this up to be bigger than it needs to be. If we find a fault, report it and try and work with who ever the provider is to eradicate the issue. I can understand it may be difficult when there is competition between providers but we must surely support each other and get the charging network improved so these issues do not occur again.

Then when members of the public who want to use an EV for general use without wanting to support the technology, it will work and fewer disaster stories will be told.
Lets surely work together on this and put aside our differences to keep working for a better EV network.

Alexander

[Kevin Sharpe]

but on how many occasions has anyone actually been 'stranded' (except for the guy whos cable was stuck!)?

I know several drivers who had to use a flat bed to get home following these failures. One in particular gave up driving the Leaf long distances after the third time and Nissan suggested they might not get any further assistance.

Ecotricty are now replacing the old 'green' Charging Stations with 'white' versions that seem a lot less prone to failure in the few times I have used them with my Roadster. You'll have to decide for yourself whether they had a genuine fault with the 'green' hardware.

The issue with ICE cars parking in Ecotricity charging spaces has not gone away... several people have reported this issue in the last week and on Friday I found all three spaces ICE'd including the DC charger (one car did eventually move so that I could get to the Charging Station);



- - - Updated - - -

I get the feeling that we are blowing this up to be bigger than it needs to be. If we find a fault, report it and try and work with who ever the provider is to eradicate the issue.

The only way you will know that is to try using the network and report your experiences here and on twitter (use hashtag #ukcharge). My suggestion is that you always have a second charging location that you can reach because the public infrastructure will let you down at some point. Many Leaf drivers are about to start traveling for the first time following the recent deployment of DC chargers... only time will tell whether this second phase of deployments is better than the first.

[Talkredius]

Hi all,

Being a relatively new Tesla owner,

congrats to your new car

I have no where near the experience of Kevin, David and others and reading through this forum I can understand the frustration at times, but on how many occasions has anyone actually been 'stranded' (except for the guy whos cable was stuck!)?

......
Alexander

I can't say anything about the UK ( but will be there for the first time June next year ) so I'm talking mainly about Germany.
The Roadster is my only car now and I'm driving about 60.000 km /year , Odometer = 118.121 km now. I have learned never ever to rely on this Smartcard / Panel driven charging stations, I always have a plan B and C often also D
My experience is , 30 % of these charging stations are not working for different reasons : they are not there where they should be, or not connected to the grid ( just used for advertisement) or never been tested with an EV before or.......long list
Keep in mind usually you have only one charging station at one place. As Roadster owners we have the luxury of big a battery, if one charging station isn't operating we can drive 50 km more to the next charging station, other EV drivers don't have this luxury.

I only rely on "community" operated charging station networks. like Kevin's Zerocarbonworld or Park & Charge in DACH (Germany, Austria, Swiss) or Drehstrometzwerk in Germany.

[Alexandersims]

I apologise Kevin. HAving never been stranded myself and having spoken to relatively few EV owners, never known them to get stranded I thought it was perhaps very uncommon.
For these posts to fail once or twice is still not acceptable but we must try and help the industry improve constructively.

Regarding the ICE vehicles taking up the spaces I agree it is a very real issue. Have you any suggestions on how to improve this?
If we put up barriers or bollards then you might need smart card access or a code which many may not have, plus adds another obstacle to ease of EVs.

Perhaps just needs to be clearer that it is an EV zone, not Disabled or normal parking. The lime green paint is quite similar to the yellow and I have found disabled cars parking in the EV spaces.

[Kevin Sharpe]

I apologise Kevin.

No apology necessary

For these posts to fail once or twice is still not acceptable but we must try and help the industry improve constructively.

I completely agree... my response is to try and build a reliable network Zero:Net... I think it falls to the EV driver community to help the other networks improve

Regarding the ICE vehicles taking up the spaces I agree it is a very real issue. Have you any suggestions on how to improve this?

I suspect this is where these deployments will fail. The problem is that this is controlled by Welcomebreak who no longer even patrol the car parks (they rely on outsourced camera surveillance and are only interested in parking time violations). My suggestion is that drivers get together and 'encourage' Welcomebreak to improve signage further but I'm not sure that will help much...

[dpeilow]

Updated map from Ecotricity

Our Electric Highway - For The Road - Ecotricity

[Kevin Sharpe]

Updated map from Ecotricity

Do you know what's changed? I thought it was 40 sites