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269 - The EV101 Episode Part 3
269 - The EV101 Episode Part 3
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About this episode
Gary dives deep into the essentials of electric vehicle (EV) ownership, focusing on long-distance driving and public charging challenges. He emphasizes the importance of choosing the right EV and understanding how to use it effectively. The episode covers practical tips on using apps like ZapMap for locating chargers, payment methods including RFID cards, and managing charging speeds. Gary also shares personal experiences on long trips and explains how to plan routes with charging stops. The discussion demystifies public rapid charging, offering advice on starting, stopping, and optimizing charge times for a smooth EV journey.
Topics:
ev basics
long distance driving
public charging
charging apps
rfid cards
charge speed
route planning
payment methods
zapmap app
rapid charging
Cars:
BMW M3
BMW M6
Buick Century
Dodge Charger
Pontiac Solstice
Porsche Taycan
Tesla Model Y
Vauxhall Corsa 5 doors
Volkswagen ID.3
In this episode of EV Musings, Gary dives into the basics of electric vehicle ownership, focusing on long-distance driving and public charging.
He emphasizes the importance of education in understanding EVs, discusses the ideal charging experience, and provides insights on planning long journeys with an EV.
The episode also covers the various charging methods and payment options available, ensuring listeners are well-equipped for their EV journey.
The EV Musings Podcast is sponsored by Zapmap, the go-to app for EV drivers, helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence.
Links in the show notes:
- 8 Cooling Towers disappear in a matter of moments. - Cool thing
Episode produced by Arran Sheppard at Urban Podcasts: https://www.urbanpodcasts.co.uk
(C) 2019-2026 Gary Comerford
Support me:
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Filter:
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Dodge Charger
"...happens when you get your electric car, getting a charger, choosing your electricity tariff, driving the ca..."
Car
Tesla Model
"...t. If you're in a car with a long range such as a Tesla Model Y long range or a Porsche Taycan, it's a complete..."
Car
Porsche Taycan
"...e such as a Tesla Model Y long range or a Porsche Taycan, it's a completely different experience to someon..."
Car
Vauxhall Corsa
"... trying to do a long distance in something like a Vauxhall Corsa E. Let me give you a specific example from my per..."
Car
Volkswagen Id3
"...m from Brighton earlier this year. I did it in my ID3, which has a 58 kWh battery in a range of around ..."
Car
BMW M6
"...ample. The most startling omission however is the M6 Corridor between Preston and Glasgow. That's not ..."
Car
BMW M3
"...ere is an ionity hub with 12 charges just off the M3 near fleet it's 150 miles away should take me a l..."
Car
Pontiac Solstice
"...e vehicle down a little lower I could continue to Solstice Park near Amesbury as a veritable jackpot for peo..."
Car
Buick Century
"...ers were a landmark in the region for over half a century and plant owner edf is now exploring new uses for..."
Select text to request an explanation
Hi, I'm Gary, and this is Evie Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things
that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be going back to basics
in a third of a series of episodes I like to call Evie 101.
This season of the podcast is sponsored by ZapMap, the go-to app for EV drivers helping you find and
pay for public charging with confidence. Our main topic of discussion today is Evie basics.
This is the last of three episodes in a series. In the first of these three episodes, we were
looking at deciding if electric is the right way for you. We looked at what you need to do
before getting your EV. We looked at dealers, leasing, salary sacrifice, and your test drive.
We ended with the car being chosen ready for delivery. In episode two, we looked at what
happens when you get your electric car, getting a charger, choosing your electricity
tariff, driving the car for the first time, regenerative braking, one pedal driving,
etc. And in the final episode of this miniseries, we're looking at the two big issues that seem
to stymie lots of people when it comes to EVs, long distance driving and public charging.
Let me start by saying that a lot of the issues that you hear about on social media related
to EVs actually come down to two simple things. Either firstly, people made the wrong choice
when it comes to what car to buy, or secondly, they didn't educate themselves when it comes
to how these vehicles work. Now we talked about picking the right car back in the first episode
of this series, ensuring you've got a car that fits your needs and that you can charge easily.
The education aspect is, in my mind, the key driver. Now it doesn't matter if you've got the
best EV in the world if it fits your needs perfectly, and it has exactly the range you want.
If you don't understand how to drive it or charge it, you're going to hear issues.
Now we're going to be discussing two main topics today, primarily doing long journeys,
and then using public rapid charging. These seem to be the two things that generally tend to trip
people up when it comes to being first time EV owners. So let me start by saying that it's
entirely possible to own and operate an EV without ever having to do charging away from home.
For this to happen, it presumes you already have a home charger, you can charge off street,
and you tend to always return back to your home base when you're done traveling.
Now that's the quote-unquote ideal EV experience.
Secondly, I want to say that it is entirely possible to do long distance journeys across the
country or the continent without ever having to touch an app or enough RFID card or scanner QR
code or anything. Just use your bank payment card to start stock chargers and your in-car
navigation to find them. It works. It's not perfect, but it works. So this is not the optimum solution.
For the optimum solution, your best opportunity is to spend a little time finding and installing
a couple of apps and services and ordering an RFID card or two. There's a little overhead
in doing this up front, but the savings and peace of mind in the long term are well worth it.
So let's start with the key apps you need. Because ChargePoint operators have chosen four
reasons not to put large signs and totems by their chargers like the oil giants do at petrol stations,
it's not always intuitive where to find public charging. Sometimes trip public car parks,
sometimes they're in their own hubs, but you could quite easily drive straight past
a lot of them if you don't know about them. So you will need an app that will allow you
to locate public chargers, navigate to public chargers and check the availability of these chargers.
After all, it's no good trekking for two and a half or three hours to a rapid charger to find it's
either not working or occupied. There are several of these apps on the market. Some are better
than others. They all have strengths and weaknesses. My recommendation is obviously
going to be Zapmap the sponsors of this podcast. The app runs on Android
or Apple it links into CarPlay or Android Automotive and it has a powerful set of filters
to allow you to narrow down the huge list of available chargers to those that are going to be
useful to you. For example, you might only want to use chargers from those operators
who appear in the top ChargePoint operators as voted for in the Zapmap customer satisfaction
survey. You can create a filter for that. You might only want to use chargers that are
part of a charging hub where there are six or more units at a location. You can filter for that.
Finally, you might only want to use chargers where you can pay using your preferred method of charging
be that a payment card, a roaming operator, whatever and you can filter by that too. Plus,
Zapmap will also show you how many chargers are available at each site and this avoids
the possibility of actually traveling to a site where either the units are broken
or they're accused to get onto a charger. We've mentioned it before on this show but
Beckinsfield services for some reason tends to be one where the ionicity chargers are
constantly in use. Now if you're heading there, it would be a nice idea to know how many are
available. So the flexibility of a solution such as Zapmap is obvious. However, there are others
in the space such as the Electroverse app from Octopus and the Ovo Charge Anywhere app formally,
the Bonnet app. On top of that, you'll find a lot of charge point operators extoll the virtues
of having their apps downloaded to your phone for when you're using their services. Now,
this is nothing new. Companies like Shell and BP have had apps available for the wet fuels
for years. In fact, Shell is now in the throes of wrapping its EV app into its wet fuel app,
meaning you'll have to use a fossil fuel based app to charge your electric car at a shell charger.
Now I'm here to tell you that you do not need CPO specific apps to charge your car. They are
not needed at all. However, what those apps do provide is some level of flexibility when it
comes to things like pricing. For example, at the time of writing InstaVault, a CPO with an
app will reduce the price you pay for charging from 54 PKWh to 50 PKWh at a certain start as
sites if you start or stop the charge via their app. There are other apps that do similar sort of
pricing, and if that's important to you, then by all means use the app. But please,
I beg you, don't randomly download every single app for every single charge point operator
just because they ask you to do so on a charger screen.
There is one exception to this. Ironically, it's the CPO that usually has the easiest way of
using them of all CPOs, and that is Tesla. For a large number of the Tesla sites around the
world that are open to use by non-Tesla cars, the only way you can start stop them is with
the Tesla app. Yeah, this is a generalisation. If you're using the flashy new V4 units in
solid white, you can start and stop them using a credit card, but for all the others,
you'll need an app. Unless you're using the flashy new Tesla solid white EV on the move
charges which don't have credit card readers, are only usable through the app.
Yes, it's confusing. My advice, get the Tesla app.
The other thing it's worth doing is seeing which of the companies, such as Zatmap,
Electroverse, etc., have an RFID available. RFID cards are simple plastic cards that allow
you to swipe, to start and stop a charge. They have two advantages over other forms of payment.
They're better than apps because they don't rely on having a good signal between the app
and the charger to work, and they're much quicker and easier to validate than using
a contactless card for payment. In fact, I have a video of me and Franz earlier this
year swiping a card on a charger in a hotel and having it start to charge literally within two
seconds of swiping. So speaking of driving to France, let's talk long-distance journeys.
Firstly, let me tell you that EVs can do just as long a journey as an ICE car and don't let anyone
tell you differently. In fact, he's often the case that they can also do them just as quickly
as ICE cars, ICE internal combustion engine cars. Now, I talked on earlier episodes about a
neighbour who wasn't going to get an EV because he drives to the south of France every year in
his diesel without having to refuel and he can't do that in an EV. Now, when we discussed his trip,
we discovered that he didn't go from where I am around northeast Hampshire to the south
of France without stopping. Firstly, he stopped at the channel. Then he stopped for
lunch outside Paris. Then he had an overnight hotel stay. And then he stopped for lunch
the following day somewhere down south of D-genre, etc. He also had a couple of toilet
stops along the way. Now, with an electric vehicle, these are all opportunities to charge your car.
This is done while you are doing other things, not as a separate activity like wet fuelling is.
I've literally done a foreign trip each year for the last three years in an EV.
Year one, I went to Paris in year two, I went to Geneva via Paris and in year three,
I went to Amsterdam via Bruges. Now, while the journey out to these places took a day or two
due to the nature of the trip we were doing, the return journey in each case was done in a
single day and the total time spent waiting for charge across all three return journeys in three
years was about 65 minutes. Now, what's more, if you're taking your car across on the channel,
the channel tunnel, there are lots of charges at the terminal and you will usually have time
prior to going across in which you can charge. Failing that, there are literally
more than a dozen different rapid and ultra rapid charges within a few minutes drive at
the Calais end of the channel. So, let's go through how you do a long distance EV journey.
The first thing to remember is that depending on what range your car has will affect how you go
about it. If you're in a car with a long range such as a Tesla Model Y long range or a Porsche
Taycan, it's a completely different experience to someone trying to do a long distance in something
like a Vauxhall Corsa E. Let me give you a specific example from my personal experience.
I mentioned the fact that I went to Amsterdam from Brighton earlier this year. I did it in my ID3,
which has a 58 kWh battery in a range of around 220-230 miles in summer. Now, the same journey
was done at the same time by the team from Zatmap. They were driving an almost identical
car to me. There's was the Cooper-Born, which is the same ID3-based skateboard with a Cooper
bodywork. And the other main difference was that they had the 77 kWh battery with a range upwards
of 300 miles. Now, we both followed the same route. We were on the same train across the
channel tunnel. We stopped at the same places along the route. We even parked in the same
hotel car park overnight. The difference was that I charged my car overnight at the
hotel we stopped at at in Bruges. Teams at Zatmap didn't. They arrived in Amsterdam with around
20 miles left on the GOM, meaning they did the complete journey from Brighton to Amsterdam
on one charge. They left the following morning, went all the way back to their hometown of Bristol
with just one charge along the way, which I believe was at the channel
while they were waiting for the train. That's the difference a larger battery made.
But it also has to be said that my charging was hardly onerous. I pulled into the charging
bay in the car park attached to the hotel in Bruges, showed the payment card and it literally
started charging pretty much immediately. With 7 kW AC charging all night, I left the
following morning with a full battery. But what if you don't have a large battery and you
have to do that long journey up to see your family in Scotland when you live on the South
Coast? Well according to a recent white paper released by Transport and Environment in the UK
all the major motorway networks are very well covered from a rapid charge point of view.
You can go pretty much anywhere in England with very little issue. Great Britain should I say.
The Scottish Lowlands are pretty well covered including the Edinburgh Glasgow Corridor and
both North Wales and South Wales are well covered. There are however certain gaps and these
gaps mostly coincide with places where fewer people live. Snowdonia, the Brecon Beacons for example,
Scottish Highlands is another example. The most startling omission however is the M6 Corridor
between Preston and Glasgow. That's not to say there aren't charges there because there are
but in terms of the number of major roads within 10 kilometres of a rapid charging unit
there are fewer than other parts of the country. Should this be an issue?
Absolutely not. Should you be aware of it? Of course. The easiest way to plan a long distance
journey is to use your vehicles in car navigation system if it has one that will send you to charge
stops. Tesla will do this obviously as will any of the vehicles equipped with the Android
automotive operating system such as the Polestar and Volvo range of cars. Now no doubt there
are others that will do this but I haven't tested a huge number of them so I can't tell
you which brands do. Now there is an issue with this sort of navigation however and that is that
the underlying database might not be totally up to date. If it's using publicly available
information that's updated in real time it'll be fine but the navigation on my ID 3 for example
doesn't show all the charges on route and it isn't automatically updated when new charges are
added. Sometimes it's best to use a third party route planners but these tend to be more
up to date. Now for the purposes of this I'm going to use the route planner within the ZAPMAP app.
As I say there are others you can use things like a better route planner for example.
Now let's assume I want you to go from Norwich to Exeter a distance of 286 miles
in an ID 3 in summer with a nominal range of 230 miles. If I plug these figures into the ZAPMAP
route planner it will show me the charges that are available on route. These are ultra rapid
charges the purple icons or rapid charges with the pink icons. It will also identify that this
is a journey of over five and a half hours a journey that long will certainly need a rest stop or a
bio stop so that will be an ideal time to charge. A quick look shows me that there is
an ionity hub with 12 charges just off the M3 near fleet it's 150 miles away should take me
a little under three hours to get there and I'll arrive with 31 percent state of charge.
There are several other charges in the area if there's an issue and I also have enough leeway
with the state of charge that I can actually travel a bit further if I wanted to or I was
familiar with the range capabilities of the car. If I was comfortable with running the vehicle
down a little lower I could continue to Solstice Park near Amesbury as a veritable jackpot for
people wanting to charge. It has two different insta volt locations two different BP pulse
installs a grid serve hub and a 16 stall Tesla supercharger up to the public it'll take me three
and a half hours it's 194 miles and I'll arrive with 11 and a half percent state of charge.
I can then make it all the way to the final destination without having to stop
and depending on the weather the speed I travel the hills that I have to go up and down
these stops could be changed on the fly if I find if I find I have a greater
or less arranged than I had anticipated. The key thing is that I allowed for a contingency
and I planned in advance. Of course once you're more or less used to your car you really don't need
to go to all that sort of planning. Again with Zatmap if you have the premium subscription
that will allow you to use Zatmap with Apple CarPlay and what that gives you is live
continually updated views of nearby chargers with their statuses. So I could do my journey from
Norwich and as I get near to fleet I can check the charges nearby and determine if I have enough
charge to continue to Solstice Park and if my battery is running a little less efficiently
than I anticipated potentially due to a heavier right foot and clearer roads I cannot
elect to stop earlier near Heathrow for example checking the availability of charges on the way.
If there's traffic and I'm using a lot less energy to travel a given distance
I can elect to go further if I want. The key is that there is flexibility and you can deal
with charging according to how you want to do it not according to what the car necessarily wants.
Now regardless of how we do it we'll probably end up at a rapid charger at some time in our
life so let's talk about public rapid charging. Remember when you first went to fill your
fossil fuel car with petrol the very first time you did it by yourself did you know how to do it?
Did you feel confident? Did you pay with a credit card or was it back in the days of cash
or even better was it attended service where you didn't even have to get out of the car and
some poor person like me in my first summer job came out in all weathers and did all the
work for you. Now I bet most of you knew what to do mainly because the first time you
went to a petrol pump and used it wasn't the first time you ever went to a petrol pump.
I bet you watched your parents use them maybe one of your parents even showed you what to do one time
it was quite simple you pull up at the correct side obviously closest to where your fuel cap is
you let the pump know how you're going to pay either by swiping a credit card or by otherwise
indicating that you're paying at the end of the pump you put the nozzle in your pump
when you're finished you replace the nozzle and you either drive off or park or pay at the
kiosk or shop but I also bet that the first time you did it yourself there were a few nerves
would you get the right pump would your park close enough to the pump
to be able to reach the fuel filler and you know what I bet you sorted things out didn't you
but I bet you also went to a different petrol station and the pump looks slightly different
maybe it didn't have a credit card reader maybe it had a big touchscreen
instead of a number of little buns on the bottom maybe it asked you to pay for the full amount
in advance of pumping for it which is something that's particularly common
if you're learned in the united states but I bet you also dealt with that without any
problem didn't you so remember that when you get to your first public charge
in theory charging public is very similar to filling a car with wet fuel you park
close enough to the unit so you can reach the connector on your car you let the unit know
how you're going to pay usually with a payment card but often with an app or an RFID card
you connect the unit to the vehicle and you charge now from that point of view
it's clear that the model is very similar but many people get confused when it comes to
charging because it's new and unknown or unfamiliar they also experience issues because
they expect one thing but they get another so I'm going to take you through the three
aspects of charging that you need to know to make it a success and they are finding a
working available charger starting at stopping your charger and understanding charge speeds
now finding an available and working charger is actually really simple if you know what you're
doing now at the time of writing there are 82,369 public electric vehicle charging points across the
uk at 40,479 charging locations because courtesy of set map for comparison there are 8,300 petrol
stations in the uk so it's a fairly safe bet you'll be able to find a charger somewhere
not too far from you probably closer than the nearest petrol station for most of you
the easiest way to find one is to use one of three methods you can use your vehicle's
in-car navigation system and for most vehicles this will allow you to find and navigate to a nearby
charger you can use a third party app such as that map which will do something similar
to your in-car app but we'll probably have more charges in the database
and the database will probably be more accurate at up to date or you can use a specific
charge point operators app to locate the charges linked to a specific supplier such as
osprey charging, grid serve, ionity or instavolt as a number of examples now any of these ways
will let you locate and navigate to a specific charge nearby but in order to make things easy
for yourself you need to be able to identify a specific subset of charges for the smoothest
charging experience you need to be able to locate the nearest charger which meets
a given set of criteria you want one that is the right charge speed for your needs
you want one that's working and you want one that's available now if any of these three
criteria isn't met you might end up with a less than optimal experience if you need a really
quick charge but you navigate to a slow charger like a seven kilowatt one if you get a charger
and you find it's not working and if you get to a charge and find it's working but
somebody's already using it all of those are going to cause problems and that's why apps such as
Zatmap for example are probably a better option they cover up the whole of the uk and they show
at each charging location how many charges are available to use alongside the given charging
speed now with the help of specific filters you can narrow the search down to just the
charges that meet your criteria you're going to hit the navigate button and it takes you
pretty much right to where the charges are now once there you're going to want to park up at the
charging bay unfortunately i can't help you when it comes to parking close enough for the charger
to reach your charge port you'll always have this issue as charger design differs between
charger manufacturers and charge port location differs between vehicle manufacturers you're on
your own there sorry so we'll assume you've got to a charger that's working that's not occupied
and you're parked in close enough to connect now comes the trickiest part of the whole process
payment cash your mind back to wet fuel in the big scheme of things there was only really two
ways to pay for fuel you either flash your card at a card reader on the machine or you paid
after you'd pumped the fuel and you went into the shop or the kiosk or the store and you gave
them either cash or a card there with charges there are numerous different ways to pay depending
on what your preference is preparation and charge point operator are now it'll seem confusing but
only really the first time the vast majority of charges in the uk the big ones that do the really
fast charging will accept a bank payment card credit card or debit card somewhere on the device
will be a card reader you can use to present the card just like with your petrol pump
but a much larger number of charges will accept what's known as a roaming payment now we've
already discussed this but it's something like the zap pay RFID card an app the octopus
electroverse card an app the power solo app if you have a car on salary sacrifice or you with
a fleet the ovo charge anywhere app and the plug serving app just as examples also many charge
point operators have their own app you can download the app and use it to start and stop charges for
that particular charge point operator no other now I mentioned companies such as insta vault
offspray charging and grid serve as examples here's the key thing to remember these are all
options it's up to you to decide which one suits your way of charging if you want to use a credit
card or a debit card that's fine if you want to use a roaming app or associated RFID card
that's also fine if you only ever use a specific company for charging and you want to use their app
exclusively that's also fine now I've done all of those in my time now my personal preference
is an RFID card from a roaming service such as zap pay I know the RFID processes robustly
it's quick it provides receipt functionality but you'll work out yourself which is the
payment method that suits your best just as you decided whether the pain at the pump or pain at
the counter work best when you were driving an internal combustion engine car so when you get
to your charger the easiest thing to do is to sort out the payment first now some charges want
you to plug in and then pay others want you to pay and then plug in my preference is to sort
the payment out first then plug the thing in if you're paying by payment card flash that
against the RFID against the card reader if you're paying by RFID card flash that against the RFID reader
no it's not always the same as the credit card reader there may be two different things you'll
see them they'll have different symbols if you're paying by app find the charger you're using in
the app and follow the instructions for initiating the charge and when the charger screen or app
tells you the payment has been approved you can plug in now this is the point where the car
and the charger will do what's called a handshake and that's where the charger talks to the car about
what it can provide and the car talks to the charger about what it needs there's some security
stuff there's some connection stuff and there's some other stuff that all happens at this point
and it can take anything up to 90 seconds two minutes to complete now one of the ways to
eliminate issues caused by a poor connection is what it's worth doing is keep your hand on the
charger cable on the handle of the cable push it into your car to make sure there's a solid
connection between the car and the charger now you'll hear some clunks maybe a fan or two whirring
and then the charge will start and that's it job done we'll talk about stopping stopping your
charge in a minute but i do want to talk a little bit about how fast your car is going to charge
now it's really tempting to go to a charger that's marked as 350 kilowatts or 400 kilowatts
and plug in there thinking excellent could be a really quick charge
only to find out that you're not getting anywhere near that sort of charge speed
why is that well it could be for any number of reasons such as your battery is too hot your
battery is too cold the charge is too cold the car is at the wrong voltage the state of
charge of your car is too high you're at the wrong point of the charge curve your car
simply isn't built to charge that fast or it's tuesday that last one isn't a real reason but
people often seem to think that silly things like that affect the charge speed i did a whole episode
on charge speeds and what to expect when charging up which is episode 253 the ultra rapid charging
episode linked down in show notes the tldr too long don't didn't read on this is your car will
have a maximum charge speed and it doesn't matter how fast a charger is if your car's
maximum charge speed is lower than this that's the maximum you'll get under ideal conditions
for example the new reno 5 ev has a maximum charge speed of 100 kilowatts for the larger battery version
even if everything else was optimal that's the maximum charge speed you're going to get
even if you plug into a charger that promises 400 kilowatts of charge speed you will never
get 400 kilowatts with the current reno 5 same for the high undi insta also 100 kilowatts
the corset electric 100 kilowatts for the larger battery the ng4 long range 142 kilowatts the bydc
150 kilowatts etc plus this is the maximum charge speed as the battery gets fuller and fuller the
charger will get slower and slower once it reaches about 80 full it will drop down to a relative
trickle to preserve battery life and this is all normal so let's talk about stopping that charge
you've had going the first thing to remember is that you can spend as long or a shorter length
of time at a charger as you want the key is knowing how much you need what's usually a mistake
especially in the more modern EVs with a larger battery is filling it up to a hundred percent
on a public rapid charger and there are two reasons for doing this or for not doing this one
it's going to be quite expensive to do so and two weeks going to take quite a long time now
remember when i mentioned the charge curve earlier that's the computer control algorithm that determines
how fast the car will charge as it fills up now for most electric vehicles when they get to around 80
percent full the charge curve will say right there's a lot i'm slowing down now just to top
things off in fact it can take as long to get from 0 to 80 percent as it does to get from 80
percent to 100 percent which means that once you get to 80 percent state of charge it's
probably time to stop charging and head out if you need more charge to finish your journey
it's actually going to be quicker to make another short stop later on when your battery is emptier
then it is to stay on this charger and continue charging above 80 percent now by the way when i
say 80 percent that's not a hard and fast rule it might be 75 percent or it might be 85 percent
but regardless of what vehicle you're in there will be a point in the charge when the car says
enough i'm slowing down if you want to find out what that is on your car check out fastness website
where they have charge curve diagrams for lots of different cars again link in the show notes the
key with stopping a charge on a rapid charge run or indeed any charge is that the easiest way is
usually to find the payment method you used to start it and use the same method to stop it
so if you swipe your RFID card to start the charge swipe the same card to stop it
if you used an app to start it use the same app to stop it there are however a couple of chargers
and i'm looking at you a bb grid serve that can be stopped just by pressing the stop button on the
screen now that's bad because it means anybody can stop your charger and there are some malicious
people out there who will press the button just for mischief you could come back to your car after
waiting 30 minutes expecting it to be charged only to find that someone hit the stop button
and you're nowhere near full now most of the units that have a stop button such as the ionity ones
also ask for identification before actually stopping the charge there are also some cars that
will allow you to stop the charge from inside the vehicle there will be a button somewhere it
might be on the dash it might be on the screen press that and it stops it once the charge
has stopped the cable should release from your car if it doesn't don't panic just lock and
unlock your car again that should release it remove it replace the cable back in the appropriate
holster and congratulations you've just done a rapid charge now my final piece of advice for
public rapid charge is to make sure you do this fairly surely after you get your car and do it
somewhere close to home and at a time when you don't really need that charge if there's a problem
or the charger isn't working or anything like that you should still have enough charge left
to get back home the one thing left to discuss is fast charging which ironically
isn't fast at all the vast majority of chargers in the uk are the slow devices that you'll find in
public car parks or at the side of the road they're different design but generally they're
relatively small especially when compared with the bigger dc chargers and they don't have their
own cables you will have received a cable with your evi when you're boarding and this cable
is used to do this sort of charging now the other general rule is these smaller slower chargers don't
usually have credit card readers on them and this is when things such as zap pay and octopus
electric first come in handy because you can use them to start and stop the charge the process
for using these is very similar to dc rapid charging find the charger provide a payment
method hook your cable to the charger and your car start the charge and when finished
stop the charge in the same way you do with the bigger chargers use the same payment method
stop the charge remove the cable and go make sure to take your cable with you they're not
cheap to replace the key difference between the big expensive units to have their own
cables attached and the smaller units where you need to connect your own cable is speed
if you're doing a long journey and you need to get a charge while you're having a coffee
and a pee break the big units where their own cables are the ones you need to use if
you're parking your car up for several hours because say you're in a meeting all day the smaller
units without their own cables are ideal if you're staying overnight at a hotel or an air
at bnb the slow units work if you're in a cinema for a couple of hours the smaller units are ideal
also as a rule the smaller slow units are cheaper than the larger ones companies like
chargey offer overnight charging on their network at 39 pence a kilowatt hour compared with rapid
charging prices of 75 p to 89 per kilowatt hour so that's charging and driving long distance
in your car and with that our ev 101 series comes to an end in episode one we went through all the
steps you need to do to get an ev decide whether they'll work for you at the moment decide
what sort of finance you'll get new or used test driving taking delivery and then we went
on to episode two where we went through day one with your ev out to drive it regenerative braking
the instant power home charging one pedal driving and in this episode we looked at the actually should
be looking at driving long distances with your ev and using the public charging network
now there are a huge amount of other things that could be included here but this
these things are your absolute basics if you're considering getting an ev or even if
you're not considering them at all but are curious about the whole ev sphere then i hope you learn
something from these episodes if you want to go into more detail there are lots of associated
episodes connected with several of the topics i discussed here there's also my ebook so you've
gone electric available from amazon worldwide for 99p or equivalent and newly updated with
additional sections on battery preconditioning the public charge point regulations 2023
finding cheaper public charging and roaming check it out please the link's in the show notes
it's time for a cool ev or renewable thing to share with you listeners the eight giant cooling
towers at the cotton coal power station in nottinghamshire were demolished in seconds recently
using explosives the blast actually set a Guinness world record and it was a major
decommissioning milestone after the plant closed last year the cooling towers were
a landmark in the region for over half a century and plant owner edf is now exploring new uses for
the site to support uk energy needs i'd love to see old fossil fuel tech being replaced with new
renewable tech it's a great video too the ev musings podcast is sponsored by zap map the
go-to app for ev drivers helping you find and pay for public charging with confidence see what
charge points are available right now with live availability and unrivaled uk charge point coverage
at your fingertips pay at thousands of charge points within the app or with the zap map charging
card join over a million ev drivers download zap map and charge with confidence i hope you
enjoyed listening to today's show if you have any thoughts comments criticisms or other
general messages to pass on to me i can be reached at info at ev musings dot com on the socials i'm on
blue sky at ev musings dot b sky dot social i'm also on instagram at ev musings where i post short
videos and podcast extracts regularly why don't follow me there thanks to everyone who supports
me through patreon on a monthly basis and through coffee dot com on an ad hoc one if you enjoyed
this episode why not buy me a coffee go to coffee dot com slash ev musings and you can do just that
ko dash fi dot com slash ev musings takes apple pay too regular listers will know about my two ebooks
so you've gone electric and so you've gone renewable they're 99 p each or equivalent
and you can get them on amazon check out the links in the show notes for more information
as well as a link to my regular ev musings newsletter and associated articles
now i know you're probably driving or walking or jogging or sitting watching this on your phone
on sofa but if you can remember you enjoyed this episode drop a review in itunes please or have
a little click on the like and subscribe it really helps me out if you've reached this part of the
podcast and are still listening thank you why not let me know you've got to this point by
messaging me at musings ev dot b sky dot social with the words how do i love the let me count
the waves three hashtag if you know you know nothing else and thanks as always to my co-founder
simon silent simon as i now call him thanks for listening bye
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