[72naed]

I charged my e2008 at a Chargepoint Scotland Post yesterday using the 50 kwh DC plug. However after nearly an hour it had barely delivered 18 kwh. Am I doing something wrong. I would have expected a full charge or at least to 80% in half an hour!? Any advise

 

[80698]

How much charge did you have in the battery when you plugged in? And what had you been doing with the car earlier? You need a decent amount of heat in the battery pack to get full charge speeds.

Also have you checked on Zap Map to rule out the potential that the charger has an issue and was slow for other recent visitors too?

See the attached charge curve graph. This is the maximum you can expect, if all other conditions like battery temperature are ideal.

 

[alegar]

Based on the usable capacity (45kWh), did you arrive with 44%? If so, theoretically you should have had 10mins at 50kW then drop.

what was the temperature and driving style before charging? Maybe cold-gating?

 

[72naed]

Arrived with 45% and left with 81% after 52 minutes. No reported issues with the charger. Should these rapid chargers be approached with much less battery power left ie 10 or 20%. Temp was about 4 degrees.

 

[i-s]

Should these rapid chargers be approached with much less battery power left ie 10 or 20%.

Yes. start from 5-10% ideally, and stop at 70-75% on your vehicle.

 

[freddym]

Yes. start from 5-10% ideally, and stop at 70-75% on your vehicle.

I have used that very same CHARGEPLACE SCOTLAND charger within last few months and got the full rated 125A current at pack voltage: nothing wrong with the charger.
Does your Pug have a way of informing you of the battery temperature, that is probably at least part of what is happening here. Best to just slow charge when the battery is less than say 5 Deg C. Driving the car idown to a lower SOC if on a journey will help to heat the battery a bit.

 

[80698]

Temp was about 4 degrees

It's not necessarily the outdoor temperature that's important but rather the battery temperature. If you drove up the road from your home to charge there you'd have a cold battery so charge slower. But if you've just arrived there after a 100 mile motorway run it would be nice and warm and achieve the maximum charge speeds possible.

To get the best charging speeds every time, you need to plug in with a nice warm battery pack, and ideally less than 20% charge remaining.

 

[Slartibartfast]

From reading several forums covering electric cars this does seem to be a thing that comes up time and time again with owners not used to the way battery charging works having unrealistic expectations as to how fast they can charge. I think it is something that has caught lots of people out including me when I had to stop at a supercharger and expected that it would charge the car up far more quickly than it did. Back then I just did not understand they way charging varies enormously with temperature and how much is left in the battery.

It is certainly something that new owners need to be made fully aware of before they stop to charge for the first time all the more because dealers are not good at explaining this stuff it seems and not everyone takes the time to watch some of the videos out there that are aimed at people new to electric cars. I watched a short series of videos called "Maddie Goes Electric" about a year ago when I was first thinking about getting an electric car and they were probably the best I have seen for someone who was a complete beginner back then.

There are lots of very technical reviews of cars but as these things will be completely new to most people there is a real need for some really good beginner level introductory stuff and it needs to include things like the charging rate you are likely to get under different conditions.

 

[Electrickery]

That does seem a little low, I have an Ioniq which is notoriously slow, your average charge rate is about 21kW (based on time/kWh delivered).
Even my Ioniq would expect to get higher than that going from 45-85%.in fact I did a very similar charge yesterday and averaged around 28kW.
It may be a lot colder up in Scotland though at the moment.
I don't think you are doing anything wrong, it's either the charger or the charging profile of the car.
What was the charge rate after around 70% charge, some cars do ramp down significantly past around 70/75%, and as you started at around 45%, by the time the battery has been heated up enough to accept a higher rate, the charge then ramps down soon after. It is preferable to arrive at a rapid as low as possible, ideally around 10-20% but that carries other risks such as the charger being broken/occupied!

 

[72naed]

I think the issue is I drove a few miles to the charge point with a cold battery at 45% full. It was 5 degrees and snowing so perfect conditions for a slow charge I am beginning to understand.

 

[72naed]

I have had the car since December but with lockdown I like many others havent used the car much or travelled outside my local area. There could be a deluge of new EV users dipping their toe in all at once soon!

 

[Electrickery]

I have had the car since December but with lockdown I like many others havent used the car much or travelled outside my local area. There could be a deluge of new EV users dipping their toe in all at once soon!

Lol I got mine in Jan 2020, I've only used a rapid about 6 times, on long journeys between lockdowns!

 

[freddym]

I think the issue is I drove a few miles to the charge point with a cold battery at 45% full. It was 5 degrees and snowing so perfect conditions for a slow charge I am beginning to understand.

the weather in NE Scotland has been very cold overnight frosts: battery temperature may well have been less than 5 deg C.

 

[b789pilot]

This is the image that tells you it all:

From 45% to 65% you would have had the fastest charge at close to 50kW From 65% to 73% you would draw about 40kW and from 73% to 84% you would draw 26kW. After that it would drop down to around 10kW. Considering this was with a cold battery then those figures could be substantially less.

One of your images shows you still plugged in at 85% charge so you would only be drawing maximum 10kW at that stage, barely much more than a home 7kW charger. Another reason why it's not worth the wait to keep charging above 85% SoC.

On a recent long journey I charged at the new Instavolt chargers at Corley on the M6 with a warm battery and I was drawing the full 50kW from 15% SoC right up to just under 70% SoC. Total charging time from plugging in at 15% SoC to unplugging at 85% SoC was 50 minutes. Exactly as predicted by the graph for a 50kW charger. In fact, I believe that those Istavolt chargers are probably rated slightly over 50kW as by my calculations at the time they were delivering nearer to 60kW at the start.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Temperature is the thing that has surprised me with the effect that it has on electric cars in general and not just charging. The range reduction in cold weather came as a surprise and the Tesla I used to drive a lot would lose all the regen braking in the morning after a cold night and not get it back until it had warmed up for about 20 minutes or so of driving especially if the car had been charged overnight as was usually the situation.

Tesla cars have a battery warming system they use if you remember to put a supercharger location into the sat nav and this makes the car try to get the battery warm enough to be able to charge more quickly although that can take fifteen to twenty minutes in cold weather so needs planning ahead. It does make a big difference having the battery warmed up like this though I would say that it gets close to doubling the speed at which the car will charge at times.

As others had said here it pays to aim to get at a charger with the battery down as low as you feel comfortable with as well as that is another thing that seems to speed up charging. One thing I learned from around 20,000 miles of driving the Tesla was not to try and get close to a full charge at a supercharger as the tactic that seemed to work the best was to only put enough charge in to get to the next destination charger with a bit of spare as that meant not having to hang around for as long.

 

[SueH]

I have had the car since December but with lockdown I like many others havent used the car much or travelled outside my local area. There could be a deluge of new EV users dipping their toe in all at once soon!

Me too in a slightly longer period of ownership. I'm reasonably low at the moment so might forgo charging at home and spend a few quid to test out a local CCS and one of my RFID cards, although which one of the small collection I'm not sure!

 

[mad_rich]

The industry doesn't really help itself by being rather vague about it. It's only by going on nerdy sites like EV-database, or looking on Fastned that you will actually find the charging curves.

50kW chargers are 50kW in the same way that my broadband is 50 meg!

I was prepared for slower rates in full batteries. I wasn't fully prepared for the effect of battery & ambient temperature. Even today, I don't really know what I should be expecting on a cold winter's day, or a medium one, at different states of charge, nor how long I need to be 70mph will bring the temp up, nor how 3 miles driving through town after the motorway will affect things. It's all just luck and guesswork!

 

[72naed]

Yes also dipping my toe into the number networks out there! Surely this is not the way forward once mass EV ownership gets going!! I was quite surprised you couldn't just turn up and swipe your credit card and off you go!!

 

[freddym]

Yes also dipping my toe into the number networks out there! Surely this is not the way forward once mass EV ownership gets going!! I was quite surprised you couldn't just turn up and swipe your credit card and off you go!!

Are you based in the East of Scotland? CPS will cover a good chunk of all your away from home charging with maybe Instavolt covering trips to Greater Glasgow.