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Busiest weekend ever - what is EV charging like in holiday destinations

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9.2K views 55 replies 32 participants last post by  Ravioli  
#1 ·
#2 ·
Stopped at the A34 services near Newbury yesterday just for a comfort break. Not need to charge the Tesla. 2 out of 2 being used and about 6 electric cars parked all around, presumably waiting.

Then stopped at the the Tesla Superchargers near Portsmouth- 4/5 out of 8(?) being used.

Podpoint this morning at 8am in Tesco Havant- 3 of 4 being used when I arrived. All still parked up when I left.
 
#4 ·
Severn View services on M48 (M4) - row of new Gridserve chargers as well as the two old rebadged electric highway chargers - Audi charging when we arrived, Leaf charging when we left. All other chargers available.

Saundersfoot village in Pembrokeshire - two new rapids and 6 or 8 new 7kw chargers, badged up as Dragon Energy (uses Clenergy back end). Me and an ID4 using a couple of the 7kw chargers, all other chargers available.
 
#22 ·
IMO we have been brainwashed into thinking there is a shortage of chargers when there is not. (there was in the past with the Ecotricity debacle)
Newcomers will still behave as newcomers do and behave like ICE drivers until they get to know the ropes.
Perhaps people should not be able to comment until they have owned a EV for 2yrs and bottled their range anxiety mentality.

Even when on the odd occasion chargers are occupied how far is it to the nearest charger or how long do you have to wait if non available.

With a 200ml + range and destination charging how much rapid charging is needed ? eg anyone living in the middle of the country can get to anywhere in England with this combination.

The problem is that in the ICE days people would fill up with petrol in one place and stop for food in another but now understandably EV drivers are trying to roll those two together which is creating a peak demand in the middle of the day. Knowing this just organise differently.

Two things i like are Kempower thinking and Tesla charging for overstay.
 
#33 ·
When I did the infotainment and NAV update on the wife's Corsa-E, it used 1% of the battery in the 30 mins I was sat in the car. Air-con on as it was pretty hot. At that rate, 100% battery would last 50 hours. If the queue took anything like that I'd have more urgent issues than the battery.
On a brighter note, shortly we are all doing a family meet up at country house we've booked for the week. We want to take the EV of course, but the house details make no mention of car charging. Dropped them a quick email and they are totally happy for us to "granny charge" the car. A big thumbs up to Edenhall Estate near Penrith. :)
 
#34 ·
I sat in the car trying to have a quick nap earlier in the week, end of a long drive and got way too hot putting a tent up. The car was mostly down to temp from the drive but was only registering 0.6 kWh/h (it’s the cars displayed unit don’t shoot me 😆) so don’t think it’s enough to worry about really. I probably lost two ish miles in 45 mins?

I’m trying to ween myself off of rapids, worrying if someone is going to be on the charger is stressful. In places like Pembrokeshire it’s easy enough to add on an hour or two at low speed and keep the car topped off. I did a rapid in haveford west whilst picking up a few odds and ends but then got an hour in little haven and two hours in st David on slow chargers and that left me fully charged for the way home.
 
#35 ·
Just going back to the title. I live in Christchurch, Dorset, near the beach. We get a lot of tourist visitors over summer weekends. There are a pair of Osprey 50kw near Aldi, it is normal to see one in use, but has been unusual to see them both in use. Next door outside a new Costa are a pair of brand new 120kw Instavolts. Again normal to see one in use but nit both and there’s another pair of new instavolts at the local McDonalds. They’re never occupied. In town we’ve got a Mer 50kw and across town another pair of Osprey at the Stourvale, rarely in use.

So no problems getting charged down here, even during peak tourism weekends.
 
#36 ·
Alas when looking at user comments we can see why they look quiet to your drive bys ….some are Mer, a local area rfid/app site that Out of Towners are not going to have, and others frequently show units not working and surprisingly bad results in the last 2 months of the osprey / InstaVolt which normally are very reliable networks.
If a charge point has had a bad connect by last reported user, of my connection type, then I don’t bother even going to it, unless I am on my own and have plenty of time to go to plan b, c etc
Sorry to be a Negative Nora but it’s based my relationship of experience with Mr Murphy and Mrs Karma
 
#39 ·
Having had a bit of moan above I do need to add I was attempting to use at busiest time of day during a very busy time of year / place
Bit like whinging the A303 or M5 was chokka (Eurotunnel ! ) .... 8am, 7pm I'm sure I would have had a more easy time.

The thing did work, the toilets were clean ----- that's the basics there.
 
#41 ·
It strikes me that Exeter is always going to be a problem until range is a genuine 300 miles or so - it’s going to be the obvious place to charge on the way to Cornwall, but any provision that is reasonable for most of the year is going to be inadequate for late July and August.
 
#42 ·
Bolting on an MFG style 8bay to an existing Shell or Esso in Penzance, plus the go live of the beefed up Cornwall-Victoria Services - these would mean I'd either not have stopped at Exeter or cleared off a lot sooner thus increasing numbers of cars using it over 12hours.
I'm reminded of the Ballard in Greatest Showman /....... "Never Enough for Meeeeeee"
 
#43 ·
A couple of hundred rapids near Exeter would get it done. If that's not enough in the future, increase to several hundred.

I don't really see the problem, except for people thinking too small. There's a lot of embarrassing incidents where the local mayor opens a new "hub" of 4 Instavolts and the like. 500 rapids at £15,000 each would only be £7.5 million, few tens of million more for the national grid and other infrastructure. All-in it's probably less than 0.1% of the annual tourism income for Devon and Cornwall, let alone rest of the economy of the south west.
 
#47 ·
Thought I'd update this thread with our recent experience of holiday travel from Durham to Plymouth and back again. It's the third year we've done it in an EV. Last year we took both Leafs actually, but this year we only needed the one. We traveled down on a recent Saturday and came back on the Friday of the bank holiday weekend and if there's a headline, then it's that general motorway traffic congestion was worse than the EV charging.

We didn't choose motorway service stations, instead places a couple of miles off each time. On the way down, choice1 (Podpoint) at Burton on Trent was in use, but choice2 (Osprey) was fine. Stop number 2 was in Bristol and choice1 (Podpoint) was vacant but charging slow, we then discovered. Weirdly, several other users were happy to queue there after us including a British Gas van; hardly a good use of company time. In hindsight we detoured a bit too far for that charge. On the way home the traffic was chocker all the way past Bristol but it did mean we used less juice at least. Choice1 (Shell) near Cheltenham was vacant and a great spot. Stop 2 was meant to be North Derbyshire, but more traffic congestion meant the bladders needed a sooner stop. Amazingly the chademo at Trowell Services Nottingham was vacant during Friday evening rush hour, so we happily filled up there.

Three summers of doing this and it didn't feel much different this time around. Maybe if I didn't carry so many apps and cards, stopped only at motorway services or other headline hubs, didn't enjoy the anorak planning that goes into having options A to Z etc then it would have been a more disheartening experience. But it was okay. We did notice there seemed to be very few other EVs on the motorways though, certainly fewer than we see in general. Maybe more holiday makers were keeping them at home in favour of the big ICE for long distance, family convenience.
 
#51 ·
We did notice there seemed to be very few other EVs on the motorways though, certainly fewer than we see in general. Maybe more holiday makers were keeping them at home in favour of the big ICE for long distance, family convenience.
On Sunday I was using the M27 from the west of Southampton on the bit that then splits off to the M3 northwards and was thinking the exact opposite! (Talking of which, Rownhams would be an excellent candidate for a few more chargers.) Maybe because I spotted the exact same colour and date of MG ZS alongside me, early enough not to have the green flash. But plenty of other models I recognised too, although I'm not that clued up, and probably notice the number plate more these days.

I do like @sidehaas suggestion of leaving the non-hub MSA chargers to those more in need. As I type it looks like Rownhams has a Leaf and a Zoe charging Northbound, and the CCS is free!
 
#48 ·
Yorkshire to Cornwall this summer was stress-free charging. We only need to charge once, but aim to charge twice because it's the more efficient pit stop strategy and we need the break anyway. Stopped at a couple of Instavolts near Birmingham, and by the time we'd gone to the toilet and ordered a McMuffin to eat on the way, the car was up to 90% - fortunately nobody waiting. Stopped again anyway later for a quick top up. Having a 7kW charger at our destination meant we didn't have to rely on Cornwall's patchy network of rapids. Sometimes busy, but never had to queue ever. Return journey stopped twice, but only needed to charge at one of the stops. Seems like other EVs doing the same - far more parked at the services without charging than using the chargers. Saw some confusion at Donnington with the dual CCS not working, and two cars trying to use the non-dual charging CCS/Chademo at the same time. Not such a good experience for them, I expect.
 
#49 ·
Did Liverpool to London to Legoland to Southampton to Liverpool this last week. The roads were very busy. As expected both Banbury Instavolt and Stafford Ionity were fine, with plenty of capacity and the car had finished charging long before we were ready to go. Although, each of them had one charger not working. At Ionity this was identified in the app and on the charger, at Banbury it wasn't (the problem was an incommunicative card reader - I notified Instavolt).
We stopped at four different MSAs for child wee stops. I only saw one Gridserve charger free all trip and there were quite a few people queuing at some (none of these were hubs).
We also used a free 7kw podpoint near our hotel in London and a 22kw Mer charger in a car park in Winchester. Both worked well. However the free podpoint was obviously used by lots of phev driving locals - I had to monitor the app regularly to know when to take the car to charge.

Basically the trip just reinforced my previous conclusion that if you plan your trip to only use hubs (now possible for the vast majority of longer trips in England) then it'll be hunky dory but you definitely shouldn't plan to need a charge at a MSA without a hub (at least at busy times) or at a cheap/free podpoint because they are likely to be very busy, and sometimes hogged for a long time. I think non-hub MSA chargers are best left for people with old Leafs and the like really, when possible.
 
#54 ·
Driving to Kettering on the Friday mid morning I pulled in to Toddington northbound just as another driver was about to plug his MG in. Needless to say, he’d randomly pulled up at the charger with both CCS and Chademo. I asked nicely if he could use the dual CCS charger, so I could plug my Leaf in, and he was more than happy to. I had backups, and indeed didn’t strictly need to charge until later in the day, but it was good to get it done while stopped for breakfast anyway.
 
#55 ·
I hired an ICE van for me and my daughters for our camping trip (no destination charging) to the tip of Cornwall from the East Midlands and left my iPace at home. The charging network is not up to it at peak times and I directly evidenced this with big queues and many of the chargers in Cornwall not working. It takes about seven hours to do it in an ICE. With the queues it would have taken 12-15 hours at least. It is just not feasible.
Maybe out of peak season then it would be OK, but such travel in off season is not possible for me.
 
#56 ·
Just returned from a trip to Cornwall from the West Sussex coast. it’s the first properly long trip we’ve done in the car (Volvo XC 40). Arrived at Exeter at 9.00 am last Thursday and only one charger was being used, got great speed too. On the way back on Sunday, we arrived about 1.30pm and all the chargers were being used. Only had to wait 5 mins though. Slow charge speed unsurprisingly.

Tesla has installed 14 chargers there too (look like they’ll be commissioned shortly). That should help a bit, especially if they open them up to all.