[Duncan]

I can sort of see why the charging schemes want to use a smartcard to control access, but it would be much better if they could just arrange for everyone to have one smartcard that would charge based on that person's usage and not require any pre-registration.

Oh, what a surprise, everyone already has a suitable smartcard usually with a Visa or Mastercard symbol printed on it so there's already a payment infrastructure as well. Is there any reason at all why public charging points couldn't just have a credit card reader? Slightly less pervasive but even better would be if they used paywave (or equivalent): the existing RFID readers could probably be reprogrammed for that if they didn't want to take payment.

This isn't rocket science: the other week I stayed in an hotel where the room safe used credit cards: not for the money side, it just read them for identity to lock/unlock.

Or in other words I completely agree with you that the current schemes are dumb.

 

[Duncan]

The whole idea of a membership like this is rediculous. You have to pay for charging you don't know you will need in advance and it is often quite a heafty fee... POLAR for instance wants £29.50 per month plus 95p per charge. Now, given that the Ampera can only charge to about 11KWh and given it can only charge at the rate of 16A max (10A if using the supplied cable), you won't get much per charge. It is an exhorbident cost just to get access to charging.

It's actually from £19.50 per month but still outrageous.

For what it's worth Polar are currently running a prize draw: the prize is a night in a luxury hotel, a home charging unit and 1 year of free access to the Polar Network. Also, every entrant gets 3 months free access to the Polar Network.

I can't enter yet as I'm still waiting to hear when I get my Volt and you have to include your registration number on the entry form. I'm not even sure that I particularly want the 3 months free access to their network when I know there's zero chance that I'd sign up at those rates, but FWIW, http://www.polarnetwork.com/Competition. There is a skill question to answer, but I'd be extremely surprised if anyone reading this forum didn't know the answer. Closing date 28th May 2012.

 

[Duncan]

I just signed up to Polar to try it and I believe every new customer gets the 3 months free BUT you are liable as all Polar users are, for charges (at some sites)

I may switch to the OVO fixed EV rate which has 2 years of Polar subscriptions included... I was going to go with Ecotricity but my questions about the i3 issue and their CCS problem met with radio silence... which is surely a sign

This is a pretty blatant case of necrothreading. Polar's offers and charging structures have changed many times since summer 2012, there really isn't much point quoting something I wrote about an offer they had six years ago and hhighlighting in red something about a prize draw they were doing at the time.

 

[Duncan]

£29.50 .... ....£19 .... what happened to the £7.85pm on their website?

You are posting on a thread from 2012!

They had a higher price back in 2012, but everything has changed over the past 6 years!

Please, could one of the mods lock this thread?