[Wowbagger]

I've been a Leaf owner for almost 6 years now and I got to the point where "everything just works" quite a while ago now. As a consquence, I've not been onSpeakEV for months.

My 30kwh Leaf's PCP deal is up next month and I'm buying it outright. I have seen no deals at the moment to tempt me into buying a new car - yet. Having said that, I am looking around to see what's available and it seems that my local VW dealer has quite a gew E-Golfs in stock at the moment, so I'm going to take one out for a test drive on Monday.

However: my son is currently in Scotland living it up with his 3-week-old Model 3, and he reports that quite a few of the chargers run by Chargeplace Scotland have had their CCS ports disabled. I seem to recall that quite a few of the Ecotricity chargers also had issues with CCS.

Is this a common problem? It's well over a year since I had any kind of an issue with a chademo not working and I wouldn't want to go back to worrying about where my next charge was going to come from.

 

[h8ten]

I'm picking up a 3 in just over a week. Hopefully, the CCS is not as bad as you say, failing that I will be falling back on the type 2 and have a bit of a longer wait.

 

[Gif]

Think it depends very much on where you are. Still wouldn’t rely heavily on EH chargers on motorway network. Other newer providers appear much more stable and well maintained.

 

[UniqueGeorge]

Nice trolling?
Mostly it's fine, but I avoid ecotricity, because I know it doesn't work.

 

[h8ten]

I live further north than the last motorway EH charger (Kinross) but there are a pair of Charge Place Scotland Rapids just over the other side of the motorway at the Park & Ride round the corner from Sainsbury's.

 

[Ralkbirdy]

Ignore EH on motorway unless desperate, aim for Instavolt just off motorway junctions, or others. Sad but true.

Your question should really be
How reliable is EH CCS, as CCS itself is reliable, just EH is not. Stopped at one to find 2x Chademo free but LEAF on only CCS / Cademo charger.

 

[Wowbagger]

I'm puzzled with this anti-Ecotricity attitude. I stated at the top that I'm a Leaf driver. I find their chargers Just Work and they are where I want them - on the motorway. OK, when they were the only show in town there were some serious issues with their charge points but that was mostly sorted by the end of 2014. They are less than half the price of Instavolt. I pay 15p per kWh. I once used an Instavolt charger because I needed it. It worked very well. But why would I pay 35p per kWh when I can pay 15p?

ralkbirdy seems to have condemned Ecotricity on the basis of one failed attempt to charge.

 

[Mtcm]

You really can't compare CCS and Chademo on Ecotricity. The chargers were designed for Chademo, it's generally reliable. CCS was a bodged add on and is inherently unreliable. It doesn't work with quite a few models of car full stop. There's also far more Chademo plugs than CCS with some sites having none at all.

Therefore, as a Leaf driver, it's quite feasible that you have had very few issues whilst others have an awful experience hence the attitudes on here. I'm an i3 driver and had about a 20% success rate before I gave up completely and started to avoid their network.

So to answer the thread title - CCS is noticeably less reliable on Ecotricity, but I haven't noticed any difference between Chademo and CCS on other networks. It's also worth bearing in mind that Ionity is building in a decent pan-European network and they're CCS only, so Chademo might start getting left behind soon.

 

[PaulD]

My experience is that CCS on EH has improved quite a bit over the last 11 months. Still not perfect yet but much more reliable than 11 months ago. A word of warning ... whilst listening to people who had negative experiences in the past is useful, if they haven't used EH for some time, their views may be out of date.

 

[Ralkbirdy]

Arriving at Instavolt with 2 CCS working chargers is much better than arriving at EH with only one. Many poor experiences at EH, none at other providers.
Also only expect 34kW at EH whilst 45kW at others. So the answer is avoid EH if you get a eGolf.

 

[dkelly84]

Nice trolling?

I don't think it's a particularly trolling question.

Chademo, for it's faults and underdevelopment, is a very rigorously set standard. Many manufacturers of both cars and charge points seem to play a bit more fast and loose with CCS standards and specs. Most of the time, this isn't a problem, but after years of reading posts about CCS charging and responses from engineers etc, it does feel a little like both manufacturers of the cars and charge points have had to patch the problems in software quite a lot - adding safety catches that shouldn't be required in the first place if people just followed a standard properly.

For example i3's on EH, Kona's on EH, Model 3's on lots of higher power CCS throughout Europe - most recent example I've seen is a new Shell Recharge that's popped up near me, where people have been struggling on CCS but fine on Chademo.

Yeah, EH are the poster boys for these issues, but they're not alone. At this point, my opinion is that the problem is 25% car manufacturers moving the goal posts with their implementations and 75% charge point manufacturers not keeping their software up to date.

I'm hoping CCS 2.0 will be more strictly enforced, but I can't see how.

 

[Gif]

I'm puzzled with this anti-Ecotricity attitude. I stated at the top that I'm a Leaf driver. I find their chargers Just Work and they are where I want them - on the motorway.

But that’s the point. Their CCS don’t just work. If I turn up at a charger with a low SoC it’s a toss of a coin. The likes of Instavolt do “just work”.

 

[srichards]

The EH dual headed posts for CCS are supposedly more trouble free. It's the triple headed ones with AC, CCS and Chademo that are mostly useless.

I've used Ecotricity several times in the last few months and it's been fine on AC. I hate apps but theirs on ios seems to be ok. Better by miles than the podpoint one.

 

[Woodulike]

The e-Golf is quite happy charging at ecotricity rapids. It isn't like the i3 or Kona ft have issues with the EH chargers.
The only time I've had an issue with their chargers is when the CCS connector was broken and EH knew about it but hadn't fixed it.
If you check zapmap/plugshare and read the reviews to see of the chargers are working then CCS at EH is ok. If you expect to just turn up and charge at any EH charger it won't be as straight forward as using Chademo.

 

[richtrash]

Nice trolling?
Mostly it's fine, but I avoid ecotricity, because I know it doesn't work.

I'd say 90% of the time CCS has worked fine for me on the EH, it has been a bit frustrating when it doesn't work, what is really needed are a minimum of two separate pumps at each MSA, that would reduce the number of failures, hopefully the next generation of pumps will be more reliable.

 

[Andy13]

With the launch of the Model 3 a problem has come to light with ChargePlace Scotland's older chargers, which a Tesla software update has fixed, so any owners on recent software (2019.29 if I recall correctly) should now be fine. Possibly that's what your son is referring to - I've not heard of any other issue with CP Scotland's CCSs.

Re InstaVolt vs Ecotricity pricing. Your 15p rate is the 50% discounted rate for being an Ecotricity home electricity customer, and it's going up. Their main rate is going to 39p while InstaVolt is 35p. So InstaVolt has a reliable network with multiple chargers at each location at 35p while Ecotricity have solo CCSs that are reported to work 40% of the time and cost 4p more. So you see why people are InstaVolt fans and Ecotricty haters.

 

[JeffG]

They are less than half the price of Instavolt. I pay 15p per kWh.

Presumably your domestic supplier is Ecotricity then. If you have a different supplier, then 39p/kWh is more expensive than Instavolt at 35p/kWh, and much more expensive than Polar Instant at 25p/kWh (as long as you take at least 5kWh to cover the minimum charge).

 

[J2T2]

There is a recent Zap-Map survey on satisfaction with charging networks and I was unsurprised to see Instavolt and Polar scoring well. Ecotricity are not shown in the top ten.
My experience with CCS and an I-Pace over the last year tallies pretty well with the survey results. I would also expect Ionity to feature next year.
I saw somewhere that Ecotricity are upgrading chargers but have not seen any yet. Until then I will use others as much more reliable in my experience.
So as to reliability of CCS, it just does work for me on Instavolt and Polar.
Survey at https://www.zap-map.com/zap-map-user-survey-reveals-top-10-ev-charging-networks/#more-98817

 

[Gif]

I'd say 90% of the time CCS has worked fine for me

Re-run that as "90% of the time I visit my local petrol station, they don't have any fuel to sell me!" Now ask yourself would you still keep going there?

I think that's the problem EH have, drivers just won't put up with anything other than consistent service. It's a pain in the nuts to waste your time stopping in an MSA only to find that you have to get back in and drive off somewhere else. Just don't bother and go somewhere else first.

 

[StEVG]

Wow I am interested in a lot of these comments as so far touch wood I have found all the fast/ rapid chargers that I have used to be ok. That includes Ecotricity, Shell, ones at IKEA (can’t remember the make) plus using my home Pod-Point for top up. I have travelled over 500 miles in last few days and used CCS charging a number of times. Perhaps I have just been lucky. The biggest problem has been where a retailer requires you to use your own cable and I have a fully loaded boot but they tend to have been slower chargers.