First public charging with our Fiat 500e - how did we cope?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 19 июл 2024
- We've had our Fiat 500e for a few months now but so far haven't ever had to use the public charging network. But we had a long journey to make recently so we thought we'd give it a go and record our experiences. Here's how we got on.
00:00 Introduction
00:26 Rugy Services, Gridserve - out
05:31 Cambridge Services, Ionity - out
10:08 Norwich - party time
11:07 Five ways Roundabout, MFG - return
14:06 Cambridge Services, Ionity - return
14:44 Rugby Services, Gridserve - return
16:07 Back home
16:56 Debrief - what we thought of the trip
22:21 Cost of the trip, EV vs. ICE car
24:16 Final roundup
Please note that Tim is not a professional consultant, just an enthusiastic amateur, so cannot reply to requests for advice or opinions on specific systems or green investment opportunities. Thank you for your understanding.
Support the channel and get £50 of credit by switching to Octopus Energy using my referral code:
share.octopus.energy/cute-qua...
Or buy us a coffee:
www.buymeacoffee.com/timandkat
Take a look at this video before pointing out any of the common misconceptions about EVs: ruclips.net/video/gXdLA63zZFE/видео.html
If you're after charging costs watch the whole video, I cover that near the end (or use the chapter select in the description to jump straight to it).
We charge from home the vast majority of the time so overall it costs us waaay less than running an ICE car and we never have to spend time filling up (public charging is very rare for us).
Also, for clarification, we each had one coffee in each direction (a grand total of four, i.e. two each in total, one each per day). Not the hundreds some people seem to think. No more asking how much "all those coffees cost", ok?
Finally, yes, I know your petrol/diesel car could have gotten all the way there without stopping, that's not the point of this video (I'm well aware of how far ICE cars can go on one tank of fuel). We stopped for breaks and lunch when we wanted to, and we charged because it was available. We'd have stopped for those same breaks/lunch regardless of the car we happened to be driving at the time. Good for you if you like to drive four hours straight without stopping; that's not something we want to do.
This is an interesting video. I bought My wife a Nissan In 2017 when electricity costs were low mainly only charged it at home so it was cheap to run. but there are issues with EVs that most people don't realise there is no ambient heat from the engine or exhaust so they suffer with damp and mould. Then the price of electricity went up and the diesel golf we have now costs half to run. not to mention the time taken to charge the bloody thing. If we go on a long run we take my Mercedes ML55 its big its comfortable and is eats the miles
Charging from home is still way cheaper if you use a good EV tariff like Octopus Go. A fraction of the cost of an ICE car to run. EVs do also have heaters, so there's no need for them to get mouldy!
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalkexactly. I've seen so many people comment across videos that they tried the early Nissan Leafs and hated them so they won't ever switch to EVs. Totally ignoring the fact that that is like comparing 2 ICE cars that are 10/15yrs apart and expecting them to not have changed lol😅
I’m normally an early adopter on many things, but not this time. The infrastructure and costs just don’t make sense…..yet. Too many EV compromises.
If you charge at home most of the time it's brilliant, tbh
Thanks for a very interesting video, filled with charger after charger that actually worked (such a relief on a long journey). Particular thanks for mentioning the weight of the ultra-fast cables. That's the sort of real world and very useful attention to detail that I think is typically overlooked in reviews, and can make such a difference when planning charging stops. Thanks again! 🤗
No problem, I hope if was useful.
Awesome - Loving the B-roll! Thanks for coming!
We had a great time, thanks for inviting us!
Enjoyed seeing your experience. Still very happy with my 30kwhr Leaf after many happy years and long journeys. Don't underestimate the usefulness of fast chargers when stopping for a reasonable length of time like lunch. Better availability, cheaper and no worries about having to move car. Will often give you the miles you need, but if not quickly top up on the more expensive rapid afterwards if necessary.
Yeah, we couldn't seem to find any convenient fast chargers, but maybe I need to look harder next time. For this trip we just tried to keep it as simple as possible.
Very useful, thank you.
Super useful video as s new EV owner who fears a long journey and inevitable away from home charging. It has made me feel more open to trying a longer journey. I guess weekends and holiday season with many on the road may change the dynamics of waiting for a charger so will brave this during an off peak time/day! Thanks again 👍🏼
Yeah, it's not as hard as a lot of people fear. Definitely try an off peak time first!
Great to see your experiences with the rapid charging, you will also find what range you are happy with and become more confident missing some of the smaller boost stops, when you know what your EV can do. The big thing to remember when paying for these extra high costs is that it is a few times a year and as part of the EV running costs it is still way cheaper. I was impressed that it only had a £5 difference and does not lose as much as I thought.
Yes, indeed. Home charging is still the vast majority of our charging, so works out a lot cheaper overall.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk and it is better for the battery life, because rapid carging results in faster degradation! home charging with an 11 kW wallbox is the best way to keep your batteries healthy for a long time. unfortunately our price for the kWh has risen from 26€c to 40€c within a year.
@@friederich66 Octopus Energy do some really good EV tariffs here, so you can get an overnight rate of about 10 p/kWh. If you can charge overnight then that works out to be very good value. As long as you have a smart meter, of course.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk the tariffs were extremely high, e-on charged the kWh with 51 c, which was reduced to a 40 cents price limit. last year it was only 25c, actually tis 37c. and hypercharge along the motorway DC costs up to 80c or more... we all hope that the tariffs are redced soon, because the energy costs are not less than with fossile driving. wit 10 p (12c) you are lucky... we have high prices because of solar and wind energy. still our mix is 50:50 fossile and regenerative sources.
@@friederich66 the day rate is much higher, closer to 30 p/kWh. It's cheaper overnight because of the higher proportion of wind, which is actually the cheapest form of power here (along with solar). It's more expensive during the day because the gas powered stations that are needed then are more expensive to run. As the mix of renewables increases it should become cheaper.
I had no idea about the Electrocards and you are right about the discounted rates at some charging points. Just ordered myself one so thank you for the tip!
About to go and pick up my Fiat 500e, this video was really helpful, thank you! This gave me a nice look at how it performs in the real world without needing to trust what Fiat says lol.
Happy new year guys :)
Cool, I hope you enjoy it! It's a lot of fun.
Looks a right faff to me . I know it’s early days for EVs and one would fit in to my lifestyle and car use but at the moment with the high purchase costs just put me off. My wife runs a petrol Fiat 500 , £35 to fill up and will do around 350 miles on that and lasts her about 3 weeks before it needs a fill up.
See my pinned comment regarding range. We charge from home so never need to go to a petrol station, and costs way less than £35 for three weeks 🤷. Public charging is a very rare occurrence for us.
I do see what you say and I’m one of the don’t knock it until you’ve tried it brigade. However in order to try , it is a commitment and not viable for me yet based on my current car finance. EVs and charging is an ever evolving scenario and I’m sure things will improve in time. I’m fortunate I could have a charging point at home (missed the cut off on my new build by 2 months before they were standard) so I’m a £1000 down for a start to get one installed but I do appreciate I would get that back over time. Both my wife and I will be changing cars in around 2 years so will see what has happened in the EV world then. I will continue to watch people’s experiences with interest. I like videos like this , it’s real world information and of real use so keep them up.
@@ianrobinson9243 yes, EVs are still pretty expensive but they're rapidly normalising with the price of ICE cars so in another couple of years it should be a lot more comparable. We're currently leasing ours for a couple of years while we wait for one that will suit us in the long run. A 250 mile range would be nice, for example. Keeping our eye on the forthcoming ID.2 from VW as that looks like it might tick all our boxes and be a reasonable price, with any luck.
In January I did North Somerset to Norwich in my 28kWh Ioniq. Charged in Banbury & Thetford. There were 6 Osprey chargers in Banbury & now there are also 32 Instavolt chargers!!
Good to see things are heading in the right direction.
You must have a lot of time to prep for a journey. Add the cost of your time waiting, meals that you wouldn't have to buy, and throw in a curve ball, for example doing it mid winter at -2 at night with Kat being on her own. Service station chargers, not always working etc etc personally not for me. But, excellent video. I'm really glad you detailed every single step. I don't think I would want my elderly parents making such a journey but for you younger people it's fine. Thank you
Apps make finding chargers pretty simple so not much prep time required. We didn't buy any meals we didn't want to. And we weren't waiting for the most part (in fact the car was charging while we did other things, like having a pee etc.). Have you never had to wait for a petrol pump to become free? We charge form home the vast majority of the time, which means we save time not having to go to petrol stations, which we would have had to do otherwise. Long journeys are rare for us (and for most people, I bet, compared to commuting, say) so public charging will also be rare. Charging at home makes EVs cheaper to run and saves a lot of time. So that's worth considering.
I found it really interesting showing the various chargers on your journey, I have grip problems, and I even struggle with my home charging cable. Luckily I won't be on my own on longer journeys so my wife will help with connecting/disconnecting of the chargers
Grip is much easier if you have two hands to use - and don’t try to force a cable that’s twisted.
Not to say that it can’t be a problem (and given that you struggle with a home cable it clearly will be) but it’s easier if you’re not trying to film it on your phone with the other hand.
Charging on the lower end of the battery is always faster, don’t charge before you get down to 5-15% 👍👍👍
Depends where you are and your onward journey. I would say don't gamble on reaching the next charger with very low charge. It may not be working!
You both reminded us of our first long distance trip in our EV. We had a blast and thoroughly enjoyed the drive. Our EV has around a 300 mi range so not quite so many stops. Your cost to charge vs petrol is so high. Our first 600 mi round trip cost about $80 NZD but for equivalent in petrol it would have been about $350 NZD. In our home city some fast chargers are actually free! I'd never go back to an ICE car. Hopefully our solar system will also be online next week. Love the channel & your chats. 😄
Yeah, the public charging price is very high right now but it wasn't always that high. Hopefully it'll come down to a more reasonable price soon. I'm glad you enjoy the channel.
Thank you so much that was really helpful.
You're welcome
Without wishing to be mean can i suggest to anyone else who gets an EV that you don't make a long trip your very first experience of rapid charging, and that instead you go to a rapid charger within a few days of getting your car both to familiarise yourself with the process, but also to check it works and theres nothing wrong with the car !
Sensible advice.
Excellent video, we used to drive a BMW i3 and managed Cornwall on 'leccy - it took 5 stops but was fun (for me, kids now so much). We've got a newer car that uses superchargers so don't have to stop as often - but as you've said you have to stop for breaks anyhow and we've found we've nearly been charged overstay fees (once charge is at 80%/100% depending on how busy superchargers are) for going into the service area and grabbing food!
That's fab, sounds like you've got it well sorted. We don't do many long trips so this was a bit of a pathfinding expedition for us. Certainly learned a few things and we'll try a few different tactics on the next one, but overall it felt like a success.
Our first public charge, about 5 weeks ago, turned out to be quite memorable. We live in south Devon, and were heading to Suffolk to visit my wife’s family, a distance of about 320 miles. We planned our first stop at the Reading West service station on the M4, which has 16 rapid chargers, so availability shouldn’t have been a problem. However, when we pulled in to the services, we discovered that the EV Rally 2023 had just beaten us there, and every charger was occupied! The rally numbered about 50 EVs, and was on a “4 capitals” trip (Cardiff, London, Edinburgh, Belfast) to help publicise EVs’ capability to do long trips. Ultimately we didn’t have to wait too long, and managed to meet Quentin Willson, who was the visible face of the rally. However, there was a certain irony in our first public charge being impacted by a rally publicising EVs.
Ha! Oh well, at least it gave you a good story!
Interesting video…Thinking of getting a 600 E when they come out later this year 😊
I drive my Toyota Aygo all over the country, stress-free 🙃
Good for you.
Thanks for the very informative post, for me not being able to charge at home with no drive is a no for me, as I was also refused to install a cable gully by the council . I would love to go electric. Cheers again 👍
Yeah, I can see that being a big problem in the not too distant future. There are going to have to be charging sockets in every lamppost, or something, with low cost power, otherwise a lot of people are going to find it impossible to switch. Hopefully we'll get there eventually.
Very informative, good team work 😊
Thank you
The main reason that I watch your channel is because of Battery GiveEnergy , mine is going to be installed next month , I went for the latest one 13.5 kw with gateway, I’ll be needing your advice in case of any problems 😉
@@fazkhan8009 ooh, the All In One, very nice. That's a bit different to my system so I can't guarantee I'd be able to help. Hopefully you won't have problems!
I have noticed that the charging network is improving at an amazing rate. Blyth services used to just have a couple of chargers but six months later - it has a similar set up to Rugby.
Nice. Yeah, hopefully it can keep up with the increasing demand.
I remember my first public fast charging armed with 4 cards and a dozen Apps on my phone, I still didn’t have the correct one. Its like being baptized you are now a real EV car driver 😊
Oh boy. Yeah, I'm glad most work with contactless payments nowadays.
I still have probs with Osprey. The other week it would not accept my debit card or 2 credit cards. I sent off for one of their rfid cards. It came and when I bleeped it it didn’t want to know. The 2 credit cards still didn’t work either but it graciously accepted my debit card this time. It’s a slight worry now that I can’t guarantee any of the 4 cards will work
@@davidadams5116 how annoying. This is the sort of thing we were worried about but thankfully it worked ok for us on this trip.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk I’m glad it was ok for you because it can get stressful when you are down to 15% and it won’t take any card. This is the only problem I have had and in fairness I don’t do much public charging
@@davidadams5116 yes, indeed, I can imagine. We're unlikely to do much public charging either, but hope that it gets better over time in case we ever have to do it again.
Just viewed yr video. Loved it. And subscribed. A petrol car could go to Norwich and back without the need to refuel. Imagine just how many recharge bays will be required if everyone drove an EV. If it's 35 degrees and u are recharging .. can u sit in the car with the air conditioner running?
See my pinned comment regarding range. If everyone drove EVs there absolutely would be chargers in every parking spot. New ones are being added at a furious rate. Just wait and see 😉. In a lot of EVs, yes, you can have the AC running while charging.
We pick up our new EV at the beginning of September and as this will be our first one your video has helped us understand what to expect when using the public charging network. Thank you.
We will probably do 3 or 4 long-distance journeys a year, so we will predominantly charge at home, at cheap rates. Having already planned several routes using the 'Electroverse' app, it is very noticeable just how expensive the public charging network is, especially at motorway service stations. It has always baffled me why anyone would want to fill up with petrol or diesel on the motorways, as they are also very expensive.
Speaking with friends and family and reading many comments on this video, I worry about how many people potentially drive without taking sufficient breaks. Or do they just conveniently forget that they do actually stop?
With regards to the amount of money spent on food and drink at different service stations, I can certainly see how that could mount up. Personally, we have always taken food and drink with us on long trips, only using the services for toilet breaks. Everyone to their own.
I'm glad we could help! Yes, it's odd how some folks really want to be able to drive for four hours straight without stopping. Not for us, thank you! Anyway, I'm sure you'll love your EV, and charging from home is a revelation. Get onto a good tariff and it costs peanuts to charge compared to petrol/diesel.
Nightmare of a journey in my eyes 😢
It seems people see what they want to see. We found the whole thing pretty straightforward and said as much in the video. If you didn't see it that way then that's entirely fair but consider that your impression was influenced by your preconceptions.
Why it’s no different fighting fir a fuel pump.
It's a delusion to think that the public charging prices will go down.
Let's see, shall we?
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk did they go down?
Your first stop pretty much confirms everything that EVM and Robert Llewellyn's Fully Charged have been saying for years. Plug in, walk to services, go to toilet, grab coffee and unplug. Almost exactly what we're (unfortunately) still doing in our ICE car when we go long distances.
Yup, not much to it, really.
Well done and shows what is really possible in a small range car. I would suggest you look for charging places just off the motorway - loads of Costas now have chargers and 5mins added to get there and generally empty and much nicer than a service station.
Re availability though, we did a trip from Yorkshire to Amsterdam (in a Diesel - more space for 4 of us & luggage) and every stop we did for us humans had a available charging point.
Yeah, I think we'll try something like that on the next trip. This first trip was more about keeping things simple so we picked stops that were as convenient as possible. Now we know what to expect we'll start experimenting a bit more!
You were lucky not to have to queue at Cambridge services at a weekend, there are often queues there too. You probably noticed the huge expansion going in at Rugby - doubling both sets of chargers. The Tesla peeps will probably not thank me for this but if you head down that way again consider charging at the Elveden Inn between Thetford and that MFG site you used - decent food and the super charger is open to all. There is a fancy farm and gift shop over the road as well if that is your thing.
You know, we nearly stopped at the Thetford chargers on the way back. The only reason we went a bit further to the MFG ones was because we could use the Octopus card. Oh well, at least we know now!
Thanks Tim & Kat. My first EV road trip was last Sunday in our new Ioniq 6 - round-trip from Cambs to Bath and back. In contrast to your, my trip cost about 1/3 of what it normally does in our ICE Mazda 6 - partly due to getting a really good price at Ionity (comes with new car) and being on Octopus Agile tariff at home. I found Zapmap predictions much closer to my reality than ABRP, but both have their good and bad points. The Ioniq 6 has great charging speeds, so I got 26% -> 70% in the time it took me to pop to the loo (10 mins) at the Chippenham Ionity setup. All up, mine was a great start to EV life, and it looked like yours was similarly positive. Thanks for all your content, BTW - great job.
Good to hear.
There didn't seem to be any covering when charging. If it was raining could there be water ingress into the connection coupling. I might wait until the inductive charging method comes on stream. Is it costing more on coffee and snacks with all the extra charging stops
The connections are all water tight. We leave ours plugged in overnight and when it rains there is never any issue. They've been properly designed. The coffee and snacks were not forced on us, nor any of the ICE drivers doing the same 🤷
Rain is not an issue, other than stupid touch screens which can play up 😢
Smaller batteries are great. Better efficiency and charge fast!
So long as you can do about 2 hrs straight then it doesn’t add time as we have a break anyway, like you do. And of course that you dont do long journeys very regularly.
Better efficiency? At 4.1 kWh that’s almost twice as much as a Tesla
great to watch you using your charging your fiat 500 im new to your channel
Good to have you on board.
Well done Tim & Kat. That said I'm still not convinced there are enough working public chargers to service the increasing demand for EV's. We are looking to get a small used EV soon but it will only get charged at home & only used for local trips. We will be keeping our other ICE car for longer trips & holidays.
Yeah, we very rarely make journeys this long. Almost all the charging will be done at home, but at least we know it's not too painful if we needed to do this again.
Its a rare journey that needs them, but yes - more chargers at the larger services (and more at the others so that people don’t only stop at the big ones) will be needed.
Just imagine how few petrol stations there were 150 years ago
@@JohnR31415 Early car drivers had to get their petrol from chemists and other places like hotels I believe.
@@dougbamford Drivers today buy most petrol at supermarkets so (other than the physical method of delivery) not much change!
Hi, yes unless you buy a Tesla. The secret is the charging rate and the number of chargers there are ( thus if you charge very quickly then they charge for less time and that way you need less chargers.)
More chargers will come but it will be dependant upon the cables in the ground being able to supply the current we will need in the future.
Be interesting to see petrol stations convert over to EV charging stations.
Take care M.
Since we are getting ours tomorrow we are catching up on relevant things. And this was brilliant. …. And eventhough I am in Denmark i imagine the process is the same. Do you change the settings in the car, the screen where you do “something” about charging … ?
Not quite sure what you mean, but the car does let you change various settings like setting up charging schedules for when you're charging at home so you can charge during off-peak times.
I have an EV ( used for city and short journeys) and a PHEV for longer journeys. I noticed when I stopped at Cambridge services third week in July ( twice) that all the chargers both Ionity and Gridserve were busy and cars waiting. Whilst I realise there are grid constraints with chargers, certainly at that service station ( which is busy for East-West traffic) more 350kw chargers at that service area ( and the service area at Stansted) and others I have seen would be very welcome. Also be nice if the chargers were sheltered against the weather.
Yes, there is definitely a need for a lot more. I don't know why more don't have covers. One or two do but if more did that certainly would help make them more usable in the winter, particularly.
When driving an ICE car the filling station doesn't say "Filling session".
Erm, ok.
I hope Costa are sponsoring you
I'll ask them for next time.
I've noticed you can turn the car on (or at least stand-by using the start button) while your car is fast charging. Might come in handy to access the airconditioning or radio while you're waiting.
Charger apps can come in handy. As your car is charging, they show the current battery level in the app; so you have a better idea how much your car is charging as you're getting your coffee break.
Using the Fastned app and charger, you can set it up to use "Autocharge." With this enabled, your car is linked to your bank account in their payment system. This means you can plug in the charger to your car, and it will automatically charge the car without the means of payment. You'll get the invoice later.
Ionity has a similar system called "Plug & Charge." It's a different standard to do the same, more secure, more new too. Fiat 500e does not support it yet; only something like 5 cars worldwide support it in today in 2023.
When charging above 80%; or rather 85% in the Fiat 500e, charging speed drops from 85 kW to about 11 kW, the same speed as a regular city public charger.
Yup, I was aware of the charge curve for the 500e. We currently don't have the app set up for the car as it is a lease and no one bothered to register it for us so I have to sort that out, annoyingly. I'll get around to it one day. Those other apps sound useful though.
Really happy to see a positive EV video from owners that have and use their common sense. This is what my experience was with my EV. Relatively easy compared to all the doom and gloom journo's seem to be spinning in their anti EV narratives.
Yeah, it's not hard at all really. Although I get plenty of folks telling me they think this video shows the opposite. Very odd.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk People like to forget and Blue Sky Thinking their Petrol/Diesel car experiences.
When in actual fact I used to regularly get to a petrol station and had to spend time messing about waiting in queues for a pump or waiting for someone to go into the shop to pay for their fuel and then everyone had to wait for the car at the Front to finish all this so you could all shunt forward 2 cars and do it all again.
@@TJWhiteStar Exactly! Weird how quickly some people forget those experiences.
We know the Ruby services very well as we use them on our way to and from Germany. They have some 22kw and 7kw chargers over to your right (east side) if you have time that is, specially as you only want 17% top up!! Like everything esle if you shop around you can get better kWh prices like Tescos, but they only charge at 50kw.
Ah, we didn't spot the slower ones at Rugby. Good tip!
I can see how lucky i am, with the Fiat we Pick up tomorrow is a year worth of power for free included. - and when that year has gone there is a subscription where you pay around 100 pounds a month and then have unlimited charging. (We opted out of getting a charger station at home)
That's very handy.
Your video is very good my girlfriend either wants A 500 or a mini EV so regular charging will be a thing when longer journeys are needed.Not many chargers about in rural Suffolk or Norfolk mind you
We love the Fiat, it's a lot of fun.
Be careful with the Mini. The 500e was designed from the ground up as EV. Even though it looks similar to ICE version, in reality there is nothing in common, Fiat waited for EV technology to mature to design an EV from scratch. For the Mini, they went the lazy route and retrofitted existing Mini with electric motor, so a lot of compromises. But the biggest one is absolutely rubbish range of the Mini, almost half of that of the 500e in real life.
@@johns4651 I'm getting up to 160 miles per full charge
out of my Mini EV on a very regular basis,
with mixed urban, rural and non motorway driving.
(being an ex international HGV1 driver, might be a factor in that)
For long-distance trips, I always charge between 10% and 80% SoC - I've been driving my Fiat 500C electric since the end of 2021.
Yup, that was our intention. We didn't realise it was going to charge so quick!
Very interesting to watch. Looked relatively straight forward! A bit of a culture shock for regular long distance drivers.
Out of interest, what did the journey by train look like in terms of changes needed, time taken and cost? Was that an option?
I didn't check, to be honest. I'm pretty sure with the two of us it would have worked out significantly more expensive than £60 though.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Thanks. Worth checking... and factoring in the cost of your car lease/purchase as well. The cost is higher than £60. Hard to beat the door to door convenience of the car but hopefully we'll see an improved rail service in the years ahead.
@@edwardlamb but we're comparing to our old ICE car, not the rail network. We'd have the car regardless so the lease/purchase cost is irrelevant.
I think it’s worth considering the convenience of Tesla’s Superchargers, if you are doing regular long trips. Here in New Zealand, a new Model 3 actually costs less than a new 500e. Soon we’ll have both :) We’re expecting to charge the 500e almost always at home.
Generally when I’m on a trip in my Model 3, it makes sense to run quite low, under 20% before stopping for a charge. Faster overall that way, the car also makes it easy by planning the stops and how long to charge for
People plan trips with planes and trains all the time. But when they need to plan a trip with an EV, they suddenly go mad. It's really not the end of the world.
Indeed.
When you plan a trip out does it tell you where to go to charge it, great video.
We use the Elecroverse app to help us find chargers along the route. It works pretty well. The car itself does not do that though.
what date and time was this? I've used public charging at motorway services pretty often and rarely seen it as busy as this.
Last weekend.
We gave up using Rugby services last year because it gets so busy, there is usually at least one charger not working and only a couple a chargers would work with our EV6 (they may be OK now)
Probably less busy outside of the weekend.
How much does it cost per charging session?
Apparently its recommended to charge to 80% anything past that would charge alot slower and potentially harm the battery
I detail the total cost at the end of the video. You will never harm the battery by charging to 100%, they have very good battery management systems to prevent that. Just don't leave it at 100% for days on end, if you're not going to drive it for a while it's best to leave it with less than 80%. The charging curve depends on the car (you can look them up easily enough), ours drops a lot above 85% so take the 80% as a guideline rather than a rule. Also, if you're able to charge at home that will work out significantly cheaper, especially if you get onto a good EV tariff such as Octopus Go and charge overnight.
I’ve had the same experience in my Ioniq 5 when making a long trip - the car is sending me a message saying the battery is full whilst I’m still out buying coffee and spending a penny.
Fairly trouble and pain free. Won’t make much of a “story” in the Daily Mail though 😂
Haha! Oh well.
With the Daily Mail "range anxiety" and "pearl clutching” will go hand-in-hand!
Hello, I’ve had my EV for 20 months now and wouldn’t be without it. Of course every person’s story is going to be different but for me the only times I need to do a public charge is when the journey is greater than 300 miles in the summer and about 275 miles in the winter. When petrol cars first came out at the beginning of the last century the number of service station grew as the number of cars grew. Now that number is at saturation point. As the number of EVs grow the number of electric charging stations will grow. It’s a supply and demand issue. If you can charge at home especially with cheap rate electricity and/or solar, it is, in my humble opinion, a win win situation. I know that not everyone has that home back up but the technology for charging is advancing all the time. I’ve never had to use an rfid card to charge, each time contactless has worked perfectly. If you can take the leap, do it.
Quite right. The vast majority of our charging is done at home so that's a huge time and money save in the long run. This trip was very much a rare occurrence for us (probably a few times a year at most), so having an EV as a daily use car is very convenient.
How does the queuing convention/etiquette work?
Cambridge services was rammed on a bank holiday Friday afternoon. All chargers were in use and there seemed to be a few EVs parked up, waiting.
I couldn't work out who was queuing and who was just parked up, or who was next in line.
We just drove five minutes down the road to Bar Hill Tesco's, where the PodPoint chargers were all available, so I never worked this out.
Varies by site (as with dino juice), but just pay attention and don’t charge over 80% if you can possibly avoid it.
Thankfully the Cambridge and MFG chargers had free spots for us to drive straight into so we didn't have to contend with that. The Rugby services had waiting bays opposite the chargers so it was pretty simple to just watch other cars arrive and know when your turn was. It seemed everyone was on board and it ran very smoothly. Without those waiting bays it'd have been a nightmare.
Yes, common sense should apply ie. Don't allow the SoC go to the point where you MUST charge at the next stop. Have sufficient contingency planned to get you to an alternative charger further along your route.....hopefully you won't endure a wait on that o😖
Interesting & informative. Having a relaxed style is key to better journeys 😃. I, personally, avoid Rugby services as it serves 6 major routes / carriageways so relatively few chargers per carriageway: M1 North / South, M6 NW/E and A14 E/W. I go a little further to/from here to Corley/Coventry services that have 9 (south) or 10 (north) rapid chargers (Instavolt & Gridserve) which I have never found busy. Slightly surprised you didn’t take advantage of the Gridserve forecourt in Norwich which is impressive.
Did you consider using Gridserve in Norwich before leaving, might have saved the little top up charge, and they have great coffee and services there.
Honestly, there were so many options, we just chose stops that were close to the route and convenient.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk makes sense, no need to go out of the way for a charge, things are definitely getting better, on a recent trip never had any issues which is brilliant.
Hi, haven’t got an EV yet but hoping to. By 6:40 I’ve learnt something: Octopus card will debit your Octopus account. So this effectively means that exported solar (credits) can be used via the card to charge your car remotely while you’re out and about?
Yes, exactly, it's very handy!
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Do you think this usage would count towards your 'household usage'? i.e. If you were charging at home it would do, so...
@@RichardABW no, the public charging just gets added as a separate debit against the account. Your exported solar would earn credit via the export tariff separately, so they're dealt with independently of each other.
it appears the actual charging process is simple enough but there is no apparent controlled queuing. Not too busy on your trip but what will happen on a wet bank holiday summer trip to Cornwall? More cars than queuing spaces, other people parking in the queuing spaces 'cos the rest of the car park is full, who's waiting, who's gone for a coffee while they wait etc etc etc I can see chaos unless it's controlled. Thoughts?
I mean, it was pretty busy at Rugby and the queueing seemed to go fairly smoothly with everyone knowing when it was their turn. I guess your scenario could happen but with any luck the number of charging spots will increase at the same rate as demand to hopefully make that rare. Certainly no worse than the queueing round the block at petrol stations that has happened a few times when there have been fuel shortages. I suppose we'll have to wait and see.
Exeter can be bad - because there is nowhere to queue, and the chargers are all on the exit road… they need to move the exit round so that the chargers aren’t blocked by cars trying to leave.
@davetakesiton Well worth a watch as you used some of the highest priced chargers out there. With the Tesla app you can get it down to 40p kwh
Well, we did get a discount on the ionity chargers but yeah, it'd be nice to pay less, of course. It was also more about the stops, as those were convenient for us. Thanks for the tip though.
Charging infrastructure rollout is slow because Hydrogen will be the way to go in about another ten years time.
The car industry marketing guys are now working on how to get their customers to buy into it.
I doubt hydrogen will ever be viable for ground transportation. Let's see who's right in 10 years time.
Well Done 👍👍👍 where did kat put that pizza
She has a special pizza stomach.
75p per KWh, wow that's mental!
Yeah, it's pretty high right now. It's been a lot lower than that in the past and I expect will become cheaper again soon. Charging at home is way cheaper though, and that's what we do the vast majority of the time.
Crazy price, given electricity is the only (possibly) green fuel, you would think they would subsidise it! & not just for car charging.
Yeah it's green alright... coal or natural gas powe plant most likely
@@erictuffelmire6826 I'll just leave this here: ruclips.net/video/bMA2uudMgsQ/видео.html
It's a lot, but it helps to pay for more chargers, and most people do most of their charging at home, where it's a lot cheaper.
Interesting, I’m not sure ice drivers would tolerate so many different processes…..looking forward to the tipping point when ev overtake ice
People fear change but it's not as scary as they think.
Ask an ICE driver 25 years ago if they would be happy choosing between leaded, unleaded, premium, non premium, E10, E20 and diesel, and in some cases wrong choice and your engine is toast or at best its £500 to get the car flatbedded and drained.
The processes happily are being simplified to either swipe a credit card or swipe another card that gets a discount (Im sure ICE drivers would happily use a card if it gave them say 10% off, unfortunately teh early charger operators shot themselves in the foot with demand for apps, pre payment and a lot of personal info with no quid pro quo sucha s discounst or whatever and that legacy still lingers and taints the whole process.
Or (and I'm not a Tesla owner) look at how much simpler that process is for Tesla. Plug in. Thats it. There isnt a second step.Easier than fossil. That is hopefully where its all heading with the recent US announcements,
And between cash, card, pay at pump, fuel card…
Interesting thought but probably 99% or more of EV drivers ARE ICE drivers either still or in the recent past.
There is no them and us. We're all just road users at the end of the day.😊
I may have missed it in the video, but why did you not book overnight accommodation with charging? Waking up to a full battery for the return would have been less stressful and made the trip home quicker. Many people under estimate the value of destination charging at a low rate of charge while you are doing stuff without needing the car. Destination charging also tends to be cheaper, so helps keep the costs down too. An example, last year needed to do a 150 mile trip with some running around at the destination, two overnight stays and trip home. Probably did 400 miles total on the trip, but the hotel had chargers so there was no need to stop to charge at any point. Made the whole trip in the car easy and relaxed while we could focus on the point of the trip.
We booked a hotel that was convenient for our purposes given the reason for our trip. It was not at all stressful adding that extra stop on the way back. It would have taken more time and stress to find a hotel with a charger than just making that extra stop. I don't dispute the convenience of destination charging, it just wasn't our priority for this particular trip. If the hotel happened to have a charger then that would have been great, of course.
@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Agree, if finding a hotel with charger wasn't convenient then don't, otherwise it a case of the tail wagging the dog.
Just interested, do you have to back in to charge…. I’m a mobility scooter user and my scooter needs to be in my boot. It would be a faff to have to take it out, then back in to charge then walk to scooter…
The charging cables are about as long as petrol station hoses so you can reach the charging socket if it's at the wrong end of the car, as it were. But it is easier to reach if you back it in, yes. Some EVs have the charging socket at the front though (I think the Nissan Leaf does it that way), so that would be a more convenient setup for you, I'd think.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk thanks. I enjoyed your video! My next car will probably be electric, but we have a few years before that one
When you were waiting for the first charge, we’re you clear about the queueing protocol?
Yeah, it was actually pretty straightforward as you could see who arrived after you, so knew when your turn was. Everyone was very courteous and asked each other for clarification if required.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk good to know. 🙏
All chargers should work that good.
They're getting better all the time.
Great video! I’m surprised the Fiat 500e charges almost double what the Chevy Bolt EV does! Definitely a car I’m considering now when it hopefully finally arrives in the US.
It's a great little car. Lots of fun to drive.
Costs are needed- having to queue adds a major impediment
Costs are in the video (see the chapter markers). Have you never queued for petrol/diesel?
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk I have an electric car on order but now I am having doubts
@@mikefitzgerald8145 if you can charge from home it's super cheap (especially if you can get a good time of use tariff such as Octopus Go). We do almost all our charging at home and it saves a lot of time not having to go to a petrol station. Public charging is only needed very occasionally for these longer trips.
Tim how do you find the driving position in the 500, asking as reviewers make it sound like there isn’t enough room for two feet around the pedals… but other than this everything is liked…🤔
Yeah, my left foot doesn't really have enough room so I have to sort of pull it back towards the seat a bit, but it's not so bad once you get used to it. Otherwise the car is great!
Interesting video. The fastest charger ive used is 50kw/h , do you remember how much you paid for the superfast charger. I wish other users were as considerate as yourselves with regards to charging etiquette. 😊
Erm, I think it was about 70p/kWh. Not sure exactly. Pretty pricey, for sure. I'd be perfectly happy with 50kW. These just happened to be the most convenient for our journey. I'll be looking for cheaper and slower ones for the next long trip, to see how that compares as an experience.
Thats interesting, my council has just increased public 50kw chargers to 70p per kw! Its fast becoming more expensive than petrol or diesel!
@@willielarsson9651 Oof, yeah, that's a lot. I estimated that parity with petrol would be at about 50p/kWh so yeah, that is more expensive than running a petrol car. Unless you can charge from home for a lot less than that I can see why some folks would be put off of EV ownership. I hope something will be done about the high cost of public charging, if the government is serious about encouraging its uptake.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk good to know that the rough point of parity between petrol and EV is circa 50p/kW. I have to say though, I love driving an EV and I don't miss going into petrol stations!
@@willielarsson9651 oh boy, we totally agree. Charging at home is so convenient, and the 500e is such fun to drive.
So how much did that cost you then? Can't seem to find a price in the comments?
You mean the car or the journey? The journey cost is explained near the end.
just adding some knowledge to you, try to do the same route and use lower power chargers where it becomes cheaper if you always use fast charging it becomes more expensive, go out and compare it
Yup, we picked the chargers for convenience rather than price. That was our choice.
Someone was saying that CCS2 in Europe was a better handle than CCS1 in the US. That’s the same handle as here in the US and the cable is just as thick.
It's a two hand job, for sure.
The Euro CCS is similar to the US CCS plug but not the same. The Type 2 part is capable of three phase charging on AC which typically allows 11 or 22 KW load speed if the car is capable.
99% of my charging is done at home , mostly solar too . Saves me a fortune .
Yup, can't beat it. Solar plus EV is a perfect combo.
I do not understand the reason for buying a electric car, when it costs more to run than a petrol car, perhaps you could enlighten me??
It doesn't cost more to run than a petrol car most of the time, only when using the public charging network. If you charge at home most of the time (which is the case for a lot of people) the running cost is a fraction of that of a petrol car. The public charging network prices are very high right now but for home charging you could be getting 9.5 p/kWh instead (using the Octopus Go tariff, for example). If the electricity price was about 50 p/kWh that would be roughly the same cost to run, so even on the current price cap (~30 p/kWh) it's still cheaper to run an EV. Service costs are also typically much lower, as there is less wear and tear. Plus there is currently no road tax for EVs. The only time it costs more to run is if you rely on the public charging network, which is currently >50 p/kWh, although that should start coming down now that the price of wholesale electricity has dropped recently.
They're also brilliant fun to drive. So smooth and so much torque.
The Public charger network was way cheaper until the hike in energy prices. while the price of fuel has come down again but the EV charging networks have kept up the prices. this is a bit of a dissapointment and will deter new adopters. however if you charge at home and also at your destination. In all, an EV is definitely cheaper to run in the long term.
Indeed. 99% of our charging will be at home so it'll work out way cheaper than an ICE car, for sure.
Ok, how far did you go, and how much did it cost ??
All that is in the video.
In the time you waited for charging to even commence you can add 400 miles of range to a petrol Fiat 500! Also, if you rely on public charging at an average price of 70p per KWh that’s about £30 for a full charge not far from the petrol cost. So unless you have free charging at work or cheap rates at home it really doesn’t seem worth it to me. I wouldn’t mind the inconvenience if it was cheaper or faster to charge not to mention reliability and availability! Enjoyed the video how it showed the true reality of EV public charging
Like we said in the video, if you can charge from home it's significantly cheaper. And you're never really waiting for it to charge, you're charging whilst doing other things most of the time, so actually it saves you time in most situations (we never need to visit a petrol station in a normal month because we just charge at home, so that saves us a lot of time too). And the price of public charging should come down soon now that wholesale electricity prices have dropped, bringing it more in line with the cost of petrol.
I have owned EVs for 7 years now and don't mind the "inconvenience" though I agree the cost saving vs petrol fot long trips is much less now than when I started on my ev journey. However, for me the real trump card of evs apart from the cost saving is the convenience for everyday trips. I only plug in at home every few days and never have to go out of my way to a petrol station.
I hope all charging stations are as easy as that i have my eye on a mini ev called city transformer which apparently should be launched 2024-2025
They're not hard to use at all, and they all have pretty clear instructions.
Any reason not to have a roof? It never rains in UK?
Eh?
A lot of short stops my punto would have made it there and back on one tank and i would have only stopped when I wanted to not when the car wanted to
We stopped when we wanted to. Please see my pinned comment.
I’m sure you wanted to be cautious for your first road trip and try out the different networks but if you want minimise the stops if you can plug in as low as possible around 1-10% you’ll get the fastest charging rate to get you enough to get to your next pit stop
Yup, we just wanted to stop for coffee and lunch at those places, so we topped up from where we got to. Generally we'd push it a bit lower, if convenient.
Tim - painfully impatient whenever plugging in. Just relax and give it 30 seconds to connect and draw power!!
You seemed to charge short of needing to and therefore stopped more than you needed to? Gloucester to Norwich is under 200 miles and your car does 150, you could have just stopped once surely? I also use Electroverse and have the app (best car charging app for CarPlay, and free!) and so when my car first warns me charge is low (31 miles) I either drive on a bit or pull up Electroverse for nearby chargers. Have never been more than 5 miles from one yet. I’ve learned not to faff (pay for) the route planner apps, which are a waste of money!
My long journey rules:
- Leave fully charged if poss.
- Use Electroverse app when car warns you’re getting low to find an upcoming charger to stop at (doesn’t have to be Electroverse as app shows non as well)
Charging short of what we need to? I've had other people complain that we charged over 80%! I can't win. We stopped when we wanted to stop for breaks and lunch, I know we could go further but that wasn't what we wanted to do. I'm sorry I seemed impatient to you, it was our first time using the public chargers so I was interested in what was going on. I've spent no money on apps. We did leave with 100% charge. Ok?
I don’t mean charging % I mean you stopped more than you needed to, which would have added time to your journey.
Glad to hear you’ve not spent money on apps, it’s easy to try them all but honestly no need to. Electroverse is a great system. I use that or contactless if charger not part of the scheme.
Good miles per kWh for a long journey. Hope you’re enjoying EV life.
@@bjblyth we stopped as often as we wanted to, though. Not everyone wants to drive for 2+ hours at a time.
i think you should switch from ml/kwh to the reverse kW/mile, so you can calculate the consumption differences with various speeds much better. i believe knowing the consumption is more effective in calculating the costs - what doYOU think?
p.s.: my actual consumption is 11.8 kwh/100 km.= 6.7 ml/kwh in urban use
the costs? well thanks to mr putin the costs for 1 kW kilowatt has doubled from 25 to 51 €c. which means my calculation turned into dust.
but in germany you can receive a reward of 300€ per year for not producing CO2 (THG) with your car, which means that i can buy ~810 kwh with the actual price of 37€c using my 11 kw wallbox. last year it with 26€c was 1100kW
I don't know why it's more common to use mi/gallon or mi/kWh in the UK. I know a lot of Europe uses the inverse, as you suggest. Just historical differences, I guess. Very handy that you get a payment per year for your EV, that would certainly go a long way to encouraging take-up in the UK.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk and we got a government rebate of nearly 10.000€ last year. which resulted in a net price of 2200€. today the price has risen +4000 € and the rebate is 2000 less. which makes it 6000€ more expensive today than last year. i was lucky 🙂
@@friederich66 wow, that's still way better support than we get here.
Electroverse and filter just Chargepoint = 37p/kWh. 😉
Yup, if convenient.
The coffee sellers will make a fortune. 400 miles in my diesel and loads left with zero stops for fuel. Ev is the way to go but makes no sense for me at the moment.
See my pinned comment regarding coffees.
Either we pay today or we pay tomorrow but we are no longer living in the twentieth century! My point is that it is time to get off fossil fuels.
@@rogermartinez78 Fossil fuels are the largest source of energy to produce electricity therefore contradicts the point your making.
@@arisavvides1970 that's not true, actually: ruclips.net/video/bMA2uudMgsQ/видео.html
Not practical for me wait till the pay per mile comes in for everyone including EVS
Fair enough
How much is a pre charge fees 🤔
There is a test payment but that gets refunded as soon as the charging session ends, so you don't pay any fees.
I was told you need the charging app in order to pay . It wouldn’t except card without
Most chargers accept contactless payments without an app nowadays (as demonstrated). There are some that require an app but the vast majority don't.
@@TimAndKatsGreenWalk Thanks .
I would be very careful holding your card in the same hand as the plug. I know you were holding the camera but I cracked the card and thus the aerial round the edge of it holding it this way. I had to get a new card.
Yeah, not my finest hour. I won't be doing it again.
Would be nice to be told how much the charging cost.
Watch to the end of the video or use the chapter markers 🤷
That 20p home charging hurts… 7.5p makes substantial difference.
The export rate wins it for us though. In winter we'll go back to Go.
Absolutely. Depends on your export capacity and milage.
Still feels painful…
You could take your monthly average p/kWh for this comparison…
Does Kat not drive?
Yes, this is her commute car. I do the long journeys.
With two of you I'd have sent one of you in to order the food or coffee's while you did the top up. Or one of you nip out to move the car mid meal.
Could have done that. Didn't want to.
On my last long trip (last weekend) in my Tesla Model 3, I went from Peterborough to Margate and back. I did not charge on the way there and charged at the Turner Gallery Level 2 charger using Electroverse like you using our ten pound credit. It was cheap at 36p per kWH but very slow not even managing 7kw. This was fine as we charged while we visited Margate. It gave us plenty of range to charge at the Tesla Superchargers at Dartford Crossing. A 12 minute charge there at I think 42p per KwH. So total time waiting to charge on the 400 mile round trip less than 15 minutes and considerably cheaper than even a Diesel ICE Car.
Thanks for the video, I was interested to see what it would be like in such a small EV.
Very nice. Yeah, we'd have been quite happy with 36p power kWh!