Someone Else's Problem: Plug Me In, Daddy - Another Tesla Model 3 Performance

Not much to report on the car itself, I washed it after returning from my holiday on the east coast and took a friend on a mini roadtrip to thank my friend who gifted me Deathloop. it's now done around £3700

However, the charging on my journey to and from my holiday destination was something else. There aren't many chargers above 50kW in the east of England, when going on holiday I could basically make it all the way on one charge but that would leave me with almost nothing when I arrive and then very few places to charge up. Charging the car at the destination itself isn't allowed because the electricity is included in the accommodation price.

Anyway, I had a choice of three places to stop and charge. The first is the Tesla supercharger I used last year (the only supercharger in Norfolk) and where I got caught speeding by a sneaky van. The second is Ionity but I'm not paying their prices and finally there's a BP station right on the quickest route that now has three 150kW chargers. Yay, I'll use those.

When I arrived there was a group in a Taycan looking confused but I plugged my car in, paid on the second card I tried because it wouldn't accept the first and then waited for the charge current to bump up above 25kW. It didn't. The group with the Taycan couldn't even either of the other chargers to connect to their car but it could've been their car. They left and I called up BP, who rebooted my charger. After it had finished rebooting it briefly got up to 26kW, before dropping to 24kW and I got bored after half an hour. They're charging £0.42/kWh for this, which is very cheeky.

I topped the car up at the cheaper of the two public 50kW chargers (there are several chargers around but a majority are private), which was OK as it chugged along at 43kW, then on the way home I stopped at BP again to give it another try. This was the 'fuel crisis' weekend so I was concerned about even getting in, luckily it was early enough in the morning that there were no other cars there. This time it managed a whopping 37kW! I charged for about 10 minutes and left. This gave me about 10% charge, which was OK.

I'm becoming tired of the lack of progress with EV chargers in this country.
 
Ugh… I’ve heard stories like this about weird makes of chargers and even big name (cough ABB cough) ones before. Do you know who built those BP chargers? And, if you tried a different one on your way back, that’s really weird… what are the odds for both of them to be defective like that?

On Twitter I recently became privy to a conspiracy I hadn’t heard before: IONITY always shutting down one or two of their chargers per site (annoying to those folk, 100% of sites have one charger off/kaputt) in order to save on grid connection cost…
 
You probably won’t be surprised by me saying that they’re made by ABB, it was on the lengthy boot screen that looked suspiciously like a Raspberry Pi boot screen. All three seemed to be defective in some way, the helpline isn’t much help because all they can do is reboot it and shrug.

I need to use a BP 50kW charger later today, probably made by ABB too but it’s been reliable in the past.
 
I need to use a BP 50kW charger later today, probably made by ABB too but it’s been reliable in the past.
Yeah for some reason the 50s are mostly ok… although the ones at our closest ikea have been showing internal variable names instead of the right button texts for close to two years now. I’ve never seen the advertised 125 A, but hey, reliable 40 or so kW is at least close to what you’d expect.
 
Well I take back what I said, I went to the charger as planned tonight and they've removed the 50kW stickers. It's now a full fat '175kW' charger. Except it isn't. My charge tonight averaged 52.4kW (it was around 53kW for most of the time and then dropped), however because this is now an 'ultrafast' charger I was charged at full price. It apparently doesn't matter what the charging speed/current you actually received.

I don't understand this, or why I on these smart machines I can't select a lower speed at the cheaper price they offer. I loaded credit onto their app as it gets you a few pence discount on 50kW chargers, but not on '175kW' chargers.

Now the petrol station had no petrol, so I can't complain too much but I'm sick of this money-grabbing.
 
It apparently doesn't matter what the charging speed/current you actually received.

I don't understand this, or why I on these smart machines I can't select a lower speed at the cheaper price they offer.
Because you’re occupying a very expensive piece of infrastructure that they could then be making more money off of. From the operators perspective, 100% understandable.

That piece of junk not being able to supply as advertised, though: while other story, I would complain.
 
The 150/175kW chargers are typically specced to be current-limited, and supply their full power at 800V only. Teslas and other 400V EVs can't get full power from them. Fully agree that pricing them above other units based on theoretical capability vs actually delivered power is bullshit though.
 
Because you’re occupying a very expensive piece of infrastructure that they could then be making more money off of. From the operators perspective, 100% understandable.
Yeah that makes sense, oh well I won't be cluttering up their forecourt any time soon.

The 150/175kW chargers are typically specced to be current-limited, and supply their full power at 800V only. Teslas and other 400V EVs can't get full power from them. Fully agree that pricing them above other units based on theoretical capability vs actually delivered power is bullshit though.
While I don't have proof, I don't believe these chargers are capable of 800V. :unsure:

There's a thread on the Polestar forum ripping them to bits, this was my source for them not being 800V:
https://www.polestar-forum.com/threads/finally-today-i-got-to-use-some-of-my-bp-pulse-credit.3334/
 
Yeah the current limit may be there, but there are enough 150kW chargers on the market whose current cap is at or roundabout 375A (I.e. 150 kW at 400V). Because people are deservedly mad at the misleading label (side most cars by far are 400V). While technically correct (the best kind of correct) - I’d still argue the maker of the charger should take the reality of his marker into account and not sell something on those misleading claims. If anything, they’ll ruin their name with the customers…
 
Aaand... gone. The nice bloke from the car supermarket dealership thing drove off in it today after personally delivering my replacement, that I almost gave away by mistake. Farewell Nebula. I didn't take a photo, I didn't shed a tear. It was a good experience, all things considered. I got a good price for it.

Reasons for replacing a Tesla?

I bought it with the intention to put 15,000 miles a year on it and was paying the finance and insurance to cover that, despite only putting just under 4,000 miles on in 18 months. I very much enjoyed the way it drove and of course the loopy torque it had to offer, however the charging situation at home wasn't working and I despised having to go out and unravel the 50M cable every time I wanted to charge it for a day. My recent experiences with non-Tesla public charging were the straws that broke the camel's back and I wanted to move on. I never suffered from range anxiety, but often from charging anxiety.

I have every intention of owning another EV in the future, I'm just going to put the money towards a house with a decent driveway instead. I don't care much about the house, I just want a good driveway and a garage if possible.

Post 69, signing off.
(I deleted an old message to make sure this was still 69 despite it saying 70 up there)

Edit: Oh yeah one thing I forgot to mention - the audio system really needs an auto volume function because I found myself constantly having to adjust the volume as I went faster and slower for different speed limits. The MX-5 has that feature and even Bugsy had it in 2001, so there's no excuse. I don't know if it's just arrogance in a 'our cars are quiet they don't need it' kind of way, the performance model wasn't silent on our roads so I'm damn sure it won't be in the US.
 
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