Colin drives a FIAT 500e Cabriolet 40kWh 2022.
He shares his experiences to-date on public charging.
What do you think of the UK public charging network in general?
ChargePlace Scotland is a great unified system that makes it easy to charge with one account. I also use the Octopus charge card and Pod Point App. The availability of Tesla Superchargers is a game changer and should become more widespread in coming months. The biggest benefit there is is the 99.5% uptime that none of the competitors can match and the number of actual charging units throughout the UK is huge with between 150kW and 250kW of charging. Obviously my little FIAT cannot take full advantage of that as it only goes up to 80kW of charging but that is a significant boost from the typical 50kW rapid charger.
What and where are your favourite UK public chargers?
Tesla Superchargers are by far the best chargers in the UK, and they tend to have lots of charging units at any site. They don’t have buttons or screens to break down and are therefore virtually never offline when you get to them. The app gives you plenty of notice of the availability of the chargers before you arrive.
What’s been your best experience with a UK public charger?
Using a Tesla car with a Tesla supercharger is clearly the best experience possible. No card or app required. The car talks directly to the charger, so you just plug in. They always work and the car will redirect you if the chargers you were heading to are busy. This is the way forward, everything else is just pretty rubbish actually.
What’s been your worst experience with a UK public charger?
Worse experience is with multiple bp pulse chargers that have been left to rot out of operation for months. Cannot trust an oil company with the future of electrification. Pretty obvious conflict, eh?
What’s got to change about public charging in the UK to get more people driving electric cars?
More ultra rapids on the trunk roads is definitely happening but I still think we need many, many more reliable slower AC chargers in the car parks, especially for overnight destination stays.
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