223 - The First Charge Episode

Gary: Hi, I'm Gary and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles, and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today, we'll be looking at what to do the first time you charge your new electric vehicle to ensure it's a success. Before we start, I wanted to say that I hope you enjoyed last week's episode, it's an important topic.

I think we did it justice. Let me know if you think I missed anything. Info@evmusings.com. Our main topic of discussion today is your first EV charge. So, I know somebody who took delivery of their first electric vehicle recently.

Naturally, following my instructions, they went out and tried to do some public charging when they didn't need to do it, which is superb. However, instead of trying various different charge point operators in a situation where a charge wasn't needed, they tried one local operator and then they went on a reasonably long journey expecting to be able to charge at their destination. But, it will probably not surprise you to learn that they did hit a number of issues.

Now, some of these issues were unavoidable. For example, their charge was unplugged by somebody else at one place and that's inexcusable. But, some of them were totally avoidable.

Now, I want to talk today about the three errors that were made by this individual, who we'll call Bob. Now, I'm not doing this to shame Bob or anyone who's been in a similar situation. I'm doing this because there is a feeling amongst the general public, I believe, that the transition from internal combustion engine to electric should be totally seamless.

But, to those who say, we shouldn't need training on how to drive an EV, I would ask, how many of you needed training when you went from coal-fired heating your houses to a gas boiler with a thermostat, a pilot light and a heating schedule? How many ran your boiler at a high flow temperature for years, wasting energy and increasing your builds because nobody told you? Or phones, how many of you went right from an indestructible Nokia phone with physical buttons and a small screen to a smartphone with no buttons and a huge screen and the need to get out and download things from the app store?

How many did that without training? Who made that transition seamlessly? Very few of us did, I believe.

You had to learn about things like mobile data, nano-sims, app stores, iCloud accounts, Google Play. It wasn't difficult, for the most part, but you had to learn about it to get the best out of your experience. Or even internal combustion engine cars themselves.

You had to be taught how to drive them, you had to be taught how to refuel them. Nobody knows how to use a petrol pump perfectly first time out. You learn by watching others do it.

And we still get hundreds of thousands of people putting diesel in petrol cars and vice versa every year. So it's not that straightforward. So with that in mind, let's start.

The first error Bob made was he didn't download Zapmap. Well, actually, that's not true. He did download Zapmap because his wife knew about the app, but he didn't use it appropriately.

One of the features of Zapmap is the ability to check the charges where you're going and check the live status where available. Now, Bob visited three different charging locations to find that the charges weren't working. A quick glance at Zapmap would have ensured that this didn't happen.

Now, secondly, Bob didn't filter the charges. Now, it's a rookie mistake to assume that all charges are created equal or equally, to be precise. In an ideal world, this would be the situation.

However, Zapmap produced a survey every year, which ranks the top charge point operators in order of customer satisfaction. The rookie mistake that Bob made was that he didn't filter out all those in the bottom five of that list. As a result, Bob ended up going to a genie point charger, which was, of course, not working.

Now, make sure that you have a filter which selects only the reliable charge point operators. The top five or six can be found on the annual Zapmap customer survey results. The link to last year's results are in the show notes.

And three, Bob downloaded lots and lots of apps. Now, there is a common misconception propagated by certain aspects of both mainstream and social media that the only way you can get a charge on any charger in the United Kingdom is to download a specific app for that charger. Now, this is both inaccurate and misleading.

Yes, most of the main charge point operators have an app that you can use to start and stop the charges. My personal favourites, Osprey and Instavolt, both have apps. However, I rarely use them.

And we talked about apps in episode 221 at the beginning of the season. Now, the reason I rarely use apps is because the vast majority of public rapid chargers allow you to start and stop using the contactless card. It's actually a little bit more than that.

There are a number of apps referred to as roaming apps, which have an app that allows you to start and stop multiple different chargers from multiple different charge point operators. Zappay is one, which is included in the Zapmap app. Bonnet is another.

Octopus Electroverse is a third. Now, with just these apps, you can start the vast majority of chargers on the UK network. Yes, there are some which aren't included in these roaming apps.

And I would suggest that perhaps these charge point operators should be avoided for the time being. As I just mentioned, I did a whole episode on apps earlier this season, episode 221. Have a listen to that if you want to understand why you don't need a phone full of apps to run an electric car.

So, if you cannot or don't want to use a contactless card, then a minor handful of apps should suffice to both locate a charger, start a charger, and pay for the charge. There's no need to download a new app for every charge point operator. Now, those were the three main mistakes that Bob made when he tried to find a charger to charge his car.

Now, I want to point out here that Bob's not alone in doing this. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Whenever you read an article in the media about a reporter who had an issue with an electric car, usually after picking it up one Friday evening in London and deciding to head to Scotland for the weekend in it, they will usually have encountered one or more of these issues.

It's a severe lack of education that causes problems like this, not the EVs and the infrastructure itself. So, knowing what Bob did wrong, let's go through and understand what good looks like in this situation. The first thing you should do, as I have said on several episodes of this podcast, is to try your first public charge when you're in a low stress situation.

That means when you don't actually need a charge. You need to be above about 50% state of charge on the battery.

Next thing you need to do is work out where you are going to actually do the charge itself and to do that we need some guidelines. So install Zapmap on your phone, open it up, go into the filter section and do the following. Slide the power type bar across until it highlights those chargers which have a power rating of 50kW or higher.

This ensures that you're just looking for rapid chargers not the slower AC chargers and we'll look at those later. Then go into the network section in the filters and select only those that are in the top half of the Zapmap customer satisfaction list. They're there for a reason.

Hit the apply button and your filter will become active. Now quick sidebar, this might be a controversial thing to say, especially if your local chargers are mostly from those in the bottom half of the list. But if you want reliable chargers that tend to work first time, every time, those are the ones you need to go for.

Now you may have a legitimate reason for wanting to use one of the lower rated CPOs. Perhaps your company has an agreement with them or something similar. That's fine.

Even the lower rated ones have chargers that work from time to time, or maybe even all the time. But on the whole, they're rated low for a reason. Remember that.

The other good thing about choosing these operators that are in the top half of the list is that you can use them without needing to download apps. They'll all accept contactless. Does this mean you shouldn't download the apps?

No, of course not. Some operators allow you to get discounts if you stop using their apps and we'll look at things like this shortly. For now, we're going to go and use contactless.

Next thing you need to do is find one of the chargers that have been filtered to show you and click on it. Check the number of units it says are available. It'll show you a little icon with two numbers separated by a slash.

It might say 3of 4 or 5 of 6 or 8 of 8. These are the number of available units at the time that you're checking. If there are units available, drive to the site and park at one of the available units.

Open the charging flap. On your vehicle, plug the connector in. It should be the big connector with the two round pins at the bottom and not the one that looks like the cable provided with your car for home charging.

If you run a car that needs CHAdeMO charging, this will usually be a round connector with two large round plugs in the middle. It'll normally be blue in colour, but not always. Once the cable's connected, go to the unit.

This is where the fun starts. Every manufacturer and every charge point operator will have slightly different next steps depending on the type of unit you're using. The first thing to do usually is to find the contactless card reader.

This will probably be attached to the unit somewhere on the side near the screen. In new units it may be integrated into the unit. Swipe or tap your bank card on the reader and watch the screen.

Follow the instructions. Charge. It's that simple.

But of course, the devil is in the details. Let's talk about pre-authorisation. Just like when you used to fill up with petrol, the bank will block an amount of money from your account to ensure that you have enough money to pay.

Unlike petrol pumps, where the amount is normally £99, the amount will vary depending on the charge point operator you're using. It can go from as little as £1, pre-authorisation with the grid cert, right up to £60 with BP Pulse. In theory, this amount never leaves your account, it's just ring fenced to ensure that you can pay.

When the charge is finished, the pre-authorisation is removed from the ring fence and placed back in your accounts. Now in practice, different things happen at different operators at the moment. Some physically take the money and then refund it, some ring fence it and return it immediately, some ring fence it and return it within a set period of time.

Now I did hear a horror story of one person who used a charge point operator, not in the top half of the customer survey list and they were unable to actually charge at a particular site. The ring fence money was kept ring fenced for over 30 days and she actually had to call the company to get them to physically release it. Now the whole area of pre-authorisations, etc, is a bit of a minefield and we'll talk about this in an upcoming episode this season when we cover payments in general.

The other aspect of this is that some units recognise which cable you're using and will start the charger once the payment has been pre-authorised. Other ones, usually those that permit multiple vehicles to charge at one unit, need you to select which cable you're using. This will be displayed on the screen and you'll have to select the appropriate one.

Make sure you choose the right one or your car won't charge. So now comes the fun bit for you. Your car's charging, you've got a little bit of time to kill, go to the loo, grab a coffee, etc.

But at some point you're going to need to stop your charge. Usually you can do this one of two ways. On some chargers there's a button on the screen which allows you to stop the charge.

Now big flashing warning light here. This isn't the big red emergency stop button that you'll find on a lot of units. Don't press this one at all unless there's a genuine emergency such as an electrical short circuit or a fire or something similar.

The emergency stop button should never be used to actually stop a car from charging in normal circumstances. If you're on an ABB unit, which is generally the type that companies such as GridServe use, these will usually have a stop button on the screen. Now this is really convenient.

However, it does mean that anybody can stop your charge without your knowledge, which can be a bit of a problem. Anecdotally I am aware of someone who pulled up to a bank of Gridserve chargers and walked down the length of them pushing the stop button on every screen to terminate the charging sessions. Then he got back into his petrol car and drove away.

No reason, just because he could. However on most other units you will have to present the payment card to the reader again. This will confirm that it's you doing this and the unit will stop.

Remove the cable, put it back into its holster, close your charging flap and go. Now of course that's the ideal world. There are several things that can go wrong with this process but as a whole it's probably the least complex way of starting and stopping a charge.

There are other ways and we'll look at those in a little while. But let's also talk about AC charging. That's the slower charging similar to what you do if you can charge at home.

It's also known, ironically, as fast charging and it relates to charge speeds of up to 22kW, although 7kW and 11kW are usually the most common. You'll pretty easily recognise an AC charger. With a small number of exceptions it won't have its own cable.

There is a charge point operator based primarily in Oxford called Ezeecharge who provide AC chargers that look just like rapid chargers. They've got big units with screens and cables. They're actually AC chargers.

They're great units but they do make my job of explaining this a little bit more difficult. The key thing about AC chargers is that they take a lot longer to charge than rapid chargers and they generally don't allow you to pay by contactless. There are a number of exceptions and if you listen to this several years into the future I hope the situation has changed and standalone contactless terminals have been installed everywhere to allow payment at multiple AC charge posts.

Because they don't take contactless they generally need to be initiated either by an RFID card or an app. But beware it's not always obvious where the RFID reader is located. Quick story I was at the British Motor Museum in Gaydon for an event last year and I arrived after dark one wet evening in December wanting to charge my car.

They have a number of AC chargers near the front door and I parked up next to one of them and in the gloom and the rain I searched all over the charger for some sort of RFID reader and I just couldn't find one. The unit itself was oval shaped and white it looked like a rather large medicine gel capsule or a big paracetamol tablet to be fair with rounded corners and I searched everywhere for the reader. Finally a colleague approached and he switched his phone light on and as he did so the light hit the charger at just the right angle and it illuminated a section of the top of the charger which had been embossed with an RFID logo.

You know the one I mean it looks like a triangular segment of ripples on a calm pond. Now once I saw that I touched the RFID card to it and it started charging immediately but this is an example where it was very easy to miss this. There was no marking, no pointers, nothing to indicate that the RFID reader was there.

Had I come during the day or when the sun was shining I would have seen it easily because it was a tactile feature of the unit but because it was dark and the actual details of the casing were unclear I couldn't see it. It was only the light from my colleague's phone that threw the shadow at the right angle to highlight the embossed logo so it was very inconvenient. So charging with an AC charger which you should only do if you're not in a rush will need either a network specific app to start the charge or a roaming app such as Zapmap or some sort of RFID card supplied either by the company whose AC charger this is or a roaming provider such as Bonnet, Octopus Electroverse or Shell Recharge.

Now the cards are always infinitely easier in my experience but the right app can be a lot more convenient as it will often allow you to start and stop an app from the comfort of your car which is especially good if the weather isn't as nice as it could be. So let's get back to Bob and what his next steps should be. We've identified that Bob had several issues which could be classified as self-inflicted due to lack of education.

If he downloaded Zapmap, filtered on reliable charge point operators, located only charges which were available and used contactless when he got there his charging experience would have been much much better. Of course that wouldn't have stopped him from experiencing the annoying of having somebody else unplug his charge before he's finished but that's a topic for a whole other episode of the podcast.

This season we continue to look at raising the awareness of carbon literacy with our listeners and one way we're doing that is with a Carbon Fact ad read by Carbon Literacy Trainer, Anne Snelson.

Anne: Emissions from SUV style vehicles are 20% higher than those of conventional cars and they're now wiping out all the benefits achieved through reducing fuel emissions over the last 10 years. According to the International Energy Agency if SUVs were a country they'd be equivalent to the sixth most polluting country in the world.

Gary : It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with your listeners.

We're big fans of micro EVs here on the show and I got to drive the Microlino earlier this year at an EV conference and it was a lot of fun. If you're US based and looking for something that's sort of a hybrid between that and the Renault Twizy you might want to check out the Eli Electric Zero Microcar. It's a fully enclosed low speed electric vehicle, LSEV, or a neighborhood electric vehicle, NEV, or a short commute vehicle, SCF, or electric microcar, however you want to refer to it, with a range of around 90 miles and a top speed of 25 miles an hour.

That might sound a bit useless but considering the average daily drive in the US is well under 90 miles and urban traffic limits speed to not much more than the 25 miles an hour the Zero can reach you might be onto something. It has heat, air conditioning, power steering, regenerative braking, ABS, an electric parking brake, USB port, sunroof, keyless entry, rear view camera, parking sensors, LED lights, and options such as a Bluetooth speaker and a Sony infotainment system among other things. The base model is priced starting at $11,990 with the Zero Plus model offering features such as a vegan leather interior and more at a slightly higher price point.

What do you thing? A bargain or not worth it?

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show.

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms, or other general messages to pass on to me I can be reached at info@evemusings. com. On the socials I'm on Twitter or X at MusingsEV.

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Check out the links in the show notes for more information as well as a link to my regular EV Musings newsletter and associated articles. Now I know you're probably driving or walking or jogging right now as you listen but if you can remember and you enjoy this episode, drop me a review in iTunes please. It really helps me out.

If you've reached this part of the podcast and are still listening, thank you. Why not let me know you've got to this point by tweeting me at MusingsEV with the words Charging Virgins. #ifyouknowyouknow. Nothing else.

Thanks as always to my co-founder Simone. You know he's often told me he struggles with new technology. At his heart he's an old fashioned sleeve rolled up oily hands mechanic type.

So whenever anything advanced or newfangled as he likes to refer to it comes along he's always hesitant to be an early adopter. Sometimes he just doesn't see the sense in it. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

How many of you went right from an indestructible Nokia phone with physical buttons and a small screen to a smartphone with no buttons and a huge screen? Thanks for listening. Bye!