EV Charging Disaster | Why This Went Completely Wrong
Now, massive traffic here, which means trying to spot EV chargers if they’re not really prominent is a problem because you’re holding up traffic. And this one, well, it’s not prominent because it says private land, permit holders only, pay on entry, Kandoka restaurant. Is this the place that you would expect to find an EV charger? Uh, this is Dave Takes It On. I’m Dave. This is not the easiest place to find in the first place. Our satnav on the Renault 5 tucked over there. Just went straight past it and onto the next main road. And that’s a huge nightmare because we then have to do a U-turn to get back onto this road, but there’s no easy turning point on this road and traffic is flowing really fast. Uh, so that was a bit of a problem for us. But we managed to get round here and we get in here and what do we find? Well, what we find is tucked away some Lego units. Uh so these are nice units. Uh 300 kW. Uh these are dual bay. So it means you’re going to get at least 150 kW if someone’s next door. Uh 300 kW if not. So my little Renault 5. Oh, got to be careful here. Uh that one’s not charging. So that’s for the private car park that we’re parked in. Uh so the Renault there won’t take more than 100 kW. So these are more than ample for that. Uh where they get a little bit more tricky to justify is the price. We’re going to come back to that in just a minute. So chargers are totally familiar to us. They all come from the same source. BP pulse shell recharge fast. They all use these. In fact half the CPUs out there use these. Uh they’re good reliable chargers, very powerful depending what modules you put in them. We have seen these down at about 150 kW and also as high as 400 kW. So there’s quite a variety depending on what you want. These they’ve chosen are the 300 kW. We can tell that cuz they’re the wider units. The 150s are much narrower than these. Now we are I’m really sad to say we are going to try and use these chargers. And the reason it’s sad to say is because yeah, we just came from filming a charger where they’re charging 30 p a kilowatt hour and these I don’t even want to say it. 84 per kilowatt hour. 84. And I’m going to have to plug in and see how good they are. Um it’s a terrible price. It’s an appalling price. But the really strange thing is they’ve been used. So, someone somewhere seems to think 84 is an acceptable price to charge your EV. I personally don’t. Seems I’m in the exception here. So, before we plug in at this price, uh who’s a Lego? Uh well, when we do a little bit of research, we find it’s a European company. Uh and they are just sort of starting to break through into the UK market. Over in Europe, they are massive apparently. uh 30 35,000 units, mostly Rapids and Ultra Rapids. Uh spread all throughout Europe. Uh very big over there. Haven’t checked the prices over there. Don’t really want to because we’re worried about here is the UK market. And in the UK, these are 84 p a kilowatt hour. Now, if you’re trying to break in to a very rapidly growing market in the UK, um might I suggest you don’t launch at 84 p per kilowatt hour. You’re almost up there with Instabol, Osprey, uh BP Pulse, Shell Recharge, uh Grid Ser, uh and those have uh really cemented themselves in already. So, if anyone wants to charge at those, they’ve got a wide choice of them. Would you travel here to save 5p? No, it’s not really worth it. So, they’ve got a real battle on their hands to try and get established here. And it’s not helped by that 84 p. Had they come in with these charges used by fastite for example at 75p or some of the others in down in the 60 or 70p they might be able to get established in the UK uh before they hike their prices back up which is what grids used to do. A lot of people won’t remember, but Grid Ser started off about 69p has now crept hasn’t crept up, rocketed up to 89 p. Uh, so that would have been my choice for a business model. Come in cheap, get a bit of a market, get a reputation, get yourself up. They don’t help themselves because they don’t even have an app. We can’t find an app on either the app store or Google store or whatever it is. Um, and so they’re not that easy to find. You can only find them really on Zap Map. Uh so you got to be looking on Zap Map before you even come across them. You’re not going to spot them when you drive past. We certainly didn’t and we were looking out for them. So you’re not going to spot them by chance and think, “Oh, let’s go in there.” Discover the 84P and then go, “Well, I’m here now. I may as well plug in.” So yeah, strange, but there’s obviously a couple of people here who are happy with them. They’re using them. And the location that we found here is not the best one. We filmed recently at night in an Algo in uh Burnley. I think it was uh Bolton, somewhere like that. Anyhow, and they were tucked away or they were really hard to find. And when we got into the location, all it was was a small square with the charges in it. The charger was lit up. The site wasn’t. So, it was pitch black. Horrible location. And if I was a young man or a young woman uh going to charge, I would feel very uneasy. This is another one. This is not a really nice place to pull into. Private parking. Once you get down here, we’ve seen no evidence whatsoever of any lights other than a street light, which will not give you very good uh coverage here. So, they’re not even nice location. So, you’ve got very poor location, massive busy traffic, no signage. There’s nothing we can see that says they’re in here. Uh, horrible price, 84p. Um, yeah, not the way to launch a new CPO into the UK in my humble opinion. So, here we go. Let’s see if we can get in. I don’t think any of them look enticing to reverse into very, very narrow bays. So, let’s see what we’ve got. [Music] Now, you know, it’s not a good location because backing into we get all sorts of beeps telling me, “Beware, beware, you’re going to hit something.” Uh, not a lot of room. Yeah, plenty of room there. I don’t know why all the beeps are going off. Anyway, uh we got charger here. I don’t Do I want to go a little bit further back? Actually, I think I’m going to have to. Yeah, not impressed with this location at all. [Music] And now he’s even narrower to get out. Yeah. Okay, this is not being thought through. I’m not impressed with this whatsoever. Uh, right. However, we’ve now come here and we now can’t get to the screen. Oh, yeah. What a what a great start for a charger location. Let’s have a look see if we can get in here. Yes, we can. Uh, right. So, it says exit uh instructions connectors. Now it says CCS. CCS doesn’t tell you which is Oh, yeah. Number one. Number one doesn’t tell you which of these is number one. Now, that’s really good, isn’t it? How do I know which is which? Right, let’s press number that one. And it’s going uh going to use RFID uh charge card. Let’s use that one. So this is Electraverse now. So let’s see what it does. RFID authenticating, right? So it’s going for it. Plug in the connector. This one’s flashing. I’m assuming it’s this one. Let’s pull that round a bit. I don’t want to strain the car. Okay. Oh, it’s gone blue. So, something’s happening somewhere. Uh, preparing charging session. Initializing ready. Preparing power delivery. [Music] Hooray. Okay, so we’ve got it charging at last. That’s not lit up yet. Strange. Uh, this one’s saying it’s charging. We’re at 37 38% state of charge. Getting 53 kwatt hours. That’s bumped up a little bit from the last one. So, these are quite powerful chargers. This seems to give a little bit more uh than the previous one. That hasn’t gone green. Does it normally go green? Um, it’s charging anyhow. Uh so yeah we got uh.5 of a kilowatt hour 1 minute 21 time 39% 56 kW okay so in favor of these and I have to give credit where it’s due these are charging 56 kW that’s a big boost over what we’ve seen before why I don’t entirely know at this point but they are seeming to charge at a faster rate than others that we’ve used today which all of which have exceeded the maximum speed of charging of this car. So, the fact these are 300 kW makes no difference against a 150 or 100 because this only charges just under 100. Uh, so this is quite impressive. So, let’s see what we’ve got now. It’s still um active station. That’s that one. So, we’re still seeing it’s uh 40% state of charge 56 kilow still. Uh so to answer one question that I sometimes get asked, does it make difference which charge you choose? Yes, it can do and it has done on this car. We were seeing 35 or 40 at another 120 kW charger. This one’s giving us 50 at roughly the same state of charge and we’re getting 50 uh 56% on this one. Interesting to say the least. Now, I’m really not interested in going any further. Not at this price, 84 p. So, we’ve achieved our objective. We got a charge. Electroverse works here. We’ll be able to see inside, get out of the rain, see what the Electroverse prices here. I’m assuming it’s going to be the same. Uh, and then we can be out of the rain on our way somewhere somewhere else a little bit less derelict, I suppose, is the is the phrase for it. Uh, so, let’s stop this charge. to see if we can stop it on here for this time. Uh, so here we go. Um, select this one. Does it give us a Yeah, it gives us a stop button. So, we’re going to go stop. Stop there. Are you sure you want to stop charging? Confirm. Okay. So, that’s actually really quick and easy to do on this one. That one should not yet, but it should release that. Authenticate. Oh, I’ve got to authenticate to stop. There we go. Follow the instructions. So, authenticate. There we go. Stopping. So, as soon as I authenticate, that’s it. So, nobody else can stop the charge. It’s not gone white. Plug comes out. Little diddly bit goes in there. Close that. stretch around to stuck stick that back in. No one’s here. Stick that back in there. Okay, I’m going to go in the car. We’re going to talk through uh on the Electroverse what we’ve just done. Uh so, just to say I finished charging. Uh not put much in at all, but we’re going to pull our car out of it so we make way for others even though there aren’t any. [Music] Now, I’m just going to go through this because this is one of those locations I come across very, very, very few of them where it is really unpleasant to try and get into the bay. So, first of all, there are no wide bays here. They are very, very narrow. Secondly, we’re up against a wall uh at the end. There’s no lighting here, so you can’t see what’s going on. And obviously, on a lot of these, we rely on the car’s sensors. So when you get near something, all EVs will have proximity sensors so they’ll go off to warn you you’re about to hit something. So going into that bay, why didn’t I use the other one which was available? Well, the next car that was already charging had used this the plug from that bay side. Uh and so that wasn’t available. So I would have had to cross cables to get in there. So I choose to go let’s go in the end one by uh just just let’s see that one seems to make a lot more sense. charging ports on the front right. So, reverse in there, everything’s fine. Far far from it. Because getting in there, all these sensors were going off saying, “You’re just about to hit something.” And they actually went faster, faster, faster until they were continuous. And that is a point. And you may have seen me get out of the car to have a look and then decide, no, actually, I can squeeze in there. And so I went back into the car and reversed a little bit further in. Otherwise, I would have had a good stretch getting the cable to it. Once I got in there, it was first of all more difficult for me to get out, but when I went round it was quite tight, but now at least I had the plug quite near to the socket on the car, which is on the front left. But then when I wanted went to try and get it to the actual screen to switch it on and off, I now couldn’t get in between the car and the charger. So I had no room on the right hand side to get out before the wall. I had no room between the car and the charger to get in and operate the uh the charger via the screen properly. Uh so that that was a really really bad experience. And I I’ve been driving EVs for best part of six years. This is not something totally new to me. So, this should be really smooth. It wasn’t. Um, anyone who has any sort of disability here, forget it. You’re not going to get in and out of your car. Uh, not by any chance, particularly not if it’s ever busy. Can’t see it ever getting totally busy. But anyway, that’s the point. So, that’s uh that’s my experience of getting in and out and it’s appalling. So, where are we going next? Uh, let’s have a look now at two things. First of all, my Renault app, and this tells me, so it shows that charging session there. That was 6 minutes charging, 4.2 kilwatt hours, and uh got the battery up to 53%. That’s sorry, 45%. Yeah, just reading 44 now. Got it up to 44%. Uh so that’s that. Now, uh interesting one. I’ve got the Electraverse app and I used Electraverse there. So, let’s do a refresh on that. The last charging session I did was on the 4th of December today at Pameir Drive with EVive. That session has not appeared on my Electraverse app. And over there, the last charging place we used, it came up instantly. So, it’s horrible. There’s no other word for it. Uh, the traffic here is appalling. Getting in, you’re probably going to block someone off. So actually spotting it really difficult without slowing right the way down. We missed it on the first occasion and we’re pretty good at spotting these. Uh the alphatronic units that are fitted here, great charges, but everything else is going totally completely wrong. They’re in a horrible location. This will be pitch black apart from street lamp at night. Very narrow bays which will put most drivers off. Uh can’t really get to see the screen. Uh there’s nothing going for it. And then add on to that the price of 84 p per kilowatt hour. And I’m surprised that this actually gets used. So that’s it for now. It’s tipping down with rain still. So we’re packing it in here. We found enough here. It’s not a recommended one for us. And we can’t see the business model really taking off if this and the one we found at night in Burnley are typical examples of what they’re doing. So that’s it. So thanks very much for watching. If you enjoyed this, click the like button. If you want to see more, please subscribe. Thanks a lot for watching. I’m Dave. [Music]
Allego is a major new player to the UK EV charging market. But with sky high prices, terrible locations and being hard to find they don’t have much going for them. Despite that, they’re more popular than you would expect. Join us as we experience some of the frustations of being an EV owner and discuss why this particular location is so bad.
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Dave Takes It On is presented by Dave and produced by his son Jonas. The channel is focused on the UK’s transition to EV charging, looking at what EV drivers can expect when out and about. Whether you’re unsure if you can use a 3-pin plug or need to find the latest EV charging prices, we have it all.
