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In reply to: Our big adventure to london
@pauledg Yes, we had a lovely time visiting family and going out for lunch 🙂 Also, despite the 11 hours of driving and charging I didn’t end up with any aches or stiffness this morning so at least the ride was comfortable 🙂 Would we do it again in a hurry? Not with the family. I’d be willing to try something like it again but I think it’s different with passengers. As wonderfully supportive as they were, I don’t think my wife and daughter are quite as EV-evangelistic as me 🙂
@nickh Yeah, I figure charging at 40% up to 80% or 90% and repeating often is prob. the best option. The ecotricity guy I spoke to said the Leaf obviously charges faster if the battery is more empty but I didn’t notice it as much with the Zoe. There must be a balance between needing to use as few chargers as possible (because they are often broken) and limiting the time needed to charge vs worrying you won’t make your next stop and getting stranded.
@trevor We noticed a definite slowdown past 80% and again past 95% with the 43kW chargers and with the 22kW charger there was the slow down at 95% so I’d guess the car drops the current in stages (maybe 43kW max to 80%, then down to 22kW then down to 11kW or 7kW). We also didn’t bother waiting for the 100% as it does take about 15 mins and it can condition the batteries all it wants when it’s plugged in at home over night 🙂
Thinking about it, I believe the chargers need to be better at reporting faults, more of the faults need to be remotely fix-able and there really needs to be some sort of system where realtime data on availability along with last charge and the success/failure of that charge attempt is made available. I don’t believe the chargers trip out when not being used so every one of the ‘circuit breaker fault’ errors on the 43kW chargers is likely to have been noticed by someone but it seems people aren’t reporting them. With broken card readers often a reset will help so being able to do that remotely or having an alternative to the reader (txt message, web portal, keypad) would be a good backup. Also, why can’t the chargers be resettable by customers – even if you need to enter a pin managed and changed by Ecotricity or something? After all, you are there and you have a vested interest in getting the charger working 🙂 Saves them sending out an engineer.
In reply to: Our big adventure to london
Well done, farblue! That’s a greater distance than I’ve attempted in one go, though soon I’ll be heading from Northampton to Surrey to visit family.
Given the low temperature (1deg) and the fact fast chargers won’t ‘fast’ charge right to 100% we figured we prob
I have regularly used the Ecotricity fast chargers to 100%. They slow down towards the end so recently I’ve got in the habit of charging to 99% then disconnecting (as the last 1% seems to take about 10 minutes of a 40 minute charge). I expect the last 1% is conditioning the battery but – what the hell – it’s not my battery.
Topic: Our big adventure to london
Hi all,
Following hot on the heels of Trevor’s latest public charging story I thought I’d share my big adventure!
Yesterday, sunday 22nd december, we had plans to travel to london to visit family we’d not be able to see over xmas. With the continued expansion of the ecotricity charger network and some successes from others documented here I suggested we might just be able to do the trip in our Zoe and, much to my surprise, Julie (my wife) agreed!
So, this trip to Canary Wharf, from the middle of Birmingham, for lunch with family would be a 300 mile journey with plans for 4 charges at Newport Pagnell, Ikea Wembley then again at Ikea on the way back followed by a final charge at Newport Pagnell. It was going to be a bit tight but I figured it should be possible and the family wouldn’t want to stop loads of times for smaller ‘hops’ between chargers. It sounded like a good plan on paper and both Newport and Ikea Wembley had ‘backup’ 22kW chargers if the 43kW ones didn’t work.
Things did not get off to a good start. Horrendous weather saturday night somehow prevented the Zoe from charging (first time an overnight charge has failed for me!). On saturday we’d only done about 10 miles so I decided just to stop at Northampton services instead of Newport Pagnell.
We set off and arrive at Northampton Services without a problem and find the charger, again without a problem. No errors on screen, all looks good so I plug it in and up comes the ‘Unable to charge’ error on the Zoe dash as well as the orange battery warning and the orange spanner lights! Oh, and the charge port light was flashing red. Don’t panic, I thought, try again and see. Same thing – although without the red port light this time. So I phoned Ecotricity. After a bit more faffing and further discussion and a reboot of the charger, still no luck. The only option – drive on to Newport Pagnell. 17 miles of estimated range on the Zoe, 13 miles to Newport Pagnell.
So we set off and we make it to Newport Pagnell (southbound) with the warning light on and 7 miles left on the predictor. The whole family was crossing fingers and toes as I plugged in the 43kW charger – and I was very worried the previous charger had damaged something! But yay, the charger worked! disaster averted!
While charging I popped off to the loo and when I came back there was a black Zoe parked up charging on the slower 22kW charger. My first ever meet with another Zoe owner 🙂 Was it any of you guys?
Charged to 95% we set off again, heading for Ikea Wembley feeling positive about the day and pleased things worked out. We make it to Ikea with 20 or so miles range and finally found the chargers, only to find the 43kW charger had a message saying the AC side had a circuit breaker fault. Bad luck – looks like we are stuck with the 22kW charger. Tried the first one – it wouldn’t read the card! It beeped but nothing further happened. Tried the other side and… it worked – but – only at 11kW! Charging was so slow we ended up having to ring and move the restaurant booking.
While we were waiting for the charge, a Leaf owner and his family pulled up and plugged in on the 43kW charger. As he did, the 22kW charger ‘had a moment’ and stopped charging. Stopping and starting the charger did the trick (although still at 11kW, not 22kW) but I noticed the 43kW charger had errored so I ran after the Leaf owner to let him know. It turns out the DC side of the charger had also tripped. After about 10 mins on the phone to Ecotricity he also had to give up but I did tell him about the charger at tottenham Ikea.
Finally, after an hour, we had enough charge to get to Canary Wharf and meet the family and had an enjoyable meal before it was time to head home.
Given the broken chargers at Wembley I thought it might be best to head to tottenham Ikea. It only has a 43kW charger but I guessed it might be working and, if not, I’d have enough range to go back for a boring hour or more at Wembley. But, silly me, I’d forgotten that with the delay getting to the restaurant and it being sunday, Ikea was closed!
A call to Ecotricity and they recommended South Mimms on the M25, 15 miles away. I had 22 miles predicted range but no other option so we set off and we made it with 5 miles range left and by driving at 45mph on the M25! “Luckily” there were road works and so the M25 was limited to 50mph. First time I’ve EVER been pleased to see roadworks on the M25!
We make it to South Mimms but the fast charger there is DC only so we were left with the 22kW charger. I try the first side but no luck – once again the card reader beeped when reading the card but then didn’t do anything! Tried the other side and yes, we had charging – and at 22kW this time. While charging, I worked out the range I’d need to get to todington and newport pagnell (northbound) and we left with enough to get to newport if needed after about 45mins.
We get to todington without issue and find the charger easily and, yay, no dreaded error! So I plug in and yes, everything works fine. We gleefully watch the percentage rocket up (well, certainly compared to the previous 2 charges) and I figured it best to charge as much as possible while I had a working 43kW charger. Except, at about 63%, the charger suddenly stopped charging and up came the circuit breaker error! Gah!
Still, we easily had enough to get to newport pagnell so off we go and easily get there with 30 miles of range left. But once again we see the 43kW charger had the circuit breaker error. On to the 22kW charger and, as trevor reported, one side didn’t read the card and the other side came up ‘fault’ as soon as charging started. Just like for Trevor, Ecotricity recommended asking to use the service road over to the south side which we did and we again used the 43kW charger. We charged to 99% and by this point were thoroughly unhappy with the state of the charging network.
Given the low temperature (1deg) and the fact fast chargers won’t ‘fast’ charge right to 100% we figured we prob. had 70 or so miles range when charging finished and the usual route back to birmingham was 68 miles. My original plan was a top-up at Watford Gap if this situation arose (I suspected it might) but after some discussion we decided we simply couldn’t trust the watford gap charger to be working and so ditched the M1 and M6 route and went cross-country to get home using TomTom’s ‘Eco’ route. It meant 20 mins extra travel time but gave us a much greater chance of making it home!
We did make it home – and we were very, very glad to do so without needing a tow!
So, overall, the score card looks like this:
43kW chargers: 1 working (newport pagnell southbound), 1 partly working (toddington northbound), 3 broken (Northampton, Newport Pagnell Northbound and Ikea Wembley) and 1 unreachable (Ikea Tottenham).
22kW chargers: 1 working (South Mimms), 1 half working (Ikea Wembley – 11kW instead of 22kW), 3 card reader fails (Ikea Wembley, South Mimms, Newport Pagnell northbound), 1 fault (Newport Pagnell northbound).
Percentage working even a bit: 33%
Percentage fully working: 16%Times the low charge warning light came on: 2
I rang and reported all total and partial failures to Ecotricity and by the end of the day I was on first name terms with them! I must have called them 10 times.
Total time taken travelling: 11 hours (instead of the original estimate of 7 hours)
My conclusion is: If you could trust the chargers, it would be totally possible to do that journey without hassle. However, you simply cannot trust the chargers. The ac side of the 43kW chargers is particularly problematic – the Ecotricity guys said only 2 charges out of a total of over 60 had failed today but i pointed out that most of the chargers were offline so no charge attempt was even made and they’d not see a log of it.
I’d also suggest the best approach to long-distance driving is ‘little and often’ – basically stop at every services and top up back to, say, 95%. The ‘go as far as you can then recharge lots in one go’ approach works fine only if you can trust the chargers will work.
In reply to: The Pain of Public Charging 4
So far as I know it’s just the chargers – though it’s quite a worry when the ZOE says ‘battery charging impossible’ afterwards, even after you’ve come back from buying a cup of tea. The message can stay there for some time, but goes once it gets a successful charge if not before. In this case it charged instantly on the southbound fast charger, so I can only assume there was nothing wrong with the ZOE.
In reply to: Charging Issues?
I have had this warning”Battery charging impossible” at one particular charge point at a filing station/supermarket since the point was installed six months ago.
EBG The manufacture sent an engineer from Munich to meet me at the charge point and to demonstrate the fault as he found no problem charging his Opel.He saw my warning on Zoe and after a while downloading info into his laptop from the charge point he thanked me but couldn’t fix or understand the problem. As the Zoe had been connected for about 25 mins the warning was now permanently on display as I drove off and went to “Check Cruise”.Cruise was disabled!
I drove back and showed him the fault , this was end of Nov,he said he was sorry and would be back in January.
It took me a good two hours at the home charger to clear the fault which has come back a few times.I asked the Renault dealer if his Renault Tech Engineer could call me to discuss the matter as I needed the car and had cleared the fault.No one ever called back.
Some days later the warning came back and no street charger would charge Zoe,I tried 5.
Called the ecar number on the charger and as it was a Sunday,I eventually got a Lady in England.I am in N. Ireland.She passed me on to a gentleman who called to say he was only responsible for traffic lights and could not help.No one ever called back and I managed to clear the fault myself,by returning home to the 32amp charger in my garage.
I would strongly advise if this warning is seen on the Zoe , disconnect quickly and try another charger,I just think this car doesn’t like “dirty electricity”.
Any comments on the heater/heat pump this weather?In reply to: I've just bought a Zoe, and I'm a bit apprehensive…
AnonymousHi. Just collected my Zoe Zen and find it fantastic. Still finding out all it can do but pleased it bleeps when approaching any speed camera – (not that I’m a speed hog but it’s so easy to creep above the limit).
British Gas weren’t able to install my charger till mid Jan so my Renault dealer in Sheffield found me Chargemaster who installed it earlier in the week. No fuss and no problems from them and our O2 signal is fine which is a relief as we live in a valley. I had to pay the extra £95 for the 30A charger but my dealer is reimbursing me this sum. All in all a good week.
One tip I picked up from the dealer was that, provided you re-charge from low – say, only 25% charge remaining – for the first few recharges you will get a steadily increasing full charge. The equivalent of ‘running-in’ in an ICE car I suppose but in this case the battery ‘likes’ to be recharged from nearly spent. The dash told me 70 miles free when I picked it up fully charged. I would expect that to creep up as the recharges take place. I’ll keep you posted.
Tony lIn reply to: I've just bought a Zoe, and I'm a bit apprehensive…
Craig, welcome! To pick up on donald’s point, note that BG provide the 16A version to anyone for free with the 30A version as an upgrade – but as an original purchaser of a ZOE Renault will make up the difference so you would get the 30A version for free. I don’t know what applies if you buy a second-hand ZOE but I would ask Renault first – since they own the battery, they may have a policy of supplying the same chargepoint to all ZOE owners.
In reply to: ZOE is Cheaper to Run than Equivalent Petrol Car
I’ve been thinking about this analysis on and off – if EV’s are to take off they should always be the lowest cost to run, regardless of mileage or battery lease payments.
Trevor, how much cheaper would the battery lease payments have to be to make ZOE the cheapest to run in all cases?
Cheers,
MarkAfter 6 months, had some info through on how to access the ‘connected services’.
Went to register and was asked to tick the ‘Ts & Cs’ button.
Have you guys just ticked the box and continued, or actually read these?
Firstly, couldn’t read them very well – an 8 line box with a drag bar that jumps 8 lines at a time, but in practice jumps more than that, so you keep missing bits. Can’t copy the text out of the box, nor download it. Almost impossible to read, even physically, let alone make sense of.
Secondly, says that you accept all the contract terms, even though the battery hire document is already signed.
Thirdly, says that access to R-link is ‘free’ for a ‘trial period’. Doesn’t say how long the trial period is, and appears to be a tacit commitment that in accepting the T&C you are also accepting charges once the [undisclosed] ‘trial period’ ends.
I know some have had issues with the battery contract, but that seemed quite straight forward to me. These T&Cs look compromised to me, and I have declined to accept them. This puts Renault in default of the battery hire agreement, because it is part of that agreement that they provide these services, and these T&Cs weren’t revealed at the time I signed the battery agreement. I’m under no obligation to accept these new T&Cs, but they are under an obligation to provide the service (they form part of the battery rental).
In reply to: Weather-related mileage
I am very unconvinced that the Fluence has a smaller battery than the Leaf. Put simply, it weights more. The Leaf, we know, has a 24kWh battery of which 21.4kWh is made available. The Fluence has a stated 22kWh of useable battery (and I have no reason to doubt that) and I suspect there is a MUCH larger overhead of SOC with the Fluence, due to its mass and the fact that it is leased so they are anticipating a harder life for it (and yet advise to fully charge it, routinely, unlike the Leaf advice). I reckon the Fluence battery is more like 28kWh and that there is some ‘compensation’ built into it that as the capacity diminishes over time the software gives access to a larger (equivalent) %age of the battery pack as its real capacity drops. Just a hunch, but I suspect we’ll never know and it’ll remain a guarded secret.
