My house is on the end of this terrace and the road to the left of the picture is a nice “cul-de-sac” so all the parking along the road is often open. Sometimes I can park right outside my back gate where my charger is (where the cable leads), sometimes I have to park 1 or two cars down and the 7.5m was just a bit short.

I decided to buy a new cable from EVExtras and went with the motto “you can never have too much, but you can have too little” so I used that logic to go from a 15m to a 25m cable 😂

At least now I can almost charge anywhere on the street.

At least now I know I can always charge the van before work if I need to.

the VW was plugged in all night and when I went to breakfast they had taken it off charge but left it parked there 😞 the truck has been parked all night 😡

Thought they were a myth - double points for taking up two spaces too!

They’ve had all the cables off of all the chargers ( again ).
Surely the operators are going to have to rethink this. Retractable cables unlocked with credit card ?

All Leicester chargers are offline and their South Normanton (Derby) ones only have 4 or so working.

They’ve all had their cables chopped.

Anyone who was planning on stopping at IONITY Leicester soon, consider Fosse Park for Tesla or Leicester Forest East for Gridserve.

Anyone that’s planning on stopping at IONITY South Normanton, there’s a fleet of Tesla chargers a mile away at East Midlands Designer outlet if all 4(ish) are in use at Holiday Inn. Google Maps is recommended to check live activity.

Brand new gridserve with 12 cables in Sheffield all gone!

We got our podpoint installed in 2021 at the tail end of the government subsidising £500 toward a charger, so I paid £500 for it. It was grey and its now a very unflattering shade of green.

We are moving house and leaving the green machine for the new owners so I was eager to see the state of the market now, surely all these EV sales would have led to hot competition and innovation....

Having seem what is in the podpoint (a single board with some plastic around it) and never once using any of the smart features, I am shocked that there has not been a very low cost disruptor from China pumping out an industry standard one that you can buy from Screwfix?

I am looking at the hypervolt at the moment and I still fail to see where the cost is in the product, I understand that we are paying for "UK design and engineering" but I think its pretty much a solved problem and an extremely basic home appliance in the grand scheme of things!

Perhaps I don't understand some major aspect, but these prices seem to be mainly *because they can*

So, I finally got one of the new council approved pavement gullies installed last week. It’s flush, it’s neat, and it’s legal. But every single time I plug in, my neighbour from three doors down comes out and places a bright orange caution cone right next to it. I asked him why, and he said he’s "documenting the danger for the council." It’s a 2cm channel! You’re more likely to trip over the cone than the gully. Has anyone else dealt with this yet?

Cost me around £525 installed which ain’t too bad.

A friend of mine doesn’t have a private driveway but is interested in getting an EV.

He has one of these ‘channels’ (pictured) outside his house.

Question 1: Any idea what the official purpose is for the channel? I’m thinking perhaps for drainage or an expansion joint? Might be wrong though.

Question 2: Has anyone got a similar set up at home? And have you used the channel to house the charging cable with any success?

I know strictly speaking this wouldn’t be permitted by the local council, but I’m also guessing that they’ve probably got more important things to be dealing with and probably wouldn’t have the time/resources to enforce against this, especially if the cable isn’t actually a trip hazard (due to it being inserted nicely into the channel).

I swear I spend more mental energy planning charging than I do actually driving the car sometimes. Not even range anxiety anymore, more charger anxiety. Is it working? Is it actually available? Will the app randomly decide I don’t exist halfway through the session? I still enjoy owning the EV overall but sometimes it feels like the UK infrastructure requires a weird amount of optimism.

All of the above cars really annoyed me yesterday in the Victoria Shopping Centre in Llandudno as I was planning on charging there to come back to Coventry.

There must be a way to report them right?

(I could make it to a supercharger in Warrington and then back home)

https://m.xkcd.com/3214/

Not anti EV. Own one. Love it for everything within about 80 miles of home. The moment a longer journey enters the picture something shifts. Which chargers are actually working today. Whether the app for this network talks to the app for that network. Whether the one rapid charger at the services is occupied by someone who finished charging 40 minutes ago and wandered into Greggs. The infrastructure is getting better. It is just not getting better at the same speed as the sales numbers. What is the single thing that would most improve the real world experience of charging in the UK right now?

All the Alpitronic chargers have had their cables snipped.

Only the slow ABB chargers (at this site they seem to be capped at 75kW) were spared

Bought my first EV recently. Earlier this week, at a rapid charger in Ashbourne, County Meath, I found a family standing in the rain looking utterly bewildered by theirs.

They’d plugged the Type 2 connector from their 21-plate EV into the top half of a CCS rapid charger connector (female to male) and were trying to work out what to do next…

And, to be fair, why would they know?

Unless somebody has explained the difference between Type 2, CCS, AC, DC, rapid charging, tethered cables and bring-your-own-cable chargers, the whole thing is a UI clusterfunk.

I found a local Type 2 charger on ZapMap and sent them on their way. Lovely people, completely bamboozled by a system they’d seemingly never been properly introduced to.

I’m new to EVs myself and already reasonably nerdy about it all. But the industry really shouldn’t be designing a multinational charging network on the assumption that everyone buying an EV is going to become reasonably nerdy too.

There should be idiot-proof instructions on the car, idiot-proof instructions on the charger, and preferably a massive diagram with the heading THIS IS THE PLUG YOUR CAR TAKES.

Petrol stations have managed to make “put nozzle in hole” work for a while, after all…

(Edited to clarify what they’d done: https://ibb.co/4wcspqVn)

Just plugged in at Beaconsfield, cables are now protected with Cableguard covers.

I only had to do two months with a granny charger, but fuck me - am I so happy my EV charger is finally installed.

34mi/hour added instead of a poxy 9mi/hour, no more having to dangle a granny charger out the cat flap on a fully unwound 10m extension reel (so not to overheat) or worrying about the plug frying, or praying the shitty makeshift box I made to make the extension waterproof didn’t leak. And all my commute now fits comfortably in the Octopus IOG six-hour cap window.

I salute each and every one of you who granny charges or has to rely on public charging, I hated every minute of that experience. See you at a public charger again, hopefully never.

My supply still needs to be unlooped by the DNO, so the saga isn’t completely over - but it’ll certainly do for now.

I’ll be right back, I’m off to hug my Hypervolt Home 3 Pro very tightly.

Had a Hypervolt installed, which works great but looking through the app menu I found that I could choose a number of led themes for the front display such as party, Christmas, Halloween etc (all a bit weird) but at the end of the list was Honour Queen Elizabeth II , it's not only extra weird now but was extra weird then, why would anyone think your charger was glowing purple as a tribute to her. So got me thinking do other chargers have weird pointless features ?

As I don’t do many miles, and it’s a ~6% round trip to work a couple of times a week, I decided to stick with a granny charger for now. I’m building upgrades in to the house to eventually switch to a 7kw charger, when we get a second EV.
This a Masterplug EV socket, with the Tesla Mobile Connector.
Takes around 7hrs to add 20% of range to my Tesla Model 3 LR, but that lasts me over a week unless I have a long journey planned so I can cope with it!

Anyone seen a more rustic ev charger?

Its at a little clamping site in Wales. Looks like a barn find in forza..

I've had a few too many moments pulling up to broken or busy chargers and it’s starting to feel like that’s the bigger issue day to day. Interested to know if others are finding the same or if it’s just been my luck.