One of the initial joys of the new car was finding out that the pub over the road from my house has just installed two BP Osprey 50KW charges that take contactless card payment. Excited by this prospect, I was straight over there to charge only to discover that they didn’t work. Early disappointment put aside; I found a working one about a mile away.

As the proud user of, I think, 5 different charging apps, I have been stunned by the challenges I have faced just trying to charge my car. On a drive to Uxbridge due to train strikes, I had planned to charge my car in a car park using a Pod Point (7KW) while I worked. Downloaded the app, found a space with point, plugged in and started to charge, brilliant, that was easy. Came back 7 hours later to the annoyance that it had switched itself off after 3 hours and I had only enough charge to get halfway home.

Next stop, Membury services on the M4. The charging network at motorway services is particularly sparce, you need to do a detailed investigation into what is available and where. Membury claims to have 4 Gridserve 50KW chargers, which is theoretically true but as most people use a CCS charging cable there are in fact only two as the other ones are designed for the Nissan Leaf. It was a busy day and as you can imagine it wasn’t only me looking for charge, I had to join a queue. What this new experience did reveal is that waiting for charge at the services is very similar to smoker’s corners in the 90s when you just popped outside and had a nice chat with whoever was there. Two hours later I was on my way.

Now, let me tell you about my experience with Shell, which almost moved me to travel to their head office and ask them how one of the world’s largest energy companies was able to come up with such a completely useless charging system. I pulled up into the Waitrose car park near my mother’s house where Shell have two 50KW chargers and 10 22KW chargers, parked the car and plugged in. Let’s start with the idea that if you put charge points in a supermarket car park you are expecting people to just pull in park and charge, nope, that would be too easy. I had to download an app, Shell Recharge, uploaded all my details, plus a card and then… I get the message that I cannot use the app to charge I have to a special Shell charge card! Extensive deep sigh released. I am looking at my app that is asking me if I want to order a card. No, I don’t Shell, I want to charge my car. Across town, I find an Apcoa car park with 42 22KW charge point, another app downloaded, details entered, car plugged in and I’m charging. This took about 4 hours for my car, and you mustn’t forget to buy a ticket to park!

In Cardiff the Tesla superchargers are open to any EVs and I will test this out soon, but it isn’t local that is the problem for me, I don’t have a car for using round town, I have a car for travelling.

To be an EV user you must be prepared to accept the current charging situation if you want to drive any distance, planning won’t save you. It is not range anxiety that will stress you but charging anxiety. As an advocate of low emission vehicles, I am now of the opinion that it is completely unacceptable for us to be encouraging people to buy electric vehicles when the charging network isn’t even close to user friendly or reliable. If you forget your mobile phone or run out of data or any other set of unfortunate circumstances, you could find yourself in real trouble. Having chatted to a few friends with EVs about this, I was fascinated to learn that many people don’t use the charging network or use their EV for long journeys, they simply charge at home and just use it around town and have a diesel for travelling distances. This means that EVs for many are simply a novelty car.

If any reader is wondering why I don’t just charge at home, I do, but on its own that isn’t sufficient for the way I use my car and defeats the point of our low carbon transport transition.

I work in the energy and infrastructure industry, and I would strongly suggest that the EV charging industry and probably the UK Governments do two things:

1. Agrees an easy and consistent way to charge, why does every charge point need an app? Get rid of them, use contactless and make it easy and logical to use.
2. Increases installation of charging points significantly, I am not even sure how many times more would be enough and make them reliable. The charging network is small at best and in reality, even smaller because about 30% of chargers are out of service.

Now a quick bit about the car, I have a Kia Niro EV, which is a great size and a suggested range of 265 miles from a full charge. Apart from almost freezing to death in a 2-hour traffic jam in -3 ⁰C because it isn’t obvious how to use the heating, it is a pretty good car. The regenerative braking works well which means you do get the range on the motorway and in urban areas it barely uses anything. It isn’t all positive though, the insurance for our EV is nearly three times that of the petrol car we had when new.

So, there it is, a brief history with my EV and me.

Useful app – Zap Maps