Tesla Fan Boy Thread

[Fermano]

Hopefully I ran into some odd, rare spot in Steinhäusl but again, it's a MAJOR rest station, the largest and most lavish I've seen yet. Btw. the fun part was figuring out how to link your Ionity app payment with the specific charging stall you're at (at this point there's no connection to the vehicle, as the charger port on the stall is locked by default).

I had to enable the NFC on the phone, and had to wave the phone in front of a small screen at the front of the machine. There's no printed information about it on the stall, and the app and the little screen don't tell you this either, I just tried random stuff in random sequence and it's so ridiculous I could've easily missed this "interaction".

I already forgot what the right sequence is (which cost me an extra fixed price of EUR8 there), iirc first you have to pay through the app, then wave the phone in front of the screeen.

Btw. I activated NFC because the charger stall and the man on the support line seemed to insist on some "card" but I've no card so I hoped the app uses the NFC as if it were a card.

Some other lesson, on a road trip I'll never start a fixed-price charge on a stall with no kW marking - it likely won't be better than 11kW. It was also smaller than the others, although in electronics it's not usually the case that a next-gen, more powerful thing is physically larger.

I still want to try some real, directly operated Ionity charger, but I know of no way of telling if a station is Ionity like those I see on the pics, or some random third party.

	Quote:	Fermano
	no idea why they don't just have a card reader per site; the problem is that there are dozens of disparate networks in Europe

There are at least three pan-European EV charging networks that require once-only registration (and a card or key that you may have to buy) that essentially solve that problem: Chargemap, Plugsurfing and the Shell (as in oil)-owned network, Newmotion.

When I researched this a few weeks ago, I wasn't overly impressed with Plugsurfing. The other two look pretty decent, with Newmotion maybe edging it because their new app, card and key (Shell Recharge, which replaces the old Newmotion app, card and key) appears to be free -- you pay only for the charges. Chargemap costs €19.90 to set up, thereafter just the cost of each charge. You'd need to consult their websites to try to work out how much the electrons cost.

Both Chargemap and Newmotion/Shell are aggregators of charging networks, i.e. they cover multiple charging networks (different between the two cards) and provide a singe point of access to all the chargers in their expanded network. Both the Chargemap and Newmotion/Shell Recharge networks include Ionity.

If I can also add, I use(d) SwissCharge here quite a lot in the past, but have found their offering to be annoying and unreliable of late. I have 3 times been to chargers that when I got there, none of the 3 stations were usable and this was not indicated in-app or on the website.

Luckily I was still in range of a supercharger, but had I not been, that would have been a huge ballache.

[temiatwork]

Check with the energy company in your Canton. SIG here in Geneva offered me an annual subscription of 54 chf / yr (all inclusive) for all "move" network in CH and i also tried using it in 2 "ionity" chargers on my way to Luzern with no additional charge at all.

Chargemap charge a lot! This is just useful as backup outside CH.

[Fermano]

Twist in my Ionity experience at Steinhäusl:

I was still annoyed by this mismatch of what the Ionity app said (some 350kW chargers there) vs reality, and managed to turn up photos of real Ionity branded chargers at the same site!

- first of all, in retrospect I should've criss-crossed the place first - but sometimes rest station roads are one-way and I didn't feel like risking a forced way back to the highway
- the Smatrics stalls, and helpful person on the line, had no problem giving me juice in exchange for an Ionity app payment (maybe Ionity is also an aggregator, or they don't really check how/if payment comes) and made no mention that they have nothing to do with Ionity
- the local personnel didn't know about Ionity, and pointed to the Smatrics stalls as the only ones they knew about
- there were no signposts that a real Ionity charger existed
- the Ionity map shows a rather crude location for the chargers - well, the location might be exact but there are no landmarks etc. included so there's no way to tell
- the Ionity chargers seem to be hidden behind some large boxes (these should've been things for me to look out for)

So all in all, I'll give Ionity another try but won't stop unless the stall says Ionity. Rookie mistake plus messy, fragmented network situation.

Next time, in addition to, or instead of using Tesla Nav, the Ionity app map and google searches for the site, I'll use Google Maps which would've helped me locate the planned stalls in this case. This can be done in advance, and as a beginner, I already blew almost an hour planning the 3rd party charger stops with this 900km trip (you can't ask ABRP to include only those chargers for which you have a card or app, or for which you can check if they expect a credit card - ABRP has neither the filters nor payment info)

[AbFab]

Sadly non-Tesla charger stations seem to be failing miserably.

There is a Tesla Supercharger at St Pölten which is about 33kms from Steinhäusl (in Austria).

Keep the info coming!

In all honesty, for longer trips, the Tesla network are the only chargers you can trust.

On longer trips I have also enquired with my destination re: charging - a surprising amount of places will make accommodation for you to plug in somewhere, even if they don't have higher power chargers.

[Fermano]

Haha yes we then went to St Pölten, a detour from the highway, and had to see another Tesla before suspecting the closed hotel parking lot that hid the chargers. Here, and at about half of the stations I visited so far, Superchargers are totally across the street or in another corner of a huuge parking lot, hundreds of meters away :-) Very much unlike the clarity of arriving at the gas pumps :-)

Then I wished we had swimdresses, Aquacity Hallenbad was right there :-) This made me think, how far we are from including fun, opportunistic events in the trip planning (well... unless there's some curated list of amenities for Tesla / other chargers in a walking distance that are sensible if one stays 40 minutes, or can indicate flexibility to spend more time)

[Fermano]

Wondering about ski resorts in this regard, maybe they maintain plenty of EV parking places near the ski lift :-D Driving up the mountains in freezing cold, in all kinds of snow and sleet, letting the battery cool down fully during the day, then having to warm up the cabin and defrost and de-fog the windows is a least ideal case for EV use, and one usually leaves quite a bit of money at the resort, yet I guess it won't happen :-) These trips should be easy to do with a home-charged round trip without destination charging, yet a scheduled departure with cabin and battery warm-up from the grid would be nice.

[AbFab]

	Quote:	Fermano
	Wondering about ski resorts in this regard, maybe they maintain plenty of EV parking places near the ski lift :-D Driving up the mountains in freezing cold, in all kinds of snow and sleet, letting the battery cool down fully during the day, then having to warm up the cabin and defrost and de-fog the windows is a least ideal case for EV use, and one usually leaves quite a bit of money at the resort, yet I guess it won't happen :-) These trips should be easy to do with a home-charged round trip without destination charging, yet a scheduled departure with cabin and battery warm-up from the grid would be nice.

I simply set the seats and heater on the app at the top of the last run down the piste.

Going down the mountain will get you some crazily good Wh/km figures. I thing it stops at -500...

[Fermano]

Wow Ionity is moving from fixed lowish price to 2-3x Supercharger kWh price

[rainer_d]

Will be interesting so see how Tesla prices their Supercharger use in the future.


IONITY is probably trying to push people into some monthly/yearly contract (with a 3rd-party like ADAC, Mercedes etc.) rather than having a million single customers.


Because, as a Mercedes customer, you still get it for 29 cents - at least for the first year. Via ADAC is 39 cents, AFAIK.

[AbFab]

	Quote:	Fermano
	Wow Ionity is moving from fixed lowish price to 2-3x Supercharger kWh price

Ionity: a joint venture founded by the BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Company and Volkswagen Group with Audi and Porsche.

Seems like a clumsy attempt by car companies whose sales of EVs are infinitesimal to protect their ICE sales.

Never used Ionity and never will...

[Phil_MCR]

I thought about getting an electric car but the range is an issue.

Normal driving is just short distances <30km typically, so not a problem.

But there are regular trips I make which would require at least one top up.

I think for me the ideal would be a hybrid type car which would rely on diesel for the long trips but have sufficient batteries to work as a pure EV for a, say, 20-30km range in urban driving conditions.

[GenevaSculler]

	Quote:	Phil_MCR
	I thought about getting an electric car but the range is an issue. Normal driving is just short distances <30km typically, so not a problem. But there are regular trips I make which would require at least one top up. I think for me the ideal would be a hybrid type car which would rely on diesel for the long trips but have sufficient batteries to work as a pure EV for a, say, 20-30km range in urban driving conditions.

Have a look at abetterrouteplanner.com and try out some of the longer trips that you do to see if they look feasible in terms of charging times etc. We bought a secondhand Model S last autumn and have done a few longer trips so far, and I have been very pleasantly surprised by how easy they have been. The supercharging is really impressively fast and the ride quality, silence, driving dynamics, acceleration etc make going back to an ICE car feel like stepping back 100 years.

[rainer_d]

PHEV are the worst IMO.


The battery will wear out very quickly, reducing the EV-only driving distance to almost nothing.
But you still have to lug around that battery and the electric drivetrain, further reducing the efficiency of the car.


The only reason to buy one would be if you were living in Germany and you could lease it as a company car. There's a huge tax-incentive for EVs and PHEVs currently.


My problem is that I use my car very little, currently.
Any new car would be a giant waste of money when it sits in the garage for most of the time.

[AbFab]

	Quote:	Phil_MCR
	I thought about getting an electric car but the range is an issue. Normal driving is just short distances <30km typically, so not a problem. But there are regular trips I make which would require at least one top up. I think for me the ideal would be a hybrid type car which would rely on diesel for the long trips but have sufficient batteries to work as a pure EV for a, say, 20-30km range in urban driving conditions.

If you can drive 400kms/4 hours without needing to stop there is cause for angst, but otherwise not.

I've been to the UK and back in my Model 3 without problem making 3 charging stops of 15 to 30 mins each: time for a coffee and a "comfort break".

[Phil_MCR]

	Quote:	AbFab
	If you can drive 400kms/4 hours without needing to stop there is cause for angst, but otherwise not. I've been to the UK and back in my Model 3 without problem making 3 charging stops of 15 to 30 mins each: time for a coffee and a "comfort break".

i can and do.

however, the issue is not with having to do the charge as such, but perhaps limitations on where the stop can be made as it is currently dictated by sleep schedule of the toddler, which unless the electric charging network is as good or better than petrol, then it can be problematic.

also, the time to charge can be an issue. although I guess with a 30-40 minute stop, i guess you could make a significant charge?

[rainer_d]

That depends on the car (or better: its battery (size and cell-chemistry) and the temperature of said battery), the current state of charge, the state of charge you want to achieve and the charger itself.


The amount of energy that a Model 3 consumes over 100km is AFAIK equivalent to about 2l of Diesel. The "problem" is that the energy-density of Diesel is currently unsurpassed. BEVs have a comparatively small "tank".


I don't think I'll buy another ICE-vehicle after this one. Hoping to drive it until one can by a Model Y.

[GenevaSculler]

	Quote:	Phil_MCR
	also, the time to charge can be an issue. although I guess with a 30-40 minute stop, i guess you could make a significant charge?

With that sort of stop at a supercharger you can go from around 20% to around 80% charged. When doing that sort of charging schedule you minimise the charging time, as it takes more time to cram in the last bit to get from 80% up to 100% charged.