Electric Ready (2)… ?

A few months in to electric car ownership Covid restrictions were easing and we were able to take another trip, this time sweeping south from Yorkshire to the south coast via Essex and London on the way out and Birmingham on the way back. It was a good, enjoyable trip and we never came close to stressing about running out of range.

However there was one particular afternoon when we had another “EV experience” which has prompted me to write this post. We’d been over to Walthamstow to visit God’s Own Junkyard (great place, good lunch!) and I thought it would be good to visit the Olympic Park in the afternoon and pick up a charge while we were there.

So we headed to Stratford, originally aiming for the rapid chargers at Stratford International station. However the vagaries of the road system brought us round to the Westfield Centre and ZapMap said there were chargers so I thought this would be an easier option than trying to find our way around to the station car park.

After all, if ever there’s going to be a place for “destination charging” it’s going to be a massive location like Westfield.

This proved to be an utter disaster. Zap Map brought us to the car park entrance, saying the chargers are in Car Park A. Car parks A and B use same entrance from the road, but you then have to decide which to choose. We saw no signage on the entrance indicating anything about EV charging.

So we drove in and around A seeing no sign of chargers and no signage (this is a big car park). We then asked the car wash staff (the only staff we could see) where the chargers were and were told “downstairs”: ie in car park B. So we exited A, fortunately being allowed out free, and made our way into B (which required driving out, up the road until a point where we could turn around and then back again).

Into car park B, found it even more massive than A with once again no signage and no sign of chargers. Eventually on our second lap we found some staff who directed us to upper level in B.

Once we’d found the ramp and gone up there we did find great array of Source London 3kw and 7kw chargers, with not a single one in use! I attempted to use 7kw charger, but it gave no response to my waved Visa card. I looked up the Source London website on my phone which says says they provide guest option – bit this was not apparent on these devices.

I tried the 020 phone number on website to find out what to do but the call failed to connect on repeated tries. The charging posts showed an 0845 number but I was not prepared to use this because of the cost of calling from a mobile. We admitted defeat, left and had the pleasure of a £3 charge to leave car park for this experience.

I now decided to have another go at heading to the Stratford International car park. We found the car park and could see an array of chargers by exit, some in use, some free. However sign at entrance declared “event day charge £15” to enter car park. This was too much and with a heavy heart we turned away.

At this point we turned to Morrison’s. Chargers in their car parks had been our saviours on a trip to Norfolk last year and again they came up trumps. Stratford Morrison’s has two Geniepoint rapid chargers, both available as we drove in (though the second was also taken immediately alongside us). A bit of shopping, a coffee stop, a successful boost and the Olympic Park visit remains for another day.

Westfield, what’s up? Stratford, EV ready??

It’s just not good enough.

PS: if you want to know my charging experiences across the 1,100 mile trip it’s all here in my charging diary

Electric ready… ?

After 6 years of plug-in hybrid driving I decided it was time to make the step to fully electric and on 1^st September I became the happy driver of a Kia e-Niro.

A few days later my wife and I set off on our first trip, a long weekend in Northumberland. I’d checked out charging options and it was looking OK.

First charging stop was the main car park in Alnwick, a big tourist centre. When we arrived the single charger had a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV connected to its CHAdeMO plug. The CCS I needed was free, but the charger can only supply one at a time. We went for a walk around the town centre and when we returned 25 minutes later fortunately the charger was free and I successfully connected and so then off we went for a coffee.

Charging in front of Alnwick Castle

Next time was in Seahouses, our home for the weekend, another very popular spot. It has a single charging station. When I turned up at this one there was a Tesla on the AC connection and a Jaguar iPace using the CCS. I returned to the apartment and tried again a bit later. This time I was relieved to get onto the CCS and have a successful charge. However, just as I had started the charge another iPace turned up, disappointed to find me there. (Chatting to him, I think he was also disappointed to hear that I had significantly better range than him, but that’s another story).

On the way home to Yorkshire we were projecting enough range to get home, but I decided we could do a quick top up stop at Scotch Corner, the most significant service stop for many miles in either direction on the A1. What did I find: 2 chargers, but only one with CCS and that was already feeding a VW e-Golf. Not wanting other than a quick stop I added just a few miles via the available AC charger.

Conclusion: up that way the infrastructure is way off what’s needed to support a significant electric car population. The numbers are already clearly rising and if we were to go back in 12 months I bet they would be double. But how much more infrastructure would there be?

A second aside: if we had been in one of the new 200ish mile range models that 3^rd rapid charge stop would have been essential. I wonder how long we’d have waited at Scotch Corner?