Hi Richard, Interesting comments, thank you.
I thought the idea with the RFID cards was to actually hold them against the reader rather than waft them about ... but the buttons on the Nissan Chademos that ecotricity use always seem a bit sluggish. Also, if you ring the ecotricity helpline (number on the side of the unit) they can re-boot the Chademos remotely... Whilst I agree that ecotricity deserve credit for starting things off as far as fast/rapid charging in the UK is concerned, it seems a shame they do not appear to be committed to maintaining their Chademos very well. The ones I had problems with at Reading services have been off line for a couple of weeks now (I see E/bound is now working according to their site). Reading is a bit crucial as far as using the M4 is concerned, perhaps more for the i-Miev than the Leaf, with the latter's greater range. MW On 28 Jan 2014, at 19:58, Richard Bebbington wrote: > > I've had my leaf for just over 4 months now, and it's been great! > There are several Ecotricity fast-chargers near here now (Cardiff) > including 2 in the city itself - but they could do with being spaced out > a bit better on the motorways (I guess we're stuck with where the services > are) > There's nothing on the A449/M50 if you're heading up to the Midlands from > Wales >> Inclined to agree, even if they worked perfectly, I'd hate to have to rely >> on them once there's more than a handful of cars running about. The huge >> cost of the installations must mean availability will always lag behind >> demand. > > Yes, I've often thought it's daft to only have 1 car able to use a charging > point that > often has 2 parking spaces dedicated to it - you can't use both the AC and > the DC leads > to charge two cars at the same time. >> High power AC sockets and lots of them would seem to be the way forward, but >> somehow provision of charge points has become so complex and communications >> dependent that they're possibly less reliable than the Rapid chargers. I've >> given up on public charging altogether until the situation improves > The comms is essential to let the car's battery management "drive" the EVSE > But it should be more robust > > That's a shame, as Ecotricity's network has grown a lot even since I got my > leaf > (last Sept). But yes, the EVSE itself does seem to be unreliable & picky. > I often have to hold my card right up to the charger before pressing the > button > asking it to start a charge - or it won't recognise my card.....and this > happens with > both my cards. > > Once the unit nearest me got itself stuck waiting for a user to finish > charging - but the user > had long since left! No amount of waving my card in front of it would > convince it > to turn on.... next day it was showing the dreaded "gears of doom". Stupid > software. > Made me wish I could find the main breaker and just reset it by cycling the > power! > > Still, I love the speed of them when they do work! > And Kudos to Ecotricity for actually ponying up for installing all these - > they must > cost a fortune to install (imagine the cost of just the hardware, let alone > labour, testing & inpsection, etc) > > The real problem is the fractured nature of the market here. Loads of > different > charger networks, databases, with not much talking to each other/sharing of > info. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
