Testing Electric Car Chargers Down The A1 (270miles) - Working???

hello and welcome back to a video that is kind of a follow-up to something I did just over a month ago where I tested the nearest 10 rapid charging sites so that sites not charges to my house six of the ten didn't work of the Fall that did work they were full as in in use so you could look at it as a zero of ten success rate but even if you thought four of ten sixty percent failure rate is simply not good enough but that was a snapshot of my area on that day it's not a great indication of what's going on in the UK as a whole last week we went down to my parents house something I do and have done quite a lot on the channel it's roughly 260 70 miles there and of course back again so I thought oh maybe this is an opportunity we'll be pretty much going most of the way down the A1 bit of M11 but essentially what we're going to do we're going to stop at all the rapid charging sites that are within a half a mile detour of the route we took so A1 M11 essentially and don't prescribe to this well three miles just off the motorway there's a really good charging Hub that that isn't normal you would do it if you needed to but it's not it's not the convenience that we have to get in place for True Mass EV adoption so effectively Services uh you know you've got your McDonald's Starbucks types just off certain roads off the A1 especially so it's that type of diversion and in total we visited 16 Rapid charging sites 17 if you factor in the one that's at our destination in clacton-on-sea that big Morrisons so I have the 16 Rapid charging sites what do you what do you think the success success rate was feel free to pause the video right now and put in the comments your guess not cheating by fast forwarding what do you think it was now although the local rapid charging sites near me is very important for people visiting the area or passing through this for me is far more important it's it's part of the Strategic Road network of the UK all these major roads motorways the A1 it it's key to keeping people moving you want to get your fuel in your car and then carry on your journey as quickly as possible if there's a queue if it's not working it can really cause problems or at the very least a major anoints which puts people off on in electric vehicles or even puts people off keeping the car that they've got and then going back to uh petrol diesel or whatever now I'm not going to show you every single rapid charging site because that'll be a very long boring video if it worked it worked uh we'll just write it down if it did or not but this is essentially what happened over the journey foreign the last time we spoke you said that you love to have a mouthful of nuts didn't you well this is called the cluster of nuts in this car park my heaven unfortunately hello unfortunately the genie point one over there as you can tell from that guy that's really annoyed that guy that's using the AC charger it ain't working uh as in the AC is working which is the slow charger but the rapid charger isn't working so no nuts so no nuts for you I'm afraid you're gonna have to wait until tonight I mean uh until we get to the next charge absolutely zero of one I'll have to mark this down so we know what's working not the best start no well the next one should be all right because it's very Bridge services there's a few there towards whole field Lane so the nearest rapid charging to this place that isn't working 19 miles away it's considering we have 40 miles of range is uh yeah it's great you can understand why people he's going to use half of it right well uh see you in a bit very bridged Services there's a few charges so we should be okay on this one there's three waiting for us ah Fab so uh got a choice yeah pick a number looks like a new grid serve one so plug us in look and play then I'm gonna have a Wii the chap there uh I've just done a brief chat with and he's coming up we're going down and he said that the next one we're going to Holiday in Doncaster be peoples isn't working which is why he's had to limp onto here which is working for chadamor on that one but not chadamor on that one but but CCS appears to be working on all three so this charging site's working fine if not follow us uh there's no point of going to Holiday in Doncaster because it's not working I've also had a look on BP pulse website yes or app and that's saying it's not working as well on their own app so yeah we might as well just skip that and go to live Services live Services was working but busy and then Starbucks which is just up there also working fine we're at Starbucks Market more install and we're about to plug in ourselves right well that was not fun really insta bolt are very good we got 70 kilowatts out of it for a while but it took me what 10 minutes to get going the first you're out there for a long time first two goals transaction canceled so it worked we've got to charge more interchange take the third exit but it's not been Flawless by any means next time we do this next time we do this we're taking the Tesla okay hey it wasn't me suggested this one yes it was you're right then come on come on no don't even remember hopefully you can see me um we are now at Cambridge services so the rest has been fine so far um I honored here there's quite a lot of them here all of them full working of course and there are two grid served ones I think yep two also full we've managed to get on Just because they can do dual charging now but it's absolutely rammed it's currently seven o'clock on a Friday it's half turn February half term so it's not exactly you know that that many people going on holiday so it's clearly getting busier and busier the cluster of nuts didn't work ferry bridge did holiday in Doncaster did not live Services did but was full well the one charger was in use uh Starbucks and two Starbucks ones at elkasley I think it's called Markham the one we used both worked fine apart from the fact that the one I used took three goals to get it going shell Newark wasn't working Osprey a pub that was fine Bennington Co-op BP that was working fine Grantham Services also working fine but busy Starbucks wittering not working that's a shell one uh Peterborough Services working fine but full which is why we came here to Cambridge Services after we stopped at the Holiday Inn Huntingdon BP pulse which wasn't working either so when I got a lot left to go there's still you know some to check right well we got to clacton the two after those 14 I've just told you about we're working fine as well and the one in clacton if you count that uh the big Genie point at uh Morrisons that brand new start again there's loads of charges for that work but I'm not gonna include that because that was that destination so from the 16 we had five failures so it's not far off a third however there are a few things which make me have some hope for the future if you will and then some things that worry me the charges that didn't work they were pretty much the well BP pulse shell and a couple of others that were you know like at the Holiday Inn there were a couple of holidays that didn't work single charging sites that you wouldn't class as a normal stop-off so not the services not a a Starbucks McDonald's Costa Coffee sort of thing just off the road it was all kind of a kind of randomly place not great places to charge our stuff so that doesn't worry me too much they should work Again part of the network but not typical places you would stop at the services they're the big important one we stopped at I think five in total uh down on this trip and remember this is just one way all of them worked so this is the good news all of the charges at the services were fine so that that's that's very good it just shows how far great surf have come considering the crap they inherited from electricity now there was a worrying Trend as well with the services so the work is brilliant but they were all full all five services with the exception of the ferry bridge which we arrived at first and it was quite early we're full and ferrybridge was full when we left I should point out as well Rand not just full there were queues and when we came back as well which wasn't filmed in any way also really full and that was a Sunday afternoon it seems normal and I've done other trips over the last you know years or so the kind of mirror that they're getting busier and busier there's more cars electric cars on the road than ever before and the Chargers simply are not growing at the same speed as the cars couple that with the fact that pretty much all of them apart from the ionity ones at the services were 50 kilowatt charges are up two so let me give you an example of why that is really important in terms of we need to change it the car I was in the Subaru soltera forgetting its charging issues you get a maximum about four to six kilowatt on a grid serve up to 50 charger well any up to 50 charging but obviously grid serve they're all the services they have a higher standard to adhere to because they're part of the Strategic Road network but anyway 50 kilowatt charger the car runs at 46 kilowatts we also visited a 150 kilowatt charger in instavolt that's a 400 volt charger that stopped that stopped or maxed out if you will at 70 kilowatts that's just the nature of a 400 volt charger but effectively a 50 goes at 46 ish a 150 charger went at 70 odd a 300 or up to 300 kilowatt 800 volt charger that went just over 100 kilowatts so we're talking major differences the ionity 100 kilowatts the grid serve at the Sim Services the 50s half the speed and that's a slow charging cap if you got a let's say an ionic five that can charge it I think it's something like 230 kilowatts so I know on ionic it will Peak at 230. but on an up to 50 charger it will sit there at about 46.47 so the throughput of these charges is so much slower because of the maximum speed of them now it's not necessarily a problem with the network it could be more than likely the local power grid or the the connection that the services has that's the issue but whoever is responsible for that whether it's the government the National Grid the services the network or whoever it is that needs changing for me we're at the stage now where the technology of all the new EVS coming out and the sheer amount of cars I don't think anything should go in below 300 kilowatt 800 volts I mean I know that's impractical in a lot of places and you'd say I'd rather have someone 150s than wait until the power grid gets better I get that but the air the goal should be 150 minimum but ideally 800 volt 300 kilowatt more future-proof charges but then we get to numbers as well there are eight I think faster I'm sorry rapid charges at rugby services and then another eight next to them for the Tesla Supercharger Network that's seen as a bit of a flagship in the service area network it's really good but I've seen that fall quite a lot I've heard a lot of people say I've just been a rugby and they were all full there was cues even though there's eight plus eight and I know Teslas aren't necessarily what you've got public but you get my point I genuinely believe now that again if we in an Ideal World if we could pick it 16 is the minimum at a service area remember strategic Road Network this is part of the country's core remember cars are getting sold in record numbers electric cars so in under the year's time 16 might not be well it's all right but it's not quite enough we need to ramp it up whoever's responsible for all these little bottlenecks the amount of charges the speed of charges and therefore the grid connection it's it's it's worryingly slow at getting or keeping up with the amount of cars being sold and this is my big issue now and it's something that I have monitored over the last eight years of electric car driving and probably five or six years of doing this channel properly it's it's kind of gone like that for a few years you know the charges and the cars went up together but now cars have just gone like that and chargers are carrying on it's it's not good enough quite frankly we we need a legislative body and something like uh off gem off com that sort of thing it's gonna cost money it's going to be a lot of private money there might be some public money but if they're serious if we have to have full EV adoption by well let's say I say 20 40 realistically because 2035 you can still buy plug-in hybrid and you don't have to plug them in and then again new cars aren't going to disappear you can still get a one-year-old car in 2036 a two-year-old guy in 2037 that's still petrol um so realistically we've got 15 to 20 years to get this side down but why we're we need it now people are getting annoyed even electric car people are getting annoyed how many videos have you seen on YouTube over the last couple of months of channels jumping on the let's bash EVS sort of bandwagon because the network is genuinely getting worse and I've done a video as well because it is a third didn't work all of them at the key areas were busy and rammed a little tip if you're going down the A1 the four insta vaults at the two Starbucks no one seems to know they're there that always seemed to be free so use them right I'm done if you want to be a member it's 99p for a month you get videos like this early you get videos that are just for members occasionally and there's a members only live stream every month just for you like subscribe all that sort of stuff thanks for watching I'll see you soon

Channel: Electric Vehicle Man

Views: 31,207

Keywords: Testing Electric Car Charger Reliability Over 270 Miles Down The A1!, electric car, car chargers, car chrgers, electric charge, rapid charger, electric charing, electric charging, motorway chargers, chragers

Id: wnrCwHGuZAk

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023