Bonnet now has IONITY

[Garry TheBiz]

I've used it successfully at Ionity sites, maxing out at 190kW on a preheated low battery.
800 miles round trip to the Scottish Highlands last week, and never used a supercharger once.
I wouldn't bother with 50kW sites either, I'd rather pay full price for supercharging, but for Ionity sites, it's a viable service. You get a comparable speed for a lower cost

 

[Adopado]

I've used it successfully at Ionity sites, maxing out at 190kW on a preheated low battery.
800 miles round trip to the Scottish Highlands last week, and never used a supercharger once.
I wouldn't bother with 50kW sites either, I'd rather pay full price for supercharging, but for Ionity sites, it's a viable service. You get a comparable speed for a lower cost

Not a lower cost anymore. Bonnet just went up so it’s about the same.

 

[mikeyg_ev]

So now I have:

• Octopus Electric Juice
• ChargeMap
• Bonnet
• Tesla Superchargers

And there are many more overlapping networks of networks. Some of which will have different prices for the same chargers. Some charge by time and some by energy used.

So is there any good way to find the best charger at the cheapest cost on your route given the particular set of networks you're signed up to? I've tried adding the individual networks to ABRP but it's not great.

So far my best strategy is to select a convenient charger on one of my networks, and then double check it's not cheaper with another one before I plug in. Which means 5 minutes messing with my phone about while the rest of the family has already finished their first slice of cake.

 

[tsh2]

My ABRP strategy so far has been to blacklist the expensive networks - seems Bonnet might break that strategy. In practice, it seems to be either Superchargers are suitable, or there is no choice (depending on route).

 

[NewbieT]

My new best friend:

Der Ladetarifrechner für dein Elektroauto

Der Ladetarifrechner für dein Elektroauto. Ladedauer eingeben, Ladestation auswählen und den günstigsten Tarif finden.

www.chargeprice.app

 

[JonB]

Annoyingly, Bonnet won't let you search for high powered chargers, the search stops at 50kw+

Quite why they can't do a search function for 150kw+, I don't know

A cynical man might surmise that they try to limit you to 50kW chargers because slower chargers tend to be cheaper (for them).

Either that, or their app is buggy.

It's all academic now, anyway. Since the price increase I won't bother with them, and I suspect most people would agree. Give it a year and no one will remember Bonnet.

 

[btc1k]

A cynical man might surmise that they try to limit you to 50kW chargers because slower chargers tend to be cheaper (for them).

Either that, or their app is buggy.

It's all academic now, anyway. Since the price increase I won't bother with them, and I suspect most people would agree. Give it a year and no one will remember Bonnet.

Bonnet has over $5m of investment so far including capital from an ex-president of Tesla.....

Meanwhile an awful lot of highly experienced angel investors on here with "give it 6 months" and "give it 12 months"

 

[tsh2]

Meanwhile an awful lot of highly experienced angel investors on here with "give it 6 months" and "give it 12 months"

This is basically how investment works. A large proportion of ideas fail, the winners need to win big enough to offset the downside of the failures. As a consumer, there is no clear benefit of being an early adopter. For european trips, I can see some advantage to an additional PAYG network since card readers seem to be absent from many locations.

 

[qwickshot]

Shouldn’t the pertinent question be how much of the £5m do they have left after giving ‘discounts’ for so long plus referrals, promotions etc.

 

[JonB]

Bonnet has over $5m of investment so far including capital from an ex-president of Tesla.....

Meanwhile an awful lot of highly experienced angel investors on here with "give it 6 months" and "give it 12 months"

What can I say, other than time will tell...? I am not able to see the future but I can make predictions based on common sense. I would like Bonnet to succeed but I cannot see the value add in their offering now that they are the same price as other networks.

 

[Adopado]

...still a useful saving on Ionity price ...

 

[btc1k]

Shouldn’t the pertinent question be how much of the £5m do they have left after giving ‘discounts’ for so long plus referrals, promotions etc.

Like any tech business then which leverages network effects whilst making a loss, to provide critical mass later on.

 

[btc1k]

What can I say, other than time will tell...? I am not able to see the future but I can make predictions based on common sense. I would like Bonnet to succeed but I cannot see the value add in their offering now that they are the same price as other networks.

With angel investors like the founder of Deliveroo, and an ex-President of Tesla, what do they know about value propositions, right?

Dave on the forums says 6 months and they be gone. Couple of promo codes and they be outta cash, common sense mate.

 

[NewbieT]

The aggregators do have a place. ChargePoint, Plug Surfing, Octopus Juice all think so and haven’t gone bump yet.

I wouldn’t write off Bonnet. I’m not saying you’re all going to get free electricity from them, I’m just saying there is a model that has appeal. We all want just 1 app. Very surprised if Bonnet weren’t planning to white label sell versions to other companies- utility co/media/telecoms/lease companies/hire companies/fleet users.

Anyone in this space is looking to grow volume/ market share to gain buying power.

 

[mdunc]

My guess is there is money to be made in fleets. An EV version of a old school fuel card.

 

[GeorgeSymonds]

My guess is there is money to be made in fleets. An EV version of a old school fuel card.

Except they don't have any web based access to your account and don't own the bonnet.com (or co.uk etc) domain. The joinbonnet.com website doesn't even give you any way to actually join unless you're on a mobile and download the app. I guess they can add it later on.

But I suspect I'm not alone in downloading it, eventually finding how to log on, might use it for one free charge, and then ignore it forever more.

With contactless payments now mandatory on all new UK rapid chargers as I understand the situation, and cars getting increasing range, the need for an individual to rapid charge will decrease (lots of demand still, but rather than 50k owners charging 3x a week, it will start to become 500k owners charging 1x a month on average). I'd have to use them a lot to make it worth my while and given public charging is a fair bit more than home charging nobody is going to shift. The cheaper introduction tariff was just to draw in customers.

Who knows, they might succeed, but so far I have been spectacularily unimpressed. Try this simple check - open the app, go to settings, go to App information, then try any of the bottom 3 (of 4 links) including Privacy, Terms and 3rd party legal notices - all of them broken links

They've not had many app reviews, but the latest scores are 2/5. 1/5, 1/5, 3/5

Building APIs to 3rd parties is also a challenge and needs their full support, billing and complaints ain't cheap to manage and you have the issues of "who's fault is it anyway" to wade through. Ecotricity couldn't really make a go of it when they had a monopoly and no 3rd parties.

The models I can see being successful are

1; provide the company card as mentioned, but that could just be a company credit card for charging, and/or
2; become the operator for third parties so they don't build their own billing infrastructure, a bit like amazon do in retail.

Neither of those things are on their roadmap that I can see

 

[mikeyg_ev]

the need for an individual to rapid charge will decrease (lots of demand still, but rather than 50k owners charging 3x a week, it will start to become 500k owners charging 1x a month on average).

Yep I'm convinced that most of the providers have got it spectacularly wrong. it's going to settle into predominantly just 2 different charging needs:

• Overnight/all-day ~7 - 11kw ac charging on virtually every residential street e.g. Lamp-post chargers. Used once a week by those who don't have a driveway or anyone staying overnight somewhere. People will care a lot about the price of the ones in their street.
• 200kW+ chargers for those on a long trip. Situated at rest stops or in shopping areas. Price not quite so critical as convenience and having things to do nearby.

I expect the demand for anything in between will become vanishingly small.

Also I never understand the difference between rapid, fast, ultra etc and I doubt many other people do either. Most people I know would call a supercharger "fast" and a home/lamp-post charger "slow" That's all people care about - overnight or as quickly as possible.

 

[tsh2]

Also I never understand the difference between rapid, fast, ultra etc and I doubt many other people do either. Most people I know would call a supercharger "fast" and a home/lamp-post charger "slow" That's all people care about - overnight or as quickly as possible.

Except that we also have 35-45kW sort of charge (labelled 50kW), and many vehicles which max out at this sort rate too. The supermarket sort of rate where a supercharger would make for a rather rushed trip (e.g. Le Mans SC).

Based on my recent trips to France, even 11kW is usable as a 'whilst doing something else' charge mode, so long as you have enough capacity float to be happy with only charging to ~70% much of the time - I had no overnight charge and an hour round trip to a SC. The one 50kW we found was broken...

 

[NewbieT]

I’ve started to love 50kW for those motorway services where you want a meal. 250kW e.g Rugby is fine if you want a splash and dash but you barely have time to get to the WC and back.

 

[CMc1]

For those that don’t know, bonnet changed their pricing this week and also cancelled all the free promo codes. Taking a lot of flack for the latter on socials.

Ionity still 50p

I’ve had two poor experiences with two separate ionity sites this week followed by 150 kW Shell site so will be avoiding once my “refill” is used unless they bring on other CPOs.

chargeprice.app to the rescue