Let me share my experience charging outside Tesla Supercharger network.
We had this Munchen - Konstanz roadtrip for a while. My wife came from Budapest to Munchen by train, I drove there from Amsterdam and picked up her and we continued our road trip to Konstanz/Moos/Singen (Bodensee) to meet up with our friends. I wanted to arrive to my friends with an almost fully charged car because they mentioned a few times that they want to try it out. I had two options:
I did my research and turned out there is a chargin station next to the hotel we had our accommodation. After dinner I went down to the garage to initiate a charging... I use Bosch's ChargeMyEv app which is an aggregator app and you can start your session and Bosch takes care about communicating with different companies and system. You just have to tap here and there and magic. The reality is something different.
When I went down to the garage the app showed that the chargin station is working. However, the charging station displayed an error message. The second problem is that there is no or very limited mobile data is available. Luckily, the hotel's wifi was available in the garage. Anyway, I couldn't start charging. No problem. There are other stations in the town and I'll find one in the morning.
Saturday morning. The coffee is the most important. We found a coffee place in Oberlingen (other side of the Bodensee), 15 km away and I also saw that there are 5-10 charging stations (22kW) there. The charging state of my Tesla at this point was around 23-25% ish.
Coffee done, it was awesome. Let's charge. In the ChargeMyEv app I found a place with 4 chargers. When we arrived turned out that it is an underground garage, but the chargers are next to the entrance. We occupied the most inner one, and the hell started unfolding. No data in the garage, so Bosch's app can't communicate. There is free wifi. But, iPhone won't let you use wireless connection without any security. We let the cable plugged in to the charger and my Tesla and wen't outside to get some data connection, but we got to far away from the car/chargin station. So, we couldn't start the charging. We went outside, basically above the car, but we still can't start the charging. At this point I can't decide why we couldn't start the charging. According to GPS we were very close to the car, we had data connection, everything was plugged in... Maybe the app cached something, maybe it didn't get fresh status from the backend even though I restarted it many times... My wife, smart woman, figure out that she is going to share her data as hotspot with me, she stands next to the entrance where there was data, my GPS will be close the to charging station and will get data via my wife's phone... didn't work. Overall, after 20 minutes we gave up. The possible solution would be to use RFID. But, eventually, I will carry a small bag with all the RFID's of charging networks... no, thanks...
We continued our journey to our friends, car's charing state is around 16% -ish. We found a charging station, I connected the car, I opened Bosch's app and initiated a charging session. The app showed an error after ~30 sec and in the same time I heard that the chargin station does something and the charging started. The app showed that the station is occupied. It didn't know that I started the session and I has to stop it. I felt that this will be a problem... But, my wife was hungry and we took a short walk a restaurant and eat something. The food was great, but we couldn't pay by card and we didn't have any cash with us. In the Netherlands you can pay by card everywhere (if it is a MasterCard Credit you may have problems, if it is a Visa or Amex Credit Card almost sure you'll have problems). We called our friends and asked them to bring some cash.
When we went back to the car Bosch's app still showed that the charging station is occupied, but it didn't showed that I can stop the charging session. We were stuck there. It was obvious I have to call them. But, here is the problem. I can speak Hungarian and English, and I might be able to order some food or bier in German. My wife also can speak Hungarian and English, and some French. Do they speak English during the weekend? Germany is not the Netherlands where everyone speaks some English. Luckily, they have English customer service and I could talk to them. It turned out that this station is not a Bosch station so they can't reset it. Unfortunetely, they don't know the hotline number to the owner company, "It should be on the charging station", but they created a ticket. I have to say that the person we had our discussion was really helpful and she also suffered when she had to say that she can't help further.
At this point I have to describe the situation. The charging was ongoing. I could release the cable from my Tesla if I wanted, but the other end was locked in the charging station. A cable like this costs a few hundred euros, so not really an option to leave there, and it is not a European solution. Not to mention that they can easily figure out who initiated the charging session. I assume they store some data about the car.
We found the goddamned number... But, the dread again. Do they have a hotline during weekend? Do they speak English? And all the contingency if the answers are "no"... not a relaxing mental exercise... We called them, they reset the station and we could unplug the cable and we were good to go. During this session the charging state went up to 40%.
I still don't know how I'm going to pay for this session.
Since, the following day we had to take the trip from Singen to Munchen I told my wife that we are going to go to Schaffhausen to fully charge the car in order to take the Singen - Munchen distance in one go. She had a train to catch to Budapest and I wanted to minimalise the traffic risk as much as possible. The trip to Schaffhausen took 15 minutes from Singen, the charging took 40 minutes (watched Zootropolis) and another 15 minutes back to the hotel. This is 70 minutes. What burned 5 hours with the charging "experience" and the stress.
I came back to Amsterdam yesterday and in the morning I initiated a charging using Bosch app at a close charging station. The session started without any problem. Now stopping it failed. Another call to Bosch and the customer service guy was rude and told me to call the charging station owner company. 5 minutes later my cable was unplugged and I charged 50 kW and according to the invoice I received later I paid only for 8kW.
Overall, charging outside of Tesla Supercharger network is a nightmare. I don't understand Bosch. With this app they position themselves to a "we integrate every charging station for you" position, but unable to grow up to the task. Both cases are "eventual consistency" problems where you have a distributed system and you have to achieve that the system will show a consistent state and with high confidence your service can switch between these states (start charging, stop charging, show valid statuses, etc.). But, it doesn't happen. Working with eventual consistency is a pain, I know, this is my job. But, as a customer I don't trust in this app anymore. It doesn't do what it promises. If this is the charging experience outside of Tesla's network I wouldn't buy a non-Tesla EV. It is an unreliable piece of garbage.
I drove 2100 km during the weekend. I charged my Tesla 8-9 times at Superchargers across 3 countries. The only thing I can mention is that it took 2-3 secs more to start the charging in Germany than in the Netherlands or Switzerland.
"Tesla Supercharger" by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine is marked with CC0 1.0.
Admin note: Imaged added for Blog Feed thumbnail
We had this Munchen - Konstanz roadtrip for a while. My wife came from Budapest to Munchen by train, I drove there from Amsterdam and picked up her and we continued our road trip to Konstanz/Moos/Singen (Bodensee) to meet up with our friends. I wanted to arrive to my friends with an almost fully charged car because they mentioned a few times that they want to try it out. I had two options:
- take a short trip (35km roundtrip) to Schaffhausen (CH) and charging Tesla Supercharger there
- using local charging points
I did my research and turned out there is a chargin station next to the hotel we had our accommodation. After dinner I went down to the garage to initiate a charging... I use Bosch's ChargeMyEv app which is an aggregator app and you can start your session and Bosch takes care about communicating with different companies and system. You just have to tap here and there and magic. The reality is something different.
When I went down to the garage the app showed that the chargin station is working. However, the charging station displayed an error message. The second problem is that there is no or very limited mobile data is available. Luckily, the hotel's wifi was available in the garage. Anyway, I couldn't start charging. No problem. There are other stations in the town and I'll find one in the morning.
Saturday morning. The coffee is the most important. We found a coffee place in Oberlingen (other side of the Bodensee), 15 km away and I also saw that there are 5-10 charging stations (22kW) there. The charging state of my Tesla at this point was around 23-25% ish.
Coffee done, it was awesome. Let's charge. In the ChargeMyEv app I found a place with 4 chargers. When we arrived turned out that it is an underground garage, but the chargers are next to the entrance. We occupied the most inner one, and the hell started unfolding. No data in the garage, so Bosch's app can't communicate. There is free wifi. But, iPhone won't let you use wireless connection without any security. We let the cable plugged in to the charger and my Tesla and wen't outside to get some data connection, but we got to far away from the car/chargin station. So, we couldn't start the charging. We went outside, basically above the car, but we still can't start the charging. At this point I can't decide why we couldn't start the charging. According to GPS we were very close to the car, we had data connection, everything was plugged in... Maybe the app cached something, maybe it didn't get fresh status from the backend even though I restarted it many times... My wife, smart woman, figure out that she is going to share her data as hotspot with me, she stands next to the entrance where there was data, my GPS will be close the to charging station and will get data via my wife's phone... didn't work. Overall, after 20 minutes we gave up. The possible solution would be to use RFID. But, eventually, I will carry a small bag with all the RFID's of charging networks... no, thanks...
We continued our journey to our friends, car's charing state is around 16% -ish. We found a charging station, I connected the car, I opened Bosch's app and initiated a charging session. The app showed an error after ~30 sec and in the same time I heard that the chargin station does something and the charging started. The app showed that the station is occupied. It didn't know that I started the session and I has to stop it. I felt that this will be a problem... But, my wife was hungry and we took a short walk a restaurant and eat something. The food was great, but we couldn't pay by card and we didn't have any cash with us. In the Netherlands you can pay by card everywhere (if it is a MasterCard Credit you may have problems, if it is a Visa or Amex Credit Card almost sure you'll have problems). We called our friends and asked them to bring some cash.
When we went back to the car Bosch's app still showed that the charging station is occupied, but it didn't showed that I can stop the charging session. We were stuck there. It was obvious I have to call them. But, here is the problem. I can speak Hungarian and English, and I might be able to order some food or bier in German. My wife also can speak Hungarian and English, and some French. Do they speak English during the weekend? Germany is not the Netherlands where everyone speaks some English. Luckily, they have English customer service and I could talk to them. It turned out that this station is not a Bosch station so they can't reset it. Unfortunetely, they don't know the hotline number to the owner company, "It should be on the charging station", but they created a ticket. I have to say that the person we had our discussion was really helpful and she also suffered when she had to say that she can't help further.
At this point I have to describe the situation. The charging was ongoing. I could release the cable from my Tesla if I wanted, but the other end was locked in the charging station. A cable like this costs a few hundred euros, so not really an option to leave there, and it is not a European solution. Not to mention that they can easily figure out who initiated the charging session. I assume they store some data about the car.
We found the goddamned number... But, the dread again. Do they have a hotline during weekend? Do they speak English? And all the contingency if the answers are "no"... not a relaxing mental exercise... We called them, they reset the station and we could unplug the cable and we were good to go. During this session the charging state went up to 40%.
I still don't know how I'm going to pay for this session.
Since, the following day we had to take the trip from Singen to Munchen I told my wife that we are going to go to Schaffhausen to fully charge the car in order to take the Singen - Munchen distance in one go. She had a train to catch to Budapest and I wanted to minimalise the traffic risk as much as possible. The trip to Schaffhausen took 15 minutes from Singen, the charging took 40 minutes (watched Zootropolis) and another 15 minutes back to the hotel. This is 70 minutes. What burned 5 hours with the charging "experience" and the stress.
I came back to Amsterdam yesterday and in the morning I initiated a charging using Bosch app at a close charging station. The session started without any problem. Now stopping it failed. Another call to Bosch and the customer service guy was rude and told me to call the charging station owner company. 5 minutes later my cable was unplugged and I charged 50 kW and according to the invoice I received later I paid only for 8kW.
Overall, charging outside of Tesla Supercharger network is a nightmare. I don't understand Bosch. With this app they position themselves to a "we integrate every charging station for you" position, but unable to grow up to the task. Both cases are "eventual consistency" problems where you have a distributed system and you have to achieve that the system will show a consistent state and with high confidence your service can switch between these states (start charging, stop charging, show valid statuses, etc.). But, it doesn't happen. Working with eventual consistency is a pain, I know, this is my job. But, as a customer I don't trust in this app anymore. It doesn't do what it promises. If this is the charging experience outside of Tesla's network I wouldn't buy a non-Tesla EV. It is an unreliable piece of garbage.
I drove 2100 km during the weekend. I charged my Tesla 8-9 times at Superchargers across 3 countries. The only thing I can mention is that it took 2-3 secs more to start the charging in Germany than in the Netherlands or Switzerland.
"Tesla Supercharger" by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine is marked with CC0 1.0.
Admin note: Imaged added for Blog Feed thumbnail
