Is Supercharging for road trips enough?

[vitesse]

Our CPO 70D is on its way and we do have a selection of Superchargers in range here for quick top-ups before long trips, if required, as we are in the home counties. However, I was wondering if I need to think about the occasional use of one of the other public charging networks, if only for occasional emergency use? If so, which ones would folks here recommend? Thanks!

I ought to add I'm having a 7KW ROLEC installed for routine home charging; I'm only asking about long trips around the country away from home

 

[Dapimp]

So far in 3 months ownership I’ve only used PodPoint outside of the supercharger network but I do have Polar Instant, Charge Your Car and ChargeMap apps installed plus the card for ChargeMap as it’s popular in Europe apparently. I’m planning a trip to Belgium in August so I figured it’s better to be prepared. I have Chamedo adapter, an EU plug to UK extension and an adapter for caravan charging points too. Maybe I’m over prepared but I’d rather have emergency options. Hope that helps.

 

[vitesse]

The Chademo sounds great on paper but they are so expensive! Do you pay a sub for Polar or PodPoint?

 

[WannabeOwner]

quick top-ups before long trips, i

Ermm ... that's probably not going to work.

If you can charge at home do that. Charge to 100% before longer trips whenever you think you might need it (e.g. if journey is mroe than 70% of normal max range)

If you stop at a Supercharger when car is above 70% it will charge very slowly.

Plan to charge on the way home instead - when the battery is low %age it will charge (at supercharger) much more quickly

You don't really need any local Superchargers, what you need is Superchargers on arterial routes home about 50 - 100 miles away, so you can refuel at them, on way home, by which time majority of your journey is done and you will be able to predict very accurately how much juice you need to reach destination (or, more correctly, "the car will be able to predict ..." because as you charge it will show you, and continuously update, the "predicted charge on arrival", and once that gets to 10%, or more, you can set off

3rd party chargers are difficult because there are different operators in different parts of the country and each has different APPs and RFIDs. So it depends where you go ... CYC seems to be reasonably widespread ... but "it depends"

 

[Terry_B58]

I have had my MS75D for just over a year and am over 28.000 miles.

I have 'cards and apps' for a few different chargers, but have only ever used one and that was the first week of ownership on a trip to the Lakes. I didn't need the charge but I thought I had better get some as I wasn't sure of what I could get out of the car, basically - Range Anxiety.

Superchargers and destination chargers are the way to go, use abetterrouteplanner (on your phone as the browser is not great), you will be fine.

 

[ewoodrick]

To me, Superchargers near home are the last ones that I will use. Don't need them, I charge at home.

I'm on a 500 km trip right now and just Supercharged.

 

[juliusa]

I have Blink and Chargepoint. If 6 years 150k miles and lots of long distance trips I have never used them. But that is in the US.

Location is everything though. All depends on where you are going - choosed the networks that have chargers where you might go, and there are not superchargers.

 

[arg]

For very long one-way trips, Superchargers are enough almost everywhere: on such a trip even if you need a diversion to pass a Supercharger you can normally contrive to make it insignificant, since most long distance journeys have more than one plausible route and more than one possible Supercharger.

The problem comes at the end of your journey to recharge for the return (&/or local driving at destination). If you are willing to choose destinations based on charging (eg. pick hotels with Tesla destination chargers for preference) then no problem. In my case, our accommodation is usually selected on other factors (often by my wife) and it’s up to me to sort the charging. Often the UMC and a handy 13A socket solves the problem- hotels usually go out of their way to help you on this in my experience (and the exception was already in line for a bad customer service score before they refused use of a perfectly suitable socket).

But sometimes there’s no option other than to fall back on public charging. All networks are required by law to allow you to charge without requiring advance sign-up, most of them achieving this via a smartphone app to collect payment and enable the charge, an increasing number by accepting contactless bank cards. Those app-based are of variable reliability - mostly due to incompetence rather than malice, though Polar are very keen to make you join their monthly subscription plan and the inadequacy of their app might be more than coincidence. Having both a CHAdeMO adapter and a Type2 cable gives you many more options (and you will almost always need one or the other for public charging). A combination of zap-map and plugshare is usually sufficient to sniff out options. You do need to check before you set out (or alternatively spend a lot of time keeping up on the changing state of public charging and downloading lots of apps for new networks just in case you go to somewhere they operate.

In my experience, out-and-back or multi-stop circular day-trips are much more of a problem than long trips, being much harder to contrive a route past a supercharger than a one-way trip of similar length. For me, the CHAdeMO adapter is still essential to make those trips work, but this will depend where you live - my trips often start off cross-country rather than up or down the main motorway routes.

 

[vitesse]

@arg Great info, thanks.