WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
SuperChargers are great, but you will encounter scenarios where lack of CCS is a problem. Unless you pack the Chademo adapter. Does it fit in the refreah frunk? I don't have one.
I don't understand this line of thinking.
Currently I can charge at Supercharger at 120-ish kW, or CHAdeMO at 50-ish kW. Yes I had to buy the adaptor, I've used it twice in two years (and public type-2 charging 3 times in two years) whereas I have used used Supercharger 63 times in the same period, so about 3 times a month. But I have the choice ... and where there is no Supercharger I can use CHAdeMO. There are plenty in the UK, but they tend to only be single pumps per site, so currently iPace is also going to be limited to using those 50kW-ish pumps.
In UK the Superchargers [according to Supercharger Info] are:
9 x 2-stalls (Newest was 2015)
6 x 4-stalls (Newest was 2015)
2 x 5-stalls
5 x 6-stalls
18 x 8-stalls
4 x 12-stalls
1 x 16-Stalls
The chances of being paired (and having reduced-charge-rate) is small, let alone the chance of finding all stalls occupied and having to wait. Car Dashboard shows the Status of sites (including # of free stalls) so can bypass a site if busy (and not urgently needing a charge). New sites are no longer being rolled out with few stalls.
I don't see how anyone would compare Supercharger to "Alternative" and find "Alternative" to be anything other than dismal, at present.
Looking on Plugshare (until I got bored, as no country-wide list so had to click on each Pin) there was one site in SE UK which had 3x CSS/SAE (probably shared with CHAdeMO), of the rest (about 25 that I checked) more than half were single-pump, and 7 had a user-reported error/failure (within the last month or so), so chance of being Blocked will be relatively high, and also the potential to find that no pump is working (although next pump won;t be far away, provided you have the right APP / membership).
I've had slow-charging at Supercharger once, and I just moved to a different stall to fix that. I have had zero occurrences of "not working / couldn't charge".
Yes the CHAdeMO fits in my Frunk, along with my UMC cable and also my Type-2 - both of which are "decent length and hefty".
Undoubtedly 150 kW-ish CCS will be rolled out over time, but its going to take time measured in years, not months. Meantime Superchargers continue to be rolled out, further reducing the gaps in the coverage.
I think the Jag looks great, and will appeal to lots of people, existing Jag owners in particular, but away-from-home fast charging is not going to be viable for quite some time.