What's people's thoughts on the non-Tesla charging networks?
Almost universally dreadful.
I've had my car over 3 years, and majority of my travelling charging has been Supercharger, but I have used a variety of brands of 3rd party charging all over the country and it just makes me realise how "right sized" the Supercharger solution is.
Supercharger = Rock up, plug in, perhaps just check the power ramps up as expect for a minute or so, then walk away / get on with something else. Looking at my logs every single Supercharge has been less than 1 minute from selecting PARK to charge starting.
My worst 3rd party experience was a pump that didn't work. I tried it twice (not unreasonable eh?) and then used the cable from the adjacent pump (didn't even have to move the car) and that worked. Not a bad experience on the face of it, but using the APP to start the charge, and enter my payment card, meant a total of 20 minutes before the charge started. I would think my best ever was 5 minutes, and quite possibly the same to disconnect by the time I've got the APP open and initiated the "stop charge" and waited for the airwaves to communicate that to the pump
Lots of times I've never been able to charge at all - pumps broken, or operator telling me they could initial the charge remotely ... and then not managing to do so.
There are incompatibility problems too. I've not had any (I'm using CHAdeMO which has been pretty reliable for all the brands of cars that have used it), but people using CCS do have problems now and again, including model-3 owners, and other brands, such as iPace, have significant problems (some iPace cars connect to Ecotricity OK, other cars never manage it, no really telling whether it is a Jag or Ecotricity problem (why would some cars work OK?). Either way :: Nightmare.
Many of them, like BP, are busy arm-twisting to sign up for a monthly subscription ... crazy. A fair number are outrageously expensive too.
yeah, just buy a Tesla and use the Supercharger network whenever you can, and destination chargers whenever you can, and avoid 3rd party chargers.
Some newcomers, like Ionity, look like doing a much better job ... but they are installing 2 and 4 stall sites and it isn't going to be long before they are fully occupied. Tesla haven't rolled out a 4 stall site in the UK since 2015 !
slow chargers which will of course be beneficial to the battery long term vs too much supercharging
I agree "too much Supercharging" but I reckon for most people Rapid Charging will be 10% of their miles, or less, and that level I wouldn't give it a second though. If it happens that you have a couple of hours to kill in a shopping mall then a 50kW charger will be fine, and kinder to the battery, but for a long journey much better to charge in a short time and get on with the journey.
