Now I remember why I brought a Tesla Model 3

[tomorrowman]

There is a youtuber called Shmee150 (I think Tim is his real name) who is a bit of a petrol head (mild understatement) who specialised in supercars.

To his credit he had brought and is trying to run an EV (admittedly a Taycan Turbo S) and his latest video HERE reminded me of why I brought a Tesla i.e. availability of an expanding, reliable and easy to use supercharger network.

In summary he has no home charging option is London based and has to rely on the public charging network, which in this instance does not treat him well (out of order chargers, charger queues, fault interrupted charging sessions etc) - to the point he is inclined to sell the thing.

Shame really as the March to EV's is going to need more than Tesla

 

[nxsynjs]

I saw the video earlier today. I expect he is not alone in his experience, neither will it be the last time. The thing is he is right, If you cant charge at home, have to rely on the shark pit that is public charging AND have a shorter range EV it's going to be more downs than ups. In some ways, I applaud him for trying to do things the hard way but then again I watched it thinking "With your money and resources, buy a M3 LR and show the other side before leaping in with a Taycan. Then again I pick up vibes of brand blindness (has to be a super car ICE manufacturer otherwise not interested ) in the same way as I do from some Teslarati so I suspect buying something like a Model S plaid, or M3 performance is off the cards for those reasons.

 

[Jason71]

I skipped through it did he mention Tesla at any point if only to say it is possible for charging to be a lot easier and this is how it will be for everyone one day?
To be fair his car may have a charging fault. "Even" Teslas get those.

 

[tomorrowman]

I skipped through it did he mention Tesla at any point if only to say it is possible for charging to be a lot easier and this is how it will be for everyone one day?
To be fair his car may have a charging fault. "Even" Teslas get those.

I think he did mention the Tesla supercharger network at some stage but what he had been trying to prove was that the general EV charging infrastructure was improving rapidly from both an availability and charge rate perspective - Sadly that was not the outcome.

The thing is he seems to be genuine in his desire to make it work and he does like the car - I think the charging faff is killing it for him though.

Just need gridserve to get a move on

 

[Alic01]

I saw the video earlier today. I expect he is not alone in his experience, neither will it be the last time. The thing is he is right, If you cant charge at home, have to rely on the shark pit that is public charging AND have a shorter range EV it's going to be more downs than ups. In some ways, I applaud him for trying to do things the hard way but then again I watched it thinking "With your money and resources, buy a M3 LR and show the other side before leaping in with a Taycan. Then again I pick up vibes of brand blindness (has to be a super car ICE manufacturer otherwise not interested ) in the same way as I do from some Teslarati so I suspect buying something like a Model S plaid, or M3 performance is off the cards for those reasons.

I could see him going for a Model S Plaid or Plaid +, it would fit his brand image, get a decent number of views to his channel to maintain the company income and would be the fastest car available at time of purchase.

I think all super car channels will need to pick up a performance EV to keep up as everything changes towards electric, having watched his videos for a long time i can see why he went with the Taycan if I’m honest. M3P isnt special enough for what he does and the original P100D was too long in the tooth when he jumped on the bandwagon so the Taycan Turbo S worked well along with the brand links to get him an early car.

Cant fault him for what he’s done but the realities are settling in now, its really a case of whether he hangs in until his garage is set up so he can charge or bails. If he does the latter i would expect a Plaid + amongst the first batch in the UK, or he may even buy in America where the infrastructure better suits.

 

[Llama.]

That was a hard video to watch. He had such a bad charging experience.

To answer a question above, he did mention that Tesla charging infrastructure is better, but says it wasn’t as good as some places in the US.

Being able to charge at home and drive a car with more than 300 miles does mostly solve the practical issues,

But not all parts of the U.K. are so badly served for public EV charging as London apparently.

I’m lucky to have DC 50kw charging at Starbucks and Lidl both within 2 miles of where I live in Leeds, and a free Engie 50kw charger at the Council Leisure centre that is even closer.

So if you live in NW Leeds, you really can get away with not needing a home charger. I wouldn’t be an issue for me locally.

So it really depends on where you live as to whether you can get away with needing a home charge point or not.

This video will fuel some of the negative messages about EV public charging, but I think these experiences need to be heard.

 

[Bantam]

That was a hard video to watch. He had such a bad charging experience.

To answer a question above, he did mention that Tesla charging infrastructure is better, but says it wasn’t as good as some places in the US.

Being able to charge at home and drive a car with more than 300 miles does mostly solve the practical issues,

But not all parts of the U.K. are so badly served for public EV charging as London apparently.

I’m lucky to have DC 50kw charging at Starbucks and Lidl both within 2 miles of where I live in Leeds, and a free Engie 50kw charger at the Council Leisure centre that is even closer.

So if you live in NW Leeds, you really can get away with not needing a home charger. I wouldn’t be an issue for me locally.

So it really depends on where you live as to whether you can get away with needing a home charge point or not.

This video will fuel some of the negative messages about EV public charging, but I think these experiences need to be heard.

Compared to some areas of the UK, Leeds/Bradford appear to be blessed with an excellent selection of public EV chargers. Within 10min driving radius I have a number of free/paid for AC & DC options and its growing... last week I noticed Osprey have stuck 2 x 50Kw chargers in the local retail park to me (5mins drive). Not sure when they were installed but it must of been during the last lockdown, long may it continue.

 

[Jason71]

That was a hard video to watch. He had such a bad charging experience.

To answer a question above, he did mention that Tesla charging infrastructure is better, but says it wasn’t as good as some places in the US.

Being able to charge at home and drive a car with more than 300 miles does mostly solve the practical issues,

But not all parts of the U.K. are so badly served for public EV charging as London apparently.

I’m lucky to have DC 50kw charging at Starbucks and Lidl both within 2 miles of where I live in Leeds, and a free Engie 50kw charger at the Council Leisure centre that is even closer.

So if you live in NW Leeds, you really can get away with not needing a home charger. I wouldn’t be an issue for me locally.

So it really depends on where you live as to whether you can get away with needing a home charge point or not.

This video will fuel some of the negative messages about EV public charging, but I think these experiences need to be heard.

Yes except the difference between a home charge point and public charging is the difference between paying 5p/kwh and (being generous) 25p per kwh. I know availability rather than price is the point of this video but that elephant in the EV ownership room cannot be ignored. People without access to off street parking are often the least affluent so we will be asking them to adopt EV's which may be more expensive and less convenient, pay the road pricing (which is coming) AND pay more for fuel then they do at present.

 

[Jason71]

on a similar note EVM put out a video about public charging a couple of days ago.
He also makes some really good points such as how some networks don't have 24 hour customer support

 

[andrewrobinson]

some networks don't have 24 hour customer support

Yeah that's one of my worst nightmares that... getting stuck in a charger at daft-o-clock and not having someone on hand to help.

 

[stonecoldrmw]

Having owned my M3P for over a year now and dropped nearly 15k miles I'm absolutely convinced that the SuC network is the single greatest asset Tesla have in their armoury.

the ease and simplicity of the SuC network are hands down the reason why I at this point, wouldn't consider anything else. I hope that other manufacturers and charge networks get up to speed pronto.

 

[Dilly]

I remember why I bought mine…
my wife told me to…

 

[Ben177]

In summary he has no home charging option is London based and has to rely on the public charging network,

And yet in his other videos, he shows those cars in the background in the garage, all sitting on trickle chargers running off three-pin sockets. So whilst not perfect, he certainly has his own ability to charge, even if he can't fit a 7kw EVSE.

Having watched a fair few of his videos over the years, he has a tendency to exaggerate everything to boost viewing figures.

 

[Jason71]

Having watched a fair few of his videos over the years, he has a tendency to exaggerate everything to boost viewing figures.

seems to be working

 

[Rustybkts]

We drove around Scotland on the NW500 route last October and although used Superchargers all the way to Fort William without failure, I couldn't get any Rapids to work or they were broken/not in service. Most times they flagged a CCS comms failure although another two had touch screen faults.
Luckily we had checked when booking and mostly relied on 13A sockets and destination chargers.

I can only assume that CCS has so many variants that at the time my cars software wasn't very compatible with certain types of Rapids but finding two with touch screen failures makes you wonder why a hard wired button to enable/stop charging couldn't be fitted as backup.

 

[tomorrowman]

And yet in his other videos, he shows those cars in the background in the garage, all sitting on trickle chargers running off three-pin sockets. So whilst not perfect, he certainly has his own ability to charge, even if he can't fit a 7kw EVSE.

Having watched a fair few of his videos over the years, he has a tendency to exaggerate everything to boost viewing figures.

Apparently his new shmuseum will have 3 phase charger

 

[Peter 224]

a good friend took a Vauxhall Mokka E out using their 2 day test drive offer. Driving from Salisbury to Bridport and back they didn't find a single charger offering more than 7kw working. They just got home and charging overnight on a granny cable had enough range to return the car on the 2nd day.
Nick agreed with me that the public charging infrastructure is a jungle: they will try my M3ER, and probably then wait for a Y.