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Source London

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Anyone got much experience with Source London as a charging network? A lot of the chat online seems to be from a few years ago.

I don't have off street parking so my charging strategy is going to be a mix of Superchargers when travelling out of London (to my in-laws every week or two) and local network chargers. The networks around me are predominantly Source and Ubitricity.

I know Source has a reputation for being expensive, but the 4 hour night-time caps seems to make it into a more compelling proposition and I wanted to check my understanding was correct.

Rates

An 11 hour overnight charge from 8pm-7am is capped at four hours' fees. Which at 3.6p per minute makes £8.64. £8.64 for 11 hours at 7.4kwh is 10.6p/kwh - which is pretty competitive for a public charge point no?

I do need to do some investigating as to how often my local Source charger is occupied at night with people with the same idea.

Obviously there is the £4 monthly membership fee, but it pays for itself in one overnight charge as against the pay-as-you-go and flexi rates. Source appears to also have the benefit of good London-wide coverage and free parking at prime locations, so perhaps it's not such a bad deal afterall?

Any thoughts/experiences with Source very much appreciated.
 
I’m in the same situation and have been for almost a year using Source London overnight charging only.

SL is crazy expensive at 29.189 pence per kWh even with their subscription when it is not capped. I’m in SE London and I’m the only person who seems to overnight charge.
 
I’m in the same situation and have been for almost a year using Source London overnight charging only.

SL is crazy expensive at 29.189 pence per kWh even with their subscription when it is not capped. I’m in SE London and I’m the only person who seems to overnight charge.

Ah that's good to hear re it not being busy. My local one seems empty as well 99% of the times I check. Fingers crossed it remains like that.

I can envisage a bi-weekly task of taking the car round the corner at 7.55pm and setting a bright and early alarm at 6.55am to go and get it!
 
It is possible to reserve a Source London charger, but there is a moderate fee for this that they often don’t make clear, so it’s not worth doing.

I have recently had two 50kW Polar chargers installed near me so their polar plus subscription at 15 p per kWh means a 50 kWh costs £7.50. This may be more use to you when traveling outside London.
 
I live in a block of flats with chargers in the car park which I think are Polar Network...fingers crossed. After researching that, it does seem like a fairly good option in terms of wider coverage as @Andrew_SE23 suggests. I recall looking at Source London too and as the other responses say they looked incredibly expensive (though I guess they are capturing the cost of parking as well...)
 
Since my workplace charging is out at the moment I’ve signed up for flexi for the odd occasion when the parking will be useful, but mostly can’t justify the cost. Overnight is a a 10min walk each way and slightly awkward timing for me, so it will be Similarly time consuming to pop to Park Royal for a quick charge but get to watch Netflix in peace :) I’ve asked the council for an ubitricity in the street, but who knows how long that will take.
 
Since my workplace charging is out at the moment I’ve signed up for flexi for the odd occasion when the parking will be useful, but mostly can’t justify the cost. Overnight is a a 10min walk each way and slightly awkward timing for me, so it will be Similarly time consuming to pop to Park Royal for a quick charge but get to watch Netflix in peace :) I’ve asked the council for an ubitricity in the street, but who knows how long that will take.
Also pretty close to Park Royal Tesla!
 
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Our council (Haringey) is consulting for installing 37 new charging points. Joy... until i realised these were all Source London.
IMHO Source London is indeed very expensive - some simple calculations pasted below (with or without subscription, with or without night cap) show they cost 3-4 times more than Polar at present. Plus the logistics around the night cap... not ideal.

upload_2020-10-19_15-22-39.png


So Source London can be a good option for Central London where regular parking is more expensive than parking and charging with them, but otherwise in outer boroughs it is in my view way overpriced, and I always avoid using them.
 
So having lived with the tesla for a little longer, I've slowly been coming to accept that i actually use source london quite a lot despite the price and have therefore upgraded to full membership. I dont have home charging, and knowing that the SL chargers nearby are almost never full (and being able to check in the app) is helpful for being able to leave the car all day for a full charge whenever i need to. It also comes in handy for parking, I've used them in central london for a hospital appointment, a shopping trip. I've used them when visiting kew gardens, and taking my son to football training/matches. I have had almost no luck using ubitricity as they are always iced or in use. I think if there was one outside my house and I could grab it when it was free that would be useful, but there is no way to know before you get there if its going to be available, whereas SL you pretty much know. I have come to terms with the cost (29p/kwh) which is similar to a supercharger. I will re-evaluate once travel is back to normal and I'm probably charging at work
 
unfortunately the only SL chargers near me are the 22kW, which are even more useless to a model 3 owner which charges at 11kW. Which their stupid /min price and "Central London" surcharge applying all the way up to Kentish Town where I work, it works out at 70p/kWh, which is more /mile than the 15yo petrol car I sold to get the tesla :(
 
unfortunately the only SL chargers near me are the 22kW, which are even more useless to a model 3 owner which charges at 11kW. Which their stupid /min price and "Central London" surcharge applying all the way up to Kentish Town where I work, it works out at 70p/kWh, which is more /mile than the 15yo petrol car I sold to get the tesla :(

Yes. ridiculous pricing.
From my exchanges with the council, it was quite clear that Source London's installation costs are cheaper than other networks'. This way they obviously score points with cash-starved local authorities and get favoured (and we users then balance things out by footing a higher bill)...