how their T+Cs have changed over the years
There was a big hoo-hah when "Idle fees" was introduced "retrospectively". Owners of free-for-car's-lifetime Supercharging thought it an unbelievable inconvenience that they would have to, for example, get up from their 7-course meal to move their car ... there was talk of class-actions and all sorts ...
Selfish gits. Don't seem to hear about that any more ... although the question "Why did my 100% limit change to 80%" comes up now and again
But only if the non-Tesla charging process is as reliable and fuss free as it is for a Tesla
Indeed. I've just come back from S. Ireland, precious few Superchargers there (although Elon did kindly open one at Enfield the day before I was passing, which solved my "get back to ferry with some juice" planning problem)
Reading this thread there has been little mention of 3rd party charging. There was a post saying that a Supercharger site was full, and the owner went to adjacent Ionity which was available ... and faster
. My experience, since 2015, is that 3rd party charging is shiite and Ireland was a good example.
Ennis (Population 25K) had one 50kW charger - 1 stall. Galway (80K) had 4 or 5 - all of them only a single stall. We were in 2 cars ...
The hotel in Ennis had a charger (the only Hotel with one in Ennis, although not the reason we choose it). A whopping 3kW ... got one car charged overnight and the other one ... not at all. It was so well hidden I only found it by accident after lowering the kW limit on Plugshare to "anything" and probably alerting Security on CCTV the way I was scrutinising the car park as I searched for it on foot!
Phoned hotel in Galway to ask if they had a charger. "
No, but there's one just down the road". I checked that on PlugShare; not the ESB I had prepped for in Ireland and obtained an RFID card for, so I downloaded the EasyGO APP as PlugShare feedback said "
Contactless not working" (Why? [
rhetorical ...]). Rocked up, sure enough Contactless not working (
neither on M3 nor MS, which I also tried the alternative cable for CHAdeMO with adapter). The instructions were a joke too ("Press XXX" where there was no button marked XXX). Launched the APP ... only to find that that station was not listed on their Map! and no QR code / similar that I could find to initiate the charge. And, although their website said "Just use a Credit Card via the APP", it was insisting on email registration, and I had no access to my email on my phone so couldn't receive any authorisation. You must think I'm making this up ... anyway, it was clear that EasyGo didn't want any money from whatever their equivalent is of Johnny Foreigner. I wonder why these companies were formed and why they continue to exist,
We charged in Galway. The single stall was occupied but I asked and driver said "Another 5 minutes" which was fine. Sat in the car for an hour whilst the poxy 50kW filled me up. A Leaf pulled up and parked next to us ... and then drove off. Then a taxi did the same. Didn't roll their window down and ask "How long will you be". No idea why that was.
I had a look at the feedback on Plugshare for both the Birdhill supercharger we used (since 2017 there are only 2 x failed-to-charge reports, one an Outlander!! the other reported broken hardware but that user returned the following day and reported that it was working again). And the 50kW charger I used in Galway? Since May 2021 30% of the check-ins reported an error which prevented charging (and also that if the A/C was in use the charge from the DC was significantly reduced ...)
Pre-2015 when I last drove ICE, and was doing around 30K miles p.a., I mostly saw Shell, BP and Esso filling stations. I very rarely had to queue. The brands were familiar. I didn't fill at Supermarket because their fuel wrecked lots of car engines with wax or something, and mostly when I went to the Supermarket there was a queue ... and only a few pence cheaper.
So if Tesla opening up enables them to expand, and is the only name I see in 10 years time, when I am out on a long trip, and they keep up their record of good maintenance and effortless plug-in-walk-away usage, I'll be happy. If the rest of poxy 1-stall-is-fine (or even 4-stalls-is-fine) and maintenance-when-I-can-be-bothered disappear without trace .... that's fine too.
So all it needs is Tesla to decide that opening up to other brands is a land grab for most-common-charger-brand and then to strive for voted-public-#1
It’ll certainly be interesting to see what’s available in 3yrs when my lease is finished. I’ve grown to like most of the Tesla (still not all though)
One factor, at that time, will be all the OTA updates you received over that period. I wonder if, by then, the other brands will have figured out how to be proactive with OTA, given the amount of nightmare 3rd party integration they currently have to do. And if their cars have physical-knobs the restriction on adding new features that will be causing.