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Which charging cards to sign up for?

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I’ve been pondering this myself, as a newbie to driving electric. Obviously one of my key reasons for buying a Tesla was the supercharger network.

With regard to other charging networks, I’m feeling like I only want to use providers who take normal contactless payment cards. I think the proliferation of dedicated cards and apps is a barrier to take up of electric driving, and the sooner they’re gone the better.

This will probably be cutting off my nose to spite my face, but providers do need to be forced to provide normal payment methods, and the sooner the better.
 
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Before the car arrived (my first EV), I thought from comments on here I would need about 20 different cards, initially I signed up to Geniepoint and thought I would wait and see how the situation panned out. PolarPlus was the next on the list as I thought I would go with OVO Energy to get the 2-year subscription offer.

Haven’t bothered with Polar or anything else. If you get home charging set up right - it just hasn’t proved necessary for my needs. Between Geniepoint and Instavolt I haven’t needed to use anything else on top of Tesla SuC. Have got the pod-point app on the phone just in case but not used so far. It does help that the local Pembrokeshire council charging installs are all configured through Geniepoint so pretty much any emergency charging out and about would be covered by that.

Eventually I’m sure I will need to use something in a town/city somewhere that I hadn’t planned on, but between ABRP and ZapMap these would keep me informed before venturing into uncharted waters.

The biggest single change I’ve made in 3 months of ownership is Octopus Go - meaning I charge almost exclusively in 40% chunks for the 4 hours overnight cheap rate. I’ve also got comfortable with leaving home on 20-40% for shorter trips now I understand range and % remaining a lot better, as the 40% overnight always gets me back to a usable % for next time.

My advice would be to invest in the best possible home setup you can and pick a couple of charging vendor cards. Maybe CYC and Geniepoint, then remember PodPoint/Instavolt as your backup. If you are regularly visiting new locations and can’t keep home-charging to give you sensible daily range then I appreciate you may need more backups.
 
Morrisons Rapid Chargers Network:
You may want to link your Tesla key card (model 3 only) to the Genie Point network which you always carry when driving in case your phone goes wonky ;).

It's a bit of a faff to set up but a good thing to do on a quiet day when you're not in a rush or needing the charge. Once done, you can in future just tap your regular Tesla key card on the charger to initiate, no need to faff with the webapp or the phone app (meant to be pretty bad). I don't think these chargers support contactless payment as yet but presumably will do in time. GeniePoint EV Charging for info, I ended up having to ring someone for help associating the card but they were very quick to answer and sorted it without fuss.

Might give that a try, always handy to have optimal preparedness!
 
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