I've gone and done it now (road trip)

Rolfe said:
Well, I appear to have been and went and gone and done it again. Of course, after last year's fun, I was well and truly on the Glyndebourne mailing list and well-versed in the procedure for getting tickets. That involved being camped on their web site at six o'clock this evening, and I managed to get tickets for two operas this time. Since the two I wanted to see didn't have any dates close to each other I'm planning two trips, one in late May and one in late August. I'm really looking forward to it.

I see that Forton services has now been upgraded and it's probably worth taking the risk of heading there for my first charge. It's just under 150 miles, and I remember last year thinking I could have made it, but didn't want to risk the couple of old Gridserves (which was all they had then) not being functional, and then not being able to make it to the next exit.

Forton is a dump but it's convenient, and it now has another six new 350 kw Gridserves. If I go up to 85% there I should be able to make it to the NEC charging hub at Birmingham. From there I should be able to make the Cobham Ionitys, which would allow me to arrive in Portslade with enough to get me to Glyndebourne the next day, at a high enough level of charge to get to 100% and balance on the destination chargers there. On the other hand if I was running late for whatever reason I could just grab whatever I needed to get to Portslade, then go out in the morning and get something from that Blink charger at Victoria park.

Who says you can't road trip an SR. I might even detour to Northampton and/or West Yorkshire to visit other friends on the way home.
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Sounds tremendous 👌 grand plan.
 
I was reading something the other day that suggested that EVs of about 50 kWh battery capacity and 80 kW charging capability were the sweet spot for mass adoption. That more or less describes the SR and I think they have a point.

The car is perfect for me for day to day use, and bear in mind that I consider a near 100-mile round trip drive for an evening out to be routine. I genuinely think that for most motorists the range of the SR is going to be adequate for 95% of days in the year. And if it's AC charged overnight then DC charging speed is pretty well irrelevant. Of course a lot more needs to be done to enable people without drives to be able to charge wherever they park their car for the night, but that will come.

The thing is, these cars are road-trippable if you're not in a tearing hurry. 500 miles in a day is obviously possible. It's only 450 miles to my friends' house in Portslade, but I could easily go on another 50 miles from there without another charge and without arriving impossibly late. The stops tend to be between 2 hrs 15 min and 1 hr 45 min apart, which is probably as long as many people want to go without a break, and then tend to last 30-40 min. That's not intolerable ennui, it's time for a bathroom break, a snack and a short walk.

Sure, there are people who need a longer range and a faster charging time, and no doubt cars with even longer ranges and faster charging will continue to be developed. But I think the capabilities of the SR are likely to be a sweet spot for many people that offers both day-to-day practicality and the capability of taking them on the occasional holiday.
 
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Simply said: if you are in a hurry you need more than 50kWh and 80kW. As we have created a world that is constantly in a hurry, I expect the standard will have significantly more.
 
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Faster charging can be a problem. We stopped at some Osprey Chargers near Bristol and to have some lunch and the car was ready too quickly, before we'd finished.

Rather than move it, we elected to charge more than we strictly needed to but obviously at additional cost.

I have found 50kW to be ideal if not in a hurry and want a meal, 75kW for a snack and 100kW+ only needed when it is just a coffee stop.
 
tsedge said:
Faster charging can be a problem. We stopped at some Osprey Chargers near Bristol and to have some lunch and the car was ready too quickly, before we'd finished.

Rather than move it, we elected to charge more than we strictly needed to but obviously at additional cost.

I have found 50kW to be ideal if not in a hurry and want a meal, 75kW for a snack and 100kW+ only needed when it is just a coffee stop.
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Is it all really coming round full circle that evs are charging too fast now ? I think what we need at these super fast charging hub cafés is thinner soups and smaller portions to speed up the slow charging human side of the equation.
 
They are too fast only because there are too few chargers.
I went to applegreen in south mims service station last night because I hadn’t eaten properly all day. Put car on charge, went to buy a panini which had to be warmed up. I wanted to eat in comfort.
Car was on charge and I stopped the charge after 10 minutes but left it connected for another 10. There were plenty of empty bays so I didn’t feel like I had to move the car.
In 10 minutes from 30% it had recharged enough for me to get to destination and a bit of buffer.
But I didn’t feel at all bad for hogging a space for 10 extra minutes on idle because there were at least another 15 unused bays.
 
tsedge said:
It would be useful to be able to limit the DC charge rate in the car to match expected stop time.

I'd expect this to work as: I want X% SOC (or % increase) in Y minutes (or by Z time).
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Thought about that too.

But is the only reason for doing this would be to avoid hogging a bay on idle?
we need more chargers tbh
 
fnegroni said:
Thought about that too.

But is the only reason for doing this would be to avoid hogging a bay on idle?
we need more chargers tbh
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It would help load balance across chargers when busy.

We do need more chargers, but as soon as we have decent capacity in an area (defined as always having a percentage of free chargers), then we need some more control over the experience.
 
tsedge said:
It would help load balance across chargers when busy.

We do need more chargers, but as soon as we have decent capacity in an area (defined as always having a percentage of free chargers), then we need some more control over the experience.
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This needs to be tested out;
Kempower chargers already do load balancing based on the connected vehicle: they predict the charge curve and rebalance the load
 
Ideally we need rapid chargers (>50 kW) with toilets and a café on major routes for en-route charging and slower (<22kW) for charging at destination. These would typically be street or hotel chargers.
In the olden days stagecoach passengers were served soup which was so hot they couldn't finish it before the stagecoach left. Any remaining soup was put back in the stock. Let's hope we don't return to those days. I don't want to be served half a sausage roll.
 
I'm no expert and certainly hold no love for mine, but on a long trip ( camera blanked out ), I did enjoy the experience. I used the ' don't let it drop below 40% ' technique for charging. Unless a charger is every five mins away then you can go lower percentage wise. I seem to get better battery usage when hi regen is set to low or adaptive. The car rolling is easier to start off than stood still.
 
tsedge said:
Yes, but I'm talking about user-assisted load balancing. The chargers cannot know whether you are in a hurry or not.
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True, but this needs someone to be willing to spend the money and make this experiment.
You and I will probably be honest when charging. It remains to be seen if that’s true of anyone else. Also how the question is asked etc has an impact.
I don’t disagree in principle it has potential, it remains to be seen if reality matches expectations.
Maybe they could make the price per kWh cheaper if you choose a lower speed
 
NLMGSAN said:
Simply said: if you are in a hurry you need more than 50kWh and 80kW. As we have created a world that is constantly in a hurry, I expect the standard will have significantly more.
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If you are in a hurry, and if you are on a long trip. Absolutely. But for how many people is that a real requirement? Most people don't drive beyond the range of their cars in a day, and if they car charge overnight (the real charger priority should be to have type 2 charging available within five minutes walk of every house in areas with flats and mid-terrace houses) then they never need a DC charger.

If they do go on a long trip they're usually on holiday and not in a truly tearing hurry, not the sort of hurry that can't take a break of 30-40 minutes every couple of hours. It may not seem like it when you look at the cars tearing up and down the motorways, but journeys of "pony express" urgency are relatively uncommon in the grand scheme of things.
 
fnegroni said:
True, but this needs someone to be willing to spend the money and make this experiment.
You and I will probably be honest when charging. It remains to be seen if that’s true of anyone else. Also how the question is asked etc has an impact.
I don’t disagree in principle it has potential, it remains to be seen if reality matches expectations.
Maybe they could make the price per kWh cheaper if you choose a lower speed
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I agree there could be issues with it - yes, we need experimentation.

There's a ton of things that could be done with chargers and real-time data, including surge pricing, boost speed charging (e.g. twice a month you can get additional speed), loyalty incentives, dynamic routing (a la Tesla) to available chargers, booking slots before arriving.

It would be great to see a lot more experimentation before everything gets frozen into a staid single set up.
 
siteguru said:
Unlikely, given that you'd still be using the same amount of electricity, just in a longer time. 🤷‍♂️
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I was thinking of an incentive to choose lower speeds for reducing demand.
What could be another incentive?
If it costs the same to charge 20kWh in 20 minutes or 40 minutes, why would I declare I need it in 40 minutes when I could say I need it in 20 minutes and then whether I stay 20 minutes or more I can decide later?
People don’t do things unless there’s an incentive.
Incentive rather than punishment.
 
My record is 6 rapid and a T2 destination charger in one day. I do try to find a 50kw unit for lunch stops as otherwise they charge too quickly to order & eat lunch.

The issue with slower speed options is lunchtime. I find that charging hubs in France are full at lunchtime, so slower speed options would cause bigger issues than it would solve.
 
siteguru said:
Unlikely, given that you'd still be using the same amount of electricity, just in a longer time. 🤷‍♂️
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Btw such incentive already exists: at a shell recharge site, price per kWh on an ultra rapid is 82p per kWh. On the same site, choosing 22kW chargers gets discounted to 59p per kWh
The only problem is, most people would get under 7kW from a 22kW charger which is way too slow.
 
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