First long distance journey coming up - a few questions if anyone can help?

[NewtoEV]

I've had my Trophy for a couple of months but haven't done any decent distance journeys yet (just local commute stuff). Got an overnight drive coming up (300 plus miles). I've a couple of concerns / questions.

1) I'll need to charge en route but I've not used any public charger to date (only granny lead at home so far!).
I've got the ionity and chargemap apps already but should I get others like Bonnet / or join pre-pay schemes etc.? Anyone got thoughts on this?

2) According to the info in wiki page on this forum, pre-heating the battery using the intelligent battery heating option prior to using a rapid charger is a good idea. I'll be starting my journey on 100% charge but I will be charging when it's about at 40-50% (as it'll be appox. in line with stopping at services). Is it okay to rapid charge from this point back to 100% (if I've pre-heated the battery en route) or should I only go to 80%?

3) Should I check tyre pressures at the garage air pump prior to heading out (like I used to do with my old diesel) or can I / should I just rely on the car's info? So far my tyre pressures have remained mostly consistent according to the car, I've only noticed an occasional .1 Bar fluctuation in the front right tyre when looking at the app info.

Sorry if these questions have been answered, I did search first.
There's so much still completely brand new (and a tad daunting) to me with EVs and like I say, this'll be my first "proper" longer distance journey.

Many thanks for any input guys.

 

[Jomarkh]

When I first got my EV I got a load of apps and tried mostbof them out with quick charges using apps and or RFID cards.
1, Some multi network cards may give you discounts.
2, If you have been driving then the battery should be warm but only go to 80-90% you will see the charge rate drop.
3, I haven't check tyre pressure apart from looking at what the car says.
Enjoy your trip.

 

[Rolfe]

One point that just came up courtesy of a new member who joined while stranded somewhere in the West Country late last night.

If you have never taken your (present) car to a public charger, make a point of doing this somewhere locally before you set out. The main point of this is to give you some practice in using these chargers, although it has to be said that different models work different ways and always read the instructions. I took mine twice to the charger at the end of my road, once putting it on the type 2 connector and once on the CSS, just for the experience.

The new member, who wasn't new to EVs having had a Leaf before, took off on a long journey and discovered en route that the MG4 wouldn't talk to any public charger. The AA couldn't help and a hire car was being awaited at the last count. I've never heard of this before, but it's probably as well to make sure that your car will in fact charge on its DC charging port.

 

[NewtoEV]

One point that just came up courtesy of a new member who joined while stranded somewhere in the West Country late last night.

If you have never taken your (present) car to a public charger, make a point of doing this somewhere locally before you set out. The main point of this is to give you some practice in using these chargers, although it has to be said that different models work different ways and always read the instructions. I took mine twice to the charger at the end of my road, once putting it on the type 2 connector and once on the CSS, just for the experience.

The new member, who wasn't new to EVs having had a Leaf before, took off on a long journey and discovered en route that the MG4 wouldn't talk to any public charger. The AA couldn't help and a hire car was being awaited at the last count. I've never heard of this before, but it's probably as well to make sure that your car will in fact charge on its DC charging port.

This is a really good point, I'll definitely do that. Thank you!

 

[Rolfe]

A friend of mine who has had a Leaf for several years surprised me last month by asking me about public charging. Turned out he had never charged the car away from home at all, despite having had only a granny charger for his first year of ownership. When I suggested he take the car to the village charger to practise, at first he couldn't even find his ChargePlace Scotland card, which he'd got when he got the car and never used. It was somewhere in a desk drawer. (Keep it in the car, Murray!)

I'm not even sure he knew he had to use the CHAdeMO connector until I dropped that into the conversation! But he did it and said he was pleasantly surprised how easy it was.

There's a point. If your journey includes Scotland, get a ChargePlace Scotland card - especially if you're going somewhere out of the way where mobile phone coverage might be a bit dodgy.

 

[Kevin Thompson]

I've had my Trophy for a couple of months but haven't done any decent distance journeys yet (just local commute stuff). Got an overnight drive coming up (300 plus miles). I've a couple of concerns / questions.

1) I'll need to charge en route but I've not used any public charger to date (only granny lead at home so far!).
I've got the ionity and chargemap apps already but should I get others like Bonnet / or join pre-pay schemes etc.? Anyone got thoughts on this?

2) According to the info in wiki page on this forum, pre-heating the battery using the intelligent battery heating option prior to using a rapid charger is a good idea. I'll be starting my journey on 100% charge but I will be charging when it's about at 40-50% (as it'll be appox. in line with stopping at services). Is it okay to rapid charge from this point back to 100% (if I've pre-heated the battery en route) or should I only go to 80%?

3) Should I check tyre pressures at the garage air pump prior to heading out (like I used to do with my old diesel) or can I / should I just rely on the car's info? So far my tyre pressures have remained mostly consistent according to the car, I've only noticed an occasional .1 Bar fluctuation in the front right tyre when looking at the app info.

Sorry if these questions have been answered, I did search first.
There's so much still completely brand new (and a tad daunting) to me with EVs and like I say, this'll be my first "proper" longer distance journey.

Many thanks for any input guys.

The batteries will already be heated if you are traveling but out preheat on and if it needs it it will and a fast 50kw will probably only take you to 90/93% see lowing as you gets close to those values. Tyre pressure does fluctuate with heat and journey time and a 1 or 2 bar flex is normal .

 

[Ian Key]

I've had my Trophy for a couple of months but haven't done any decent distance journeys yet (just local commute stuff). Got an overnight drive coming up (300 plus miles). I've a couple of concerns / questions.

1) I'll need to charge en route but I've not used any public charger to date (only granny lead at home so far!).
I've got the ionity and chargemap apps already but should I get others like Bonnet / or join pre-pay schemes etc.? Anyone got thoughts on this?

2) According to the info in wiki page on this forum, pre-heating the battery using the intelligent battery heating option prior to using a rapid charger is a good idea. I'll be starting my journey on 100% charge but I will be charging when it's about at 40-50% (as it'll be appox. in line with stopping at services). Is it okay to rapid charge from this point back to 100% (if I've pre-heated the battery en route) or should I only go to 80%?

3) Should I check tyre pressures at the garage air pump prior to heading out (like I used to do with my old diesel) or can I / should I just rely on the car's info? So far my tyre pressures have remained mostly consistent according to the car, I've only noticed an occasional .1 Bar fluctuation in the front right tyre when looking at the app info.

Sorry if these questions have been answered, I did search first.
There's so much still completely brand new (and a tad daunting) to me with EVs and like I say, this'll be my first "proper" longer distance journey.

Many thanks for any input guys.

1) I'd get the Electro Universe card from Octopus Energy and download the app. You can attach a credit card to the card. You don't have to be a customer to have one.

2) The car charges fastest from 20% to 80% and slows down quite a lot above 80% so factor that into your planning. I don't think preheating at this time of the year will make much difference as the battery will already be warm.

3) The tyre pressures will be OK and the pressure gauges at petrol stations aren't that accurate. If you are still worried get a pressure gauge from Amazon and check the pressures yourself.

 

[NewtoEV]

1) I'd get the Electro Universe card from Octopus Energy and download the app. You can attach a credit card to the card. You don't have to be a customer to have one.

I signed up to Electroverse from Octopus and so far it's a complete nightmare. Either I'm very thick or none of this works properly? I'm really getting pissed off and disenchanted with everything about all this.
(Ian, I am in no way blaming you by the way, just sharing my frustrating experience)

Yesterday I used the app to find a fast charger for a test run of charging on the go. The app showed a Chargepoint place (but according to the user photos it is Raw Charging?). It was IMPOSSIBLE to find. It exists according to pics but there was no way to locate it and I tried 3 different map apps, all of which took me to a dead end.

So I then tried a more obvious one by a retail park. An Osprey (which was twice the price of the one I was originally trying to find). I hadn't received my Electroverse card yesterday (it arrived today) but the app is supposed to work just as well without the card. Well, it couldn't connect to the charger at all. So I gave up.

I finally got it to work just by using my credit card. I did a bit of fast charging. At least that worked!

Which leads to today. My Electroverse card arrived so I thought I'd try it out. Went to a Shell Recharge. My Electroverse card was read but the message on the screen said "you are not authorised to use this charger". My credit card also did NOTHING, the machine didn't even respond to it? I gave up and went home, extremely annoyed.

WHAT THE HELL am I doing wrong? I'm not a stupid person but all of this is making me feel like a complete idiot.
I only went to chargers that the Electroverse App said were "partnered with Electroverse" but they don't actually seem to be?

Surely it can't be THIS complicated just to charge a car, can it? I am now REALLY worried about being stuck at a motorway service station in the middle of the night because this technology either isn't working as it should or I'm an actual bonafide imbecile.

 

[MoDolph]

Surely it can't be THIS complicated just to charge a car, can it? I am now REALLY worried about being stuck at a motorway service station in the middle of the night because this technology either isn't working as it should or I'm an actual bonafide imbecile.

Your not an imbecile, the charging network is a bit shit and there is a learning curve. In a few months you'll have figured it out and know what to do at various chargers and which ones to avoid etc.

The most important bit of advice when starting out is to really plan the routes you want to take. Once you get more confident you can start to plan less.

Never arrive at a charger empty. Always leave enough to get to another convenient one and at least one extra one that can be off route but at least reachable.

I don't really look at the cost as I use them so infrequently. I'm more interested in having a lot of high power chargers (4+) with contactless payment in one place with a backup on a different network not too far away.

I would keep practicing whenever you have the time when passing one. If you plug in and only add 1kWh the cost will be practically nothing.

Have you tried plugshare? It's a great way to look at photos of chargers so you can have an idea where they are.

 

[Martinonline]

Unfortunately as I, a new EV owner, have found out preparation is the key and Google street view is often your saviour. My electroverse card did not work with the IONITY chargers at the MK Coachway so I used the QR code. Yesterday I charged at the new Gridserve Forecourt at Norwich. But you have to be on the ball because in the same are are chargers at LIDL and McDonald's and the yellow AA EV Chargers signs peter out. The Gridserve site was brilliant and came with a friendly assistant who helped me after the first charger would not work. My fault, I had not put the car into Park. You live and learn.

EDIT: I used contactless payment.

 

[oldun]

I've had my Trophy for a couple of months but haven't done any decent distance journeys yet (just local commute stuff). Got an overnight drive coming up (300 plus miles). I've a couple of concerns / questions.

1) I'll need to charge en route but I've not used any public charger to date (only granny lead at home so far!).
I've got the ionity and chargemap apps already but should I get others like Bonnet / or join pre-pay schemes etc.? Anyone got thoughts on this?

2) According to the info in wiki page on this forum, pre-heating the battery using the intelligent battery heating option prior to using a rapid charger is a good idea. I'll be starting my journey on 100% charge but I will be charging when it's about at 40-50% (as it'll be appox. in line with stopping at services). Is it okay to rapid charge from this point back to 100% (if I've pre-heated the battery en route) or should I only go to 80%?

3) Should I check tyre pressures at the garage air pump prior to heading out (like I used to do with my old diesel) or can I / should I just rely on the car's info? So far my tyre pressures have remained mostly consistent according to the car, I've only noticed an occasional .1 Bar fluctuation in the front right tyre when looking at the app info.

Sorry if these questions have been answered, I did search first.
There's so much still completely brand new (and a tad daunting) to me with EVs and like I say, this'll be my first "proper" longer distance journey.

Many thanks for any input guys.

I where you i would download Zapmap then you can plan ahead to where all the chargers are on your route and use it to plan your charge stops hope this was useful

 

[Woodyeyes]

Your go to charger should be tesla. Get their app, tell it you have an mg and it will show you which chargers allow non teslas. Then check if there are any available on your route. If so use them they are easy to use, reliable, and generally cheaper than any of the competition. Others I have used successfully are Shell, BP, and gridserve, but all these tend to be 65p+.

 

[richlove]

I signed up to Electroverse from Octopus and so far it's a complete nightmare. Either I'm very thick or none of this works properly? I'm really getting pissed off and disenchanted with everything about all this.
(Ian, I am in no way blaming you by the way, just sharing my frustrating experience)

Yesterday I used the app to find a fast charger for a test run of charging on the go. The app showed a Chargepoint place (but according to the user photos it is Raw Charging?). It was IMPOSSIBLE to find. It exists according to pics but there was no way to locate it and I tried 3 different map apps, all of which took me to a dead end.

So I then tried a more obvious one by a retail park. An Osprey (which was twice the price of the one I was originally trying to find). I hadn't received my Electroverse card yesterday (it arrived today) but the app is supposed to work just as well without the card. Well, it couldn't connect to the charger at all. So I gave up.

I finally got it to work just by using my credit card. I did a bit of fast charging. At least that worked!

Which leads to today. My Electroverse card arrived so I thought I'd try it out. Went to a Shell Recharge. My Electroverse card was read but the message on the screen said "you are not authorised to use this charger". My credit card also did NOTHING, the machine didn't even respond to it? I gave up and went home, extremely annoyed.

WHAT THE HELL am I doing wrong? I'm not a stupid person but all of this is making me feel like a complete idiot.
I only went to chargers that the Electroverse App said were "partnered with Electroverse" but they don't actually seem to be?

Surely it can't be THIS complicated just to charge a car, can it? I am now REALLY worried about being stuck at a motorway service station in the middle of the night because this technology either isn't working as it should or I'm an actual bonafide imbecile.

Don't be hard on yourself, the infrastructure and UX just isn't up to scratch currently, there can be many frustrations. FWIW, I have the Electroverse card and app, there is a set of Osprey chargers nearby in Milton Keynes and I can not get it to start working with the Electroverse card (for a 20% discount) and end up resorting to paying the full price with contactless debit card. There is another set of Osprey chargers near my folks which works pretty faultlessly with the Electroverse card. I have no idea why, it's frustrating, though seems to be par for the course at the moment. Maybe in 1-2 years, things will be a little more streamlined with apps, cards, etc and the reliability of chargers may be better.

 

[siteguru]

I class myself as reasonably savvy regarding this stuff, even though I'm new to EVs. For my recent trip I had planned a charging stop in Luss (at the Wenea charge points) and had downloaded their app and prepared it with a payment card. When I actually reached the chargers I couldn't use them ... there was no mobile data signal (I'm on giffgaff which uses the O2 network) so I couldn't get the app to load - and there was no contactless payment option.

Fortunately I still had plenty enough charge to get us to Arrochar where I hopped on to the single Charge Place Scotland 43kW charge point, for which I only needed to use my RFID card to activate. (The first time I've used it since I got it in March '22 and it worked flawlessly). 20 or so mins there got us enough charge to comfortably get to the destination (and back to Arrochar if necessary).

 

[Rolfe]

I find the ChargePlace Scotland card works pretty reliably. Even when the charger's bank card facilitiy is broken.

 

[Deleted member 10041]

I find the ChargePlace Scotland card works pretty reliably. Even when the charger's bank card facilitiy is broken.

Spent a week using chargeplace Scotland chargers Fort William, Speyside, Findhorn. Used the card and worked flawlessly at every charger

 

[Mike H]

I've had my Trophy for a couple of months but haven't done any decent distance journeys yet (just local commute stuff). Got an overnight drive coming up (300 plus miles). I've a couple of concerns / questions.

1) I'll need to charge en route but I've not used any public charger to date (only granny lead at home so far!).
I've got the ionity and chargemap apps already but should I get others like Bonnet / or join pre-pay schemes etc.? Anyone got thoughts on this?

2) According to the info in wiki page on this forum, pre-heating the battery using the intelligent battery heating option prior to using a rapid charger is a good idea. I'll be starting my journey on 100% charge but I will be charging when it's about at 40-50% (as it'll be appox. in line with stopping at services). Is it okay to rapid charge from this point back to 100% (if I've pre-heated the battery en route) or should I only go to 80%?

3) Should I check tyre pressures at the garage air pump prior to heading out (like I used to do with my old diesel) or can I / should I just rely on the car's info? So far my tyre pressures have remained mostly consistent according to the car, I've only noticed an occasional .1 Bar fluctuation in the front right tyre when looking at the app info.

Sorry if these questions have been answered, I did search first.
There's so much still completely brand new (and a tad daunting) to me with EVs and like I say, this'll be my first "proper" longer distance journey.

Many thanks for any input guys.

I took my first journey outside the range of my ZS recently. I used Zapmap to check for chargers on route and download a few apps to give me options based on the chargers.
In the end I only used pod point to charge at Lidl, and the other chargers I used Nr York were contactless.
Charging away from home is expensive, almost as expensive as my ICE car but most of the journeys I make are within the range of my ZS so the occasional trip when I have to charge isn't too bad.

 

[Goodc2]

We‘ve just had a holiday recently in Cornwall/Devon and we had no problem using the Rapid Chargers anywhere, on the networks we used, which were Instavolt, Gridserve & SWARCO E-Connect.
The Gridserve chargers were they cheapest to charge for us whilst we were away out of the 3.
Whilst at our AirBnB accommodation in Cornwall, we agreed with the AirBnB owner when booking with the use of the Granny Charger so we could keep the car topped up there. To be fair, with the price of energy these days, we paid the AirBnB owner for the electricity we used charging the car (I took the electricity meter readings at the accommodation at beginning and end of our AirBnB stay, and paid for what we used less 20% for the accommodation).
Your tyre pressures are available to see on your heads up display on the MG5 Trophy, I’m led to believe the ZS has the same facility, I run the tyre pressures on our MG5 at 2.6Bar (I don’t think the display will give PSIs, correct me anyone please if I’m wrong).
I’ve never bothered using the battery preheat, you shouldn’t need it for the warmer months of the year anyway, if you use it, it may well shorten your range!
Now for the range we got as an example for a 165 mile journey leaving Barnstaple with 95% charged battery, using the M5 and A303 route back to our GU35 postcode in Hampshire, doing 70mph when the speed restrictions allowed, we had about 20 miles range left in the battery when we arrived home (typically with any Pure EV, 70mph driving will shorten your range!)
I still think Zapmap is the best charging app of them all, plenty of feedback available about the reliability of the Chargers. As expected the chargers are popular and you may have to wait to use them!
Other than that, happy EV motoring, I’m very impressed with the MG5 Trophy, just wish MG will speed up the touch response on their Infotainment Displays!
CG.

 

[Jomarkh]

Hi, we are travelling up to Scotland for 10 days and plan to use similar networks.
We are staying in 6 different places and have emailed the owners asking if we can plug in the granny, 4 have said yes, which is great for Arran, Islay and Mull. What price per kWh did you do you calculation using?
Can I ask why you had your tyres at 2.6bar?
On my SR Excite the screen is very laggy but I thought the face-lift had been improved.

 

[Goodc2]

Hi, we are travelling up to Scotland for 10 days and plan to use similar networks.
We are staying in 6 different places and have emailed the owners asking if we can plug in the granny, 4 have said yes, which is great for Arran, Islay and Mull. What price per kWh did you do you calculation using?
Can I ask why you had your tyres at 2.6bar?
On my SR Excite the screen is very laggy but I thought the face-lift had been improved.

Octopus Standard Flex of 32.79ppKwh, due to energy price capping, on a single rate standard tariff & meter that is most likely used by any energy company. You'll need to do quite a bit of charging with the Granny for the mileage you'll be doing.
I tend to over inflate my tyres a bit, the MG5 manual quotes 2.2Bar, but I've found more even front tyre wear on the front tyres by using a little more pressure, especially on my previous cars, and I'm not one for keep checking the pressures and topping them up, its handy having the pressures on the display to refer to.