Does anyone have any experience of using ChargePlace Scotland EVolt units?
We drove up to our holiday home on the Isle of Skye last week from York. We charged at the new Ionity location at Gretna Green and at an InstaVolt location near Glasgow airport. Both great experiences.
It is 197 miles from the location in Glasgow to our holiday home. Generally I'm getting a range of 200-210 miles, so I wanted to do a quick top up along the route to give us a better safety margin.
So we stopped off at Crianlarich and plugged into the charger there. Things started well... it recognised my CYC RFID card and started to charge about half a minute after I pressed the start button... then cut out almost immediately with a CCS error. I tried to get it going for about another 10 minutes before I finally gave up.
So we headed up the road to Tyndrum where there are two separate chargers... one at the Good Food Cafe and another at the Green Welly stop.
At the Good Food Cafe the charger recognised my card, displayed the instructions, sounded like it was starting up, but after a minute or so just went back to asking for my RFID card again. I tried several times, but always the same result.
So we went across the road to the Green Welly Stop and much to our relief this one worked first time.
A couple of days after we arrived here we went for a drive around the island and stopped off in Broadford on the way back to charge. The unit worked first time and we charged all the way to 100% while we went for something to eat.
Then the day before yesterday we stopped in Broadford again to do exactly the same thing. Having charged here successfully before we were not expecting any problems, but could we get it to work? Not a chance!
So now our confidence is shot as regards getting a safety margin top up on our way back to Glasgow on Friday.
All these units are operated by ChargePlace Scotland and are identical EVolt ones. When they refuse to charge the connector is always locked into the I-Pace's charge point and I have to use the emergency release to get it free.
When things start to go wrong the car doors will frequently lock by themselves... same on all of them.
We will be stopping in Broadford again today, so we will see what happens. One thing I want to try is leaving the key in the car, rather than having it in my pocket. Could the automatic door locking have anything to do with this?
Any helpful advice would be much appreciated! Though my overall feeling is that this is an I-Pace shortcoming, rather than a problem with the chargers.
A couple of weeks back Goshdarnit kindly recommended the Lomondgate ChargePlace Scotland location to me, saying he guaranteed it would work. It is 185 miles from here so should be achievable, but with Scottish weather conditions you never know for sure!
We have by the way really enjoyed driving the I-Pace around the island and on the way up here from York. Such a pleasure!
We drove up to our holiday home on the Isle of Skye last week from York. We charged at the new Ionity location at Gretna Green and at an InstaVolt location near Glasgow airport. Both great experiences.
It is 197 miles from the location in Glasgow to our holiday home. Generally I'm getting a range of 200-210 miles, so I wanted to do a quick top up along the route to give us a better safety margin.
So we stopped off at Crianlarich and plugged into the charger there. Things started well... it recognised my CYC RFID card and started to charge about half a minute after I pressed the start button... then cut out almost immediately with a CCS error. I tried to get it going for about another 10 minutes before I finally gave up.
So we headed up the road to Tyndrum where there are two separate chargers... one at the Good Food Cafe and another at the Green Welly stop.
At the Good Food Cafe the charger recognised my card, displayed the instructions, sounded like it was starting up, but after a minute or so just went back to asking for my RFID card again. I tried several times, but always the same result.
So we went across the road to the Green Welly Stop and much to our relief this one worked first time.
A couple of days after we arrived here we went for a drive around the island and stopped off in Broadford on the way back to charge. The unit worked first time and we charged all the way to 100% while we went for something to eat.
Then the day before yesterday we stopped in Broadford again to do exactly the same thing. Having charged here successfully before we were not expecting any problems, but could we get it to work? Not a chance!
So now our confidence is shot as regards getting a safety margin top up on our way back to Glasgow on Friday.
All these units are operated by ChargePlace Scotland and are identical EVolt ones. When they refuse to charge the connector is always locked into the I-Pace's charge point and I have to use the emergency release to get it free.
When things start to go wrong the car doors will frequently lock by themselves... same on all of them.
We will be stopping in Broadford again today, so we will see what happens. One thing I want to try is leaving the key in the car, rather than having it in my pocket. Could the automatic door locking have anything to do with this?
Any helpful advice would be much appreciated! Though my overall feeling is that this is an I-Pace shortcoming, rather than a problem with the chargers.
A couple of weeks back Goshdarnit kindly recommended the Lomondgate ChargePlace Scotland location to me, saying he guaranteed it would work. It is 185 miles from here so should be achievable, but with Scottish weather conditions you never know for sure!
We have by the way really enjoyed driving the I-Pace around the island and on the way up here from York. Such a pleasure!
