Why Gridserve's New EV Chargers Are SLOWER Than Their Old Ones
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 เม.ย. 2024
- It's great to see new Gridserve installations going in around the country but it was a real surprise to turn up to one of their new 'high power' sites only to find it really wasn't high power at all. So to find out what's really going on, stick around as Dave Takes It On.
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This is why the way Kempower does it is better. The charging units are essentially just a payment processing unit, a screen and a CCS cable. The actual charging modules are all housed away near the energy supply and they all share it. So if the site has the ability to only do 300kw and theres only 1 car plugged in, it will get its full speed. Unlike this situation where the charger only has one module installed so each one is limited to 60kw when no one else is charging.
There's another problem at these new style Gridserve chargers. I charged up last week at Donnington services on the M1 which has 3 of these new chargers. They have 2 cables on each charger so we plugged in checked the car was charging (33%) and went for some lunch in the services. When we came back it should have been past 80% but was only 44%. The charge had stopped. I suspect the driver on the other cable had selected the wrong cable on the screen when stopping the charge. They are just labelled 1 and 2 with no arrows or any graphics to help you and you don't need the card that started the charge to stop it - just press the stop icon! (and don't say I should have checked the app - my car doesn't have one!)
Throttling the charge rate to match available power. Who would have thought that would happen? Next wheeze? In America some stations now charge per minute connected to the cable, regardless of the charge rate you get. They are priced assuming you get the fastest charge rate the unit can supply, you can easily get a tenth of that. You could rack a bill of hundreds of dollars for a full charge. Why are they doing this? To get back the capital investment they have made.
The Kempower chargers used by Osprey and others are far better as they can intelligently distribute the power over all the stalls (typically 16 bays) because the charger internals are all in a single cabinet and the screen+cable+payment part is just a remote terminal. So the entire available power supply can be perfectly shared.
Exactly how all hubs should be set up.
Yep, they seem to have the best solution. I would assume they are cheaper to manufacture as well.
So does the new Gridserve ABB 360kW, that is its key feature. The question here is how much power did it get to distribute?
@@davetakesiton The Gridserve doesn't share the total power across all bays, it still has the charger modules in the cabinet (hence why it is so huge). The Kempower approach shares across many more bays and it will allocate power in 25kW chunks depending on live need, so it makes a lot more of the available power. Yes, the total available power is still a restriction but the real world result is that you get consistently faster charging for the same total power.
As somebody who tows with our EV I’m very pleased to see long, drive through bays!
What are the advantages of towing with a EV and which one would you recommend for a medium size caravan?
@@Ifitwerks I tow a 1450kg caravan with my BMW i4 edrive40. There are one or two advantages, depending on what car you've come from. 1) The extra weight of an EV helps with stability, but my i4 isn't much heavier than my previous 435d. (+260kg). 2) The more responsive power delivery, to get you out of a slip-road pickle etc. Downsides are less range (typically 1/2 to 1/3 of the normal range) and hardly any long charge bays, which means unhitching every time.
Great to see someone doing something about accessibility. Just as a matter of interest if anyone knows are there any petrol pumps with access for people with a disability or mobility problem or are they always dependent on a member of staff?
Brilliant work as usual
I do a lot of journeys on the M4 in Wales and now avoid Gridserve. My ioniq 5 would at 15% only pull from their 350kw chargers at 33kw one week, but 120kw another, same amount of charge left, similar weather. Plus, half the chargers at Swansea were broken. All the other brands consistently do over 100kw and always work.
Have you tried the Texaco Tawe petrol station on Neath Road near what I still call "The Liberty Stadium" ?
@@stevenjones916 I don't go into Swansea, I'm travelling across the M4 to/from Pembrokeshire so services are more convenient. Bridgend (Sarn Park) is really good, and now there are several other services on that stretch with plenty of 100kw+ chargers. By the time both the dog and I have used the toilet we have more than enough for the rest of the journey. Swansea we were often there 40 mins+.
People filling up at Motorway services are normally company car drivers so they aren't paying for the fuel.
HMRC has killed off most ICE company cars. Though EVs are quite popular as company cars due to tax incentives. Leaving a motorway and driving around looking for cheaper fuel when on a long run takes too long and can be a waste of time.
strange! I see a lot of company car drivers towing caravans this time of year.
If you drive an ice version of a Tesla you fill up at BP not local store. Locals stores have terrible fuel quality, which will make a difference in a premium ice.
Sadly up in the Carlisle/North Cumbria area, the solar power/renewable power is not exactly very strong at this time of year!! Still great for my Zoe, but I won't be running short as far south as Southwaite....hahahaha
Great job and good to see more and more EV chargers being fitted.
Cheers mate
Were the bays on the new chargers pull through ones for people towing? Or was the space behind for waiting in?
They were technically pull through, indeed I entered my bay from behind but those are parking spaces behind so no guarantee they will be free. They were free when I was there. Exeter meanwhile is definitely drive through with trailer or caravan. They are on the way.
I would have thought having the modules in the unit, grid power will just charge the modules and the modules would charge the car so the demand from the grid should be less ( like Kempower).
Just moved up to a full EV, so my questions are when using chargers at service stations 1 are the bays always full in peak times? and 2 what if any is the queuing etiquette when waiting for a charger, do you queue in a line or wait in another normal bay ?
Good new on your upgrade. EV chargers are like McDonalds. Go at rush hour and it is likely to be busy. I have not queued at an EV public charger for the last 18 months, never, not once. I have seen queues while filming and generally everyone behaves and waits patiently. Better to just time it right.
Does anyone know why they got rid of the Tesla charge points at Clacket and Cobham services?
If you want thinner cables the easiest and maybe only way is restrict the current being carried. Lock the chargers to 50KW and you have solved the problem.
Tesla has very much thinner cables on 250kW chargers!
@@davetakesiton Tesla is Tesla. They plan to push 900A through the NACS plug as well. Wonder how long that will last before temps reach the limit and charger has to slow down.
Pretty sure the V3 and V4 cables are thicker than V2.
@@Gazer75 Doubling the voltage halves the current for a given power in Kw and hence cable size and vice versa its all about current carrying capacity of the cables and the power available to the charge point and not simply charging speed as seems to be used lately.
@@Ifitwerks I guess they expect all future cars to have 800V...
No matter the voltage Tesla papers still claims up to 900A for NACS.
Nope, they're thinner. I use both. You seem to miss the obvious: Tesla are able to cool their cables far more effectively so can use very much thinner cables for higher currents. simples.
Every Gridserve I have used I have NEVER got more than 96 kw, 350kw is totally false advertising. I totally understand the car determines the charge rate however, many cars can handle a lot more than 100 kW still only get 96 max on a Gridserve charger. IONITY give you the full amount and 79p per kw no thank you I will go else where
That’s disappointing, the reason I ordered a Hyundai Ioniq 5 rather than the Kia Niro EV (which was my preferred option) was because the I5 can, theoretically, rapid charge in half the time on a 350 kw charger. I hope this is just some Gridserve chargers, not all of them.
I do not care about speed (50KW is enough) but do about price. In a year I have only used one public charger (connected kerb) which charged around 30p /KWh (it has since gone up). My response was and is 'stuff that'. My home electric is £0.075 day and night thanks to a time shifting battery. A long journey is in an ICE car which is cheaper than my EV using public chargers. 90%+ of all driving is in the EV which I really like but the rip off prices are borderline criminal.
You're forgetting that home electric is taxed at 5%, public charging is full rate VAT. That's "criminal".
Really it is almost as if you say that if you could not home charge you wouldn’t have an EV. I am shocked.
This an ABB Terra 360kW with 4x90kW modules that balance automatically.
Except this unit has 1 90kw module running. Hence the roughly 50/50 split.
Mis sold. Mis selling.
@@davidrowewtl6811 The modules don't split. You'll use at least one module regardless if you get less than 90kW.
No idea why he was only getting ~35kW. Maybe the site is load balanced due to lack of total site power.
There are some chargers that are weird with some cars though, and the adapter might mess things up as well.
@davidrowewtl6811 the key word often missed by the unwary is "capable"...like "up to" 50% off in the "sale"..... all marketing hype.
Or xyz diesel car does 75mpg...in reality 40 mpg, if you're lucky.
We are all conned on a daily basis one way or another. It's a fact of life!
Although it is not good; I am glad to see it wasnt my imagination, I've only got 34KWh on every Gridserve charger I tried on my Heathrow run; even when I was the only car using the station.
My 2016 Soul can pull 50KW, and the battery wasnt exactly low when I started on either occasion, between 20 and 45%.
In my case, the bays were clearly marked 360KW, with neighbouring 150KW chargers - both gave 34KW; a Leaf owner was getting the same; the other charger location I tried - gave me the full 50KW
I forget the network or charger make - but they were marked as 150KW.
Motorway Gridserve, in my opinion at least, have been rather careless with the way their chargers have been marketed. In part of the video was two of the older 50kw chargers but they are usually single charge only, one box with a CCS/Chademo set up, and one box with two CCS plugs. In the video they even have only one bay only. But on all of the apps, this is going to be highlighted as a 3 CCS and 1 chademo location.
Of all of the charger providers they are by far the most disappointing. And given their locations and the likelihood of EV newbies using them by default, it's a terrible impression to give everyone.
I don’t get excited about petrol pumps I just use them and it takes about 90 seconds.
Lousy value at £80 per tankful
@@davetakesiton And you think 50 pounds "supercharge" for less than half the range while waiting 40 minutes is a bargain?
The cable thickness are comparable with the amount of amps the higher the kilowatts the bigger the cable. Some of the "energy" your paying for is wasted going up in the air as heat ! Same principle as the old electric bar heaters , at least with ice you get what you pay for out of the pump
Really???? And your experience is???? I go and handle plugs and cables around the country and with different networks and I can state, and have previously launched several videos showing this, that the Instavolt cables attached to a 120kW charger is several times thicker, heavier and less wieldy than a Tesla V4 cable which gives out 250kW. That V4 cable is thin, light and very flexible. Please explain!
I know that crow.
He hates EVs
Yes, his mate was circling ominously
Unless the UK starts building more power stations , upgrade pylons and power lines there is simply not enough power to go around.
We are doing those things.
Yes, you must be right, I am now experiencing loads of blackouts whenever EVs plug in. Sorry!!! that should read I AM NOT EXPERIENCING LOADS OF BLACKOUTS WHENEVER EVS PLUG IN!
So a 360kW capable dispenser restricted to 50kW - what a waste of time, best to avoid these Gridserve sites unless it’s an emergency charge you need then. What a con!
It *would* be a waste of time *if* it was advertised as 350kW, but it isn't. It's advertised as 50kW.
When the site's electric supply is upgraded, then it will gain more modules in each charger. It would be a waste if they had to rip out the charger just because it couldn't handle 350kW.😂
But it’s the car that does the charging and sets the demand, not the charge point. Almost certainly the EV was t pre-conditioned for charging.
@@G6EJD I think the car only does the AC charging but it does control the speed it gets from the DC charger but there have been case seen where the car accepts more than its claimed speed.
@@rtfazeberdee3519 the EV has to the DC charging too, also the battery management system is on-board the EV too. All charge points merely off a power source for the EV to undertake its own charging. It’s a misnomer that charge points are chargers, they are not. Also nearly every EV has a different battery pack voltage which the EVSE to give it its correct name cannot know, that’s for the BMS to manage. Dave did go on to say that these EVSE’s were being deliberately limited to 60KW rates.
@@G6EJD The way i understood it was that the AC onboard charger converts the slower AC charge to DC for the battery whereas the DC "chargers" effectively put DC directly into the battery and the speed/rate etc controlled by the BMS.
It's being slowed down because the grid can't handle it and it's only gonna get worse and you all fell for it😂😂😂😂😂
Yes, you must be right, I am now experiencing loads of blackouts whenever EVs plug in. Sorry!!! that should read I AM NOT EXPERIENCING LOADS OF BLACKOUTS WHENEVER EVS PLUG IN!
@jamie-hb8gy electricity not your strong point then.
@@Bb5y It's about common sense and not being an idiot buying ev's
@@jamie-hb8gy your not displaying much of it mate