Sorry for the rant, but I need to vent.
I bought an EV last year. I love the car and think EVs are the way forward, even if they need improvement to the batteries. The charging is a nightmare at the moment though.
For home charging, I'm on a looped supply. Survey has been done, and they are going to have to run a new supply cable to 4 houses on my street including mine. I'm on the waiting list, and it's taking months. I don't think they've even told my neighbours about it yet.
For public charging, the availability of the chargers or charge time is not a problem, even the chademo connector that mine uses. I just charge while eating or stick a TV show on. The problem is faulty or confusing chargers. As with fuel pumps, it takes a pre-auth payment, then refunds the difference. Unfortunately if the charge doesn't complete for any reason, even user error, it usually takes 7 days to refund, but can take up to 30.
To add to that, there is no pin pad, they are all contactless. By law all cards must ask for the pin after £200 of contactless payments. So if you have £50 contactless left, you try use a pump that take a £30 pre-auth payment, then it doesn't charge, you're unable to charge.
There also doesn't seem to be anything can be done about it. I complain to the companies and they say I just have to wait for the refund. I complain to my bank and they say they're bound by law and payment provider so can't do anything. Best I can do is leave reviews in various places.
As a result, I'm now having to:
* pay with chip and pin whenever I'm in a shop to make sure I have contactless limit remaining
* pay using a credit card for protection
* avoid certain networks that have the most unreliable chargers (geniepoint)
