Fast charging fun...

[bristolian]

So, coming back up the M5 yesterday with not quite enough range to get home, decided, more out of curiosity, to try the Ionity 350KW chargers at Cullompton. Charged from 22% to 52% in 16 mins at 86KW, which seemed pretty good. But, 1 minute after driving away, warnings popped up about ‘electric drive not working, visit workshop’, and drive assist not available. By that time we had just turned onto the motorway, so continued and drove the 50 miles home with no further problems except that ACC was not working. This morning the warnings had gone and all was working OK including ACC. We have used 22kw AC and 50kw DC chargers before with no problems.

So in the 6 weeks we’ve had the car we seem to have encountered most of the issues that others have had in this forum, namely:

1. Drive & ACC as described above.
2. Airbag error (was at the dealers for 2 days with no cure, dealer awaiting response from Skoda)
3. Car not connecting to Internet (twice, 2 days & 5 days) I’m aware of the fuse 19 hack thanks, will try if it happens again, but twice in 6 weeks is a bit much…
4. Satnav not going into Night mode
5. Occasional warnings to fill washer fluid, despite it being almost full.

Hopefully the upcoming software update will fix most if not all of these...

Despite all the above I have to say I love the car. It’s a dream to drive, especially on the winding Devon hill roads, which were a lot of work going up & down the gears on the Octavia. I’m impressed with the economy, we got 3.2m/kwh on the 100 mile trip to Dartmouth last Friday morning at below 4C all the way, and 3.9m/kwh on the way back yesterday at 13-14C, all with the two of us plus luggage. It was actually 4.1 as we pulled into Cullompton, and probably would have stayed at that except that without ACC the speed kept drifting up to 75 before I noticed

Also impressed with regen. Before getting the car I had read that hills were a killer for EV range, but it was fascinating seeing the range slipping away as we went up the hills, only for most of it to come back as we went down the other side! Overall I don’t see much difference over the same distance on the flat.

Won’t be going back to ICE if I can help it…

[RichR]

I was planning at charging at Cullompton on Monday. Tempted to carry on to Exeter and use the slower Gridserve ones

I'm amazed mine ever connects to the internet to be honest, mobile signals are pretty poor where I live. But I've only had it lose connection once (and resetting it by pulling fuse 19 worked).

[RichR]

Charged at Ionity Cullompton on my way from North Yorkshire to Cornwall today with no issues. Also at MPG Filton (recommended - eight 150kW chargers with plenty of space, and a nice new Budgens, Greggs and Costa) and Instavolt at McDonalds Appleby Magna (very narrow spaces!). Gridserve at Gloucester Services wasn’t working when I arrived but looked like it was when I was leaving.

I only actually needed to charge at Filton (Bristol), but thought I might as well charge for 10-15 minutes whilst using the facilities and getting a cup of tea at the other places.

[bristolian]

Good. I'm hoping my experience was a one-off glitch due to the general bugginess hopefully fixed in future updates. Out of interest what rate did you get from the Ionity chargers? MPG Filton looks good, too close (24 miles) to us to in North Somerset be of use but hopefully a sign of what's to come elsewhere. Would have been useful 15 years ago when I worked at Rolls-Royce just up the road, but electric cars were just a pipe dream then

[RichR]

I think about 80kWh - but I was at about 60% and just wanted to get a good top up before I headed across Devon and Cornwall to Bude, knowing there aren’t many rapid chargers near my route.

[Bother7]

We have just been to the Alps and back using exclusively Ionity 350kW chargers with my Skoda Powerpass card. Very straightforward, but thought the table below might be of interest.

Shows minutes charging, kWh delivered and ave charge speed (kW). We got braver towards the end of the journey, with the final charge starting at 6% SoC.

Clearly reflects the Enyaq charge curve with the 125kW rate dropping off from ~40% SoC.

As an aside, the Ionity rates are /min not /kWh in France, so not only is it much quicker charging an empty battery, it's also much cheaper!