Had my first en-route charging problem

[f1eng]

I just had a weekend away and thought I could just do the return journey on one home charge but the sat-nav thought otherwise and chose a charger not far off its chosen route for a 5 minute top up.
Anyway the charger was at a Volvo dealer almost next door to the Porsche dealer where Ibought my car so I thought I would stop there instead since the sales people work Sundays and I wanted to discuss the extended warranty but we must have been too late because at 4:30pm the gates were closed.
I went on tho the Volvo garage where my RFID card didn't work (unsurprisingly) and the credit card showed a £40 approval but the display said not available at this time or some such.

Luckily I noticed the sat nav had, as always, chosen a long motorway route rather than the actual good route which is shorter and more beautiful so we just drove home and got here with 12 miles left.

There was a phone number to call on the Volvo charger so maybe given long enough I would have got a charge and a Renault pulled up needing a charge with a very grumpy driver so that was what he was going to try. We didn't wait.

Having written all that the dual character of the car was much in evidence, with an exceptionally quiet comfortable "limo mode" most of the time on the road trip but impressive (apart from being stupidly big) sports car mode available when desired

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[WuffvonTrips]

I was glad that I'd bothered packing my Porsche mobile charger on a recent trip away- I only got a brief charge from the destination fast(ish) charger before a maintenance crew tracked me down and asked me to disconnect- apparently the chargers were supposed to have been cordoned off in preparation for them being serviced, but even then they'd have been luring drivers by reporting an available status up to that point. That was the National paddock at Silverstone- the only conveniently nearby alternatives weren't usable- 2 different sets of new chargers still not commissioned at the Hilton, the Porsche SEC ones are only for use by those attending an SEC event with them the same day (and in any case, gate security won't allow access without an invite), so I ended up plugging my 3-pin in to my pit garage for the day, which at least gave me the extra miles needed to get me to a good fast charger facility that wasn't (like MK) inconveniently far off my route home.

 

[anonymouse]

I don’t think the data in the PCM is clean enough to be reliable for uk road trips at this point. I have had similar experiences, being directed to chargers that are private or not available.

Instead of using the PCM to recommend chargers, I always plan my trip on A Better Route Planner, and if I need to use anything other than my priority networks (IONITY, Fastned etc) then I look at user comments on PlugShare to confirm that the charger is likely to work.

 

[f1eng]

I don’t think the data in the PCM is clean enough to be reliable for uk road trips at this point. I have had similar experiences, being directed to chargers that are private or not available.

Instead of using the PCM to recommend chargers, I always plan my trip on A Better Route Planner, and if I need to use anything other than my priority networks (IONITY, Fastned etc) then I look at user comments on PlugShare to confirm that the charger is likely to work.

I have always planned my routes using an actual map, ABRP and zapmap when I knew I would need a charge but this time the trip originally looked doable with 100% charge at home, but then I had an unexpected additional journey to meet my nephew which made it more marginal.
It does seem still to be the case that charging stations variations and how to pay is a stupid clusterf*ck.

The only Sat-nav I have used to give a consistently good route is Toyota's "ecological" choice. IME so far anyway.

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