Best apps to find commercial chargers on a journey

Yes, that seems like the best thing. I'll get her to take a look. I can see it's an expensive charger, but I can literally see it from the bedroom window and hopefully I can just let the car charge there for as long as it takes. I can't find anything much cheaper nearby anyway.

The only snag is that she says the four charging points are usually filled by ICE cars parked there for the day and I'll have to be on the ball to get a space at a charger. I don't know what can be done about that. (I wonder if it's possible to park across one or two of these cars and block them in. No, I'm not really that nasty...)
 
my go to is bonnet, with a filter of rapid & 4+ chargers, very reliable real-time availability (MFG is preferred, as they usually have 8 bays-& always work). But I always have a look a Tesla supercharger network, as quite a few are now for non teslas - always ample capacity
 
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Do you know anything about the Tesla chargers at Tebay on the southbound carriageway of the M6? According to ZapMaps they are Tesla-only, but it seems strange that there would be no facility at all for non-Tesla cars at a big motorway service station.
 
Ian Key said:
Yes it does seem odd that they aren't open to non Teslas as there is a Gridserve on the northbound services.
Click to expand...
Is the tesla system 100% on the southbound then, as when I drove past this (27th dec), going north bound, the traffic was queuing in lane 1 on the M6 to the services.

Ian Key said:
Yes it does seem odd that they aren't open to non Teslas as there is a Gridserve on the northbound services.
Click to expand...
Why would they? Their priority is supporting their tesla owners. The aren't going to allow others on to their supercharger system, given its location (of been approx 1/2 way between glasgow & manchester), and no decent alternatives, having said this you can get onto the Porsche Centre on J35, with a Shell RFID card (but only 2 bays), my goto is MFG on J27 (with 8 bays).
 
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Rolfe said:
Do you know anything about the Tesla chargers at Tebay on the southbound carriageway of the M6? According to ZapMaps they are Tesla-only, but it seems strange that there would be no facility at all for non-Tesla cars at a big motorway service station.
Click to expand...

Ian Key said:
Yes it does seem odd that they aren't open to non Teslas as there is a Gridserve on the northbound services.
Click to expand...

Tig170 said:
Is the tesla system 100% on the southbound then, as when I drove past this 27th dec), going north bound, the traffic was queuing in lane 1 on the M6 to the services.
Click to expand...
IIRC, you are allowed to switch sides using the access roads to get to a compatible charger.
 
WonkoTheSaneUK said:
IIRC, you are allowed to switch sides using the access roads to get to a compatible charger.
Click to expand...

That's useful to know. In fact the best stop for me on that journey is Southwaite, but if there's a problem at Southwaite, Plan B really ought to be Tebay. Killington Lake is not beyond my range, but if there was also a problem at Killington Late, Kirkby Lonsdale could be pushing it in winter (I do that trip nearly every Christmas).

So if there is a problem at Southwaite, I will come off at Tebay and enquire about accessing the northbound services. (There is also a charger in Tebay village itself, not far from the motorway, at "Adventure Leisure Vehicles", which could be worth investigating.)

Tig170 said:
Why would they? Their priority is supporting their tesla owners. The aren't going to allow others on to their supercharger system, given its location (of been approx 1/2 way between glasgow & manchester), and no decent alternatives, having said this you can get onto the Porsche Centre on J35, with a Shell RFID card (but only 2 bays), my goto is MFG on J27 (with 8 bays).
Click to expand...

I'm not declaring that Tesla should let other people use their chargers, but I do find it strange that a motorway service station doesn't have other charge points to service other makes of vehicle.

Gomev said:
Click on the INFO button for more information.
Click to expand...

I did that, but I'm still not clear how it works. It doesn't say that it takes contactless, but these chargers are very new and I thought all new chargers were supposed to take contactless.
 
My friend took a photo of the chargers beside her house and they need a Blink Charging app. This was hell to get registered on. First I tried to register as a guest, but it wouldn't let me fill in a phone number. Literally any number I entered was met with a comment that this was invalid.

So I tried to sign up, and it wouldn't let me do it on my Google account, spewing up a load of gibberish about my email address. I emailed them and got a standard auto-reply, but well over an hour later no human contact. I remembered there was another email acount Google might recognise, but it seemed the one I had originally given it was locked into the system and couldn't be changed. Sigh.

So I deleted the app and after an aborted download it finally downloaded again, and I was able to try the other email address. This appeared to work, but when I tried to register my car this proved impossible as MG4 was not available as an option on their menu.

I am extremely glad that I was sitting at home on my own sofa while I was doing this, and not standing in the dark and the rain beside a car which was low on charge and parked beside a charger that wouldn't let me access it.

Is this a common experience? Is Blink Charging unusually difficult?
 
Looking at their tag line on the website what could possibly go wrong :cool:

Over 50 Councils
Can't Be Wrong​

Dozens trust us as their EV infrastructure partner​

Billing and Payments: Get in Touch (EN-GB)

Contact Blink Charging UK for help with billing and payments. Streamline your EV charging operations with our reliable support.
blinkcharging.co.uk
 
timeades said:
Looking at their tag line on the website what could possibly go wrong :cool:

Over 50 Councils​

Can't Be Wrong​

Dozens trust us as their EV infrastructure partner​

Billing and Payments: Get in Touch (EN-GB)

Contact Blink Charging UK for help with billing and payments. Streamline your EV charging operations with our reliable support.
blinkcharging.co.uk
Click to expand...


I love this sort of marketing ?

Just like when you see something like
'over 7 years experience in the trade'
or
'over 36% of people said so'

It's even better when their spurious claims contradict each other ? where do I sign up?? ?

Edit: for all 'over 50 council's can't be wrong'.. they only managed to name 3 of them in their 20 case studies.. I wonder if the remainder were wrong.
 
Well, my friend said that when she walked over to the chargers this afternoon to get the info, two cars were charging. And a neighbour had used the chargers for a while before his wall box was installed despite the exorbitant price. So it must be possible.
 

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