Failed Gridserv/ABB charging in MG4

[Rolfe]

Yes, these are the ones I'm talking about. I only tried one, three times. After I'd had £90 frozen in my bank account to no effect I quit and moved to a Gridserve charger rather than throw good money (temporarily) after bad.

 

[DevonMG4]

Thought I would try the new Gridserve Hub at Wetherby Services on a recent trip. Sadly, the 350kW chargers there would not work for me and failed with an error message that the car had stopped communications or something similar. I then plugged into the original Gridserve 50kW chargers at the service station and they worked fine, albeit at a very slow speed (under 30kW). I also tried the new BP Pulse Ultra Rapids on the M6 Stafford Services a few weeks ago and couldn't get those to work either. Anyone else had a similar failure at all?

I'm now over 8,000 miles in with my MG4 and have done a fair bit of rapid and ultra rapid public charging due to the long trips I do frequently. In my experience, and with my MG4, I do find the MFG 150kW, Osprey 150kW, Instavolt 120kW, Ionity 350kW and Fastned Ultra rapids (300kW) to be exceptionally reliable, along with most 50kW chargers. It just seems that for my EV some of the Ultra rapid chargers (i.e. Gridserve and BP Pulse) just won't work. Maybe my car needs another software update?

Have tried the 350kw chargers on our SE SR at Exeter, Reading E&W, Leigh Delamere W, and Soltice Park, been bullet proof almost every time (think I had to move chargers once). Of course I never see more than 80 ish KW with an SR but that's preferable to the Gridserve 50kw units that only ever seem to give me 30.

 

[PeteC]

Yes, these are the ones I'm talking about. I only tried one, three times. After I'd had £90 frozen in my bank account to no effect I quit and moved to a Gridserve charger rather than throw good money (temporarily) after bad.

I wasn't keen on them taking so much money either! If the third one had failed, I'd have moved on to other chargers too.

 

[siteguru]

The Applegreen charge point at Gretna worked first time for me on Sunday (on my way home), whereas on Friday it took 3 attempts to get a successful charge. However on checking my bank account I can see:

1. a £30 pre-auth still sitting there
2. a debit for the successful charge on Friday
3. a debit for an unsuccessful charge
4. a debit for the successful charge on Sunday

2 and 3 together would be more kWh than my car's battery can even accept, even if I'd been down to 0% SoC!

I've sent a complaint email to Applegreen re. 1 and 3.

 

[Waterstoney]

I struggled a bit when I tried ESB at London underground stations with 3 issues at beginning. Those were not charger problems but my problems:
1) They do not support contactless on the charger that I tried to use. I have to download "EV Plug" from play store and topup minimum 20 pounds.
2) Charging needs to be started by swipping on app before plugging in CCS charge cable.
3) Make sure charging target is more than current battery percentage. I got my target on 50% somehow with iSmart when I had more, which was causing charge ended straight away.

I got 48kW feeding to my ZS LR from 50kW ESB charger.

 

[Rolfe]

The Applegreen charge point at Gretna worked first time for me on Sunday (on my way home), whereas on Friday it took 3 attempts to get a successful charge. However on checking my bank account I can see:

1. a £30 pre-auth still sitting there
2. a debit for the successful charge on Friday
3. a debit for an unsuccessful charge
4. a debit for the successful charge on Sunday

2 and 3 together would be more kWh than my car's battery can even accept, even if I'd been down to 0% SoC!

I've sent a complaint email to Applegreen re. 1 and 3.

Ouch. At least they didn't try to charge me any money. The £90 just sat there in pending transactions, then went away.

Meanwhile Gridserve took a £1 authorisation fee which likewise sat there and eventually went away. I was never debited for that charge, probably because the charger broke down while it was charging my car. Fortunately after it had supplied ample charge for me to get home on!

 

[DBedford]

All UK charging is priced per kWh delivered, not how fast it's delivered.

Yes I know, but I just ask why, when all MG cars have relatively low charge rates.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, as far as the LR goes, Bjorn Nyland was really impressed, kept saying "charges like a BOSS!!" He was getting 135 Kw.

Even for the SR, 80 Kw is better than 30-40 Kw.

 

[PeteC]

Yes I know, but I just ask why, when all MG cars have relatively low charge rates.

It's not all about peak charge rates but also about charging curves. My Trophy is still taking more than 50kW when the battery is at 80% and way more than that when it has less charge (I once posted a picture of it taking 139kW with the battery at 42% and an outside temperature of 3 degrees). It keeps its higher charging speeds for a long time so gets to a good level of charge surprisingly quickly.

So, to answer your question, I use the higher powered chargers because they probably more than halve the charging time I would take on a journey compared to using 50kW chargers.

 

[m4rmite]

Yes, these are the ones I'm talking about. I only tried one, three times. After I'd had £90 frozen in my bank account to no effect I quit and moved to a Gridserve charger rather than throw good money (temporarily) after bad.

I'm sure it was a member on here who said they use their credit card rather than debit card for chargers.
This way the pre authorisation doesn't hold back their money in the account.
Worth a try if public charging is needed regularly

 

[Rolfe]

I'm sure it was a member on here who said they use their credit card rather than debit card for chargers.
This way the pre authorisation doesn't hold back their money in the account.
Worth a try if public charging is needed regularly

Yes, I think they said that after I recounted that experience. Definitely a good idea.

Although not something I could have done at that precise moment because I had maxed out my credit card buying the car and the bill hadn't yet fallen due!

 

[adiel]

It's not all about peak charge rates but also about charging curves. My Trophy is still taking more than 50kW when the battery is at 80% and way more than that when it has less charge (I once posted a picture of it taking 139kW with the battery at 42% and an outside temperature of 3 degrees). It keeps its higher charging speeds for a long time so gets to a good level of charge surprisingly quickly.

So, to answer your question, I use the higher powered chargers because they probably more than halve the charging time I would take on a journey compared to using 50kW chargers.

Completely agree. I have done a couple of 600-mile round trips to Newcastle recently and spent less than 10 minutes charging at an Ultra Rapid on both the outbound and inbound journeys, coupled with an overnight destination charge in-between the outbound and inbound journeys. Both ultra-rapid charge stops were done whilst taking a comfort break, so in effect this was less 'down-time' than having to refuel an ICE car, which you can't leave filling-up whilst paying a visit.

 

[PeteC]

A quick update about my experience with the Gridserve 350kW chargers at Wetherby services. There has been speculation that powering the car down before charging might help with the car connecting to the charger:

Quick update and worth other members trying this tip too. I was not happy that I had given the ultra-rapid Gridserve chargers a fair crack of the whip with my MG4 Trophy, so I tried one located at Washington Northbound services. I had a thought about what might have caused issues before with our ZS, so before plugging in the charger I used the 'Safety' tab in the MG Pilot section of the infotainment system to turn the system off. I then plugged in and hey presto, a successful charge started relatively quickly too. I then repeated the trick at Wetherby services, where I had experienced my initial issues and again a charge started successfully. So, I would say that the charging errors, particularly with Ultra-rapids, on some MG4's may be caused by the fact that the car seems to be in an 'on' state which will not be tolerated by certain chargers. By turning the car off before you start a charge you might have a better chance of success with some of the 'pickier' ultra-rapid chargers in the public network. Give it a go and feedback your findings, please.

I'd always powered down my car this way before charging on several previous visits to these chargers as, for some reason, I thought you had to power the car down for it to charge. As that always worked, I never questioned it! However, I said I'd give those chargers a go without powering down to see what happens next time I was at them.

Today was my first chance to try, so I put the car into P, got out without locking the car (my wife was still sitting in the car ready to power it down if needed!), connected the charge cable and showed the charger my card. There was quite a pause during which the charger had a message saying that it was connecting to the car. I was about to give up when the car started charging. No error messages, just quite a long handshake it seems. We locked the car to go to the services and the charge continued uninterrupted. So it worked fine without the shutdown. I'll try again in about a week's time on my way home, but I'm expecting it to be ok.

 

[Vingnut]

Did the handshake take considerable more time with the car on? I'm asking couse Bjørn Nyland had a lot of handshake problems (timed out on handshake) with the MG4 on his 1000km test.

 

[PeteC]

Did the handshake take considerable more time with the car on? I'm asking couse Bjørn Nyland had a lot of handshake problems (timed out on handshake) with the MG4 on his 1000km test.

I only visit those chargers every couple of months, but I don't think they ever connect to the car very quickly. I don't think this time was considerably longer than previous visits. I think I was probably just more aware of it as I wasn't sure it was going to work or not.

I find that the time to connect can vary quite a bit. I stopped at a Tesla charger for a top up later in the journey and that connected quite quickly - I noticed from the charge port lights that the car had started charging while the Tesla app was still telling me to wait for the charger to connect!

 

[adiel]

A quick update about my experience with the Gridserve 350kW chargers at Wetherby services. There has been speculation that powering the car down before charging might help with the car connecting to the charger:

I'd always powered down my car this way before charging on several previous visits to these chargers as, for some reason, I thought you had to power the car down for it to charge. As that always worked, I never questioned it! However, I said I'd give those chargers a go without powering down to see what happens next time I was at them.

Today was my first chance to try, so I put the car into P, got out without locking the car (my wife was still sitting in the car ready to power it down if needed!), connected the charge cable and showed the charger my card. There was quite a pause during which the charger had a message saying that it was connecting to the car. I was about to give up when the car started charging. No error messages, just quite a long handshake it seems. We locked the car to go to the services and the charge continued uninterrupted. So it worked fine without the shutdown. I'll try again in about a week's time on my way home, but I'm expecting it to be ok.

Thanks for trying this out, PeteC. I will do the same test next time I am passing Wetherby.

 

[kevinji]

Tried two so far with my new trophy and no problems with either. In fact got 140kW on a Shell recharger so got plenty in the time it took to 1) stare at dial hurtling up to 140, 2) have a pee, ( in garage not by the charger) 3) chose and buy refreshments in garage —- then I was good to go. The trick is in the planning.ie select UR chargers and alternatives in advance of journey and download the apps and register. Shell also provide free card or key fob linked to whatever payment card you add to the app. Very easy and quick. They are a bit more expensive but for a quick boost on a long journey they are ideal.

 

[adiel]

Thanks for trying this out, PeteC. I will do the same test next time I am passing Wetherby.

We travelled up north in our ZS Long Range instead of the MG4 this time and the ZS worked with no hassle and managed to pull 84kW's. Not quite the 130+ of the MG4 but more than good enough for a quick top-up charge.

 

[kin]

Speaking from experience, a Trophy will charge perfectly fine at a public Tesla Supercharger.
Just remember to create a Tesla account before going to the chargers! (also speaking from experience ?‍)

Yep tried Tesla supercharger in Aberystwyth, just plug in and select stall number and off you go!

Charging speed at 50+% SOC went up to 137kw for a brief moment.

 

[Veryfatbloke]

Have been on holiday in Wroxham this week and used the Gridserve Norwich Forecourt on 5 separate occasions. On each occasion I hit 137Kw during the charging process. I did a couple of long journeys during the week, including one back home to Kent (with a slow BP Pulse charge to get me back to Gridserve) and a trip to Ipswich which required a 35 mile diversion on the way back, not all charges were to 80% but I had no issues whatsoever.