You CAN road trip an SE SR

[Bam Bam]

Looking forward to your report on this trip. We're due to drive from here at the Centre of the (known) Universe in the north west Highlands to the south of England, London via Hampshire, in February, and we've only been as far south as Kirby Lonsdale so far.

It says you've got an LR - surely that's cheating!

 

[QLeo]

It says you've got an LR - surely that's cheating!

Well, -ish. When we go places, there's the dreaded A9 to do, pretty much no matter where we go. That means it's about 220 miles to Perth. Which also means we're unlikely to get there, what with the Grampians being in the way. So we have to volt and bolt in Inverness, just like SR drivers.
I mentioned to @Rolfe to be careful after Inverness going south, as from Inverness, there is first of all a never-ending hill to climb until the Slochd summit, but actually, as we found last weekend when going to Glasgow, against a headwind, you only start going downhill again after Dalwhinnie.

 

[Coulomb]

So we have to volt and bolt in Inverness,

I do like that phrase. It might just catch on!

 

[T1 Terry]

This was the bit that got me

That means it's about 220 miles to Perth. Which also means we're unlikely to get there, what with the Grampians being in the way.

 

[QLeo]

This was the bit that got me


View attachment 31697

Or as an Aussie friend said, it's amazing how many places in Scotland are named after places in Australia.
(Herself leaves for Brisbane on Monday to see her mother, then later on to Perth (your one) to see her sister. So it's another 500 mile road trip to get her to Edinburgh - you don't have one of those I don't think, but NZ has its Gaelic name, Dunedin.

 

[Rolfe]

Looking forward to your report on this trip. We're due to drive from here at the Centre of the (known) Universe in the north west Highlands to the south of England, London via Hampshire, in February, and we've only been as far south as Kirkby Lonsdale so far.

Kirkby Lonsdale was the second charging stop I made on my first ever trip away from home. Four Instavolts in the car park of Booth's supermarket, but I think they're only 50 kW. (It should have been my first and only stop but I was out for practice and stopped earlier at Southwaite too.)

That's a cold time of year for that journey, but you've got the LR (cheat...) and with it the faster charging time. There are loads of places with banks of ultra-rapid chargers now so you shouldn't have any trouble. Tebay is a nice stop but it's popular and there are only four chargers. (Unless you're a Tesla.) Both times I've been there all four were already occupied when I arrived and I had to wait about 15 minutes to get on one.

Well, -ish. When we go places, there's the dreaded A9 to do, pretty much no matter where we go. That means it's about 220 miles to Perth. Which also means we're unlikely to get there, what with the Grampians being in the way. So we have to volt and bolt in Inverness, just like SR drivers.
I mentioned to @Rolfe to be careful after Inverness going south, as from Inverness, there is first of all a never-ending hill to climb until the Slochd summit, but actually, as we found last weekend when going to Glasgow, against a headwind, you only start going downhill again after Dalwhinnie.

I took your advice and made sure to take plenty on board. But I did realise that what goes up must come down. Perth and Inverness are both more or less at sea level. My reckoning was that if I still had the nominal range to get to Perth when I crossed the watershed at the Drumochter Pass I'd be laughing, and as it happened I had five miles in hand at that point. (You see the sign for entering Perthshire? That's the start of the downhill leg. It's about five or six miles past Dalwhinnie.) I think I had over 20 miles in hand by the time I got to Perth itself.

I do like that phrase. It might just catch on!

I first heard it from that creep The MacMaster, who made it sound as if he just made it up, but he could have heard it from someone else.

Or as an Aussie friend said, it's amazing how many places in Scotland are named after places in Australia.
(Herself leaves for Brisbane on Monday to see her mother, then later on to Perth (your one) to see her sister. So it's another 500 mile road trip to get her to Edinburgh - you don't have one of those I don't think, but NZ has its Gaelic name, Dunedin.

Dùn Èideann, as the signs entering the city inform us.

 

[Tight Git]

@QLeo - are you not going to use the Tesla open to all - Inverness, Aviemore, Perth and plenty more south of those on your route?

The £9 subscription will more than pay for itself on that trip and the chargers are cheap, quick and reliable! It's very easy to cancel the subscription before the month ends, which is what I do.

 

[QLeo]

@QLeo - are you not going to use the Tesla open to all - Inverness, Aviemore, Perth and plenty more south of those on your route?

The £9 subscription will more than pay for itself on that trip and the chargers are cheap, quick and reliable! It's very easy to cancel the subscription before the month ends, which is what I do.

Yes, we do use the Tesla chargers, to the extent of having our favourite pillars And as we need them so often we've gone for the annual subscription, which pays for itself quite quickly with the length of trips we have to do. But we've not had a need to use them south of Larkhall.

 

[Rolfe]

There may be bad news here. It appears that Tesla may be closing all their sites that still have the old-style chargers to non-Tesla cars, and as far as I know most of the sites in Scotland are like that. Certainly all the ones I've used.

The reason is that a year ago legislation came into force mandating that DC chargers open to all vehicles must take contactless payment. A year was given for charger companies to bring their chargers into compliance with this. The old-style Tesla chargers don't comply, so Tesla are being forced to close them to non-Teslas again. As far as I know they will be opened again when the new-style chargers are installed, but goodness knows how long that will take.

 

[QLeo]

There may be bad news here. It appears that Tesla may be closing all their sites that still have the old-style chargers to non-Tesla cars, and as far as I know most of the sites in Scotland are like that. Certainly all the ones I've used.

The reason is that a year ago legislation came into force mandating that DC chargers open to all vehicles must take contactless payment. A year was given for charger companies to bring their chargers into compliance with this. The old-style Tesla chargers don't comply, so Tesla are being forced to close them to non-Teslas again. As far as I know they will be opened again when the new-style chargers are installed, but goodness knows how long that will take.

Good grief. That will be a blow to us. I can absolutely understand, and approve of, legislation that mandates contactless payment, but forcing the existing network to comply seems bizarre*.

* - (Unless a political "donor" owns a charger machine supply company, in which case it makes perfect sense. </CYNICISM>)

 

[Rolfe]

I think it probably seemed sensible enough at the time, and the targets were people like Ionity, to give them a year to get contactless capability installed. I'm not sure the thought that this would force Tesla to close a lot of superchargers that had been opened to non-Teslas even crossed anyone's mind.

Reducing non-Tesla access to the Supercharger network

Whilst charging at the Cardiff supercharger I was told by a Tesla employee that they are reducing access to the supercharger network for non-Teslas from the end of November. Including the Cardiff and Camarthen superchargers I was using on my trip. This is due to legislation which is requiring...

www.mgevs.com

Actually, given the wording, it does look as if they thought about Tesla.

Maybe they thought a year was long enough for Tesla to replace all the old-style chargers in the sites it had opened to the public with the new ones? I'd have thought that was a tall order.

Looks as if I might get away with Trentham Gardens though, since I'll be travelling down on 22nd November and it looks as if this comes into force on 24th November.

 

[QLeo]

I think it probably seemed sensible enough at the time, and the targets were people like Ionity, to give them a year to get contactless capability installed. I'm not sure the thought that this would force Tesla to close a lot of superchargers that had been opened to non-Teslas even crossed anyone's mind.

Reducing non-Tesla access to the Supercharger network

Whilst charging at the Cardiff supercharger I was told by a Tesla employee that they are reducing access to the supercharger network for non-Teslas from the end of November. Including the Cardiff and Camarthen superchargers I was using on my trip. This is due to legislation which is requiring...

www.mgevs.com

It's difficult to see how that approach will achieve its aim. If the idea is to make it easier to charge, at more locations, then this simply encourages a more closed-shop approach to the existing charge network, be those Tesla, Ionity or ChargePlace Scotland.

 

[Rolfe]

I think the rationale might have been that these operators want customers, and so will be motivated to get the work done to accept contactless. That applies to Ionity and ChargePlace Scotland, which weren't set up to service a single brand of EV. Tesla, though, can survive perfectly well on Tesla cars until they get round to replacing the chargers.

 

[siteguru]

The Tesla superchargers at Gretna Outlet and at Todhills services are V4. I don't know about the ones North of me, and I've never been to any of the local ones.

 

[Rolfe]

Eurocentral, Dundee, Perth, Aviemore, Inverness and Fort William are all the old style. I have no idea whether Tesla intends to replace these quickly so the sites can revert to open, or whether they'll wait until the units are due for replacement anyway.

 

[siteguru]

From a business plan perspective I suspect they'll wait - the extra revenue from non-Tesla owners probably wouldn't cover the cost to change, at least not within a reasonable timescale. V1 and V2 chargers will be replaced ASAP, but V3 chargers won't be changed out until nearer end-of-life.

 

[QLeo]

From a business plan perspective I suspect they'll wait - the extra revenue from non-Tesla owners probably wouldn't cover the cost to change, at least not within a reasonable timescale. V1 and V2 chargers will be replaced ASAP, but V3 chargers won't be changed out until nearer end-of-life.

Possibly, but there may be some wriggle-room in this if it's enforced. For example, does the Tesla subscription make it a "club" rather than fully open to public use, so they could argue, if they felt like it, that the proprietary aspect is membership rather than ownership. It may not be in the spirit of the legislation, but the legislation seems daft if it effectively takes out of general use perfectly serviceable chargers. Maybe I'm just being hopeful. Don't worry - it'll pass. ;-)

 

[Rolfe]

Good news, potentially. I raised the subject on the comments page of one of the Dave Takes It On videos. He replied, saying "Not going to happen. Tesla got a legal waiver."

 

[Coulomb]

He replied, saying "Not going to happen.

Sorry to be thick: What's not going to happen? If it's the adding of contactless charging, how is that a good thing for us?

 

[Rolfe]

In context, it would appear that he meant the exclusion of non-Teslas wasn't going to happen. I asked him to elaborate but he didn't reply again. He's been wrong before. (Most egregiously, about the trick to re-tax the car in March to postpone paying road tax.)