Pitfalls to avoid when charging at a public charging station
Pitfalls to avoid when charging at a public charging station
The charging station you plan to stop at, to charge your electric car, may be occupied by the time you arrive. It may still be broken or your card may not be usable on it.
So many reasons why it’s better to always have a backup solution, and even two or three if possible.
To be at ease, you must therefore keep enough energy in the battery of your electric car in anticipation of possibly joining another charging terminal, which you will have previously identified in an application such as ABRP (A Better Route Planner).
Likewise, a third emergency terminal will serve as your ultimate escape, just in case …
Have more than one charging card and therefore access to several networks of terminals for electric vehicles
A charging card may be more interesting on a network of stations for electric cars while another squeezed it elsewhere.
An operator might be momentarily unavailable when you need to charge while on the road.
Even if a card covers several networks, you can never be sure that it will be readable just when it is necessary for you to charge your vehicle.
Find out about the costs of electric charging at the stations where you need to charge
In the current state of the public charging station network, prices are sometimes very different between operators.
It happens often that for the same charging terminal, and the same amount of energy transferred to the battery of your electric vehicle, one operator charges you up to 3 or 4 times the price another would have asked you.
You might as well know it and use the right card or application for each charging station.
The excellent Chargeprice application will let you know the price of charging at each terminal and choose the right card to connect to.
Disconnect your electric car as soon as charging is complete
More and more operators are billing not only the amount of energy drawn from the charging terminal, but also the time your vehicle remains connected.
Payment per minute of connection is indeed quite common, especially when you exceed a certain period.
This is setup to prevent people from leaving their cars connected for hours after charging has been completed. This is not a bad practice because its goal is to have the charging station released as quickly as possible to avoit to the following electric cars from waiting too long.
Always have a charging cable in your car to plug to the charging station
The so-called fast or accelerated charging terminals generally have no cable on them. These are terminals with a power below 22 kW. You can therefore connect to these terminals using your own cable. If you don’t have one with you, you’ll not be able to charge your car.
Monitor the charge of your electric vehicle
It sometimes happens that the charging station freezes and the charging process stops. If during this time you are not near your car and you do not notice it, you may have the unpleasant surprise of finding your vehicle insufficiently charged when you get back to it.
It is better to monitor the charging process with an application developed by the manufacturer of the electric vehicle, or with one of those proposed by the companies that manage the terminals.
Do not charge your electric car over 80%
The range in which electric cars charge the fastest is below 80%. Once this level is reached, the charging power decreases and the times lengthen. It is not uncommon for electric cars to take longer to go from 80 to 100% than it does from 10 to 80%.
Rather than wasting your time trying to nibble off that last 20% of the load, while blocking the public terminal and at the same time increasing your bill amount, it is better to stop the process at 80% and go.
It will be much more efficient to organize your top-ups between 10% and 80%, for example, rather than trying at all costs to reach 100%.
The only thing you can do if you want to get the full charge at all costs is to increase the charging times and therefore extend the duration of the trip.