Motorway charging

[hdasmith]

Is it me or are lots of the Ecotricity motorway charging points solely for Nissan cars and won't initialise my Ecotricity card for the PHEV to charge. I had a frustrating journey up the M1 and down the A1 over the weekend and couldn't charge in any of the three services I stopped at.

The Nissan label is just because Nissan are/were sponsoring the chargers. The charger works regardless of car.

 

[hdasmith]

I still see software being able to prevent tampering by another driver.

I see this as a solution.

have a timer that is started by the presenting of a card. This timer either times out after say 30min, or if the same card is presented. If some other card user tries to use the charger and it is under 30min or has not been cleared for use by the previous user then it will be unavailable for at least 30min. The timer would only start once current was flowing.

This would mean that if your car was connected and charging and someone else came along and unplugged you, they would have to wait at least 30min to get any juice. Meanwhile if you came back and presented your card, the point would become immediately available to another user.

The key is that if your car had current flowing and it was interrupted, then at least 30 min would have elapsed before the station was available for another user. I do see opportunity for misuse if another user disconnected you and replugged. You would get an incomplete recharge. This can still happen with the present system. The other user would have no benefit to unplug you before you got at least 30min of charge.

SO: There would be no point in another driver unplugging your car to charge there own with a simple forced delay if the card was not presented to disconnect.

I cannot see any issues with presenting a card again as these cords have smarts to know if they are connected and disconnected. The longest another driver would have to wait would be 30min.

I think all EV or PHEV have the same right to use the charging stations, so need some station smarts to make all users play fair.

I don't think this is necessary as the CHAdeMO chargers are locked to the car during charging already and automatically unlock when charging has finished. The only way to over ride this, I think as I haven't tried, is using the e-stop, but this would be very poor form. You can stop a charge early using the original user's card, but the card does need to be presented to the charger before it will stop, thus preventing someone stopping another's charge early.