I bought a plug-in hybrid car a year ago with the idea that I would get used to charging it and using public charging points before going to a full EV. I think I am ready after a year and I will move to a full EV when I replace the car, but I do wonder why it has to be so complicated. I mostly use public EVs at our second home in Northumberland as I have a home charging point in our main home. There are several places with charging points and each one has a different way of paying. Each has its own phone app and there are 3 different ways of paying. For one you have to set up a Direct Debit. For another you have to register a credit card. The third way is that you have to pre-pay into a wallet on the app, so they always have some of your money! We have invented a neat way of paying for other things, the contactless payment card. Why on earth do we have to fiddle about with apps when we could just swipe our card.
The apps make it unecessarily complicated. Last year the most convenient public charging point was unusable for days, they had “technical problems with the app” for about a week. Now, they have been taken over by a different company so I have to go to a completely new app. It is absolutely ridiculous.
If we want EVs to take off, we need to make it as easy to charge an EV as it is to buy petrol.