Car (or bike) Chat!

[struth]

car was real iced up, and ive just had electricians in all morning fitting a new house board and a waterproof light in bathroom. so to check it was still all going i gave it instructions to charge and to precondition etc.. its de iced car very well..

[Pigmy Pony]

I have a tin of de-icer, which is now empty.

[struth]

had to cancel the car service as its too icy for me to risk venturing out the front door. i also had to cancel a food pickup as i wont get out for that either. its double risk when there are no ambulances and no room in hospitals... what a life we have with this govt

i tried salt but it just froze worse lol. judging by forecast i wont be out til after xmas

[dave2010]

Takes about 7, hrs to do 30% I guess at that output. I joined charge Scotland at time but so far a year in I've not have to charge anywhere bar home

We have a Chargeplace Scotland card, but it doesn't seem to work right now. Either that, or the chargers don't work.

It's worth taking your car out and trying to charge up at a public charger just to make sure you know how to do it. It shouldn't be difficult, but it often is. You'll have to learn a whole bunch of "stupid" things, such as:

1. How to actually unlock the cable so it will go into your car [some of the older ones were easy, but some just don't want to come off the charge stand. Brute force is sometimes the only way]
2. How to get the charger to start once the cable is plugged into your car. At this point you may need to waive your card at the machine. It may work - it may not.
3. The car and the charger will - with luck - eventually start to "talk" to each other.
4. Sometimes - actually quite often - there is a failure at this point, and you have to take the cable out, put it back on the charger and go back to step 1.
5. Sometimes - again actually more often than really desired - charging starts to lull you into a false sense of security. It may fail soon - so watch - and if it fails go back to step 1. If there's a choice of another machine in the location drive the few feet (usually) to that and try a different machine.
6. If things seem to be going OK, then walk away and do whatever you wanted - go to the shops, etc. Sometime (you guessed - more often than you'd want) the charging stops almost as soon as the charger detects that you're out of range. This is a real bummer if you leave it charging for a day, hoping to get enough charge to get home. Arriving back to find that your car has hardly charged at all, and you can't get home can really piss you off!
7. You should also test out the public chargers more than once. You may find that the one you used yesterday doesn't work today, or when you really need it.
8. Often it takes about 20 minutes to try to kick a public charger into life, which is way longer than getting petrol in a petrol station.
9. Another thing to learn is where the emergency off button is, and how to use this. To start with you'll not be happy doing that, but eventually after 10 or so failed attempts on different days - you may decide to give it a go. This usually requires pressing a big red button quite hard for a second or two, then waiting a few minutes, and hoping that the charger will come back to life. Sometimes they do - and wheheay - you can get a charge. However you may find that it still doesn't, so you've either got to drive home or drive on to another charger - see point 10.
10. Driving to another charger. The next charger you can use may be 20 miles away - not always a problem. However you may find that you drive the extra 20 miles towards (maybe) one of your destinations, and that charger doesn't work either. Sometimes even 3 or more chargers en route may not work, so you give up and continue to home, where you charge up as normal.

This might give you some idea just how much fun it is using Chargeplace Scotland chargers - which are supposed to be easy to use at least along the A9.
There are other chargers, for example BP ones - but you probably need another card for those, though if you apply for a BP card you may get a few pounds of free electricity for the first few uses while you get used to the system.

The one good bit of good news is that some of the Chargeplace chargers have been free to use - though I'm not sure if any are nowadays. Examples: Perth and Dunkeld.

I have no idea whether the Chargeplace Scotland cards need annual renewal or not. Probably - but try contacting Customer Service. You probably won't be able to or won't get any sensible responses - certainly not when you really need it.

Nevertheless - in the interests of science - or whatever - give it a go!

Tesla chargers are difficult the first time - but then you don't have a Tesla so they won't work. Now that we know how to use Tesla chargers I can say that normally they work OK - though at a price.
They are about 5 times more likely to work than Chargeplace Scotland ones.

Good luck.

[struth]

We have a Chargeplace Scotland card, but it doesn't seem to work right now. Either that, or the chargers don't work.

It's worth taking your car out and trying to charge up at a public charger just to make sure you know how to do it. It shouldn't be difficult, but it often is. You'll have to learn a whole bunch of "stupid" things, such as:

1. How to actually unlock the cable so it will go into your car [some of the older ones were easy, but some just don't want to come off the charge stand. Brute force is sometimes the only way]
2. How to get the charger to start once the cable is plugged into your car. At this point you may need to waive your card at the machine. It may work - it may not.
3. The car and the charger will - with luck - eventually start to "talk" to each other.
4. Sometimes - actually quite often - there is a failure at this point, and you have to take the cable out, put it back on the charger and go back to step 1.
5. Sometimes - again actually more often than really desired - charging starts to lull you into a false sense of security. It may fail soon - so watch - and if it fails go back to step 1. If there's a choice of another machine in the location drive the few feet (usually) to that and try a different machine.
6. If things seem to be going OK, then walk away and do whatever you wanted - go to the shops, etc. Sometime (you guessed - more often than you'd want) the charging stops almost as soon as the charger detects that you're out of range. This is a real bummer if you leave it charging for a day, hoping to get enough charge to get home. Arriving back to find that your car has hardly charged at all, and you can't get home can really piss you off!
7. You should also test out the public chargers more than once. You may find that the one you used yesterday doesn't work today, or when you really need it.
8. Often it takes about 20 minutes to try to kick a public charger into life, which is way longer than getting petrol in a petrol station.
9. Another thing to learn is where the emergency off button is, and how to use this. To start with you'll not be happy doing that, but eventually after 10 or so failed attempts on different days - you may decide to give it a go. This usually requires pressing a big red button quite hard for a second or two, then waiting a few minutes, and hoping that the charger will come back to life. Sometimes they do - and wheheay - you can get a charge. However you may find that it still doesn't, so you've either got to drive home or drive on to another charger - see point 10.
10. Driving to another charger. The next charger you can use may be 20 miles away - not always a problem. However you may find that you drive the extra 20 miles towards (maybe) one of your destinations, and that charger doesn't work either. Sometimes even 3 or more chargers en route may not work, so you give up and continue to home, where you charge up as normal.

This might give you some idea just how much fun it is using Chargeplace Scotland chargers - which are supposed to be easy to use at least along the A9.
There are other chargers, for example BP ones - but you probably need another card for those, though if you apply for a BP card you may get a few pounds of free electricity for the first few uses while you get used to the system.

I have no idea whether the Chargeplace Scotland cards need annual renewal or not. Probably - but try contacting Customer Service. You probably won't be able to or won't get any sensible responses - certainly not when you really need it.

Nevertheless - in the interests of science - or whatever - give it a go!

Good luck.

i think i will just stay within range of my home charger lol... tbh i dont travel that far and car has a very good range.
but thanks for that; its a bit like i suspected

[Pigmy Pony]

had to cancel the car service as its too icy for me to risk venturing out the front door. i also had to cancel a food pickup as i wont get out for that either. its double risk when there are no ambulances and no room in hospitals... what a life we have with this govt

i tried salt but it just froze worse lol. judging by forecast i wont be out til after xmas

Terrible time to be taking any risks, no matter how remote. Keep yourself safe Grant. I plan to leave the house as little as poss in the coming weeks.

[struth]

Terrible time to be taking any risks, no matter how remote. Keep yourself safe Grant. I plan to leave the house as little as poss in the coming weeks.

Yup it's what I'm thinking too. Best of a bad lot, but much better than queuing for 40 hrs to get into a & e.

[dave2010]

i think i will just stay within range of my home charger lol... tbh i dont travel that far and car has a very good range.
but thanks for that; its a bit like i suspected

Seems fair, though maybe if the weather does improve next year try then, when there's much less risk of slipping on ice etc.

I went out for a coffee with someone a few days ago and he didn't turn up. Turned out he saw it was icy - and what I didn't know was the he lives about 20 minutes walk (normally) from the cafe. I caught up with him on Zoom a day later, when he explained it all. As it happens I was only about 3-2 minutes (normal) walk from my car to the coffee shop. It took me around 10 minutes to get there, slipping on the ice (but not falling) and that was with the aid of a trekking pole. Getting back to the car was nearly impossible - I did wonder about crawling there, but then I'd probably have been killed by a car driver not noticing me. Ice can be really bad - though this was almost as bad as I've ever known it.

Take care - better to stay in and be safe.

[Macca]

Terrible time to be taking any risks, no matter how remote. Keep yourself safe Grant. I plan to leave the house as little as poss in the coming weeks.

That's my plan all year round. As my mate Budge used to say, 'If you've had to leave the house you've gone wrong somewhere.'

[Barry]

What about shopping - or do you have it delivered?