First test drive with charging experience

Finally I decided myself to do a test drive with charging! 

Not sure how the adventure was going to be, I picked the closest charging station to my house just in case things would go wrong. 

There is this one near Yverdon-les-Bains train station, just about 14km from my house where there is still the old school T13 domestic plug (reminder: for the moment I only have a range of aprox. 35km...)

(screenshot was actually taken while I was waiting to charge)

After a couple of minutes I was there

Time for the real adventure to start!

The charging station seems to be in nice condition, a QR code led the way:

 Of I scanned, and tried to get the thing started:

LOL: 32.55 kWh! This should be about 10 full charges! I picked this one.

After 15mins guessing where the T13 socket is and how to open the small door to access it (newbie's stuff), I got the charger plugged and... nothing! Not charging!

The worst part was that I closed the small door to be sure it wasn't a safety thing preventing the charge to happen while the door was open! Now I had the plug inside and couldn't get it out!

I call the phone support, and after some 20mins talking with two different persons, some remote restart of the charging station... Nothing! Their best guess was the the position 2 was somehow not working...

In meantime I downloaded and installed the evPass app. Same issue, no way to open the small door!

I finally ended the call and decided to solve the problem myself:

1. Scanned again the QR code

2. Got the menu on the charging station screen to select the T13

3. Pressed, door got open :)

I was free!!

In the meantime got some messages from TWINT saying the payment was cancelled. Great.

Not willing to give it up, I went to test the other position of the charger. This time using the app. The problem is the app does not open the small door to access the T13 socket nor the screen of the charging station shows this option when using the app... So I thought to scan the QR of position 1, leave the door open, cancel the charge, go back to the app, plug the charger and finally enable the charging through the app! (couldn't look more complicated, right in?)

Nevertheless, stubbornness payed of, and I was officially charging away from home for the first time:

(the "Last charges" log show how ridiculous this was...)

I set the charging current to 25 A, but my charger quickly overheated, so I got it down to the standard 15 A. 

Now just had to go grab a coffee nearby and wait... 

I profited to write this entry in the blog and get some sun while waiting :)

After 1 hour, I was again topped:

0.17 CHF, parking on Sunday afternoon was free.

And that's it! First charging outside home completed! Definitely learned some stuff.

Now heading back home I dicided to give an eye on another charging station nearby, this time at the Y-Park:

 

Should also have a T13 socket!

When I arrived there, surprise:

No T13 plug :/

If I'd trusted on this one... Definitely need to buy one of this standard charging plugs!

Time to get back home, with a very nice sun after the last weeks of awful weather

(45 km/h up a steep hill, that best it can do...)

Total trip of today: