Changing Cards or 300 apps

[Rabaoriley]

Hello , I better quickly introduce myself I’m 29 and from just outside Dunbar on the sunny east coast , I have my first ID3 which is also my first EV but certainly not my first Vw and loving it .

But what I have noticed is I have had to download a new app every time I have came across a charger , knockhill being the latest , But I was wondering if anyone has been more successful with the Wecharge part of the Volkswagen app ? As I was struggling to understand if that would be more expensive than downloading each and every Charger app

Hope I haven’t made myself sound too complicated

[OmaSyl]

My energy supplier is Octopus and I have set up the Plug & Charge with them (Electroverse). Currently only Ionity charging stations do plug & charge with Electroverse, so I try and find one when I need to charge en route. Octopus also supply Electroverse charging cards and I use those elsewhere. Not all charging stations accept Electroverse, so yes, occasionally I need to use another app or my credit card. Electroverse gives a discount and take payment from my electricity account, which suits me well as my solar panels provide me with surplus funds on my account.

[Sherlock]

If you are in Scotland well worth getting the Chargeplace Scotland card as their app is pretty flakey but card works very reliably. I also have the Wecharge and Electroverse cards.

I can't charge at home so I also have most of the main apps on my phone (Ionity, Osprey, Instavolt, Shell, BP etc) just in case I need them when I am travelling, but most weeks I charge on a Chargeplace Scotland charger near me.

Zapmap offer their ZapPay payment solution which works at a lot of the main charger brands if you just want to have one App.

[Batterdry500]

After three months of refusing to be forced into it I have reluctantly started using google pay.

No apps required other than google wallet.

Provided the charger takes contactless (I think most do now) it's all you need to in order to pay.

After 30 years working in finance it goes against the grain to have bank details on a phone...so I just take the debit card out of the wallet in between my infrequent long trips.

EDIT> I also have an Electroverse card to give me one non-phone option in reserve for when the phone is inevitably lost or stolen.

Gave up on using contactless debit cards - bank security is over the top at the moment...is like Russian Roulette whether the card will be refused or not.

[sidehaas]

I take the same approach for rapid chargers as Batterydry500 - contactless payment via my phone, with electroverse and wecharge cards as a back up. Dead simple.

For many AC chargers, and possibly for many Chargeplace Scotland rapid chargers, I think you need to use their app or card. Wecharge and Electroverse together aggregate an awful lot though. At the moment, wecharge is usually poor value and Electroverse better, but it's worth checking for a particular charger if you are putting lots of electrons in (Electroverse pass on the price from the charging company, sometimes with a small discount if you are an Octopus customer, whereas wecharge apply a flat rate across multiple charging companies and sites).

[g320y]

Good to hear you are enjoying your ID3.

I agree there is no foolproof single method with charging - I've checked and have 8 apps on my phone for charging.

A lot depends on what type of chargers you use and how price sensitive you are. The charge point regulations https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... 3-guidance mean that any charger over 50kw should now take contactless and any new chargers over 8kw will have to - but that does leave a lot of lower powered chargers where you can't use cards and will have to use an app or rfid card.

There are lots of amalgamation services (wecharge, electroverse, zapmap, allstar, bonnet etc etc) and I guess they all have pluses and minuses. Personally I mainly use electroverse (rfid and app) https://electroverse.octopus.energy/sig ... hell-14280 as this seems to cover most of the chargers I use and benefits from plug and charge with ionity and an 8% discount as an Intelligent Octopus customer; as you are based in Scotland this seems a good choice as it now works with Chargeplace Scotland. I also have a wecharge account (app and rfid) mainly as this covers BP sites which Electroverse doesn't. Electroverse is generally cheaper than wecharge.

With the lower power sites without contactless that will really depend on where you plan to charge. Personally I find the podpoint app very helpful to have.

Pricing is inconsistent and varies by payment method (eg using a Lidl 50kw charger a kw costs 74p by contactless, 68p with electroverse, and only 62p with the Lidl app; Gridserve occasionally have discounts for using their app) so that's something else to think of.

[SinglePointSafety]

Pretty much what's already been said. In all of my public charging history, have only ever needed Octopus Electroverse RFID card, VW We Charge card (for the very few edge cases that Electoverse doesn't cover but, weirdly, VW does) and contactless. The We Charge card has been used....once (in France)
Best app so far has been ChargeFinder, for locating and giving real-time availability of chargers - it not only works in the UK but works fine in the EU (and, eg, USA if you're lucky enough to visit). I'd urge everyone to give it a try (and I have no link with ChargeFinder, I'm just a very satisfied user)

[TimF]

Pretty much what's already been said. In all of my public charging history, have only ever needed Octopus Electroverse RFID card, VW We Charge card (for the very few edge cases that Electoverse doesn't cover but, weirdly, VW does) and contactless. The We Charge card has been used....once (in France)
Best app so far has been ChargeFinder, for locating and giving real-time availability of chargers - it not only works in the UK but works fine in the EU (and, eg, USA if you're lucky enough to visit). I'd urge everyone to give it a try (and I have no link with ChargeFinder, I'm just a very satisfied user)

Didn't know about this app - thanks for the suggestion. Do you have the free or premium version? Most reviews other than 4* and 5* are complaints about ads.

[wisey78uk]

I have download all the apps over the last year. This has taught me to avoid a lot of them as even the apps are flaky at best, downright useless at most of the time. My go to apps are:

1. Gridserve. Never fails with the latest app. Not the cheapest, but they are everywhere.

2. Tesla. Superb charging infrastructure and pricing is great if you are travelling late/early.

3. Ionity - so there is where WeCharge is great, you can get the £5.49 subscription with WeCharge and you get plug and play with it. WeCharge is a Volkswagen wrapper to Elli so any chargers that Elli can use WeCharge can use to... and I think that includes BP Pulse, because my mum's petrol station in East Kilbride shows up with their charge point in the WeCharge app. Don't quote me on that. I've only had my ID.3 for 5 days so I won't say how effective this all is, but heading back up the road to beautiful EK this weekend so fingers crossed it is flawless

4. BP Pulse - this is only useful if you can find a free charge point close to where you do stuff. £7.60 a month for hours of free charging is great, and money off fast chargers. Their dongle/card makes charging easier too. Where I live, before I got a home charger, I had a free to use BP Pulse charger at the cinema and being that I got to the cinema once a week anyway...bonus! Cheap charging at home has negated that.

As others have said, ChargePlace Sscotland can be fantastic if you find a cheap/free point you don't mind parking and going off doing something else.

[SinglePointSafety]

TimF, I use the free version of ChargeFinder, it's served me very well so far, I've found it much better than ZapMap for example

The apps I use are ChargeFinder, Electroverse and Tesla - these cover all of my requirements. Kudos to the Tesla app for being pretty decent for finding Tesla chargers for non-Tesla cars and showing accurate directions and real-time availability

[sidehaas]

TimF, I use the free version of ChargeFinder, it's served me very well so far, I've found it much better than ZapMap for example

The apps I use are ChargeFinder, Electroverse and Tesla - these cover all of my requirements. Kudos to the Tesla app for being pretty decent for finding Tesla chargers for non-Tesla cars and showing accurate directions and real-time availability

Just to note that the real time availability is not much use to an ID3 if you are visiting a V3 supercharger site because whether you will get a space depends what spaces the other cars have taken. E.g. if it's an 8 stall space with 4 Teslas charging (app showing half full) and they have parked in every other space as people often do, then you will not be able to use any of the four remaining stalls because the cables are too short.
This issue doesn't apply at V4 supercharger sites but unless they have updated the app very recently it doesn't show which sites are V4, which is a bit of a shortcoming.

[Sherlock]

Personally I am not going to use any of the Tesla chargers as a point of principle.

[sidehaas]

Personally I am not going to use any of the Tesla chargers as a point of principle.

Ditto I have also stopped.

[SinglePointSafety]

sidehaas (as usual) makes a very good point about the Tesla v3 chargers and too-short cables to reach rear-right charging ports. And if you do find a vacant stall and use the 'wrong charger' to reach your id3 port, if the site gets busy, expect some 'feedback' from the Tesla owners....

[LeffeP]

Hello
When i refuel My second car (VW Golf) i "blip" my Mastercard. WERY Easy.

When i charge my ID3 i must look for apps or charge-card. Whay so ?, We are year 2025 !!!

[sidehaas]

Hello
When i refuel My second car (VW Golf) i "blip" my Mastercard. WERY Easy.

When i charge my ID3 i must look for apps or charge-card. Whay so ?, We are year 2025 !!!

You don't.
As was said up thread, the vast majority of rapid chargers take contactless payment, and indeed this is now legislated for. It works the same as paying for fuel except that the preauthorisation amount is usually less.

[wisey78uk]

Hello
When i refuel My second car (VW Golf) i "blip" my Mastercard. WERY Easy.

When i charge my ID3 i must look for apps or charge-card. Whay so ?, We are year 2025 !!!

Most of the time folks with EVs charge at home and this "nuisance" of finding an app isn't that much of an issue as you will normally know your stops and charging locations. So you get used to getting the app out and taping in a location or a number... and then walking away for the toilet and a coffee.

Filling up a petrol car means standing there while you car refuels, then you pay and more often than not you have to head into the shop to do that. Why are you doing that? It's 2025! And then you need to go park up as you might want that coffee and toilet as well. Lots of wasted time there?