Charging cars and apps

[g320y]

Hello Everyone.
10 days in to driving my first EV (a Costa Azure id3 pro launch edition 1) I am loving the smooth, quiet, quick ride.
Whilst the car will predominantly be charged at home with Intelligent Octopus I was wondering what people's experience is with charging cards and apps for road trips. At the moment I have an Octopus Electroverse card.
Most of my long trips will be along the M4 which seems well catered for with Ionity and Gridserve high speed chargers which can be paid for with the Electroverse card or contactless.
Are there any other cards or apps that I should consider getting - I don't really want to end up with a wallet full of cards and numerous apps and don't think I need a subscription plan? Having said that I am happy to share free money if there are any sign up credits available!
Many thanks.

[Raxacorico]

Hi g320y
Welcome to the forum!
If you ever plan to come to Scotland I suggest you get, in advance, the ChargePlaceScotland RFID card.
Most public chargers here don't take debit/credit cards at all.

[sidehaas]

I would recommend getting a wecharge card from VW as well - you order it via the VW app. It has a different pricing structure than Electroverse that means it will occasionally save you money. It also covers a slightly different range of chargers (but with a lot of overlap). With those two, a CPS card for Scotland, and contactless, you can go pretty much anywhere in western Europe. No payment apps are really necessary. If you want to use Podpoint you need their app and if you want to use most public Tesla supercharging you need their app too (the newest 'V4' sites take contactless).
Of course you do need an app to plan routes/select chargers sometimes. I would recommend getting familiar with zapmap, wattsup and abrp, then decide which one you prefer to use. They all have comprehensive coverage of rapid chargers but provide slightly different functions.

[g320y]

Thank you both. I hadn't realised you could charge non Tesla cars at some of their sites. Trying to research online which Tesla sites are available but can't come up with a definitive list, is it just 15 test sites or more? Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[Sherlock]

Thank you both. I hadn't realised you could charge non Tesla cars at some of their sites. Trying to research online which Tesla sites are available but can't come up with a definitive list, is it just 15 test sites or more? Can anyone point me in the right direction?

If I remember correctly if you get their app you can filter sites that non teslas can use. I think you need the app to charge at most of their sites.

[sidehaas]

If you download the app, unless you also have a Tesla, it will only show sites that non Teslas can use. There were 15 originally, 20-odd now. I would caution that all the v2 and v3 sites are quite difficult to use because the short cables mean you need to use the wrong space - meaning that because almost everyone else doesn't, you actually need two adjacent spaces to become available together when it's busy. If it's quiet, no problem. The need to use the app also provides another failure mode though. The new v4 chargers solve these issues by adding contactless card readers and longer cables. Unfortunately they aren't explicitly identified on the app - but I believe it's just Tottenham, Reading West and Trentham that have them so far.

[g320y]

Thank you for the information. I think I will see how it goes with Electroverse/contactless, short cables and app payment with Tesla sound a bit of a faff!

[SinglePointSafety]

The Tesla app (mine's Android, I guess iOS is much the same) works very well - have used it for charging both in UK and EU, including the very, very convenient bank of chargers at Folkestone LeShuttle

[MotMot]

Yeah - big thumbs up for Tesla from me.

Nearly always the cheapest and had my fastest charges at Superchargers (Tesla’s are 400v EV’s so when their chargers say they do 150 or 250kw they really do…