How Autocharge Will Transform EV Charging

Of all the complaints and criticism and moans I get about EV charging the vast majority about paying to charge you have to have dozens of RFID cards multiple apps contactless bank cards maybe use QR codes and on top of all that you have horrendous pre-authorization fees well

Sit back problem solved I’m Dave welcome to Dave takes it on great news indeed now to clarify many of these complaints end up saying and I quote here oh because of all this hassle I will stick with my petrol car 5 minutes and I can be gone so half the people

Complaining they don’t even have an EV and they’re moaning why do you think it’s to help me as an EV driver has been doing this for four years I suspect not so let’s smash that one immediately when you with your ice car go to a pet station and we know all

About this because we were once long ago e ice drivers ourselves you have a multiple choice you can use a bank card at the pump at some sites not others or you can fill up and use a bank card in the shop or kiosk or you can pay cash in

The shop or kiosk then you probably also forgotten but many people also choose to use a nectar card or a test a club card you’ve actually got more Choice than us EV drivers the problem you have with contactless is that the petrol station will almost certainly take a pre-authorization fee these are commonly

50 but can be as much as £99 legally and that may not clear for several days and I’ve heard cases anecdotally where it was several weeks imagine going on a road trip where you might have to fill up two three or four times and each time you lose nearly A1 to

Pre-authorization well let’s just hope you had a healthy bank balance when you set off one thing you la is an app and you are missing out well sort of because you have apps for absolutely everything else most of us live our lives with apps we

Have the Tesla or nectar card on an app we might have a cost or Starbucks app and then use our banking app on the smartphone for the payment if you want to book a restaurant we do that on an app on the phone and we

Carry a copy of that so that we can use it when we get there to confirm the booking and we can actually often use the same app to order food and drink while we’re sitting at the table without even having to get up and queue up at

The bar even McDonald’s now hasn’t an app you can actually order in advance or go to your table and order with an app from there just put your table number in in fact it goes much further than that because I see most people are now using their smartphones to pay for most things

At the supermarkets countless people now just swipe their phones using Google pay Apple pay or Android pay whichever it is now I recently saw a large notice on the motor on the m6 they told Road and at a toll booth it said warning you cannot use a smartphone at this booth you must

Use your bank card and and of course the driver in front of me was trying to use his phone as he actually no longer carried around the banking card now to of tolls I often go through the Mery tunnel and they have a fast Ty system well or should I say they did

Have it’s been I know upgraded taken over super seeded or whatever they call it and it’s now called I think it’s t flow you enter your registration number and APR that’s automatic number plate recognition that you just drive straight through without stopping payment is taken automatically so we actually live with

Apps already every day so I actually feel sorry for you ice drivers having to get out of your car and walk over to the shop or kiosk in order to pay we Eevee drivers don’t have to do do that we have far more Choice including apps but we

Also do not want that much choice in many cases now as Dave takes it on I try my best to keep you up to date I drive around all the various charging networks and actually try them out they do not all charge what their websites say they

Will charge and some offer offer really fast charging speeds While others are embarrassingly slow and in the early days more than 5 years ago for me I needed to apply for an RFID Card this is rather like a Tesco Club card or nectar card and that had to

Be posted out to me and of course just like the supermarkets who all have their own Loyalty cards so the EV charger networks all had their own RFID cards and the trouble was you couldn’t use those to pay for your charging session you had to use something else for that

But the RFID was just a way of identifying you so we had not only RFID we usually also had contactless payment as well well unfortunately RFID back then it was if you can’t use it can’t judge it’s really simple but there was not a single card I could get that worked as

All EV Chargers it was a mess and I had dozens of these RFID cards some only ever used just once well eventually thank you apps arrived around the same time some but only some added contactless bank card terminals so now instead of a dozen RFID

Cards I had a dozen apps and one or two contactless bank cards well it was it was much simpler apps are on your phone all the time you don’t have to carry anything so it was a slight Improvement but then shortly afterwards they made contactless bank cards compulsory and situation improved

Drastically you now need one card and as long as the contactless works which is not always then you can charge but as a Tesla driver I’ve had a very different experience for the last four years you see when I bought the car I registered all my details with Tesla

My name my address and my payment method they added the car details and then we put in our debit card or credit card or PayPal or whatever method we were paying and that was it we were permanently logged in now Tesla is fully integrated so all the cars constantly talk to Tesla Tesla

Constantly talks to the Chargers everyone knows everything about it I’m quite happy with that so we’re permanently logged into the system so it doesn’t detect you when you walk up towards it I’ve just closed this there’s a button on top of every uh Tesla plug

And all you do press that and the port Springs open and the the socket unlocks so all I do now is plug it in and at this point that’s the end of it that now stops a charging and releases the plug so I can remove the plug and return it

Taking off my adapter return it to in real time when I reverse into a supercharger Bay I get out I take the plug out of the charger I press the button on the plug and my charging flap opens and the charging socket unlocks I plug in and walk away that’s

It no RF RFID Card no credit card no contact l absolutely nothing and we even have no need to use the app we don’t need the app for charging it’s there for information so I literally plug in walk away well for all you non Tesla owners fastet has just introduced exactly this

System it’s called autocharge and also last time I went to grid serve down their brain tree Hub Before Christmas they told me that they were going to be introducing exactly the same method later this year uh and possibly or even including a membership now I don’t know what method

They’re using what they’ll call it but they if they’re on track will be launching their own autocharge equivalent later this year so how does it work can anyone use it well as to how it works all EVS have an onboard computer and they store certain information and they’re

Identified it’s a bit like a SIM card in your phone it knows which car is which now the Chargers be they Tesla fasted or shortly grid serve also have computers they have unique addresses and they’re constantly monitoring the charges for availability and faults and to be able to feed back to

Their websites and apps and Maps like zap map and whats up the availability how many are free so when you go to charge your say fasted when you go to pay the first time it will ask you if you want fastet to store your car and payment method for the future it is

Entirely voluntary you don’t have to use it but if you choose to do that store your details it will be stored and the Very every next time you charge at a fastet charger it will immediately recognize your car it will remember your payment details details so

Literally all you do is plug in and fasted computer does the rest if you do have their app and you don’t need to have it but if you do it will update with the progress so first of all you can see that your car is actually charging then you can see how

Fast discharging it will also tell you how long it’s going to take before you reach whatever limit you set and it will tell you when it has reached your preset limit so at that point you just simply unplug and it’ll calculate on what you’ve charged and it will take payment

From your chosen method automatically you just unplug drive off that’s it so Auto charge aut to pay what whatever you like to call it it is the simplest way of charging yes you do or can have an app but you don’t actually need to use it it is there for your

Information yes you still probably carry around a contactless card or you’re banking up on your phone but you don’t need to use either of them either pull up plug in unplug drive off it is the future but it’s already here today well done fastet now who can use it well

The list is really long and the vast majority your cars are quite happy but for technical reasons VW cannot VW have uh most people um they’ve got a MAC address which is which tells the computer tells everyone else what your unique uh Mac address is uh this is

Nothing to do with Apple Mac this is a Mac uh addess which is to do with the internet and Volkswagen changes every time you start up the car so they can’t actually identify which car yours is because each time they you start it up it’s a different Mac

Address so every single model of vws cannot use autocharge likewise your chados sockets can’t use uh autocharge so things like the Nissan Leaf Chad is just not compat compatible but that is about the limit of which can use autocharge the vast majority of EV owners can use it even my

Older Tesla Model S it’s coming up now to what is it 8 years old and that’s fully compatible I’ve registered on the app put all my details in and I’m just waiting till the next time I go charge my car at a fastet charger unfortunately there are none anywhere

Near me the nearest one’s over 100 mile away so this might take a while but the very next time I use a fastet charger it will automatically ask me do I want to activate it okay now again I don’t have to but I’m told I will have that option

And the whole point about Auto charge is making things so much simpler so when I would charge next at a fast night I shouldn’t be very long long I’ll let you know how it all went now the autocharge type system has been available and used by all Teslas

And Tesla drivers since the very first Tesla took to the roads it is exactly like autocharge but it goes one simple step further on every charger plug on a supercharger there is a button press this and the charger port flap opens and the charger socket unlocks now for non-tesla owners if you

Press that button it doesn’t work on your car I’m afraid you will probably have to open an app to open the charger port or go into the car and open it from the display some of them will allow you to open it by pressing the charger itself but they often don’t unlock the

Charger socket you might have to go into an app or uh the car to do that bit it’s it’s it’s it’s trivial but it just simplifies the process if when you get there press a button charger flap opens unlocks and you plug it in now I’m not

Sure which method grid serve will adopt oh in fact I don’t even know if they’ll actually launch any system or if they do when it will be I sincerely hope they do they have talked about it at one time it was on the website but it’s now

Disappeared if you use autocharge of any sort or any other compan I haven’t mentioned let me know in the comments below let me know how you found the application process and how you found actually using it for the first time when it act asked you hopefully do you

Want to store this and let me know whether the very next time you charged it went smoothly well thanks very much for watching this video if you have enjoyed it please click the like button and if you would please subscribe it makes such a difference to us as a new channel if

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Thank you so much for your support for the channel I’m Dave

As much as EV charging has come on leaps and bounds, there are still aspects that have been less than ideal. Fortunately, one of those bugbears will soon be a thing of the past. So to find out what’s going on, stick around as Dave Takes It On.

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About The Channel:
Dave Takes It On was founded in 2023 and focuses primarily on content about electric vehicles and issues that impact drivers. Dave is based in the North West of the UK and owns a Tesla Model S. He regularly travels around the country, so if you see him feel free to say hello. The channel is supported by his son Jonas, who helps with thumbnails, titles, and technical aspects of the channel.

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