Volt a shambles! Up to a third of charge points for electric cars don’t work
ELECTRIC car drivers in Scotland are struggling to power their vehicles after a spate of problems left charging points around the country out of service.
A snapshot survey of the biggest cities north of the Border last week revealed a significant proportion of charging points are not working – meaning some motorists have had to drive from one point to another in an ever-more desperate hunt for one that would allow them to recharge their batteries.
In Aberdeen last week, almost a third of publicly available charging points could not be used. The large-scale breakdown comes just weeks after a new firm was appointed to run the network.
Neil Swanson, director of the Electrical Vehicle Association Scotland, said: ‘The problems we have seen in the last month have been pretty significant.
‘If you are without the ability to charge your car, the effect is catastrophic. We are looking for a comprehensive improvement across the network going forward.’
There are around 2,500 publicly available charging points in Scotland, overseen by
‘Problems in the last month have been pretty significant’
ChargePlace Scotland, which is owned and funded by the Scottish Government.
The body runs an app and website telling drivers where the nearest charging points are. However, responsibility for actually running the network is contracted to a private firm, Austria-based Swarco eVolt.
The company promised ‘the gold standard’ of charging networks.
But the firm’s start last month has been so chaotic, worried Ministers are demanding to be kept up to date with how the scheme is running.
In Edinburgh, almost one in three of the capital’s 18 charging points were out of commission last week.
Aberdeen has 31 public charging points but only 22 were working , a failure rate of 30 per cent. In Scotland’s biggest city, ten of the 107 chargers within the Glasgow City Council area were out of service.
Meanwhile, six of the 58 public chargers in the Dundee City area were not available.
On Friday, the flagship Castleview
Low Carbon Transport Hub, in Stirling, went offline along with its 64 electric charging points.
The problems seem mostly to stem from the communications technology involved in operating the charging points, and the systems required for billing.
Drivers have a swipe card to identify them at charge points. However, transfer of banking details and email addresses to Swarco did not go smoothly.
On top of that, chargers need to ‘speak’ to data centres, with some talking to data centres in London and others communicating with the Isle of Man.
As a further complication, the network includes charging points built by nine different manufacturers, meaning software upgrades are needed to communicate with data centres.
Yesterday, a spokesman for Transport Scotland said: ‘We are aware that users have experienced disruption. We understand significant progress is being made in resolving the key issues.’
John Curtis, spokesman for Swarco eVolt and ChargePlace Scotland, said: ‘We have inherited issues around poor data, faulty cards and “missing” third-party charging points. Our teams are working literally night and day to address the issues.’
Swarco was forced to issue apologies to frustrated drivers within hours of taking control.
In one example, a map showed charging points in wildly wrong locations – even suggesting an oil rig in the North Sea to drivers.
On July 28, the network’s Twitter feed stated: ‘We are aware of a loss of comms with all CPS chargers.’
Three days later, a ‘mobile comms issue’ with a London-based data centre knocked out the service for 50 minutes.
On August 3, the operators admitted: ‘We have a system error causing a lack of communication with all chargers.
‘We have a team bringing the network back up, which we anticipate will take an hour.’
Just last week, another ‘comms issue’ hit 300 chargers.