I have been charging only at home, and doing fairly short trips due to being retired. Then I recently decided it was time to get some experience on public chargers in readiness for possible summer holidays, and to get over the slight anxiety I have around finding, queuing for, and using public charging infrastructure. So I enrolled in most of the main public networks that don't involved paying subscriptions (holding off on a Powerpass until I actually need it). I included BP Pulse in my list due to the size of their network, and I decided to just use their App but loaded £5 onto my account via credit card to go and try one of their 150kW chargers 100m or so from my house. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work.
The indicator light on the car charge socket went white when I plugged the cable in (indicating communication with the charger) and a similar message appeared on the charger screen. After a minute the light turned red and the car dash display said "Unable to fully charge vehicle. Consult vehicle wallet." I tried this again, and then repeated a third time whilst on the phone to the BP Pulse helpline. They confirmed the charger was OK and that it appeared to be entering a charging state. We tried a second 150kW charger with the same result (and by the way I had seen 2 cars charging successfully before me, and someone else whilst I was trying). We concluded there must be an issue with my car, and as I had not at this point ever used a DC charger I assumed it must be a related to that.
Today my car went into the local dealer, who checked it out and said there were no issues and it charges fine on their 29kW DC charger. So I decided to see if this was one of the many issues with the current software that goes away with an overnight rest and took it straight back to my local BP garage. The exact same issue occurred. I then did the only other thing I could try which was a different public DC charger. I drove 10 miles or so and found a Shell charger rated 50kW. I found with some relief this worked fine (my first actual public DC charging experience Yay)!
So what now? I wonder if there could be some problem with the BP charger being 150kW. I should have the 125kW charging option but it should not make any difference either way, albeit it would charge more slowly if this was not actually fitted. I wonder if I have the only Enyaq that does not seem to like BP Pulse chargers? If anyone else has experienced anything like this with either BP, or other high power rapid chargers only, I would appreciate you letting me know. My dealer, like most, has fairly limited experience.
By the way, I asked about the upcoming software release and was told that, even if I had a fault that turned out to be fixed in that release, they had no way to get hold of it until the official rollout to existing vehicles during the second half of the year! I have 3 other minor problems with the car that are possibly software related:
- When Lane Assist is turned on (and yes I agree it is a pain this resets to "On" at startup), the optional setting to enable/disable steering wheel vibration, even though this sub-setting does persist at startup, does not do anything. Vibration is always on, and this is the feature we find most disconcerting as it feels like you have lost steering control.
- The nearside mirror should automatically lower when reversing with the mirror adjustment knob turned to R, but it doesn't (I had this working once but never since. It could be I haven't set it up right).
- Despite some early success, I now just cannot get the "Easy Open" boot lid function to work. I have tried all the methods reported as successful by others but it just stopped working after a week or so.