Not a PlugShare glitch, apparently there really are 6 different EV fast charging sites in one services on the A303, just down the road from Stonehenge.

Tesla have a site with 16 plugs there, GRIDSERVE are there too with 8 CCS2 plugs, and the Costa, McDonalds, Harvester and Holiday Inn all have 1 or 2 plugs of their own.

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This is the best charging setup I've come across so far in the UK.

With these Smart Charge chargers you just need to tap a credit card to start the charge, at which point a QR code is briefly displayed on screen which you can use to access a web page to monitor the charging session or retrieve a receipt.

Like the Ionity chargers you get charging session monitoring without needing to install an app or create an account, but the Smart Charge chargers are even quicker and simpler to use because you can pay by tapping a credit card instead of having to use a web payment portal.

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Today I discovered that Ionity chargers work a bit differently than the GRIDSERVE and ChargePoint chargers I've used so far. You can't just tap a credit card on the machine to start a charge, you have to go to a web payment portal instead. That would present problems if someone did not have a smartphone with local internet access, but for me and my eSIM this actually works better because in exchange for using the web payment portal I got a web dashboard to remotely monitor the charging session, while still not having to install an app, create an account or get an RFID card.

I also like the purple halo lights.

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Had a most un-Australian problem this morning while leaving our rental flat in Coventry: the car's boot was frozen shut. I had to go get a spatula from the kitchen to pry it open.

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Another charger, another charging app I can't install because my home address happens to be outside the UK.

It is undeniably a good thing that most chargers in the UK can be used simply by tapping a credit card. No need to install an app, create an account, order an RFID card, or have internet access at the site.

It's undeniably a bad thing that this is often the only option available to visitors to the UK, because it leaves them with no way to monitor the progress of a charge while away from the car, increasing the risk of overstaying at the charger.

You can't use the car's app to do this if you have a rental car, because when you're not the owner you can't use those apps. That leaves the charging company's app as your only option, except it seems that a lot of the companies operating in the UK have set their apps as UK only in the Google Play Store. That doesn't restrict the app to people who are *in* the UK (which would make some sort of sense), it restricts the app to people whose home address is in the UK, which seems utterly pointless.

So far I've run into this with both GRIDSERVE and ChargePoint, and I strongly suspect there will be more. The only charging app I have been able to use is Tesla, because that one is international.

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The motorway services at junction 1 of the M6. There are a total of 64 fast chargers here, 28 Tesla Superchargers (Tesla only) and 36 GRIDSERVE. The GRIDSERVE chargers can be used without an app, RFID card, internet access, or account, you just plug in and tap a credit card to start charging.

Australia has some catching up to do.

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Parking sensors become less useful when they are constantly beeping and lit up even when you're Doing it Right.

Because it's a fairly wide car and UK car parking spaces are so small every parking attempt results in the car continually warning me I'm too close to stuff. Here I was straight, and centred, and so were the cars either side of me, but the car was beeping up a storm. The red line on the reversing camera is useless too. If I used that as a guide I'd always be leaving a metre of the front end of the car sticking out of the parking bay.

I can cope, of course, but it would be quicker and much easier with a 360° camera system. It is, I believe, an optional extra that our rental EQE does not have

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Apparently the car should be able to charge at up to 173 kW. I don't know whether it wasn't playing nicely with the Tesla Supercharger, whether it was the cold weather, or whether I'd need to pay a subscription to unlock maximum charging speed but it definitely maxed out at 85 kW today.

I will concede that the branded puddle lights are an excellently wankerish touch.

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First time charging in the UK, with the rental EV.

As expected fast charging is almost twice as expensive here as it is back home (£0.55/kWh vs ~$0.65/kWh), but that's still cheaper than petrol.

Also as expected the Mercedes once again compared poorly with our BYD. Max charging speed appears to be 85 kW, while our Seal Premium can do 150 kW.

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The last 24 hours did not go entirely according to plan, but despite bouts of gastroenteritis for both my wife and my son we managed to catch the train from Brussels to London, dragged ourselves and our luggage across London on the tube, then caught the train to Stansted airport where we picked up our hire car for this trip.

It's a Mercedes EQE 350+ battery electric car. First impressions, based on an hour and a half of driving on the motorway and A roads with no time to read the owner's manual, is that it's undeniably a Nice Car but I do miss several features from our own rather less prestigious BYD Seal.

The first thing that struck me was how dark and claustrophobic a car with a metal roof feels once you're used to one with a glass roof! I also missed having a driver's heads up display, and most of all the BYD's 360° camera system. The Mercedes only has a reversing camera plus parking sensors, which feels like a big step backwards after spending a year with 360° parking cameras.

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