Gert morning all today. I'm in this car park plugged into a BP pulse charge point and there are loads of these charge points in this car park. This car park is, uh, Vicus or Vicus Way in Maidenhead and you have to pay twice here. once for charging your car and also for the parking which is done through the Ringo app.

now. I'm parked in one of these Bays here and it's just occurred to me: Does that mean electric car charging and or disabled? same as these ones here? Or does it mean electric car charging when you're disabled? I guess I could look at this car over here. It's a bit ambiguous. Does this guy have a disabled guy? No, There's no disabled badge there.

So I'm assuming this means electric car charging or disabled. There are lots of charging points here. Um, a double There, Another double, another double behind this vehicle, and another double over there and over the other side. there are one two, three, four five, six double charging points.

and they're even more if you pop up to the upper levels. So on level one, there are one two and three four five over there charging points. That's another ten. And on this level level -2 there are three doubles.

There two doubles there. Let's go up another level. Oh yeah, there are tons of these charges. Uh, three doubles there.

Three more doubles over there that's on level two. Let's carry on up. Oh okay, that appears to be it. There are no charges up here at level minus three.

Yeah, no charges there either. So charge us up! to level two now. I Just spoke to a chap I think he's got one of these cars here I don't know which one and he said well, certainly these charges are on free vend at the moment there's no charge for using them. you can see that in the app I'll have a look at that in a moment.

We also said that the parking system is not implemented at the moment now I had to set up Ringo I didn't have Ringo I opened an account and put in a payment method and it looks like it's taking money I don't know yet, it may not and he says he works just across the way there and he's been coming here for weeks if not months months I think and he hasn't had to pay any parking charges. So at the moment this is an electric cars Paradise I mean these are only seven kilowatt Chargers So here I am in the Uh BP Pulse app and you can see up at the top here this is uh, Vicus or Vicus I'm going to say Vikas I think Vikas Wayson Dives the road in Sl6 Maidenhead Slough of course is down the road and I've been charging for 24 minutes, but you can see here um that the cost is currently zero per kilowatt hour. so the charging is free even if the parking isn't Uh, the parking I think was about a pound an hour. So I can get seven kilowatt hours in an hour.

Uh yeah, that's worth at domestic electricity rates more than a pound isn't it? So currently with the charging being free, that's pretty good deal. This is my session. So I've been charging for 26 minutes so just take a look at the charging screen in my car. Uh, minus 16 amps at 385 volts.

I'm used to seeing about minus 17 amps I think on the Pod Point charger. so this is about six kilowatt, six and a half. something like that. Um I've set the charging to stop when I get to 90 percent.

Uh Maiden head back to where I live in High Wycombe will probably use up most of that. so I don't have to leave the car uh at more than 80 which is not recommended. So what brought me uh to this car park was I was looking in the BP Pulse app. Here at the map and at the top here you can see there are eight uh charges near High Wycombe where I live.

But there were 29 down here near Maidenhead, so zoom in and you can only really see two blue blobs but this bottom one is kind of fat and as you zoom in, you see that there are well, loads of these charging points. Now each of these blue teardrop things are double Chargers So I think there are something like 56 charges here 28 locations. Let's see what it says. Oh well, that probably includes the one above.

Maybe it's 26 times 2 so that would be 52 charges at this. Uh, Vicus did I say Vikas Vikas Way Car Park. It's supposed to show you the ones in use, but I don't think that's very real time. Now the chat that I spoke to um about this car park said that um, pretty much the day this one opened Nicholson Car park down in the town closed and they said due to structural issues.

So I think I might wander down to Nicholson car park now and uh, just see whether it is indeed closed. Um, because it looks like they're trying to. Yeah, thanks kids! It looks like they're trying to send people to this car park instead of Nicholson Car park. Let's take a look.

Uh, this isn't it. This is Stafferton Way car park. but this is daily charger for eight pound fifty unless you've got a disabled permit. No change.

given this car park is regularly patrolled. Scary Car Parks aren't they? Uh, maybe this is Nicholson's car park. It certainly looks like lots of Works being done on it. So I'll just uh, have a closer look.

Wow. Looks like if you want to live in Maidenhead, it won't be long before you can get yourself one of these. Flats There's loads of them right here we are. Nicholson's Shopping Center parking and it does look down here as if it's closed.

This car park is closed. So yeah, they're doing work on this. Uh, that's quite a hoist, isn't it? The entire thing extending around that corner and that corner. the whole thing's moving.

That's quite impressive. So this is called the Hub and there are going to be 421 solar panels and also these are all electric homes. So there's no gas because as we know, gas is being phased out, we're all having heat pumps. Oh, and this building that I saw is not a car park.

It looks like it's 150 000 square feet of New Wave workspace by Tempo And this is a picture of what it's going to be like. Make sure I don't get run over. it's gonna look like that. There's a lot of building work going on in Maidenhead, so this is the state of EV charging in Vikas way Maidenhead.

Um, free vend on these electric charge points at the moment. but of course that won't last. And possibly free parking. The Ringo thing has pre-authorized six pound 30, but whether or not it'll actually charge me that I don't know yet.

I'll have to put that in as a comment. Um, in the comments section below and this is one of the problems I See with EV charging. these are slow charges. so you're here for several hours, but even on the Rapids, you're there for 30 or 40 minutes.

And unlike a petrol station where if you're queuing, you don't get charged for parking with EV charging because you're there for 30 or 40 minutes, you're going to get charged for parking. Land is expensive and people want to return on it. so you're going to get double charged charged for the electricity and that is not a lot cheaper than petrol diesel at the moment and also charged for parking on somebody else's private land. A double hit.

Nevertheless, it is encouraging that there are 50 odd charge points in this car park. Despite the pack, the fact that you uh will have to pay for electricity and BP pass I think is around the same rate on these uh, seven kilowatt charges as domestic I've seen some at 36 p38p maybe and some at 30p. These currently are free so I can't tell you what these are going to be. um and also, of course you've got to pay the parking charge, but it's um, certainly a better location than South Roh Islip Cheerio.