So I'm currently in Banbury charging the car here and I thought I'll show you around the charges at
this site this is the Banbury Cross Retail Park, but also look at the charging infrastructure in
general in Banbury because they're making a really good job of it in this town.
So over there next to Pizza Hut we've got ten Tesla superchargers, they're all version 3 250kW
and another two here. These all CCS and what makes these a bit different is any vehicle can charge
them and these ones have been opened up to any EV driver and actually in this space I'm standing
in when I pulled up there was a Hyundai Ioniq charging here just a few moments ago. But then
right next to them we have got one two three four five six, six Osprey chargers which have got both
Chadamo at 50kW and CCS at 150kW. So in total 18 DC rapid chargers
open to all vehicles in just one charging location. Yeah with six 150kW chargers here
and twelve 250kW chargers there is a serious amount of power available at this location.
So these Osprey charges are great looking devices, I've never seen these before, very slim units,
great that they've got this cable support at the top, very long cables, very flexible,
obviously that's going to take the weight of the cable and connector which is good
and long cables to reach to your charge port where ever it is on your vehicle.
You've got your chip and pin, sorry your contactless terminal down there and I'll look
up the price and put it on the screen. I've got a feeling these are 79p pkWh something like that,
obviously electricity prices just shot up, so expensive no matter where you charge now. But
the thing that I think a lot of people don't realise is that those Tesla chargers
over there are also open to any EV driver and they're cheaper than these over here.
But in a way I'm glad it's not common knowledge. I know it's probably rather selfish but I think
most Tesla drivers will actually feel the same because as a Tesla diver, if you pulled into
this site and those Tesla superchargers were all in use by non-Tesla drivers,
yet these Osprey ones were empty, it would be very frustrating that you would be pushed onto
this network when you're only charging at 150kW, which if you've got a Model 3 or a
Model Y you can charge much quicker than that. But in my case my Model S over there is the
older generation one as it were and that has free supercharging for life. So over
there I'm getting a free charge, whereas if I had to plug in here it would cost me.
But also if you are paying for your electricity, as those Model 3's are over there,
as a Tesla driver, you don't pay the same rates as a non-Tesla driver on the supercharging network,
so yeah it will be equally as frustrating for them if they were then forced to use another
network because they'll be paying quite a lot more. I think about 20p
per kWh more than they would if they could charge on these units.
I thought I'll just include this in this video,
that guy in a Model Y, that white one who's just pulled away, couldn't put his charge cable
back properly and it fell out of the holster, fell on the ground and he didn't even bother
picking it up. He just, he actually kicked it and then got in his car and drove away.
So I was just going to walk over there and pick that connector up and a white Model 3
has just pulled in and he's charging on that one, so he's picked it up.
Anyway, this is the Banbury Cross Retail Park and here we've got a Pizza Hut there,
a KFC just behind it, so you can use the loos and if you need to and grab
a bite to eat and then all around the edge you've got retail shops.
But Banbury seems to be making a great job of EV chargers. They've got an awful lot of
EV charges for what is a fairly small Oxfordshire town. So there is quite a
lot of commercial premises at Banbury, a lot of big warehousing because it is on the M40,
but within the town, I've had a quick look at ZapMap and there are 13 charging sites,
which isn't anything special, but over those 13 sites, there are 99 charges, which is so much
better than anyone else seems to be doing. So you're averaging 10 charges per site. Whereas
I suspect if you looked at most other towns, you're averaging probably two charges a site.
So anyway where I am here, the Banbury Cross retail Park, we've got 18 rapid charges
and they are pretty rapid as well, but only a mile and a half up the road
you've then got this InstaVolt, let me just put in uh put on the
satellite view. So here, just off the M40 junction here you have got an InstaVolt charging hub and
I'll call in in a minute and have a look at this place, but they've expanded this it's not just
this bit, it's now all of this and there's I think 28 chargers there now. A huge charging hub there,
plus lots of other charging sites in the town, the car park seem to be catered for very well
and I've excluded the sort of hotels and private sites where they have got public charging as well.
So yeah, there are well over a hundred charges in the town. So why is Banbury doing so much better
at installing charging infrastructure, when some other towns in the UK have very few or even none.
What's Banbury doing different? Why are they getting all this infrastructure here?
If you're from Banbury, on the council or whatever, let me know. Write in the
comments. It'll be interesting to know how Banbury is getting all this infrastructure,
when some places just haven't got anything yet.
So I'll just quickly mention the parking here at the Banbury Cross retail Park,
if you're thinking of coming here. There was no barriers or no noticeable cameras as you pulled
in. There's no parking fees and looking at the signage up there, the car park is managed by Euro
Car parks and it says there is a maximum stay of three hours and no parking in the electric
vehicle bays, which is great. But anyway, I'm nearly charged,
so I'm going to disconnect from here shortly and then what I'll do is I will call into the
InstaVolt charging hub up here, because it's on my route to get back onto the M40 South.
But I'll have a quick call in here, I'll walk around and show you what that place looks like.
That doesn't take much to put your charge cable back properly, but anyway let's
um, what am I doing, navigate uh, charging, let's just go to the InstaVolt charges
down the road and right yeah, it's only 1.3 miles away from this site.
I've pulled into the InstaVolt site and all the fans are going on my car because I've just been
charging and it's the first time I've seen the vents open. Obviously it has done before but I'm
always driving, so yeah the battery obviously got quite warm, so I can tell summer's coming.
But anyway here I am at this InstaVolt charging hub. It's a seriously impressive place.
There are just rows and rows of rapid chargers. Funny enough,
including two waiting bays, which I've parked in one because I don't need to charge, but I
can't see there's many times where you'll actually going to be waiting for a charger at this place.
So let's have a look what we got here. Very nice painting on the ground...
so we have got
CCS
Gosh, they're stiff. I don't think this has been used much and Chadamo.
and there's the speeds. So Chademo, 62.5kW. I didn't think Chadamo supported anything more
than 50kW, so that's good to see. Obviously that's the maximum speed you can get on a Chademo. I'm
not sure whether you can see that screen. The sun is very bright today and CCS is a 120kW.
As for the price, I'll look it up and put it on the screen.
Interestingly, it says 100% renewable power as well. And then got your card terminal here.
You can pay with all the cards including American Express and your IntsaVolt app.
So yeah, a seriously impressive site. I'm just gonna have a walk around now and count
up how many charges. I think there's 28 here but I'll just double check that.
So there are 8 along this row. There's another 8 along this row. I don't understand why these 4
have different paint on the ground and don't have bays. I can't quite understand why they've
done that. Is that for larger vehicles or vehicles with trailers, possibly?
You've got marked pedestrian walkways all around as well, all in green.
And a very wide walkway through the middle.
There's another 8 along this row. These are a different unit. It does say "hypercharge"
on the screen there, it doesn't give you the power output. So maybe these are a
higher powered unit, but anyway I'll look it up and put it on the screen.
And then on this side you've got the original ones
and another 8 rapid charges again and another different type of unit.
And again these have got CCS and Chadimo and they're 125kW DC shared.
So yeah very impressive site they've even got bins between the chargers as well,
which is nice to see, but that's probably because we're right opposite a Costa over there
and uh as you can imagine they're full of Costa cups.
So they've obviously got one hell of a good connection at this site in that big green box
that one there
another one here with that little fenced off section
and again it's replicated over there
for that final row. These units have got nice long cables as well,
as do these newer ones. They look even longer on those and it's also nice to see lighting as well.
It's probably only lighting up the signage, but anyway, it's nice to see lighting, bins,
proper laid out marked up bays. Not that you're going to get icing in a place
like this because this isn't a car park, it's just a dedicated charging hub area.
It looks like this lighting is solar as well, solar powered. But anyway with 32 DC
rapid charges at this site, is this the largest charging hub in the UK? I would imagine it is.
And it makes Banbury very well catered for. It's probably got the most public
chargers per head, than any other town in the UK.
So I'd imagine it will be many years until waiting at this site is going to be an issue.
So that's it from me. I hope you found this video useful. I'm going to get back
on the M40 and get on my way. If you found it useful and like this video,
please do click the thumbs up, that really does help. Do subscribe if you want to
see more electric vehicle videos and I'll see you on the next video.