Top 5 Charging Mistakes

Charging along the road isn't always simple. After quite a few charging transactions through our app, we've both seen, experienced, and fixed various charging errors over the past few years. We're sharing the 5 most common mistakes and how to easily avoid them.

1. The car doesn't respond when I've connected to the EV charger

Several electric cars have a lock that activates after two minutes. The problem is particularly common on rental cars that use apps to lock the car. The solution is to lock and unlock the car again to remove the lock without having the charger connected.

1. Drive up to the charger and note the pole so you can find the same one in the app

2. Connect the charging cable to the electric car

3. Start charging in the app

It's that simple 😎

2. The systems are a bit slow

If you first experience that a fast charger won't start, you can quickly make a mistake that even we who work with charging all the time make. Start pressing lots in the app, open and close the app, simply get a bit irritated. But due to slowness in the system, this can instead cause the charger to lock completely and refuse to charge. Many chargers need a few minutes to reset after an error, so let them recover before trying again.

Waiting a bit, trying once more, should work fine. For example, take the charger out and back into the car or fast charger, or lock and unlock, as mentioned above. In the worst case, you can try switching to another charging pole.

3. You don't have coverage on your payment card

Check that you have money on the card. Before charging starts, we reserve an amount from your card or Vipps. 150 kr if you use a bank card, 500 kr if you use Vipps. If you don't have enough money on the card, charging won't start at all.

Check that you have money on the card if the reservation doesn't go through, and try again. The reserved amount comes back to your account quite quickly, but if you want the lowest reserved amount, we recommend adding a bank card to the app.

Note! If you click many times, you risk reserving large amounts on your account.

4. Charger doesn't give the right charging speed

Charging speed can be affected by many factors, but the two big ones are temperature and how many are charging on the same pole.

If it's cold outside, it affects the charging speed. If you have a preheating function in your car, this can help against this. Alternatively, it will also help to charge after you've driven a bit, and thus gotten some heat in the car.

If it's not the temperature affecting the charging, the speed may be affected by multiple people charging on the charging pole. A 300-kilowatt charger can only give this speed if connected to one car. As soon as you share the charging pole with another car, the speed is halved to 150 kilowatt per car. If there are few at a charging stop, always choose your own pole for the fastest possible charging.

5. The charger gets stuck after charging

Is the charger stuck in the car after an error has occurred or you're finished? Lock and unlock again. Then the charger should come loose.

Several cars also have "secret" button combinations on the key or dashboard that force the charging cable to come loose, if it doesn't work with normal lock and unlock. Check if there's such a button combination for your car.

Charge and pay across charging companies with Elton

You only need one app to charge everywhere in Norway. With Elton, you can easily charge at Mer, Circle-K, Uno-X, Kople and many, many more!

Download Elton today