IONITY - charging / fees / tips

unkel wrote: »

€8 fixed price is only temporary. Not sure why Ionity thought it was a good idea. Maybe to take customers away from competing networks in mainland Europe I guess.

The 8 euro charge has been around for ages on mainland Europe, not just with ionity either

The 350kw chargers are 11 bucks a pop in Germany without maingau anyways.

unkel wrote: »

Ionity only started last year

Ionity aren't the only ones around, there are plenty of operators most if not all offer an 8 euro rapid charge

Ionity are just following suit.

unkel wrote: »

In Germany mainly? Any other crowds with 175/350kW chargers? I'm not familiar with charging in Germany / France myself but I haven't heard of any €8 fixed fee charging in Belgium / the Netherlands. Fastned (the biggest one in NL and something of a benchmark for charging networks) don't do it.

Innogy do the 160kw chargers, lots of the local Stadtwerkes have their own setups with 150 kw though and bill through Ladenetz but you have an option to pay normally via app or via phone.

Even Deutsche Bahn have their own rapids

https://www.swd-ag.de/mobilitaet/ladeinfrastruktur/strom-tankkarte/

Flat fee is fairly common, though, Dusseldorf Stadtwerke charge 8.50 per rapid DC Charge.

krissovo wrote: »

Had a bit of nightmare with IONITY Cashel yesterday, firstly 3 of the bays were ICE’d by what can only be described as fast and furious wannabes & less desirables when most the car park was free. Could not get my maingau card working, used the app & paypal and somehow IONITY took 3 payments. Then it failed with an error after starting so I had the pleasure of asking the Neanderthals to move twice while IONITY tried to get one of the stalls to work. Lastly once it did charge the screen crashed so I could not stop and it took IONITY a while to remote stop.

Don't worry
It'll show in the app but unsuccessful charging sessions won't be charged.

I had a 76 euro charging session on the app for a week until it eventually dropped off

Unfortunately maingau can't do anything about the skangers :mad:

Petetheroadie wrote: »

Trying to order the Maingeau card but the site doesn't accept Irish Eircodes and you can't leave it blank. What did folks here do about that?

I had same issue.
Contact them through the site and provide your details in the following unusual German format

Please send us your address in the right order:


· Company name or n/a
· first name Last Name
· Street, house number
· Postcode City
· country

Note house number is after street name.

They seemed to then ignore my eircode and set up the account manually

I also had issue downloading the app. There is two maingeau apps, one for car sharing (wrong one) and one for charging payments. After downloading the right app, logging in, I then added IBAN and BIC account details (it says BIC is automatic but not for Ireland) and checked I could see the ionity charger in Gorey and Cashel on the map. Finally when you receive the card from them you need to tie the card to the app. Maingenau card use seems to be most reliable way to start ionity, and lower cost for small battery capacity cars. You can use the app without the card.

After reading this thread last week, I was travelling to Cork in my 2018 e-Golf so I decided to sign up to Maingau the night before. Signed up with the app and registered successfully and then added my BIC and IBAN to the account and made it my default payment method.

When I arrived at the Circle K in Cashel the next day, the ESB eCars charger was occupied so I went straight over to the Ionity chargers. All four of them were free (this was 12 noon on a Thursday).

One charger had a blank screen and didn't look like it was working. The other three were working fine. I plugged my car into the end charger, opened up the Maingau (Einfachstromladen) app, tapped the Charge Now option and then the Scan QR code button and scanned the QR code underneath the screen on the charger. It immediately said authorised on the charger's screen and said "Communicating with the car".

For some reason, there was then a problem ("Error communicating with the car") and there was no means of cancelling/stopping the process, so I just had to unplug the car. I called the Ionity helpline - the number is listed on the charger - and told them about the problem. They said they would pass the details of the charger and the problem onto their technical department. I plugged the car into the next charger along and this time the whole process worked perfectly and very quickly.

16 minutes, 6.33 kWh, €2.53

One thing I noticed is that there is a "Stop charging" button always on the screen - available for anyone to tap? I would assume in most cases anyone who walks over to the shop won't be gone for long and hopefully nobody decides to interfere with your charging session while it's underway...

The only issue I had afterwards was that the first charge that had failed was still on my account as an "Active transaction" in Maingau that I couldn't cancel. And so the cost kept going up during the day (with the €0.10 per minute charge). However once I contacted them via email and explained the situation they removed the transaction within 24 hours with no charge.

My Maingau card arrived 6 days later in the post.

Tried nil and 00000 and they didn't work so have emailed them.

I put my Eircode in originally as XnnXnnn (X is a letter, n a number) and it didn't work. But when I put it in as Xnn Xnnn with a space between them, it accepted it.

mccannf wrote: »

After reading this thread last week, I was travelling to Cork in my 2018 e-Golf so I decided to sign up to Maingau the night before. Signed up with the app and registered successfully and then added my BIC and IBAN to the account and made it my default payment method.

When I arrived at the Circle K in Cashel the next day, the ESB eCars charger was occupied so I went straight over to the Ionity chargers. All four of them were free (this was 12 noon on a Thursday).

One charger had a blank screen and didn't look like it was working. The other three were working fine. I plugged my car into the end charger, opened up the Maingau (Einfachstromladen) app, tapped the Charge Now option and then the Scan QR code button and scanned the QR code underneath the screen on the charger. It immediately said authorised on the charger's screen and said "Communicating with the car".

For some reason, there was then a problem ("Error communicating with the car") and there was no means of cancelling/stopping the process, so I just had to unplug the car. I called the Ionity helpline - the number is listed on the charger - and told them about the problem. They said they would pass the details of the charger and the problem onto their technical department. I plugged the car into the next charger along and this time the whole process worked perfectly and very quickly.

16 minutes, 6.33 kWh, €2.53

One thing I noticed is that there is a "Stop charging" button always on the screen - available for anyone to tap? I would assume in most cases anyone who walks over to the shop won't be gone for long and hopefully nobody decides to interfere with your charging session while it's underway...

The only issue I had afterwards was that the first charge that had failed was still on my account as an "Active transaction" in Maingau that I couldn't cancel. And so the cost kept going up during the day (with the €0.10 per minute charge). However once I contacted them via email and explained the situation they removed the transaction within 24 hours with no charge.

My Maingau card arrived 6 days later in the post.



I put my Eircode in originally as XnnXnnn (X is a letter, n a number) and it didn't work. But when I put it in as Xnn Xnnn with a space between them, it accepted it.

Don’t worry, the unsuccessful charge will drop off same happened to me.

mccannf wrote: »

16 minutes, 6.33 kWh, €2.53

That's very slow, about 25kW? I thought the eGolf charged at 50kW?

Did anyone else get the mail about the new Maingau charge tag they are releasing? They claim it is easier, not sure if they mean handier or easier as I am getting mixed results with the card.

New Motion, Maingau, Easygo (came with a wallbox), ESB