bp pulse

I like to give scrappy startups the benefit of the doubt, when their apps need a bit of polish. Par for for the course. So imagine my surprise when I discovered BP was not a couple of kids subsisting on pot noodle while coding all through the night but a large energy company that made nearly $9b in profit on revenue of $189b in 2024. I do not know what they spend their profit on. But I can tell you with absolute certainty what they do NOT spend any money on, which is this app. That a company so large would be willing to put its name on such a poorly made app (and you HAVE to use the app to use these services in most cases) is almost impressive. Maybe it’s stating the obvious but it seems like people running one of the foremost fossil fuel companies don’t spend much time charging electric vehicles, because if they were to use this app, they would quickly discover that they in fact CANNOT charge their electric vehicle because the app simply does not work most of the time. At best it’s a gamble, even on the very latest iPhone with every single ‘We’ve made minor bug fixes, enjoy!’ dutifully applied in the hopes that the app might actually start properly working. And then it hit me… they have been so busy fixing minor bugs they haven’t realised the major bug, which is the whole app. A fitting metaphor, perhaps. TLDR; for the love of all that is holy please just fix the app, I am trying to give you my money

Still a number of issues with listings being wrong or incomplete (esp listing taxi only chargers as public ones or missing chargers), but the app and network are becoming more reliable and useable. EDIT: as requested, a couple of chargers (that I have reported before by phone and email) that have such issues are: - A24 Colliers Wood, near the Underground station. Is taxi-only but it’s listed as public. - A214 Trinity Road, near junction with Henderson Road opposite Wandsworth Prison. Is a BP Pulse (or legacy name, possibly Polar) branded 50kw public charger but isn’t listed at all. When I phoned your helpline, the adviser said “that’s a TfL one” - it might have been funded by TfL but is very much part of the BP network. EDIT #2: As requested, I can confirm that the charger on Trinity Road is definitely a BP Pulse one. It has the BP Pulse welcome screen and works with my Polar RFID card. My charges appear in the app charging history list as “320 Trinity Road”. This charger is listed on the PlugShare app. There are also BP Pulse chargers on Balham High Road (both public and taxi only) than should be listed and aren’t. It is very worrying that BP doesn’t have a proper log of its chargers and has to be told again and again and again about the same charger not being listed.

Used the app for the first time last night. The charge station wasn’t clear on whether it could be used exclusively with the app. The charge station touchscreen just gave a binary members/non-member choice which would then ask for payment card details or membership card details respectively. Nothing about the app. I took the initiative and found the station on the app (the station ref no. wasnt particularly obvious either). The neither the app or station screen offered any feedback on when the cable could be taken to plug into the car. The app just spent 5-10mins giving me cute non-updates e.g. “ready for lift off soon” and other such nonsense. Eventually an error message popped up on the charge station. I had to wait 5mins for this to clear itself. I tried the same process again, except this time tugging the cable on the charge station intermittently to see if it would be released. Eventually after a couple of minutes it did so and I managed to plug the car in and get it charged. Once the charge was complete, the app and charging station gave absolutely no indication what the cost was. In fact the app doesn’t even tell me what my credit balance is now, just constantly asking me to log in... despite me obviously already being logged in. The fact I got the car charged seemed more luck than judgement and I’m still unsure if I’ve even paid anything for it. This is precisely the fear that ICE drivers have with EV. Just a complete faff.