Is it the car or the charge station?

Hi
I am a new i3 (with REx) owner and am really enjoying the car after 3 weeks. We have only used it a few times since we picked it up and it won't be a daily driver until we take it with us back to Australia at the end of next year. We are currently in France and purchased the car in the UK. The intention is to use the car for the next year and half we are in France.

I am off to a bit of a bumpy start when it comes to charging (actually ran out of charge and petrol on the way home after purchasing it, but thats's another story).

The car has the fast DC charge option fitted but I appear to be having a few intermittent problems when it comes to using it. The first time I tried to use the Combo plug the car raised an error when connecting. In the end I had to fall back to using the T2 plug. Then last weekend on a short jaunt out of town I was able to use the Combo plug at two charge stations without any problem. Tapped the card, plugged it in, all good. Then again this weekend I was able to use a fast charge on Saturday on the way out of town but today a three separate charge stations I was unable to get a charge happening with the Combo plug. On all occasions I swiped the card, plugged it in, the charge symbol appears on the dash but then a minute later the charge station switches off. Trying the T2 plug worked at the first point, but the other stations either had no T2 or a broken plug.

Am I doing anything wrong or is there a problem with my car, or have I just been very unlucky with the charge stations I have stopped at?

My wife is starting to wonder if we have done the right thing by buying this car and going electric. I am hoping it is just that I am off to an unlucky start.

The car is going into BMW for a service on Thursday so I might ask the questions of them too.

Thanks for any advice.

I don't know how fast chargers are in the EU and Australia, but in the US it's not uncommon for them to be online, but semi-working, or not working at all. I was taking a road trip last weekend and had the unpleasant surprised of hitting two broken ChargePoint ones in a 100 mile stretch: both accepted my card, authorized the session, and then crapped out at various points in the handshake. Fortunately, the REx got us the extra 15 miles down the road where there was an NRG Evgo one that worked perfectly fine.

I'd recommend getting the PlugShare app, and looking up the chargers to see if there's comments or reported problems. That should help determine if it's "you" or "them". Had I done this, I would have avoided the confusing and wasted time. ChargeHub is another good app for thus, but it appears their database for Europe is quite limited right now.

Some U.S. CCS cables are heavy enough or the plug-receptacle fit is loose enough that some of the electrical contacts don't make good enough connections for the charging handshake to complete successfully. Those who have encountered this problem have sometimes been successful supporting the weight of the cable by lifting the plug up a bit until the handshake has completed and charging has started. I don't know whether this might be a problem with the different E.U. CCS plug and receptacle, but lifting the plug during the handshake might be worth trying.