Electric Vehicles EVs

Kicking this trip off tomorrow at 3am…

With a 1 year old + all their stuff.

First time with a proper charging trip in the Tesla. I’ve used a super charger before but only for the novelty. Got 3 or 4 charge stops tomorrow.

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Superchargers are great.
Enjoy the Netflix time!

We’ve timed the journey to align charging stops to feed times etc so no Netflix for me.

Rapid. 16 stalls, only one here

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Looking good. Hope it goes swimmingly.

On my own road trip (London York Edinburgh Pitlochry Colintraive Glasgoe Manchester London) I have so far found the open road bit (I'm as far as Edinburgh's now) really easy for charging and cruising.

Finding working chargers in Edinburgh itself has been much more difficult. I have now tried three different 22kW ChargePlaceScotland points, that should have allowed me to leave the car either overnight (walking distance from our accommodation) or parked for a few hours whilst we be tourists.

The former is in a car park that is locked overnight, even though ZapMap advertises the charger as 24/7.

The latter two are in building sites and are inaccessible.

In the end I drove to a semi suburban McDonalds that had 2 x InstaVolt 150kW chargers in the car park. Read a book for an hour or so to get a full charge. Totally fine, just a lot less convenient than hoped for.

Off to Pitlochry today. Fingers crossed.

16-82% in 26 mins. Can’t ask more than that. Still feeding the little one so it’ll have more charge than we need by the time we’re back and ready to go.

Perfect!

26 mins really is quicker than an ICE service stop. By the time you've had loo trips and bought a coffee, then driven to the pumps, pumped and paid you'd definitely be longer than that.

One thing that isn't lauded enough is the fact that you can be charging whilst pissing / breast feeding / drinking coffee / perusing foreign pornography / buying opinel knives.

Cornwall and back has come and gone. Traffic was totally mental - 9 hours yesterday door to door, and that was only with a one hour break and and 15 minute stop.

Cant fault the Kona at all - its a realistic 270 mile range in shitty slow traffic (no doubt dropping like a stone if it was a 250 mile journey at 80 mph....)

Only problem outside London was queuing for chargers, which was all the time. The worst was Heron farm on the A303 (recommendation from LFGSS) the driver of a bmw had left his car on the instavolt charger fully charged while he had his lunch. The second charger was taken by someone charging to 100% - at least they were there and moved when it was done, but this stuff doesnt scale well with this kind of behaviour.

BMW driver in being inconsiderate shocker.

Do they charge a fee by the minute or just by kWh?

Kwh no time limit, unlike shell recharge for example.

The heron farm folk asked the folk in the cafe if they owned the bmw, but seems he didn’t hear that either. I can only hope he is treated the way he treats others…

Even faster at the third charge we stopped at:

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The final stop is a little more rudimentary…

2Kw / 10A - 24h+ to full, from 28%.

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So yesterday took a total of 14h 10m, including 4 charge stops, to cover a distance of 672 miles from door to door. So roughly 50mph average including stops.

Cost: £52.92 of Tesla Supercharger cost & £12.50 of home charging - £65

Energy cost: 215kw or 319Wh per mile - not bad considering it's all motorway, 3 up with 2 weeks of luggage.

Finding working chargers in Edinburgh itself has been much more difficult. I have now tried three different 22kW ChargePlaceScotland points, that should have allowed me to leave the car either overnight (walking distance from our accommodation) or parked for a few hours whilst we be tourists.

Scotland was pretty bad, can vouch for that.

Bested only by the Lake District which was really bad.

The problem I find is when chargers are inaccessible or out of service. I noticed in York a set of BP Pulse points and York council stated that these are exempt from parking charges but BP do charge for chaging... result is that all 6 of them were occupied by EVs which had their cables plugged in but none charging. I was lucky and one left as I waited wondering what to do, and the chargers were functioning and I did get a charge so the others were truly just hogging the free parking.

BP Pulse is a bit shit though. At another point around the corner in Haringey it claimed empty spots, arrived and there were empty spots, attempt to charge and it claims it's out of action due to it being "ICE'd"... had to Google to see that this meant it thinks ICE vehicles were parked there, but nope... just 2 of us attempting to charge and a charger that insists it is out of action.

The vehicles are the future... the infrastructure and weird rules that vary from place to place are not.

Would love to see a nationwide (EU wide if possible) law that states that EV chargers must act a bit like petrol stations:

• Advertise prices prominently
  
• Allow all vehicles to use them (we'd have to supply cables to a universal socket on the charger)
  
• Charge hefty parking fees when not charging (even in areas without parking fees)
  
• Be accessible to all users, i.e. accept contact free payment options by card
  
  

So few chargers even start to tick those boxes.

Dear Toyota,

Please actually make this.

Yours sincerely,
Viscount Jonny le-Soixante-Neuvieme

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It's been 10 years since I last owned a car and am now seriously thinking about an EV. Ideally I'd want something like an estate, but there doesn't seem to be much choice out there (based on initial searches only). Anyone driving something with decent space to chuck a bike or two in the back?

Also, for those that have made the jump, have you bought outright or leased? Lots of articles saying leasing makes the most sense as the tech is moving forwards so quickly.

Maybe the VW id.3 would work for you. But without going to the high end Jaguar or Audi there’s not a huge choice of estate- type cars.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m using on.to at the moment - monthly “lease” or rental which gives you the option to try before you buy or commit long term. The Kona is £550 a month including insurance and power (mostly - shell, bp, instavolt are all free, most others are not), and residents parking in Camden is £20 for the year. It’s given me a very safe intro to EV ownership with the option of cancelling or changing cars each month.

That’s great to know about on.to, I’ll have a look. Thanks

Let me know if you want a referral code 😀

The only other thing I’d add is that Kona is great, but I wouldn’t buy one. Feel the same about the id.3 given the reported issues, so I’m quite happy with the short term lease at the moment.

Let me know if you want a referral code

Yes please. BTW, what was the turnaround time from registration to delivery?

100% lease.

Battery tech and infrastructure are completely up in the air and you just need to look at someone like Kia or Hyundai to see the generational leap in quality of EV between Kona etc and the Ioniq 5.

I've got until December 2023 with the Tesla and I'm hoping the market will be mature enough that I'll buy the next one.

That brings the infrastructure problems with it though. When you look at time at "pump" you're going to need at least ten times more electric chargers than petrol pumps and maybe even more if a selling point is that you can put it on to charge and then wander off without clock watching.

How far back does it keep you? Does the driver in front feel tailgated or does it stay a decent distance (and adapt for wet conditions, etc). I find normal cruise control useless on most British motorways with the traffic always varying in speed so seems a nice feature.