Rhodgie, I’ve driven that same route fantastic roads and scenery, last weekend we did 640 miles with one service break on one tank of fuel and noted on the Thurrock M25 Services not a single charge point was free. There were 6 for around 500 parking bays. That was with my scooter my wife’s chair luggage on board with 4 adults and my grandson in his car seat. This is the problem I have nothing available on the scheme comes close to what we need.
The Harvester at North Stifford has a 50kW Polar charger (but be careful using the post code on Zap Map), there’s a couple of Instavolt chargers at the Ballantyne gym, plus there are chargers at Lakeside. Thurrock is one of the very few areas in Essex where you can find chargers in any numbers.
EV drivers know that the Electric Highway run by Ecotricty have a monopoly on motorway service areas & have learned that the Electric Highway is far too unreliable to be considered fit for purpose. MPs get lots of letters about this, and we’re seeing BP installing chargers in the BP petrol station areas at some motorway services. Ecotricity should be swept away for all their broken promises, they may be OK for charging a Leaf, but their CCS is usually absent or faulty.
Ecotricity have recently been submitting plans with mixed CCS & Tesla charger bays at some services, I think they’re piggybacking off Tesla as Ecotricity would take decades to get this done themselves.
As for a car large enough there’s the NV200, but the range is lacking. Perhaps something will come along in the next few years. We’re still early on in the EV revolution, but they’re coming.
Watch what happens in September, Tesla have an announcement to make, possibly about doubling the range with an identical sized battery pack.