Did my first long range drive in my Q4 45 yesterday, thought I’d share in this thread how it went for a realistic look into electric cars and range, charging etc. Drove from Birmingham to London and back. 123 miles there and 123 miles back. On the way there I used the cruise control set at 74mph. Car got 3.1 miles per kWh with an ambient temperature of around 12C. Before I set off car was showing 253 miles range. Got there with around 130 miles left. Plan was to charge at Westfield shepherds bush but when I got to the chargers you either need a BP pulse card or the app to access the chargers. There was no phone signal in the car park so I couldn’t download the app so I parked in a regular spot and decided to risk the trip home or charge at a service station. On the return leg the temperature dropped to around 10C and I was getting 2.7miles per kWh. I stopped off at Oxford services to charge the car but there’s only 2 non Tesla chargers there and they were both taken and the Tesla chargers there couldn’t be used by non teslas. My mate told me Banbury has some Tesla superchargers that other car companies can use so I decided to head there. Reached Banbury with around 30miles of range left so theoretically the cars actual range was 123 plus 72 miles from London to Banbury plus 30 miles range left for a total of 225miles. There was quite a few chargers in Banbury available, both Tesla and non Tesla ones. I downloaded the Tesla app and it shows you in there how much it costs to charge and it turned out those were cheaper than the others. Tesla was 60p per kWh and others were 70-85p per kWh. So I parked in the Tesla bay, used the app to start the charge and within 10 minutes had 100 miles range available which was double the amount I needed to get home. In total it cost me £15.60 at Tesla so if you include the overnight charge at 7.5p it cost around £21 for a trip to London and back. So a few things to learn and help other users: make sure you download all the charger apps such as bp pulse, Tesla etc before you head off so you’re not panicking in a place with low signal. Be prepared that some places chargers won’t work so make sure you have a back up. The car itself was smooth, comfortable, lots of torque available when overtaking, the automatic cruise control is nice but I prefer to be in control all the time hence the 2.7kwh on the way back ?
