[Vaun]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Hi,</p>
Did my first two long trips from Teesside to (a friend drove) Sussex and Teesside to London and back in one day.

The short finding is that the public charging network on motorways is expensive, badly maintained, and hit and miss.l unless you’re willing to pay a lot of money.

The long answer is that if you plan carefully and nothing happens like road traffic accidents or long delays you can do it better and more reasonably priced than petrol or diesel.

The journey to Sussex was a nightmare including total closure on A1m and 90 minute delays on M1 and M25.

I believe using other people’s home chargers and paying for the privilege will become more important and useful.

Using fast chargers 150kw and 320kw is really expensive but a lot quicker obviously.

But if one could park for 4 or 5 hours in someone’s drive using 7kw charger pay £10 or so , so it well covers their costs is probably the best way to go.

My friends trip in my car to Sussex totalled around 750 and cost him £55 in charging costs. This included using ionity 320kw charged and BP Pulse 150kw.

Obviously for a lot of people including me, long trips like this are few and far between and using my home charger between 0030 and 00430 on Octopus Go tariff at 5p kw, the costs are exceptionally cheap.

If only the government had thought this through and invested in a decent network for public owned chargers long trips wouldn’t be so difficult and expensive.

Sorry if this post wanders , it’s a stream of consciousness wrote at 4.00am unable to sleep due to pain.

Cheers, all the very best

Vaun

Topic

[Rene]

Uhm, are 320kw chargers more expensive than “normal” chargers?

Because, to be clear, your car can only charge with 100kw maximum. There’s no difference between using 100kw, 150kw or 320kw – it’s not faster (but maybe more expensive?), the car limits the charge to 100kw regardless of output of the charger.

If i misunderstood, i’m sorry (maybe there wasn’t a normal charger available or something?), in that case my bad. In general though, 100kw charge is the maximum for a Kona Electric. I in fact don’t even know out of the top of my head what widely available car can charge at 320kw. Even a Porsche Taycan (with a 92kwh battery) can only charge at 225kw?

edit: and even the 100kw are only up to 80%, from there it gradually becomes slower as it slows charging and increases balancing of the cells.

Current: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19
On Order: VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY22

[kbfern]

Even at £55 I think 750 miles is pretty cheap. If a petrol car would do 50 mpg you would have used 15 gallons at about £6.50 per gallon = £97.50 so much cheaper than petrol.

Also from what I have read avoid charging on the motorways as whilst they do have more, faster chargers they are more expensive and usually have queues to use them. Better to come off the motorway a couple of miles and use cheaper chargers that are usually available without waiting. Use the Zap Map app to plan better and find out live what chargers are available and the cost etc.

 

 

 

[Intranicity]

Chargers being expensive are relative to what you’re used to paying…  Compared to 5p kW, they are expensive, compared to Petrol/Diesel they are still cheap.

The Kona will only charge at a maximum of 77kW, it’s probably the only downside of the car, that said, it still only ends up being slightly slower than most of the comparable cars, and has the bonus of generally having a better range.

Motorways are getting much better now, and to be honest, are some of the cheapest destination chargers out there at 35p kW,  in the end, for occasional use, even the most expensive chargers (Currently Ionity 69p kW) are still cheaper than conventional fuels. they just come as a shock, you soon forget about paying £80 to fill a tank with diesel!

Previous Motability Cars
2006 - 2009 Skoda Superb VR6 2.0tdi
2009 - 2012 Citroen C5 2.0tdi VTR Nav
2012 - 2015 Nissan Qashqai 1.5dci tekna
2015 - 2018 Ford Kuga 2.0tdi Titanium X
2018 - 2021 BMW 220d X drive 2 Series Active Luxury
2021- Hyundai Kona Electric Premium SE

[Jojoe]

Long journeys are the only thing putting us off going electric. We make regular trips from the Northwest to Cornwall 5/6 times a year, around 370 miles each way. Maybe this range will be available and affordable  in another 3 or 5 years.

[Vaun]

Hi all, I have thanks for your replies. Yes using the 320kw was out of necessity as there is a paucity of 75kw to 100kw even 150kw chargers. And of course despite careful planning traffic flow and accidents and rerouting due to road closures can make your good intentions disappear quite quickly.

Yes I also agree that even using the more expensive chargers you still are cheaper than diesel and petrol, but and even more so when one considers that most of the time I’m using my 7kw charger at home at 5p a kW.

But it is interesting I thought to note, but that the charging network isn’t the nirvana that I possibly naively expected. Xxxx great replies thanks for

Cheers, all the very best

Vaun

[Rene]

Jojoe wrote:

Long journeys are the only thing putting us off going electric. We make regular trips from the Northwest to Cornwall 5/6 times a year, around 370 miles each way. Maybe this range will be available and affordable in another 3 or 5 years.

I can relate, but there’s something to consider. I don’t know your particular train of thought, ours was that if we do “long journeys”, we’d need to stop somewhere for 90 minutes or so and that’d be awful.

That’s not realistic though. In your example, lets say 400 miles, you only charge once for less than 30 minutes in an average modern EV. In the ID3 Tour (long range model) you’d only charge for around 10 minutes. You arrive at your destination and charge there, assuming of course there’s the option for it somehow.

400 miles range in an EV won’t happen within a decade, especially not an affordable one. Batteries are heavy, the more you pack in a car, the heavier it gets – the less mileage you get out of it. Diminishing returns, so without a leap in battery technology (solid state etc), the range might go up a few dozen miles, but not up to 400. I don’t think that’s realistic.

Generally, what is more realistic is that charging speed goes up, so instead of 10 minutes of charge for 100ish miles range (ID3 Tour), you only charge 5 minutes (or 10 minutes for 200 miles). It’s cheaper to increase charging speed than to build state of the art, new tech batteries.

Current: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19
On Order: VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY22

[Stuart]

My way of thinking is this, over the 3 year lease i have the car i reckon i will save well over 2 grand and in that 3 years i think i will probably do 5 good long trips. With the money i have saved  for those trips i will just hire a really nice car and probably still save money. An EV will not suit everyone but give it a few years and battery tech will hit that magic number and we will all be driving them.

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KIA Soul EV First Edition
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Scale modeller in my spare time
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[fwippers]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>At present the potential saving are huge and I think we will see ranges heading up to 400+ in the not too distant, coupled with faster charging and better infrastructure.</p>

[Author]

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