BLOG: Driving an Electric Vehicle
Our New Business Director gives his insight & thoughts on driving an electric vehicle.
After nearly two years driving an electric vehicle, I can safely say that I've pretty much lived through the highs and lows of the future of motoring.
As soon as I took delivery of my Electric Vehicle (EV), I found myself on google searching for "ev charging points", "charge points near me" & "electric car charging", panicking about how I could charge my new car.
For the first couple of weeks driving it, my eyes were constantly glued to the range on my shiny digital display, sweating every time the "battery range" went down a mile. When the range got into double digits, regardless of my location, Range Anxiety kicked in.
What is Range Anxiety?
Range anxiety is the electric vehicle owner's fear that an EV's battery does not have sufficient enough charge for the vehicle to reach its final destination or that a charge point won't be available for charging "on the road.
After a bit of research I opted to get an EV Charger installed at home to assist with any fears, of not having enough charge to go places at short notice. There are hundreds, if not thousands of ev charging solutions you can get installed at home. Electric car charging stations cost about £400 once the government grant has been applied – but you don't have to worry about this, this is looked after by whoever you order your charge from, it's a very simple process as a buyer. In fact, many of our customers chose to include an ev car charger in their deal!
How much is it to charge an electric car at home?
It all varies on your electric provider, but to go from pretty much empty to full, it costs me about £11. With certain chargers, they have a smart mode to charge your car at the cheapest possible time, syncing with your energy provider to work out the best price.
The standard charger (7.2kwh) takes about 11 hours to give me a full charge, which is convenient for me as once i'm in at night, I just plug it in and let it know that I'll be leaving the house at 7am, and it will ensure it is fully charged by then.
The first 80% of the charge is the quickest, which is why you will see many electric car charging points advertised as 0-80% in 1 hour. – I'll go into this further down this post
Once I'd familiarised myself with the electric charging stations locally, my confidence in both my electric car range and the infrastructure grew. I decided to brave myself and make a 200-mile round trip to watch my local non-league football team.
On a full charge, theoretically I should arrive home with 44 miles remaining. However, the pure torque performance on electric vehicles is something else, and also quite addictive. The feeling of putting your foot down and sailing past other motorists is something I don't think I'd ever get bored of. (Driving legally, of course). My vehicle is a Jaguar I-Pace, which has a 0-60 of 4.5 seconds, a second slower than a Ferrari 458, but over 2 seconds quicker than the Jaguar F Pace.
Once I'd got to my destination, I had 125 miles remaining, which meant that I had eaten into my range by 19 miles. (the same way as a petrol/diesel car would eat into the fuel if you give it some welly!) This meant that by the time I got home, driving the same style would leave me with just 6 miles left. All of a sudden, the range anxiety I had rid myself of, returned.
Unlike a petrol/diesel car, once an electric car battery runs out of charge, there is no reserve, no magic extra miles that we've all done trips on before, it stops, it doesn't move an inch. Before I set back off, I googled car charging stations near me, for which Google is quite good for, but not as good as Zap Maps, which literally plans your journey for you. That app is a game changer for electric vehicle charging points, it really is.
I found a charger at a service station about 20 miles away, so it made sense to grab myself a sandwich and a coffee whilst I gave my car a charge on the Ecotricity car charging station. After half an hour, I jumped back in my car and to my confusion the range had only gone up by about 5 miles! I quickly googled the charger I had just used and realised it was quite an old charger, probably about 8 years old. Given that the average range of electric cars has improved from 67.4 miles in 2012, (we are now are over 260 miles), it made sense that it would have only charged so little. Thankfully at the date of writing this in 2021, Ecotricity are already well underway in upgrading all their chargers, that now offer over 100 miles in less than 5 minutes – Now that is more like it!
With around 110 miles to complete my now 80 mile return home, I drove cautiously, just in case. Little mod cons in the car that are used daily, do affect the cars battery range, but not by much. An example would be the heating, I turned the heating off and this gave me an extra 3 miles, but it was quite cold and I wasn't prepared to be cold for the journey, but knowing this helps if you are in need of those extra miles. After not putting my foot down too much, I arrived home with over 20 miles to spare – I didn't even need the extra 5 miles from the service station!
Ev Charging Solutions on the road
With more charging points than petrol stations in the UK, the infrastructure is will on the way to being feasible for almost every driver on the road. Despite some aging charging units, there's plenty of charging units out there for everybody to use, just not all at once. But that goes for Petrol stations, right?
The fact that home chargers are more affordable than ever, thanks to competition and government grants, it's more than just the future, its now.
Some of the faster car charging ports are the costliest ones, an Instavolt charging station is a great example of this. They are super quick and and very easy to use. They will give your car a full charge under an hour, however it's twice the cost of that of a home charge, but its extremely convenient when you need a quick ev charge. I use them when I need that boost of charge in my car when I'm out on the road.
Every time I get behind the wheel of the car, I love how quiet it is, however this does come with its downsides, too.
Car parks and Cyclists! People are still yet to get used to the fact that there are silent cars literally zooming around on the roads. They are completely oblivious to that fact that these electric cars are there, causing mild panic when you politely beep your horn to let them know you are about!
With more and more electric charging stations being installed across the UK, its becoming less of an issue to own an electric vehicle