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Post by garry on Oct 3, 2021 8:41:19 GMT
My son started at Cambridge yesterday. As John described in another post, it’s a pretty traumatic event for a parent!! Anyhow, I thought I’d describe how we got on with the Etron.
Door to door, the trip is 210 miles each way. The plan was to get to the gridserve superhighway at Rugby services (circa 10 fast chargers) grab breakfast on the way down and use the same services for a quick top up on the way home.
Have to say that the etron is a super refined place to be. The weather was terrible, and is was great to waft along in supreme comfort. I’m not sure I’ve been in anything that’s noticeably more refined. It’s a pudding in terms of driving dynamics, but it’s a hell of a comfy pudding. Journey to Rugby services was uneventful. Got there, plugged in , started to charge at circa 150kw. There were five other cars charging (two etrons and three ipaces). I did wonder how busy it might get mid week. 20 minutes later we’re back on the road. We spent a couple of hours getting everything sorted in Cambridge before heading back. Got back to Rugby, plugged in, had a fifteen minute break and headed home. Completely uneventful, smooth and easy. If only all electric journeys were like this!
The gridserve superhighway charging stations are transformational. The biggest problem with electric cars are unreliable chargers and patchy coverage. Stick one of these at each motorway service station and most of the pain is gone. I know gridserve are rolling out lots of these over the coming year. I worked out that I don’t have range anxiety, I have charge station anxiety. Today, I’m going cross country to a birthday party for my brother. Charging on this route is both patchy and unreliable and I’m already a little anxious.
The etron with circa 400 miles of range and plenty of gridserve style charging stations dotted around would be a very strong proposition. But we’re not there yet so wish me luck on my drive today!
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Post by Roadsterstu on Oct 3, 2021 8:51:17 GMT
When the charging points on your route are available and working, it seems ideal. But, as you say, with patchy coverage, I'd be worried that I'd get to my planned charging stop and find they were out of order or all in use.
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Post by PG on Oct 4, 2021 12:46:26 GMT
.. I worked out that I don’t have range anxiety, I have charge station anxiety... Lovely summation. People's demand for range is because of the lack of chargers as much as the desire to not have to charge very often. |
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Post by johnc on Oct 4, 2021 13:42:30 GMT
We drove down to Silverstone last week using electric power but because of the distance (about 370 miles each way), we left at 4pm on Tuesday, splitting the journey down by staying overnight at Kirkby Lonsdale (charging the car in Booth's carpark where they have the very good Instavolt chargers). We then drove down to Buckingham to stay the next night before going to Silverstone the next day. We had a couple of 40 min stops, one somewhere I can't remember but it had a Costa and one in Milton Keynes, both of which we sought out because they were Instavolt.
On the way back we stopped overnight in Harrogate, charging in Booths at Ripon (charging points designed and installed by morons who made the spaces as small and as inaccessible as possible: electric cars tend to be wider but these spaces would have been tight for a Renault Zoe). We then had a final splash and dash at Gretna services which was the first time we had to wait - 4 chargers, one broken, the remaining 3 occupied and 3 people waiting. After about 45 minutes we were able to charge for c 30 minutes and get on our way.
As Garry said, the bigger electric vehicles are a very quiet, comfortable way to travel and we had no issues. Our strategy this time was to drive no more than about 130/140 miles before charging which them meant we were stopped for no more than 40 minutes to get back up to around 85/90% full before starting again - this certainly cuts down the charging time but probably requires one more stop driving the distance we travelled. However it removes the charger/range anxiety a lot.
I will need to mark that charging station at Rugby for next time.
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Post by Big Blue on Oct 4, 2021 13:56:23 GMT
Good experiential write up.
Thus far I am at over 1/3 pure electric in Eva and the serenity is what grabs you the most. As a road safety device it probably does more than any camera, speed hump etc. as there just seems no need to nail it as that would spoil the experience. That said my all-electric journeys are unsurprisingly in terrible traffic so serenity is what is needed and the longest drive so far has been the return trip from the dealer in a brand new car.
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Post by Martin on Oct 4, 2021 14:03:02 GMT
I stopped at Rugby services last week for the first time and I have never seen so many electric cars charging at once. There were only a couple of Superchargers free (out of 12 I think) and they had the same number of fast chargers, of which half were being used, so it's great at the moment.
40mins sounds like a long time for 130-140 miles range?
Edit: Just googled it and the iPace has 100KW max charging speed vs 220-250KW for something like the Ioniq5 or EV6. At that rate, charging speed is getting to where it needs to be without having to resort to a Model 3, just needs a reliable infrastructure.
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Post by johnc on Oct 4, 2021 14:43:20 GMT
I stopped at Rugby services last week for the first time and I have never seen so many electric cars charging at once. There were only a couple of Superchargers free (out of 12 I think) and they had the same number of fast chargers, of which half were being used, so it's great at the moment. 40mins sounds like a long time for 130-140 miles range? Edit: Just googled it and the iPace has 100KW max charging speed vs 220-250KW for something like the Ioniq5 or EV6. At that rate, charging speed is getting to where it needs to be without having to resort to a Model 3, just needs a reliable infrastructure. The best charging rate on the i-Pace is around 170mph but an ID4 owner we were talking to was charging at just under 250mph, so technology is moving forward at a decent rate. I saw another e-Tron GT and think it is a great looking car. |
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Post by Martin on Oct 4, 2021 15:08:46 GMT
I stopped at Rugby services last week for the first time and I have never seen so many electric cars charging at once. There were only a couple of Superchargers free (out of 12 I think) and they had the same number of fast chargers, of which half were being used, so it's great at the moment. 40mins sounds like a long time for 130-140 miles range? Edit: Just googled it and the iPace has 100KW max charging speed vs 220-250KW for something like the Ioniq5 or EV6. At that rate, charging speed is getting to where it needs to be without having to resort to a Model 3, just needs a reliable infrastructure. The best charging rate on the i-Pace is around 170mph but an ID4 owner we were talking to was charging at just under 250mph, so technology is moving forward at a decent rate. I saw another e-Tron GT and think it is a great looking car. It is a good looking car, but even the basic model is £95k when you add a couple of 'essential' options. We saw an Ioniq 5 on the road on Saturday and I quite liked it, but Lindsay didn't and made the comment that all the electric cars she'd seen were ugly and wondered why that was. I tried to find one she liked.... only when we got to the Taycan in estate form did I get to something acceptable and she thought the RS GT was the best looking, but not enough to want one. |
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Post by Martin on Oct 4, 2021 15:23:42 GMT
Just remembered that I drove past this place in Manchester (Stretford) on Friday morning, first one like it I've seen.  |
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Post by racingteatray on Oct 4, 2021 16:01:15 GMT
It is indeed the lack of charging infrastructure that is of most concern.
But also just, so far, zero want. I don't need to change my car, so I need to want to change my car. Which means the new one must be better and more desirable. So far I am struggling to think of a single electric car that I actively desire (I don't like the styling of the Taycan much).
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Post by Alex on Oct 4, 2021 18:54:05 GMT
It is the charging structure and charging time that is keeping our fleet from going electric. Simply put the downtime driving an EV is just too much compared to an ICE vehicle that can be refilled in less than 10mins (if you're not waiting half an hour in a queue for the petrol station!). If the Ioniq 5 is now getting 250kwh charging that makes a massive difference so long as there are chargers that can offer it.
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