My First EV experience.....
Discussion
Driving from Sussex to Lincolnshire in a brand new.......car! (It’s a nice one but I can’t divulge which...sorry) The route was 145 miles and after a full charge I had 165 miles on the cars range display. I had my EV station fill up planned at around 135 miles so thought that would be fine based on a 30 contingency.
Within 25 of Driving my contingency had disappeared!...so knot in my stomach appeared, range anxiety hit me and I had to start re-routing. This was a time sensitive work job.
I stopped at a large service station on the A1 about 125 miles from my start location only to find the electric station was not working. By now my anxiety was hitting MAX....another 5 miles down the road I found another large service station that had Ecotricity chargers...PHEW!
In the pissing rain and 4 degrees of temperature I had to input name, address and bank details into my phone and I started to charge....except it wasnt charging....it was ghost charging! I didn’t realised this so after 45 minutes I realised the car hadn’t charged so I call the operators who told me to try the other station next to the one I was using. Another 45 minutes later....same thing had happened. Bering in mind I was late for my delivery and I had 0 miles in the batteries I was a tad upset...I tried again but to no avail. After approximately 15 phone calls and more attempts to charge with both Type 2 ac(slow) and Chadeo(Fast)I was informed that neither charger or plug was compatible with my car due to the fact that the software had not been upgraded for this car!
I was stuck....for 5 hours! The AA flatbed came around 2pm and took me to my destination.
Suffice to say...I’m not impressed.You can keep your EV’s until the network has been sorted, cars have a range of more than 130 miles (this was a £50,000 car,) and charger plugs are universal.
If your reading this and considering an EV.....don’t bother, especially if it’s not going to be used as a pottering about town car. There’s a LONG way to go before I’d even consider one.
Within 25 of Driving my contingency had disappeared!...so knot in my stomach appeared, range anxiety hit me and I had to start re-routing. This was a time sensitive work job.
I stopped at a large service station on the A1 about 125 miles from my start location only to find the electric station was not working. By now my anxiety was hitting MAX....another 5 miles down the road I found another large service station that had Ecotricity chargers...PHEW!
In the pissing rain and 4 degrees of temperature I had to input name, address and bank details into my phone and I started to charge....except it wasnt charging....it was ghost charging! I didn’t realised this so after 45 minutes I realised the car hadn’t charged so I call the operators who told me to try the other station next to the one I was using. Another 45 minutes later....same thing had happened. Bering in mind I was late for my delivery and I had 0 miles in the batteries I was a tad upset...I tried again but to no avail. After approximately 15 phone calls and more attempts to charge with both Type 2 ac(slow) and Chadeo(Fast)I was informed that neither charger or plug was compatible with my car due to the fact that the software had not been upgraded for this car!
I was stuck....for 5 hours! The AA flatbed came around 2pm and took me to my destination.
Suffice to say...I’m not impressed.You can keep your EV’s until the network has been sorted, cars have a range of more than 130 miles (this was a £50,000 car,) and charger plugs are universal.
If your reading this and considering an EV.....don’t bother, especially if it’s not going to be used as a pottering about town car. There’s a LONG way to go before I’d even consider one.
rampageturke said:
why havent you replied to anything in the thread.
2 reasons...Firstly, I realised I was preaching to the converted who decided I was the one at fault for a crap electric charging infrastructure because I hadn’t planned to arrive a a filling station that wasn’t working.Secondly, I’ve got better things to do than sit on PH all day replying to comments!
dvs_dave said:
Lordbenny said:
Spent the day in a very nice fuel cell car last week with a 400 mile range....NOW your talking!....if only there were more than 14 places in the UK to fill up it would be great. Mind you, two of them are quite handy for me!
400 miles....yea right. “Real World” range is no better than an EV’s. So as you managed to completely bungle your one and only EV trip, you presumably spent most of your time with the Mirai walking? 
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.motortrend.com/ne...
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