Long trip advice for new EV driver

[fly]

Alickadoo said:

What happens when you say to the children, 'this is the way it is, we have to wait here for an hour while the car charges'?

The older one would need to use the toilets 4 times, get hungry twice, and tell me about all the cars parked around us in excruciating details while I tried to get some work done on my phone.
The baby would poop the second I got comfortable, and then again just as we were all charged up and ready to go.
And we'd get to our destination 4 hours past their bedtime because I'm generally disorganised and late even at the best of times.

I took an ICE car for the trip that I wrote this thread about. Mostly on the M6 - stopped at a few services along the way to deal with the various child nonsense mentioned above and had a look at the chargers on offer in each one.

Most of them had two 50kw chargers in total, of which either both were always in use or at least one was broken.

Yes - I understand that I could have:
- Stopped more often and charged early
- Made contingency plans for each stop in case the chargers were unavailable
- Queued for the chargers and then sat patiently while it charged at less than half the speed the car's capable of charging

But the alternative was... When the fuel light came on, I had enough range to reach approximately 15 petrol stations and didn't have to plan in advance. Each petrol station had 10+ pumps with at least 5 available. Filling up took 3 minutes. I only had to fill up once.

I missed my EQC - I love driving it and would have preferred it. But I am very glad I chose not to take it.

[DonkeyApple]

off_again said:

About 18 months ago, we were looking at the logistics of moving from California to the Mid-West - around 2500 miles and had an i3 Rex at the time. Looking at the refueling / recharging options on the way was not good. The route planner for EV's (cant remember the name - a better road planner?) and it would have taken A LOT of stops to make it.

The i3 Rex is good but the generator is designed to keep the battery charged, not charge it. I guess the best way is to use the first 25% EV (you cant turn on the generator until you have used 25% battery) and then put it on gas to keep it charged as long as possible and keep filling it up (it has a tiny tank). Then stop at a decent charging station to go further - rinse and repeat. It would have been a nightmare! Thankfully dropped that idea - but it was getting super complicated.

Alternatively, road-tripped with my daughter in her Mazda 3 for approximately the same distance. 400 miles out of a tank and could either stop briefly or have lunch etc. Worked out great and importantly easy. Why mention this? You could do this in a longer range EV, and it would be fine. But for a shorter range one, its going to be a challenge. EV's are great, but for the rare time that you need to do a longer trip they do need some consideration. Its getting better, but still not quite there yet.

This is the competitive advantage the U.K. has over other G7-G20 nations. High wealth but with a more even distribution and over a much smaller distance.

In the States people must consider very long distances and where there may currently be huge expanses between cities without significant supplies of electricity. In the U.K. it's basically some people who have moved to the SE to feed off London and feel obliged to go back to their parents once or twice a year and their only real issue is that they all decide to do so on the same weekend and some just aren't smart enough to work out how to do that with the car they've chosen to use.

The U.K. has far more simplistic usage and the bulk of the issues today stem from a few folk rushing to buy the latest toy without thinking through how it will fit into their lifestyle needs. Such as moving to London for work but needing to travel 300 miles+ to visit parents.

[number2]

Having just ordered an EV this thread has made for interesting reading .

It'll be fine for nearly all road trips, charged at home. However, I'm not looking forward to busy/broken chargers en route when required ... I go out of my way to avoid that type of hassle... I'll now just have to add this to my hassle management list! .

Edit: some hassle management expected, and notwithstanding that, I'm looking forward to quiet motoring and home refueling.

Edited by number2 on Wednesday 7th June 01:40