Long trip advice for new EV driver

[fly]

Planning a 400 mile trip over the Easter school holiday between London & Scotland in an EQC. It will need at least 2 charge stops.
Travelling with children so trying to be as prepared as possible...

I have never needed to charge away from home before. The main thing I'm concerned about is increased Easter traffic clogging up all the chargers.

What's it likely to be like? What are my chances of arriving at any motorway services and having a 100kw+ charger working and available to use?

[fly]

Well, this thread is thoroughly depressing as a new EV owner.

I assumed I was being paranoid about there not being enough fast chargers, especially on big motorway services - but after reading this thread I don't think I'll ever venture more than 20 miles away from home again!

I appreciate all the strategies offered above, but your children are obviously more patient than mine. We could cope with the odd 30 minute charge stop at a 100kw charger (taking it from 10% to 80%), especially when I can plan them in advance, but having to queue and/or spend ages hunting for an alternative (probably slow) charger - nope.

Will take the ICE car for this trip and forego the comforts of the EQC.

Edited by fly on Monday 27th March 22:42

[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.