Hi there
Could anybody provide advice on a situation I find myself in please?
I’m going to be driving a 270 mile journey from Helston in cornwall to Oldbury in the West Midlands and back once a week.
I’m researching appropriate fully electric cars to eliminate fuel charge and also the charging network and time to charge on the journey as I know that no cars will make the trip in one go.
Does anybody have experience of a similar regular trip and have advice on a suitable car please?
Many thanks
Pat
You're clearly thinking about current 'reasonably priced' EVs and are anticipating charging en route. (I am presuming you will get a full charge at your destination one way or another?)
I am also interested in making these sorts of plans myself as I hope to be in receipt of my 30kWh Soul, once off its slow-boat-from-China, so this sort of thing is 'practice' for that battery capacity. So I am looking at zapmap now.
Applying Donald's rule-of-thumb to these trips, the shortest time is always the minimum number of stops, regardless of how slow you have to go to achieve that. Assuming 4.5kWh is possible most of the year then you need 60kWh. If you had, or waited, for a 40kWh car (current Zoe or coming Leaf) you could do this with one charge, say at Michalewood services. With 30kWh you can't charge 100% en route so it would be two charges. Exeter, Cullompten and Tiverton are clustered around your 1st stop northbound, so you could try stretching there, then a 20kWh charge is needed to get to Gloucester services, and then you can get to your destination.
If winter were to hammer you to 3.5mi/kWh then you would need 80kWh, so you can see also the 2 stop strategy for 40kWh but now 3 stops for 30kWh, unless you can time it so perfectly that you get 30+25+25. Sounds too risky to me so you end up with 3 stops in deep winter.
I've yet to find out exactly how far the Soul will go in winter, but one way or another if you can pick a speed that keeps you to under 70kWh total, i.e. 3.8mi/kWh, which I think should be possible, then you can stick to the 2 stop 30+20+20 solution, which would still require precision-distance timing to the stops at the right moment.
Think in terms of the total energy you need, then you can work back to the number of stops.
Your trip back is far more problematic. The last run from Exeter to Helston is 110 miles and you basically need a full charge. I can see some rapids on A30 that are not EH you would have to either get familiar with those or sit for longer at Exeter, as the charge rate slows down as you get higher SoC. This is why it is not a bad idea to charge towards the end of your battery charge so that when you do plug in you get the fastest rate possible.