So, electric cars....
Drove it to Plymouth on Saturday, M4/M5 rather than A303. The car told me it couldn't do it on one charge and arranged for a place just north of Exeter to fill up. Would be the first time charging it away from home. It took me to a McDonald's with a charger, but both of them had cars on them, asked how long they'd be and turns out they had just arrived, so 60-90 minutes before I could even start. Got the app out and it sent me one junction further down the M5 to an industrial estate, to a charger whose payment machine was broken, now down to 12 miles left. Sent me to a service station off the M5, had 16 chargers, all taken with >20 cars waiting, hours...then to Ikea, payment machine broken, to Tesco, a crappy rubbish Pod-Point charger, would have taken 10 hours to charge it, fortunately it didn't work either. 8 miles left now. Then to a little country pub, big charger, but in the corner of the car park so you could only park to the right of it, it worked, cable was only 5' long so couldn't reach the charger port on the car, had to crab it in to the space sideways, blocking the other spaces, it worked...
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When I was blocking the spaces some local wanted to use it, but couldn't cos I was in the way, I was very apologetic, but explained I didn't know what the hell I was doing, he was cool and said he'd been to the big service station and it must be a crazy day as he'd never seen it full before in the 3 years he's had an EV. He also said he'd driven his to Andorra last year and had to factor in an additional 2 days for the charging. Then we got chatting about Plymouth university, where he's a lecturer in dentistry, had worse teeth than me and luxuriant nasal hair.
The machine in the picture got it from 8 miles to 70 in an hour and twenty mins, it is supposedly a 50kWh thing. The next morning I sneaked out early as had spied a charger and signed up to it, it's a 40kWh one, asked it to go from 12% to 100%, it did it in 50 mins and according to the app averaged 66kWh...a bit of a mystery that. This charge gave me the exact miles, to the sodding mile, to get home. The car suggested a stop in Andover, I accepted, again a McShits, but just round the corner was a pub with 4 big chargers, all empty and working, slammed it in there, had a steak and chips and made it home without incident.
Seems that for longer journeys you need to plan it in advance and allow quite a bit of extra time for charging, also don't wait until there's 20 miles left, plan to charge at 50 miles.
By comparison, a month ago we took our petrol Seat Leon down to Plymouth with a full tank, then to Bigbury and back to Plymouth, ~90 minute round trip, then back home, fuel light came on near Andover, less than 5 minutes to fill the fucker up...