Anyone taken an electric car down to Penzance for a week

So I understand, your car has a 170 claimed range. Based on your driving/overall car weight (conservative 3mi/kWh), and not allowing it below 40 miles, I can assume your battery size is roughly 50kWh. Useable amount slightly under? This means you’re looking for a charger when the battery is about 26%. You can go so much further than you realise.

While I plan my trips with e-ROUTES, the same principle works with ZapMap so I don’t understand why it didn’t align properly. Especially as it should state which has working chargers. If your car is compatible, try e-ROUTES for planning, and use Waze for the actual driving navigation. You’ll get the hang of it.

@Hoppinggreen via a company is a whole different tax ballgame though. Buying it yourself is very expensive. The op could not afford the £4,000 extra for a bigger battery. Company car users would not have to worry about this. Probably won’t pay the new purchase tax either. And can charge at work. For business use, EV make sense but high depreciation is a big issue for private buyers and sales are static amongst those people.

Sales are driven by businesses and business lease deals are not available to private buyers. We have gambled that we still have a car worth £16,000 in 3 years time - list price £68,000 in May 2024. 8 months old £46,000. Business leasing (as we used to do) is a much better deal. We are ok with this car but it won’t be going to Cornwall and I never drive 110 miles and stop for breakfast!

Sorry your first long trip in the EV was challenging OP! As others have said, it gets easier as you're more used to it. My first EV had a 150 mile usable range (less in the winter) and I ended up replacing it with a longer range version of the same car (I had a Leaf and now a Leaf Plus) which has a 200 mile usable range. That extra 50 miles has made all the difference to me because I do a lot of journeys which are about 150 miles round trip and it was too stressful in the old car.

I took my new car from the South Coast to Co Durham recently, and was worried about the charging but it all worked out fine. I had planned ahead and had a couple of options up my sleeve in case one was broken/blocked. I do use ZapMap quite a bit, or the app of the charging company I plan to stop at (mostly Gridserve for motorway services). You do have to refresh it as you're getting nearer though (which is easier if there's someone else in the car with you).

The infrastructure has improved massively in the 5 years since I've had an EV, but there are still problematic pockets of the country, and I really resent having to download a billion different apps and do so much planning. I think it will improve a lot more in the next 5 years.

I’m in my second EV, as is my husband. You quickly adapt to what works for you. As a simple example, when looking at a hotel or holiday home I’d only book one with chargers or allow you to plug in to charge. I’d also be looking at routes before booking to see where I’d charge. My current workplace is a round trip of 220 miles, so I just stop on the way for breakfast at one of two places with very fast chargers and the journey is fine. It’s also worth noting that your car will charge faster when it’s lower battery, so you’re better off stopping when your car is down to 20% than doing 50% - it might save time overall

@Springsnowdrops as a reference point for your future travels in your EV, I have just driven back from Cornwall. The EV I used has a 50kWh useable battery with manufacturers range of 200 miles (I’ve actually looked it up). I left Truro with 100%, stopped once at Exeter with 50% remaining, charged to 100%, and drove all the way to London, with 15% charge remaining. I averaged 3.8 miles per kWh with sat nav, music, and AC on. And the car was packed to the rafters!

I suspect you’d have a similar experience if you planned your stops correctly. I believe for your journey, you could do it in 2-stops, if you really wanted to.

We have taken ours all over the country so i am not sure why someone would need to hire an alternative for 3 weeks.
I bought it as a company purchase so it reduced my VAT bill by quite a lot that qtr and it costs me very little to run.
No extra planning or trouble and its great to drive.
I do appreciate that they are not for everyone, I leased for 6 months first to try it and never looked back

Depends whether you get BIK as a company car driver. You pay reduced tax and the saving can be substantial.
Car tax can be much reduced compared to ICE which can be very large on registration.
Maintenance costs are generally lower than ICE.
Whether or not you can go for zero rate charging tarfifs.

It's not a simple calculation to do.

Honestly, is an electric car worth the extra planning and trouble? I truly can't see them as a substitute for a family car at the moment. You say you save £17 a week (£8 electricity against £25 petrol) and I suppose that's the attraction, but if you have to hire a car at £300 a week even for three weeks a year so that you don't need to take the annoying car on holiday then you've completely used up all the money you've saved.
Also, the last time I had a hire car when mine was being repaired I had to sign a form to say I wouldn't carry a dog in it.
Still can't see them as anything but shopping and school run cars.

We have a Tesla that has an advertised top range of 330 miles.
We have never pushed it to that and usually only charge to a max of 80/90% but I reckon we can get 275 plus

Range cold is different from hot, and how you drive and how loaded up the car is.

The problem is the vast majority of car journeys undertaken in the UK are under 20 miles. So in adding extra long range you are paying significant amounts of money for a facility you might not use much.

For example if you lay out £5K on a battery but only need the extra battery for 2 weeks holiday a year, you would probably be far better off in simple cost terms just hiring a car for the 2 weeks each year you need it than splashing out £5K on a massive extra battery to give range you hardly ever use. It would probably take you 10 years + to recover that extra battery cost.

Also bear in mind, that if you have a 175 mile range car, and do not let it go below 40 miles without charging, then you effectively have a 135 mile range car. Which is part of the issue in this thread.

This is a very interesting thread OP as we are planning on getting an electric car. I would love to know what kind of car you have but I respect that you don't want to say.

Would you at least be able to tell me, this 170 mile range you mention - is that the "official" advertised range for the car, or is it the real approximate range you are experiencing day to day?

Because many EVs that advertise an official range of around 250 miles, are often only achieving around 170 miles in the wost case conditions (motorway, cold weather, heating, stereo etc). I was thinking of getting one of these, but might now go for a bigger battery if it's the same as your car!

Thanks.

@ThatHazelGuide Those cars will be imported Chinese ones.

All this talk about hotel stays! How much do they cost to get “free” charging? It’s ludicrous. Just have way more charging points and make sure non EVs are not in them. Musks have their own chargers I think. It’s not easy to take a EV on a long journey and too much planning and anxiety isn’t fun.

It’s grossly unfair to keep quoting battery size, make of car and driving style at the OP as well. Most of us just drive. I’ve no idea what my battery size is. I just need a charger available when I need it. On my route and no hotel stays! That assumes you have all the time in the world. I just want to charge when I stop for a coffee.

Yes no doubt about it, a good affordable high range electric car is going to be the game changer. That and improved charging infrastructure.

We have an vw id4 pro. 77kw battery.
It has a range of up to 550kw. Which is about 5hrs driving.

It’s really good. Even where we live in frozen snow for half the winter the range is excellent.

Dh will drive to airport 170km later, drop friends, turn around and drive back. He won’t need to stop to charge anywhere. Just charge when home again

I've not read all replies, but all yours.

We went to Devon in a 214 range car. About a 400 mile journey from home. We planned it like this...

Stop over half way, overnight with free charger at hotel
Stayed at accommodation in Devon with free charging
Did top up at service stations and supermarket networks, which are generally better serviced.

I love driving an electric car, but like you have found it works seamlessly for journeys around the home charger. There needs to be some serious improvements to the charging network to convince me to go on long distance holiday in one again. Just because you have no control over who will be parked in the bay or if it's working- so it's a stress - and that's not what a holiday should be about.

I suspect we will try a train next time.

I don't think you've been negative about evs at all. You've highlighted an issue which made your trip difficult.
Manufacturers aren't very clear about the 'real' range of these cars. Our is supposed to do 350 but we rarely get above 300. I can understand your frustration if you bought one thinking it would do 170 and you lose a bit chunk of that.

Never say never. Our old EV was similar but newest one is soooooo easy. By the time you trade in you’ll have a much much longer range. And it’s so cheap!