Please can you give me an honest opinion of electric car charging in the UK?

[Dabralor]

I've seen an Audi etron I like but its battery life is 193 miles tops. We have family in Scotland and London - is it awful having to stop and charge a car these days or is the Infrastructure getting better?

We stop anyway because we have a dog, but I don't like the sound of worrying about whether the charging points are full/not working/the wrong type etc etc.

Id love a hybrid ideally but we wouldn't be able to afford such a big one.

That's an appalling range. I couldn't deal with the hassle of having to recharge that often.

It also costs more to charge an EV at a motorway services than it does to pay for petrol, apparently.

DH has an electric polestar.
Just been up in the wilds and off the beaten track of Northumbria. DH uses a couple of apps such as electroverse to locate high speed chargers that also give him current prices. High speed charge is between 20 to 30 minutes so we time stops as rest and tea breaks. TBH the cost is way cheaper than petrol for a 95% charge. We were paying £100 for petrol the old car and now £25 for the new and cover the same distances. the upside is an electric car has resulted in DH driving with more thought. Some locations do charge more than others and yes the motorway service chargers are having a laugh so look for the just off the motorway service junction places that are opening up with high speed chargers instead.

I’ve had EV’s for a decade, so in the era of poor infrastructure and low range cars. I’m a dab hand at it now and it’s a piece of piss to
find a charger in 2025, compared to 2015!

I’d want better range for frequent long trips though @Dabralor
You won’t get that range on motorways and public charging that often would be far too expensive. My current car is around 200 miles, I don’t regularly drive more than about 160 so it’s fine as I don’t suffer with range anxiety but I think you need a 250+

Remember that the car will prompt for a charge at 20% battery (and default will usually be to charge to 80% , though you can override that). So your ‘range between routine 20-80% charging’ will actually be not much more than 100 miles. Even if you go down to 10% charge each time, and always charge to 100%, your actual maximum will be less than 180 miles, much less in the cold and wet. Look at the longest journeys you do - if you will always need more than 1 stop, using say 150 miles as realistic charging intervals, it becomes a pain. We often do journeys where the there and return journey requires 1 charging stop, and that works absolutely fine (we have a group of preferred charging spots near eg places to eat, walks etc), but needing 2 every time would be genuinely inconvenient.

We got an electric car in April. It has taken a few long trips to get used to it, dh had terrible charging anxiety and wouldn’t let it get below 50% charge, so we were stopping quite often on long trips.😆 He’s got over that now and we’re really enjoying the car. And it’s so much cheaper than filling up with petrol!

Ooh that's not a great range at all. We have a Jaguar iPace (range goes from 230 - winter, to about 260 in the summer) and it's been up and down to Scotland several times. We usually find somewhere with a charger where we can also eat, so killing two birds with one stone if you like, then we will stop at Tebay just to top up before crossing the border. Look for the open Tesla chargers which are usually high speed and off the main motorways so you don't get charged as much.

The car can also tell you where the nearest chargers are (but we usually plan) and Google/electroverse are good at flagging as well.

I would say, look at availability in Scotland before you're visiting. I found the infrastructure is quite far behind England in that respect, so worth taking a Granny charger to plug in at your accommodation even just to top up if you need to.

And don’t even consider it unless you can charge at home using a cheap
tariff.

Plan your journey. If most of your miles are charged at home, it’s ok to have to charge out on longer trips.

The poor range is an issue of longer journeys are regular. I can get to DM’s on a charge, then need to charge to come home. That’s ok.
All other journeys are well within the range so I charge at home overnight on the cheap tarif.

Make sure you know your charging arrangements at home before buying. Don’t be the people hanging an extension cable through your window…

I have a Kia that has 340-350 range and it is no problem. I'd look for something with a greater range.

We have had 2 full EV's now, but both with considerably more range that the one you are talking about. Have an at home charger on a cheaper overnight rate and would not consider ever buying a house without now!! Biggest change is planning more where you are going to stop. We always factor in coffee/lunch on longer journeys - and never try to go above 80% charge on public chargers (the last 20% takes for ever!!). A great app to get is ZapMap which shows you where all the chargers are, if they are operational and if they are in use! Good luck, but realistically I would be looking for a car with a range of around 250.

This is all super useful, thank you!!!

We have a Tesla and it’s amazing. It knows where Tesla charges are and routes you to the nearest one automatically. It also tells you how many stalls are available and also how many other Tesla’s are making their way there.
We get 4.5 miles a KW and it cost 7p a KW to charge at home.
A colleague has the etron and absolutely hates it.

Another voice saying exactly the same as everyone else lol

I have a Vauxhall Corsa-e, I’m really happy with it but 180 range isn’t massive. I drive a lot for work normally but pretty much never more than 120 miles in a day, so it suits me really well. We can charge at home. I like that it’s just a car IYSWIM - they didn’t bother changing anything about the setup except putting a battery into it as far as I can see. The aircon is a bit lame.

DP has an MG4 with theoretically a 300 range and that’s what we use for long journeys. Like a pp I think the uk infrastructure is infinitely better than it was even 4 years ago (Scotland used to be way ahead but England is catching up now). It works fine. I personally don’t like it as much as a car as it’s too big, and there are lots of bells and whistles which I don’t care about, it’s a bit of a one man car so it’s a struggle to get it to talk to my phone etc. But the range is great.

I’ve heard nothing but good about Kia EVs, Skodas too, but would have a good look round

I agree with other posters , that's a very poor range. Ours is around 250 and I wouldn't want less than that, in the winter/cold weather it drops down to around 200ish.

There are plenty of chargers about, you just have to plan your journey. The first few times we did a longer journey were quite nerve wracking 😆 but we're used to it now! And it's absolutely fine, you get to know where chargers are and where the best places to stop are , especially if it's a journey you do regularly.

You definitely need a home charger, would be very hard work without.

We drive around 1000 miles a month and the electric costs about £30-40 pm. We're with Octopus.

If you download Zapmap it will show you where your chargers are. As PP said, you’re looking at about £25 and 30 minutes for a full battery.

You only need to be thoughtful if you’re going somewhere very rural. That said we did that in the Peak District recently and we were fine - found a pub and a local Morrisons

Oh and once you have a home charger (£800-1000) charging the car is about £8.

I wouldn't go for a hybrid, it sounds like the best of both worlds but it is also the worst of both. For a start it's much heavier because you have two engines, a tank and a battery so it's less efficient. The electric part is generally quite low milage so you will need to plug in every time you get home.

I used to have a BMW 3 series hybrid and in theory I was the perfect personality and lifestyle to own one. Lifestyle driving was mostly short local trips with three or four longer return trips per year. Personality was right because I was diligent about plugging it in. But I got fed up with it. The electric driving was so much more pleasant than the petrol driving that I got pissed off when it swapped over, and it was a pain having to plug it in every single time. It was reasonably cheap to run as by the time I sold it 87% of my milage was electric so I hadn't paid for much in the way of petrol, on the other hand I couldn't schedule it for the cheap night rate because I needed to charge it straight away to be ready for the next school run etc so I paid more for my electricity than I do with my fully electric car.

My current car is an iPace and it does my regular long trip (250 km) with no bother, I have plenty left on arrival even at motorway speeds. I've had it for over two years and have only had one return trip that needed en-route charging and it was ok, a bit of a pain having to wait a bit longer than a petrol fill but, on the other hand, I had two years of not having to do any petrol fills so I came out ahead time-wise. The fast chargers were quite expensive, I think on one of them I paid €0.65 per kw, but the all the rest of my charging has been at home. I only need to charge it about every 6 days (I charge when it gets to 45% so that I have enough in reserve for unexpected journeys) and I use cheap rate electric car rates of €0.07 per kw for three hours per night and €0.11 for the rest of the night.

The battery ranges are increasing as the technology improves so if you don't want to go full electric now because of range concerns then go for petrol over hybrid and give it another couple of years.