Anyone taken an electric car down to Penzance for a week

[Springsnowdrops]

Booked in over Easter
No chargers at property
Can only see 4 rapid chargers in whole area on zap map
The rest are 6 hour chargers ,but in supermarket car parks ,where if it's anything like home ,you can only stay for 2 hours ..
Starting to think this is going to be a disaster
Anyone successfully done a week in Penzance in an electric car

@Springsnowdrops We have an electric car and Cornwall is a nightmare! Where we are, there’s a large new car park, but - no chargers at all! I asked Cornwall CC why not? Wrong electricity supply. The car park next to our place has 2 charging points. 2 for a well known and highly visited area. We can charge from our house because we own the land - it’s not public. Cornwall doesn’t have anywhere near enough fast chargers and if you need to charge whilst you are in Cornwall, it takes time! Welcome to Cornwall.

Cornwall CC is not ahead of any curve. It’s pathetic. There’s 500,000 people living in Cornwall. It has 30% of its business derived from tourism. Tiny numbers of slow chargers in public places is well behind any curve.

We live in rural Scotland and have an electric car, we love it ! Home charger helps of course. Off on our usual trip to Devon this week, it’s so easy to plan our charges around our favourite Tebay/ Westmorland services. They were installing lots of new chargers last time we went, hopefully they’re up and running now.
Lovely car to drive, saves us a lot of money in petrol too .

But that's only going to work if the chargers are free, no queues and none are broken.

The investment into EV charging points is going to have to be collosal. It looks like it was announced in Nov 2020. After 18 months chasing and asking we have no EV points in our ex council estate street of 200 homes and only a plan to install one charger. What should have happened is a handful now in place with a plan for at least 100 in the communal car parks.

Is there anyone you can swap cars with for a week? Hire one?
My brother in law does that. Has an electric but hires a car for uk breaks.

I could actually just holiday at bloody lovely Tebay services 😂😂 did you know there’s a sister one on the m5 too 😝

gloucesterservices.com/about/

@JitterbugFairy is there a fast charger in Mevagissey, or did you charge at Bodmin/Cornwall Services?

I was going to suggest this. My friends swapped cars with me when she was going on a weekend break down to the south coast. She took my car and I used hers over the weekend if I needed to.

I wouldn’t. This is why we have one of each (electric and petrol). It’s just too much hassle and half the charging points are not even working when you get to them - if there are any at all. The electric car is cheap to charge and great for local journeys. It’s rubbish if you go somewhere like Cambridge and get stuck (park and ride, broken charging points, app not up to date, one working charger in use by someone who’d left their car there all day). Unless there are as many fast charging points as petrol pumps, electric cars are crap for long distance (and that’s without range anxiety kicking in)!

Love the idea you go to motorway services that are not in Cornwall! It’s always the case that they can be not working or full. It’s a lottery. We aren’t far from Oxford and we won’t take our EV to Cornwall without on site charging. Fast chargers are a rare beast in Cornwall.

Yes I certainly do ! It’s my favourite 🤣

My friend did in 2023, she's still heading back but is already at Exeter.

We live in a rural area and have an EV. My DH does over 20 000 business miles a year in it and we use it for most of our family trips as well. We've been all over the place in it and I can't remember the last time we had any significant difficulties with public charging. Obviously there are some problematic pockets, but nationally the availability of chargers has increased massively in the last few years and it's unusual not to be able to find somewhere to charge nowadays
And you don't have to wait around for ages whilst you charge your car every couple of hundred miles! If you are doing a long journey you plug it in to a fast charger for a few minutes when you stop for a coffee or the toilet and for a bit longer whilst you have lunch. Nobody sensible drives an EV til it's empty and then charges from flat - well not unless you're on your way home in which case it makes sense to get back with low charge then you can "fill up" at the cheapest rate. It takes my DH no longer to do his work trips in an EV than it did in a diesel - his company would be back to ICE cars like a flash if it was paying employees to hang around for ages on chargers on every trip. But they don't, because you don't need to, not with modern, decent sized EVs and chargers. The very earliest ones may be different, but the technology is evolving rapidly, both in battery and charger design.If you have a tiny EV with a very small battery, fair enough, it's not ideal for long journeys, but I wouldn't fancy long trips in comparably sized ICE cars either-you need to pick your car according to your driving needs regardless of what type of engine it has,
There are of course still issues, and I'd say the biggest one now is the home charging infrastructure. I don't think I would recommend an EV to anyone currently if they don't have offroad parking and the ability to install their own charger. If you were fully reliant on public chargers it would be inconvenient and very expensive. But if you can charge mainly at home and only use public chargers sporadically it's not difficult in most places and it's getting easier all the time. And ok, if you're one of the oft quoted Mumsnet drivers who has a bladder of steel, no nutrition or hydration needs and a co driver with whom you do Le Mans style driver changes in service stations then you probably are better sticking with an ICE. But for us mere mortals who do need to stop to eat/drink/go to the toilet and have a rest from time to time, honestly it's really not that hard to use an EV as your main vehicle even on long journeys.

@Supergluerules

my car didn't even come with a granny charger so I have to use public chargepoints.

what's a granny charger?

We were in Hayle a few years ago in an Ev & it was fine. I know it’s not the same place but fast charged en route there as it’s about a 6 hour drive from us, then only needed to charge once when we were there. Charged on way back in services. There was a fast charger at one of the local train stations. We use Chargemap, maybe have a look at that and see if there anymore locations than Zap map

This is utter rubbish. We drove to the south of France in ours. Let me guess, you don’t own an electric car? There are loads of chargers in the UK. Sure, Cornwall may not be teeming with them but that’s Cornwall, they’ve also unfortunately only got one hospital

It's a charging cable that connects to a domestic 3 pin plug, so you can charge from a house for example. But, they are very slow in comparison to chargepoints - but useful in emergencies and as a PP said, quite often need to be used if there's a delay in getting a home charger. If I wanted to buy one I think they are around £100.

Cornwall has 15 hospital. They do different things. I do have a EV and Cornwall is a PITA regarding charging if you cannot do it yourself.

Which route are you driving down on?

Some thoughts although I dont have an EV so dont know...

I'm.pretty sure they were putting some in at the services near Victoria? There's a M and S retail outlet at Fraddon - do they have any? Gloucester services is nice and have some if you are coming across from Oxford to the M5 that way.

Otherwise, I'd say research some of the high end hotels/stops and see if they have any and if stopping there for a paid breakfast or meal would allow you access to them. Places like Arundel Arms at Lifton just off A30. Or Strawberry Fields.

What about National Trust Car Parks - are you a member? Do they have any chargers? We've a lot of NT property down here!

Good luck. I always said EVs simply won't take off as there isn't sufficient investment in the infrastructure. Lazy Government again, wanting something but not providing the service ahead of time to do so.

We have never had a problem charging our car on long distances. Have done 35,000km in ours so far, and have driven all over Europe in it. I find it far easier that a petrol as there’s charger everywhere, where as petrol is only at a petrol station.

The last 2 cars we hired in Uk were a Tesla and a ford Diesel. The Diesel the ad blue ran out, and we spent age in Devon looking for it. And then had to divert to petrol station for Diesel off route. The Tesla was super easy, could charge wherever we stopped at National trusts places, super markets, shopping centres, car parks

There’s not much around Penzance. You get charging points that are full. Or the wrong type of charger. Charging on the way there just isn’t the same and I would have thought 500,000 residents in Cornwall would need more fast chargers.

No need to be rude@strongandstable. People do all different kinds of journeys. Here in mid Wales we have NO hospital, and precious few electric chargers. I don't own an electric car and never will, no matter how angry it makes people who mostly do short journeys and only do longer ones on very beaten tracks. When I set off to drive 360 miles on a spring holiday next month I'll fill up my big powerful diesel car and it will tell me that I don't need more fuel for 650 miles. I won't plan my holiday around chargers but can buy diesel quickly and easily wherever I happen to be.
Have you heard of live and let live? I don't care what kind of car you drive, why do you feel you can tell someone who thinks differently from you that their opinion is rubbish?

It doesn’t make me remotely angry @oddandelsewherehowever you have no experience of using an electric car not least of all on long journeys, so you are incorrect in saying it’s a nightmare and with respect don’t know what you are talking about

@Notstrongandstable perhaps you could show me where I said it was a nightmare?
I have to say you might not be angry, but you certainly seem a bit peeved. First saying that I was talking rubbish, now saying that I don't know what I'm talking about.
What I know, because it is a fact, is that my diesel car will go 650 miles before it needs refuelling. It is also a fact that the average range of an electric car is 200-300 miles. No matter how you look at it you will have to refuel one of these cars twice as frequently as the other one. That is definitely less convenient, and that is before you factor in finding a charger in very rural areas.
Happily I am not like a dog that needs letting out for a wee every two hours, so I am able to drive a long way before I feel like stopping.
This form of motoring suits me, and I would assume most people who frequently make long journeys. Others might not mind hanging around in service stations. Obviously if that suits them then that's good.
As a matter of interest, do you tell everyone who disagrees with you that they're talking rubbish? It must get quite tiring (for them as well as you).

I think the points are: you might not get a charger available or working and it can take a long time if it’s not a rapid one. One of the car mags did a survey on rapid chargers and found only 10% did what they promised to do. So it’s really not straightforward for EV owners - and I have one! It’s not always easy and occasionally stressful. We know we can charge from our house but other people staying in our village have a big problem. 13 miles to a charger at the supermarket if the two in the village are occupied and they are slow ones. It’s definitely not easy. We prefer to take a petrol car!