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We have invested in a fully electric car which has a range of over 200 miles, which is fantastic for the shorter journeys around home. However, electric car charging on a long journey can be a little more challenging!
Our first holiday using our electric car to to Cornwall highlighted some of the trials and tribulations of electric car charging. We didn’t know that car charging anxiety was a thing before then!
The first challenge is deciding where to charge your electric car when you don’t know the area. Our journey was 275 miles door to door which meant at least one stop off. Most motorway service stations have fast car charging stations, varying from 50kwh to 350 kwh. If all goes to plan, a good break halfway there for an hour not only refuels the car but also rests and refreshes the driver.
That all seems very simple and in an ideal world there should be no problems.
However, it is not as easy as it sounds, so read our top 10 tips for hassle free electric car charging below.
With a petrol or diesel engine, you would dare to run the car down to the last 20 miles of fuel, knowing that there is always a petrol station nearby to fill up. With an electric car, charging stations are fewer, so you have to plan further ahead. As the miles count down on the dashboard, anxiety increases, especially if you pull into the services to find the charger not working or a long queue.
Another source of tension is the vast range of networks available. Many use different apps, so when you come to charge for the first time you have to go through the initial logging on and entering payment details before you can even plug in.
This added more time to the journey and by the end of our holiday, we ended up with 6 different apps on our phone. Some apps were much better than others so you could enjoy your coffee and monitor the charge level, but others were very basic.
Queuing up for charging can be frustrating. Around 30% of cars sold in the last 6 months are electric, but the infrastructure for charging is still developing. Hopefully, this will continue to improve in the near future.
Another worry was that we didn’t know the area and didn’t want to arrive with a low charge, so made a second charging stop just to be on the safe side.
Our holiday accommodation in Cornwall didn’t have electric car charging facilities. Luckily we found a local fast car charger for occasional use during our stay. What a relief! And the best thing was there was never a queue.
On our long journey, we learnt a lot along the way. Here’s our top 10 tips to reduce stress and anxiety.
Don't forget to move you car out of the EV parking space as soon as it's charged up to prevent unnecessary stress for other EV drivers!
We found a great CCS fast charger at one service station; whilst quite a bit more more expensive, it saved a lot of time.
In the future, car charging will become easier as the infrastructure improves. Electric cars are so much better for the environment as they have zero exhaust emissions. They are also more energy efficient with around 70% of the power produced by the battery making it to the wheels, compared to only 20% of power produced by a combustion engine.
We have always offered guests free EV charging at Hoe Grange during their stay, but now fully understand how much this eliminates stress and worry and allows for a relaxing holiday! We have three charging points too, so there's plenty of space for multiple cars to charge at once.
You can definitely recharge your car battery as well as your own when staying at Hoe Grange. And the best thing is that our electricity is mainly generated using renewable solar and wind power, so you'll be reducing your environmental impact even further!
David