analysis: ev road trip
Instavolt McDonalds, Warwick
Is inter-city travel by EV as easy as with a petrol or diesel car? Not while the infrastructure struggles to deliver the advertised charge speeds. And then there’s the cost. Mark Bursa takes a Kia EV6 to Newcastle and back in order to test the networks
The road to good intentions Mark Bursa
E
lectric car sales are booming, with 267,000 vehicles sold last year, up 40% on 2021. And as more and more EVs are introduced, that percentage will rise.
In 2022, one in six cars sold was an EV. By the end of 2022, there were more than three-quarters of a million EVs on the road, and the million units milestone is likely to be passed this year. Great news for the environment – but there’s a problem. The rate of installation of charging infrastructure is lagging behind the growth in EV sales. The charge point rollout continues to lag behind EV uptake, with the SMMT estimating there was one standard public charger for every 36 plug-in cars on the road, down from 31 in 2021. Not all charge points are equal, of course. There is a huge spread of technological capability, ranging from AC home chargers that “trickle charge” overnight at a rate of around 7kW, to DC rapid chargers that you might find on motorways, which typically run from 50kW right up to 350kW. It is in the latter area that much of the high-profile investment has come, with operators such as
Gridserve, Ionity, Osprey and Instavolt installing banks of rapid chargers wherever they can find a suitable parking area, whether it be motorway services, pub car parks, McDonalds restaurants or garden centres. These networks are becoming established with a view to making EVs viable for longer journeys, not just urban trips. With many EVs now boasting a decent range or 300 miles or more (on paper at least), inter-city EV travel should be relatively painless. OK, even the fastest charger is going to take longer than a splash and dash at the petrol pumps, but most journeys from, say, London to Manchester are going to require a comfort break, and in theory, that should provide sufficient time to top up the battery. Professional Driver magazine has sought to put the networks to the test. Even in the distant days of a decade ago, when 80 miles of range was as good as you could hope for from your Nissan Leaf, we took a car on a daring trip to the midlands, dicing with the recalcitrant and often broken Ecotricity chargers and overnight charging via three-pin plug. We have experienced “range anxiety” in full effect. These days it’s less of an issue, so we set the bar higher. A return journey from Professional Driver HQ in Weybridge, Surrey, to Newcastleupon-Tyne, a journey of 304 miles that normally takes around 5 hours. My chosen electric transport was
“The SMMT estimating there was one standard public charger for every 36 plug-in cars on the road, down from 31 in 2021…”
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JUNE 2023