So I bought my ZS EV end of May and it has been amazing for doing my 60-mile round trip to work. However, I recently went on my first long road trip from Hull to Newcastle and then on to Edinburgh and back. Every journey was a disaster.
So I planned my route, had plenty of stops so that I would only need to spend 10 minutes at each charger and would never get down to 3 bars. This was ruined by lack of chargers, inconsiderate EV drivers and machines not working. I'm actually embarrassed to tell my friends & family how it went as I've been bigging up electric cars to them and now I feel like an idiot- they were right, the UK is not ready for them yet!
This is a long one so good if you're bored, but explains all the difficulties I faced.
Journey 1- Hull to Wetherby Services. The police closed the M62 so I had to make a detour which missed Wetherby, no problem- I had a back-up of Boroughbridge. Only 1 rapid charger- luckily no one charging at the time. Tried to pay, came up with an error message, checked my bank 2 lots of £15 authorisation fee had come out, but no charge. Called the 'emergency helpline', gave up after 20 minutes on hold (already double my planned stop time and I had a wedding to get to). Ended up, after several more phone calls in the coming weeks, having to go through my bank to get it refunded.
Decided to drive on to Scotch Corner. Very very busy, took an hour to just get into the car park. 4 rapid chargers, but only 3 spaces, and only 2 could charge at the same time. 1 car apparently been there over an hour with no owner and another 3 cars waiting to charge so I drove on to the next charger, another 30 minutes to get out of the car park (1 hour 30 min for what should have been a 10 minute stop- and still no charge since leaving Hull).
Luckily made it to Washington Northbound, only 1 rapid charger but managed to charge up without any issues.
Journey 2- Newcastle (going from Airport hotel) to Edinburgh (hence the route- I now realise I should have gone A1 route as there are more chargers- hindsight, eh). Topped up to full at Ponteland- great. Stopped part way in Jedburgh, only 1 rapid charger, in use, waited 10 minutes for them to finish. Then I had to call the number to get it working, 20 minutes on hold. 10 minutes charge, then another 10 minutes on hold to end the charge. Nearly an hour for what should have been a 10 minute stop.
Drove on and wanted to top-up just outside Edinburgh, stopped at Lauder. Plugged in, again had to call to start the charge. 10 minutes on hold to be told there was an error and I'd have to go to another charger. Unplugged and was going to just go straight to Edinburgh as I'd already spent more than 10 minutes there and only wanted a top-up. My car would not move. It wouldn't even turn off. Tried to get someone to jump start my car, that didn't work. So called the breakdown company, 20 minutes later it randomly started again, so cancelled the breakdown and headed to Edinburgh without a charge.
Journey Home- Skipped Lauder because of the issues before and tried to stop in Earlston, only 1 rapid charger, in use and no sign of owner. Drove on to Jedburgh, only 1 rapid charger and in use, even the slow charger was in use and no sign of either driver. Only had 30 miles of range left and 49 miles to the next rapid charger so I waited. I was there over an hour (the EV bay is max stay 45 minutes) and there was no sign of the owner. It was getting late, 8pm so I had a look around the village, no one to be seen, they had been there that long that the charger had turned off as both cars were full.
I ended up very slowly driving to Otterburn where there was a slow charger, gave me an extra few miles (not many) in the 30-45 minutes I was there. Then slowly drove on back to Ponteland. Arrived there with 6% battery after driving at 30mph on 60mph roads. Charged up fully while having a lovely meal at the local Indian place (I was considerate though, unlike the previous drivers I'd encountered, and left a note in my car with a contact number in case anyone needed the charger).
Overnight stay in Newcastle. On the way home, stopped at Wetherby, lots of rapid chargers, but again, for some reason it would not charge my car despite charging my bank card. Drove on to Ferrybridge, only 1 rapid charger and in use, machine said they'd been there over 30 mins so I started on the slow charger, planning on transferring over once they were back, 20 minutes later (50 minutes of them charging on rapid) still no sign of them and I had to get off, I was only planning on being there 20 minutes. I had only got a few miles of range from this, so cautiously drove home. Had to pop to another slow charger on route to get an extra few miles to make it home.
I had written to my MP about lack of rapid chargers a month or so before this. The government's response was that there are rapid chargers every 25 miles on major A roads and motorways. What they fail to understand is that 1 rapid charger is not enough. If it is in use, it's 50 miles to a charger, if that's in use then it's 75 miles to a charger. etc. And what about when there are detours (happen all the time when driving on motorways at night) then you're not on a major motorway and there isn't a charger for a long time- sometimes too long. Add to the lack of chargers- inconsiderate drivers who leave their cars on charge for hours with no contact number and driving an electric car is not worth the hassle and time. I would not have been able to do that journey with kids. Luckily, my wife wasn't too annoyed but imagine all the hassle I had but with screaming kids. This journey made me miss my petrol car.
On a plus though, I did the whole trip on about £3.80! (After all of the holding fees were returned- which took a couple of weeks!).
), so now I'm having to react to find a charger and I'm panicking as I'm very late and suffering intense range anxiety with only 20 miles left on GOM. I eventually found a charger on the map, but took 20 minutes to find it as ZapMap wouldn't navigate to the address - it only gave the postcode. When I got there it had just been taken by someone else. Thankfully he lived in Ullapool and had enough charge to get there, so after hearing my tale of woe he let me queue jump.
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