Taq
Established Member
Just back from a trip in the MG5 SR last week, approximately 240miles each way to Edinburgh and back.
The car was fully loaded with luggage and 4 adults so I was a little nervous going as it was a heavier load than normal, heating/wipers etc were on due to cold damp conditions and zap map seemed to be telling me that most chargers north of the border had problems. This resulted in routing in far too many coffee recharge stops travelling there through fear of reduced range/falling charger density & the possibility of blocked or broken chargers.
Travelling there we managed about 3.5m/kWh and didn’t have any issues accessing the chargers, but I did notice what seemed to be a quicker fall off in battery charge with the shorter charge stops (as if the battery charge reading was higher than reality when disconnecting).
I was much more confident in the car/chargers on the way back, especially given the density of charger was increasing coming back so decided to go for a single charge/lunch stop at the Gosforth InstaVolt, this worked out a treat with lunch at the pub and plenty of charge when we got on the road again and this time the charge didn’t appear to have the same initial drop down after leaving the charger as the shorter stops had.
On the trip back managed 3.9m/kWh and about 40% left on car when we got home, I would say the range was about 150-170 with the car fully loaded, even though when driving and watching the charge level drop does get the mind racing a little at times (my advice is not to worry about the battery level too much until your getting down towards 30% if your cautious like me).
Tried to keep my speed to around 60-65 on the motorway and the AC was running at 22deg with the fan on low for most of the trip.
couple of things I thought were worth pointing out
- every osprey chargers we used had problems starting/ending charge but this wouldn’t stop me using them as they all did charge the car and tended to be close to a rather nice eatery, the Osprey software definitely had some issue with the car but the stop button / customer support tended to fixed it quickly.
- on the A1 Gosforth was a great place to charge if heading to/from Edinburgh as there are 6 chargers and several places to eat on site
I don’t know if anyone has any experience with the reliability of zap map information as some of it looked quite old but seemed to be telling us most of the charge place Scotland sites had problems with rapid charging so we tended to avoid them, would have been nice to know how accurate this was at the time as their prices per kWh looked better.
Anyway after waffling on a bit I hope someone might find this information useful when planning something similar.
The car was fully loaded with luggage and 4 adults so I was a little nervous going as it was a heavier load than normal, heating/wipers etc were on due to cold damp conditions and zap map seemed to be telling me that most chargers north of the border had problems. This resulted in routing in far too many coffee recharge stops travelling there through fear of reduced range/falling charger density & the possibility of blocked or broken chargers.
Travelling there we managed about 3.5m/kWh and didn’t have any issues accessing the chargers, but I did notice what seemed to be a quicker fall off in battery charge with the shorter charge stops (as if the battery charge reading was higher than reality when disconnecting).
I was much more confident in the car/chargers on the way back, especially given the density of charger was increasing coming back so decided to go for a single charge/lunch stop at the Gosforth InstaVolt, this worked out a treat with lunch at the pub and plenty of charge when we got on the road again and this time the charge didn’t appear to have the same initial drop down after leaving the charger as the shorter stops had.
On the trip back managed 3.9m/kWh and about 40% left on car when we got home, I would say the range was about 150-170 with the car fully loaded, even though when driving and watching the charge level drop does get the mind racing a little at times (my advice is not to worry about the battery level too much until your getting down towards 30% if your cautious like me).
Tried to keep my speed to around 60-65 on the motorway and the AC was running at 22deg with the fan on low for most of the trip.
couple of things I thought were worth pointing out
- every osprey chargers we used had problems starting/ending charge but this wouldn’t stop me using them as they all did charge the car and tended to be close to a rather nice eatery, the Osprey software definitely had some issue with the car but the stop button / customer support tended to fixed it quickly.
- on the A1 Gosforth was a great place to charge if heading to/from Edinburgh as there are 6 chargers and several places to eat on site
I don’t know if anyone has any experience with the reliability of zap map information as some of it looked quite old but seemed to be telling us most of the charge place Scotland sites had problems with rapid charging so we tended to avoid them, would have been nice to know how accurate this was at the time as their prices per kWh looked better.
Anyway after waffling on a bit I hope someone might find this information useful when planning something similar.
