Thanks for the update,

I think that if I ever go down the route of an Eleccy car, I'll want a 400 mile rane minimum.

Me too, I do a 270 journey twice a week with just a 5-min toilet stop half-way. There's no way I'd want to rely on finding a n available charging point when all I want to do at 10pm is get home and get to bed.

My journey is almost all motorway at 70mph, in the freezing dark at this time of the year, so I'd be looking for a 350-mile range in the depth of winter with a half-laden car. Until that's a reality I'll be sticking to my 58-mpg diesel that has a 600-mile range and takes 5 minutes to go from empty to full.

The variation in efficiency of electric cars seems quite surprising, and it doesn't seem to be the case that small is necessarily more efficient.

I wonder how much of this is down to aerodynamics and how much is management of the battery, regenerative braking etc. It seems surprising that when aerodynamic drag becomes so much more of a factor that most of the EVs coming out (other than Tesla) don't seem to be designed with aerodynamic efficienty in mind.

The long range is only really needed when driving at motorway speeds, so I'm surprised they haven't focussed more on getting more out of the cars at higher speeds. You'd need to be driving round and round constantly all day in a city (like a taxi) to get close to using up even a 150 mile range, yet that's only just over 2 hours of motorway driving.

Yep my thoughts exactly. Two hours of driving is plenty for me, then I'm stopping for a "splash n dash". Its an old guy thing.

The Mokka will charge at 100kw so if you pick the right stop you can be back up to 80% plus when your ready to roll again.

Well if you start with a full charge that's quite possible. But I do get your point it's difficult to be spontaneous . Ev ownership seems to require you to be a little organised.

Edited by Ethan Edwards on 02/02/2022 at 21:27

An EV would make perfect sense for 99% of my motoring. In the average week, none of my return trips is more than 25 miles.

But occasionally I drive north to see family and that means close to 300 miles each way, split between two or three days; re-charging, subject to availability, would make the trip possible, but given the paucity of charging points, problematic. We're also planning to go to France with the car around Easter time and I've no idea how that would work with an EV.

I don't wish to run two cars, nor to hire.

I imagine my situation is not uncommon. Until the general range of EVs improves to 300 miles and reliable, accessible charging points are the norm (and I don't want to have to rely on re-charging halfway on a long journey) I won't be dumping ICE. Charging points will need to be as available as filling stations are now and we are a very, very long way off that.

There are actually comfortably more charging points than petrol stations. In fact, there are 36% fewer petrol stations than there were in 2000 in the UK. By contrast there are 48,906 public connections at 29141 devices. Plus, obviously, work and home wall boxes. Those numbers are growing daily (701 connections were added in the past 30 days),as the total of petrol stations decreases. www.zap-map.com/statistics/

Yes but each petrol station has say 8 pumps and each one might be used for 6 minutes (including paying in the shop kiosk). 80 cars fuelled per hour. Even at 50% that's 40 vehicles. Each electric station will need 30 mins for a fast charge and even longer for regular charging so maybe max 2 per hour be realistically less than that.

Rumour has it that Tesla are considering opening up their charger network to non Tesla EVs . If that happens its a game changer. But though some chargers in mainland Europe are open, none so far in the UK. Fingers crossed and let's be nice to Elon eh?

Tesla are opening them up only because if they don't the EU would make them do it so they are getting in first to make out they are doing some good.

It will be interesting to see how that pans out. If I was running a Tesla and turned up at a Tesla charging point and it was being used by a non-Tesla vehicle, I might be miffed. For me the big USP of the Tesla is the supercharger network. Who has paid for the superchargers? Presumably Tesla?

That's interesting, thanks. When I go to visit family in London, it's a round trip of just over 200 miles so a Tesla might be an option for the future. For now as I only do about 1000 miles a year, the old Focus will be the cheapest option!

As you say quite a lot of Teslas have free charging for life. How is Elon making any money from that? Opening the network or some of the network to us lesser individuals would be a new income stream. Might enable Elon to buy a second solid gold House...

That's not bad. You have the 64kwh version? Mokka is only 50kwh and 46 (iirc) is usable. So has a bit less range than you do. Still upwards of 170 miles.

I do have a home wallbox the usual 32amp 7kw. As you said It makes for cheap motoring. So I was wondering why you chose not to have one?

Well that explains it. I traded both my ICE cars and bought the Mokka-e six months ago. Not been a problem for me yet. My longest regular journey is about 90 to 100 Mile's round trip. The Mokka can do that with ease just from a home charger (in my Garage). As you say the EV driving experience is an eye opener isn't it.

Edited by Ethan Edwards on 10/04/2022 at 20:24