The Reality
They say that while planning makes most activities easier there is also the phrase in the military that a good plan only survives to the first point of contact. This also was my experience with the trip that I took for a few days away from home with my wife.
The actual driving was easy helped a little by using the eco mode and regenerative braking but my plans for testing public chargers was not as predicted and trying to record the trip was less that successful due to equipment (and operator) problems. This meant that I could only film the return journey and even then the battery gave out before the journey was complete.
Public charging
I had driven about 40 miles and had around 80% charge when I reached the charging point in the motorway services. It was in use and when I was able ot get on the charge rate was very slow and so I left with only a small amount of charge added in around 30 minutes.
I should have read the information that charging is much quicker when the battery is more fully discharged so a learning point for the future
Charging without a charging point.
As a positive however using a standard 13A socket using a charging cable was slower but even using it for 8 hours for 1 day did take the charge from 50% to 80% making the return journey easily achievable without stopping to charge and leaving 39% of charge in the battery when I got home. This gives me confidence that provided I can access a socket and park off road I will be able to top up a battery wherever I go if there is no suitable rapid charger nearby
Overall trip statistics
I drove 182 miles between leaving home and returning. There was about 40% of charge added to the battery between the “rapid” public charger and the 13A charging. The car reports 4.3 miles/kWh as the economy in the trip at an average speed of 34 mph which included about 50% of the journey being on motorways.
Clean air speed restriction
Travelling around Birmingham on the M5 and M6 there is now a speed limit on this stretch ( assuming no traffic jams) of 60mph and both the overhead matrix signs and fixed signs on the roadside say this is to improve air quality.
So for a long time I have been able to drive this stretch of road in my previous ICE cars at 70 mph but now with my zero emission car I am limited to 60mph. I suppose that’s life although I did see a newspaper article suggesting that zero emission cars could be allowed to drive at 80mph on the motorways
