Having had the car for around a month I am now planning a longer trip as my wife and I are having a few days away from home.
The trip
The total distance of the trip is around 200 miles excluding any journeys done while away. With the quoted range of my Mokka-e being 200 miles it will need a charge during the trip as the real world range is likely to be shorter particularly on a longer drive at a steady speed even if I engage eco driving mode .
There is also no charge point at my destination that is also a rural location so the nearest public charge point is some distance away.
Charging strategy
I will be taking my “granny charger” with its 13A plug so that the car can be trickle charged overnight to give some boost but one of the key elements of this trip is to allow me to get familiar with a rapid charger.
As I have done this journey a number of time know there is a rapid charger as the motorway services on route and having checked Zap-Map they are Gridserve 50kW chargers.
Stopping for coffee, something that we do at that service station, will allow enough charge to top up the battery. Stopping on each journey should eliminate the possibility of range worry during the time away.
The advantage of this charger type
Having done some investigation one of the advantages of the Gridserve chargers are that they use contactless payment thus not requiring me to preregister or use an app at the time of charging.
My thinking process
This is probably a fairly easy journey to do because I know it well and therefore the planning process is fairly easy.
However the process that I followed would be the same for any longer journey. I agree with many others that at my age driving for more than about 2 hours or 150 miles without stopping is unrealistic so planning stops at around those distances or times, and the availability of chargers being the main restriction
I have changed my energy supplier to Octopus Energy that has a referral scheme whereby if you change to it using this link you will get a credit of £50 ( I will also get a credit of £50) http://share.octopus.energy/peach-rill-315
