Driving to Cornwall in an electric car
We recently went on holiday to Padstow in Cornwall in my husband’s electric car. He was lucky enough to get one earlier this year. We’d wanted an electric car for a long time to help reduce our own carbon footprint, as well as reduce our impact on people’s health through pollution. We also make some savings on fuel.
I’m not an electric car expert. This is our own experience of driving to Cornwall, so that new electric car owners – or people who are thinking of getting one – can get an insight.
Nearly everyone who has an electric car (sometimes called an EV) has a home charger. This is where they will do the majority of their charging. Home chargers aren’t very powerful, but they are cheap to run. When you drive long distances, you are at the mercy of the public chargepoints available.
There are lot of different types of charger – some need an app and some don’t and some are more powerful than others. Most chargers have a couple of different types of cable. With some of them, you can also plug in your own cable. On some chargers, two people can charge at once (using the two different types of cable).
There are not enough chargers for the recent huge rise in EVs. Needless to say, the supply of chargers is better in cities, particularly London. But it’s not great driving down to Cornwall! It’s not unusual to arrive somewhere and find there are two chargers and one of them is out of order.
Our car theoretically has a range of 300 miles, but it never seems to go quite that far. Some cars have much shorter ranges – as short as 100 miles – but they are improving all the time. When you get into the car, it will tell you the percentage of battery you have left and how much range you have left. This information will also be available on the app you have with the car.
Unlike petrol and diesel cars, motorway driving is less efficient in an electric car. So as soon as you start driving on the motorway, the range will drop noticeably. Also, unlike petrol and diesel cars, stop-start driving, where you keep needing to press the brake (like in town centres) can actually slightly recharge your battery.
On our way to Cornwall from Gloucestershire, we stopped at Sedgemoor Services to use the toilet, so we decided to charge up. Sedgemoor isn’t much more than an hour from home, but if you see a charger and nobody is using it, it’s always best to take advantage! In a fairly short time, we charged up 15% – giving an extra 40 mile range. Sedgemoor has more Tesla chargers than normal chargers. Annoyingly, Tesla chargers are for Teslas only. Going back a few years, Teslas were in the majority of electric cars, but that is no longer the case.
One of the slightly frustrating things about charging a car is that garages and service stations haven’t come up with a convenient and workable queuing system for the chargepoints. You might have been waiting 40 minutes, then someone else just appears out of nowhere and drives straight onto the charger. In these cases, people will usually be brave enough to speak up. It might cause a bit of grumpiness, but I haven’t seen any actual conflict.
From Sedgemoor, we drove all the way to Cornwall Services on the A30, which is only about 20 minutes from our destination in Padstow. We still had 40% battery left, but it seemed wise to charge before we got to Padstow. The charge would see us through any driving we did while on holiday and also be a headstart on the charging we would need to do for the journey home.
Cornwall Services has more chargers than most places. They are arranged almost like petrol pumps on a garage forecourt, so they are easier to drive onto and the queuing is slightly clearer. They are supposed to be powerful ones, but our car was charging incredibly slowly. It turns out they were solar powered and it wasn’t a sunny day. (I assume they have an alternative source of power for night time charging.) Sometimes it would literally take five minutes to go up 1%, but with little bursts of sun, we managed to charge 40% in 1 hour and 20 minutes.
When you are charging your car, it is OK to leave it. But most people stay with the car most of the time. There’s usually a community of friendly, slightly confused people around. Nearly all EV drivers are new to it and, with so many different types of chargers, they are usually confused. Drivers talk to each other to share advice on which cable to use, how long it will take, where you can get a quicker charge etc etc.
One thing to be aware of is that the parking time limits in service stations and supermarket car parks etc still apply when you are using an electric charger. So if the time limit in the car park is 2 hours, you mustn’t linger beyond that time unless you want to be hit with a fine. It is also important to be back at your car before the charge is due to end. With an inevitable queue of people waiting to use the charger, it is frowned upon to stay there for even a second longer than necessary!
So we made it to Cornwall with minimal queues to charge, but the journey took a long time because of the time spent sat on chargers. If you know to expect it and factor that time in, it’s not a problem.
We found a powerful charger at a garage in a Padstow back street, so were able to get the car fully charged for the return journey. My husband charged it over the course of two separate sessions, so it didn’t take too long in one go.
Most of the time, having an EV is no different from having a petrol or diesel car. But when you go on longer journeys, it does take more organisation, planning and time. The infrastructure isn’t always there to support the growing numbers of electric cars, but hopefully things are starting to improve and it will catch up soon.
Hmmmm, very interesting. Its always great to hear the values and benefits of EV ownership but the practicalities are often overlooked. Especially in more rural areas (and the new etiquette required!). We have been looking at new cars and I’m still not convinced on the EV route. Appreciate you may have been risk averse in this approach (and I am SUPER risk averse) but an extra 2 hours on a long trip is not really practical for our needs. Might have to wait for some more tech improvements!
There is definitely more work needed on the infrastructure – a lot more chargers are needed, especially fast chargers. We knew we were going to need to take long breaks on the way to Cornwall, so we built it into our day, but wouldn’t be practical in every situation, particularly when working.
Sarah,
Very interesting! I certainly wasn’t aware of all the issues you mention. Some of them are indications of how much energy there is in a litre of petrol or diesel.
I’ve no idea what alternative source of power is used at Cornwall Services when the sun isn’t shining, but a couple of years ago at COP26, dignitaries were shuttled back and forth in EVs that were recharged using diesel generators fuelled by vegetable oil. ;o)
I didn’t know that about COP26, that’s very interesting! There is also an alternative, clean vegetable based fuel which can be used as a straight switch in diesel cars, but of course it’s not freely available.
Interesting to read this. I’m driving up to Scotland in a couple of weeks, then a road trip. It’s certainly not something I’d consider an electric car for. We’re stopping on the way up overnight, but not on the way back down. That’s 6 hours of driving, plus 2 hours or maybe 3 more of charging. That’s a lot longer stopping than we’d usually do at a service station.
My only experience of driving electric cars is having a courtesy hybrid from Volvo when mine’s in. They left 16% charge, and it was gone by the time I’d got home 17 miles away. Reasonable rural roads, but very little stop start. The more I hear about the downsides of losing ‘charge’ – not good for motorways losing range, and rural roads are meant to be poor. That’s basically my driving life. And we’d have a 15 mile roundtrip to charge on a fast charger. At home, electricity goes through the farm business, so somehow we’d have to split it so I’d be able to pay my part. We’re a long way from going electric until so much is improved and made easier.
An electric car definitely wouldn’t be good for Scotland at the moment. We definitely need a lot more chargers, especially fast chargers.
That Volvo does sound particularly bad. Ours would only go down about 5% for that distance. I’m not sure where our nearest fast charger is, because we don’t use one when we’re at home, we just keep it topped up on our home charger.
This is a really interesting post. I’m pretty terrified of changing to EV as I know I will be so anxious about charging. Also we don’t have a drive so we’d have to sort that out. Apparently they will be changing all Motability cars to EVs in the future so I’m just hoping the charging situation gets better, or I may be taking more trains.
I’m sure the charging situation will get better. It will have to or it would be impossible to stop production of petrol and diesel cars. I’m pleased to say that my husband managed to drive to London and back without charging yesterday. Often he charges it up a few percent just because he can, but it’s nice to know that he doesn’t need to!
Interesting article on your experienceand subsequent comments here on how people feel about EV’s There is a long way to go as there isn’t a one fit solution for everyone’s situation, be it work, where they live (like a victorian terrace with no way to charge at home like my daughter), affordability, also awareness impact of the end of life of the vehicle/write off disposal etc.
I do feel more enlightened though, on the practicalities, thank you!
There is definitely a long way to go, but I’m pleased that things are getting a bit easier. Terraced housing would definitely be a real problem with chargers. Hopefully someone somewhere is working on a solution because it is something that will affect a lot of people.
Do you still have your EV? I have one on order, BMW i4 E40 and we drive to Cornwall once a year for the dog holiday, I’m nervous driving from Milton Keynes to Padstow.
Yes, we still have it! You will be fine, just allow plenty of time. I’d say we are more confident with how far we will push it between charges now. And even in the last year there are more chargers, with a lot of motorway services installing more super fast chargers.
Hi Sarah, Great post 🙂
We are due to drive down to Padstow in the summer (2024) from London and I am getting serious ‘range anxiety’ as the resort we are staying at doesn’t have on site chargers.
If you can remember, I’d appreciate if you could share the road name of the powerful charger you found. Through my research the only powerful ones I’ve managed to find near where we are staying is at a Tesco a few miles away and would be good to have some alternatives in case they are occupied.
We are travelling as a big group and are are only family with an EV so trying to do as much planning as possible so I don’t inconvenience the group itinerary.
Hi, it is at Padstow petrol station, which is just outside the town, off the main B3276. The postcode is PL28 8RW. I hope you can find it!
(Tesco ones are pretty much always rubbish, we’ve found!)
There is a terrible mistake coming and what no one has properly considered …..or mentioned it here….it’s this..
At the moment the problem has eased very slightly owing to a number of chargers going in against the slow take up to full electric. However, the geometric rate of climb of the charges is going to be massively over run by the geometric rate of climb of people making the switch.
The lady here has Already discussed the issues but with less than 5% of the car population
having gone over. It’s due to fear and cost, but once this starts to become accepted we will be into a world of pain no one ever thought possible….
Run the numbers ….!