A Charge Machine and Some Clotted Cream

What I learned about long distance driving in an electric car.

Day 1 – Charge 1

Admittedly, after a 10-day holiday in Switzerland which was, to be quite honest, superb, I do feel slightly guilty at embarking on another trip away so soon afterwards. Especially seeing as everything was so eye-wateringly expensive over there.

This time though, rather than relying on public transport which has its own share of challenges, we decided to take the car – in fact, the all-electric BMW iX3 which has a published range of around 280 miles and a realistic range of about 230.

So, after charging up at home with the extremely reliable Wallbox 7.5 kWh charger the night before, we set off with a full charge.

Devon is our destination. In fact, more accurately we are heading for a seaside town known for its yachts, ferries and beaches. Salcombe?is located on a magnificent estuary with turquoise waters crammed with yachts and boats of all kinds. It has been a popular destination for us for many years and we usually stop off along the way to break the journey up so, when I say we stopped over night in Stow-on-the-Wold it has nothing to do with the fact we are in an electric car, we would have done this anyway.

Stow is around 173 miles from where we live and by the time we arrived, the range indicator on the BMW was showing around 59 miles, giving a range of 232 miles. Clearly this meant we needed to do a re-charge.

After a long and slow journey in holiday traffic, we checked in to The Cottage, our AirBNB bed for the night and wandered off to find a nice cup of tea. Not sure of how many tea rooms there might be in Stow, we quickly found a table in the first one we came across, Lucy’s, which was a mistake for 2 reasons 1) there are actually about 10 tea rooms in Stow and 2) because the clotted cream tea scored about 1 out of 5. The scone was terrible, and the awful taste could not be disguised by the clotted cream as there was hardly enough to cover half of it, let alone all of it. We got too excited and opted for a cream tea in Gloucestershire when we should have waited until we were in Devon!

Over our miserable offering, we cast our minds to the problem of re-charging the car for our onward journey. The first thing I noticed is that there are no reliable apps or databases for charge point locations. In my experience, and it is purely my own opinion and in no way represents that of anyone else that I am aware of, Zap Maps is lauded to be the best but actually is far from it. It needs a good clear out of all the dead wood and misleading and inaccurate information that makes you feel like giving up rather than persevering to find a way through the maze of almost useless information.

Of course, my BMW App tells me where to find charge points too, but quite frankly this was not much better. In the end I resorted to Google maps, and I have to say, this is actually quite accurate and up to date.

According to Mr Google, there are 3 charging points in my local vicinity, all 7.5kWh, and the nearest is a BP Pulse, so I opt for this. It is actually extremely difficult to find. I was expecting a huge green and yellow branded filling station and was slightly dismayed when I drove into a housing estate. Thankfully, the BP Pulse charging point was not attached to the house wall of an unsuspecting resident wondering why, actually, it was his house on the estate that attracted so much attention, but rather a single lonely, lowly unassuming pillar in a parking bay.

Great!

Err, not great. It didn’t work. As an older charger, it did not have any cables attached but no worries, mine are handy and accessible. First though, I need to follow the instructions. Unfortunately, there weren’t any and it was clearly out of order – it looked abandoned. Nothing I could say or do was going to bring this back to life.

OK, back to Mr Google. Just a little farther away was a Tesco Superstore. Now I had heard that Tesco’s obligingly provide charging points and, furthermore, they are free of charge. Surely not. On the flip side, I had heard that they only give a maximum of 3 hours charging and then disconnect. Not really having any choice, I head over to check it out.

First things first, you can’t miss it. A huge sign telling me where the charge point is declaring that every little helps and Tesco is doing its bit to help the planet. Secondly, the instructions are so blatantly clear and obvious, even I couldn’t go wrong and thirdly, they were available (i.e. not in use) ! OK, so far so good, but does it work?

Yes it does, and honestly, it was a dream and could not have been easier. Hats off to Messrs. Tesco and Co who have really thought this one through properly.

Not having used one of these before, I pop in to customer services to check I am OK to use it without buying anything and if I leave it there I won’t get a ticket. All good. So off I go. Armed with my 'myBMW' App, I can see the rate at which my car is charging and as the 3 hour mark approaches, while enjoying a simply superb Moussaka at Alexiou’s (https://alexious.co.uk ), I expect it to stop, as I had been told it would. But no, instead it keeps on going so I leave it there and retreat to the comfort of my AirBNB lodgings for the evening.

Next morning, I am delighted to see that I have been given a completely full charge, completely free of charge. Thankyou, Tesco, for a quite simply amazing service.

Day 2 beckons and we now need to see what is in store for use here.

What I learned:

·???????There is no point trying to plan your EV charge stopping points en-route as there is no database capable of supporting this, it is outdated and inaccurate, and even if there was, there is no guarantee it would work when you get there

·???????Do give AirBNB a try – there are some really good finds on there

·???????Don’t stop at the first tea rooms you come across, there may be better ones around the corner

·???????Alexiou’s Moussaka is stunning, the best I have had

·???????Tesco’s charging set up is really good.

#bmw #evcharging #airbnb #tesco