tonybridge
Established Member
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2023
- Messages
- 196
- Reaction score
- 233
- Points
- 83
- Location
- Berkshire
- Driving
- MG4 Trophy LR
Hi all
Had a great trip back home today, from Worcester to Maidenhead, along the A46 and M40. We have family in Worcester, so have done this several times over the past 14 months since we’ve had the MG4. One of the family has a home charger, so the usual pattern is to zip up the M40, sticking to 60-ish (this is really hard for me to do, but if I stick the ACC on, it is bearable), across to the M5, down to Worcester, and then put a few kWh into the tank via the home charger. We head for Warwick South on the way back to put in enough charge to get us home.
This weekend, we didn’t have access to the home charger in Warwick, so it was a 60mph trip up the M40, keeping the seat heating to a minimum, then across the A46 (Google promised a 15% saving on Energy) into the city. We parked in the King Street Car Park, which had 8x7kW Chargers (These don’t show up on ZapMap…), though they were all occupied when we turned up at about 2pm on Saturday. The rate seems to be 50p per kWh
so maybe I should have persisted until a bay was free and left it going overnight.
We headed off home at about 2pm on Sunday, and had a spirited drive down the deserted A46, a lovely smooth road with lots of gentle curves, and a really interesting drive. Warwick South was about 70 miles from Worcester, and we had about 35% left in the tank, so again, I kept to 60 (quite fast enough on this windy A-road) and heating on low. We made it with about 18% left – the AppleGreen bays were quite busy, with half of them occupied. Across the way is a bank of Tesla-only chargers, completely full today, with drivers huddled in their cabins looking across at us poor people with barely-disguised amusement at our antics! Though when I looked at the other cars around me (a couple of Mercedes, a Porsche, a Mustang, and an Infiniti) I felt a bit better!
Armed with the knowledge we’d gained from the AppleGreen engineer on our last visit at Christmas (see Charging at AppleGreen stations, Warwick Services) I first of all connected to the charger with the AG app (which took just a few seconds) and only then plugged in the cable. A quick Swipe on the app started the session. An email popped up on my phone, from AppleGreen, advising us of our charging session. The base charge is 72p per, though we are supposed to get a 5p discount via the app, I didn't see any evidence of this, but the whole charge cost us £28-ish. After a minute or so, we were charging at 130kW… we just had enough time for a pee and grab a Starbucks to go, and after 20 minutes, the MG’s tank was 75% full, and we were able to head off down the M40 for home, not worrying about turning up the seat heating, or the speed (though I only touched 70mph a couple of times, the road was quite busy and dusk was falling).
I was very impressed with AppleGreen!
Had a great trip back home today, from Worcester to Maidenhead, along the A46 and M40. We have family in Worcester, so have done this several times over the past 14 months since we’ve had the MG4. One of the family has a home charger, so the usual pattern is to zip up the M40, sticking to 60-ish (this is really hard for me to do, but if I stick the ACC on, it is bearable), across to the M5, down to Worcester, and then put a few kWh into the tank via the home charger. We head for Warwick South on the way back to put in enough charge to get us home.
This weekend, we didn’t have access to the home charger in Warwick, so it was a 60mph trip up the M40, keeping the seat heating to a minimum, then across the A46 (Google promised a 15% saving on Energy) into the city. We parked in the King Street Car Park, which had 8x7kW Chargers (These don’t show up on ZapMap…), though they were all occupied when we turned up at about 2pm on Saturday. The rate seems to be 50p per kWh
so maybe I should have persisted until a bay was free and left it going overnight.We headed off home at about 2pm on Sunday, and had a spirited drive down the deserted A46, a lovely smooth road with lots of gentle curves, and a really interesting drive. Warwick South was about 70 miles from Worcester, and we had about 35% left in the tank, so again, I kept to 60 (quite fast enough on this windy A-road) and heating on low. We made it with about 18% left – the AppleGreen bays were quite busy, with half of them occupied. Across the way is a bank of Tesla-only chargers, completely full today, with drivers huddled in their cabins looking across at us poor people with barely-disguised amusement at our antics! Though when I looked at the other cars around me (a couple of Mercedes, a Porsche, a Mustang, and an Infiniti) I felt a bit better!
Armed with the knowledge we’d gained from the AppleGreen engineer on our last visit at Christmas (see Charging at AppleGreen stations, Warwick Services) I first of all connected to the charger with the AG app (which took just a few seconds) and only then plugged in the cable. A quick Swipe on the app started the session. An email popped up on my phone, from AppleGreen, advising us of our charging session. The base charge is 72p per, though we are supposed to get a 5p discount via the app, I didn't see any evidence of this, but the whole charge cost us £28-ish. After a minute or so, we were charging at 130kW… we just had enough time for a pee and grab a Starbucks to go, and after 20 minutes, the MG’s tank was 75% full, and we were able to head off down the M40 for home, not worrying about turning up the seat heating, or the speed (though I only touched 70mph a couple of times, the road was quite busy and dusk was falling).
I was very impressed with AppleGreen!
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