Does the lady protest too much?

[Rolfe]

This story here.

NADINE DORRIES: Why I handed my electric car back

NADINE DORRIES (pictured): One Sunday last December, it was snowing when I finally admitted it to myself: I had made a dreadful mistake in buying an electric car.

www.dailymail.co.uk

OK, it's the Daily Fail, and it's going for the controversial click-bait, but this is an article published today, referring to events last December, so it's not old (like the 2019 story the Spectator keeps re-tweeting).

The Zoë has a 52 KWh battery with a claimed range of 239 miles. But not on a motorway in December, madam. It's a 250 mile trip. She doesn't say if she returned the same day or not. But we seem to pick her up at the start of her return journey when she's on 30% charge and panicking because the car heater is causing the range to drop precipitously. So she's asking about charging opportunities in the town from where she is setting off.

There are three rapid charging locations in Lytham St Anne's, and the one she rejected as being broken (Booth's) actually has two Instavolts. Both broken? Really? And the other two locations? There are three more locations in nearby Lytham, including another Booth's with another two Instavolts. She's insisting that "Available fast chargers, I had come to realise, more or less vanished north of the Watford Gap." I don't think that four Instavolts and four Blink chargers in a fairly small radius is "vanished".

The next move is to "pull in to Stafford services" (on the M6). That's a good hundred miles into the 250-mile return journey, from the failure to get a charge in Lytham St Anne's. She can't have got there on 30% SoC, in a Zoë. Something really doesn't add up here. Gloss over the obligatory complaint about not being able to find the chargers, and then the charger taking ten minutes to talk to the car. She then has a wait of "at least an hour" but doesn't want to walk to the service station in the freezing rain. Well, we can all sympathise.

This was apparently "the last straw" that caused her to sell the car (and get a plug-in hybrid). She lives in London and most of her driving is done using home charging. (She seems to be implying that she only got her home charger after she got rid of the Zoë, but that would be very odd.)

In fact the rant is almost entirely against the public charging network, and there's no doubt she has a point. Too many broken chargers, and too many chargers sited with no shelter at the far end of a car park from the coffee shop. But the tenor of the article is all implying that this is the car's fault. And of course it's the fault of the car heater that she had to stop to charge at all!

A 500 mile round trip in the depths of winter, with presumably no chance to charge at her destination (she was picking up her mother). That's arguably four charging stops, to be reasonably safe. What happened at the other three? How did she get from Lytham St Anne's to Stafford anyway? She doesn't mention this. What about planning? Panicking at 30% charge, in an area with eight rapid chargers on six sites, but going on another 100 miles before stopping at a motorway service station? Having gone past multiple available chargers to get there?

It's a complete taradiddle. Complain about the siting of chargers by all means. Complain that sometimes one is broken, for sure, but don't make out that there's only one charger north of Stafford and that was broken, because it's nonsense.

Pootling about London and the Home Counties in an electric car you can charge at home should be a walk in the park. Even using the heater! Getting rid of it because of one experience where the main issue was lack of planning (and isn't even being narrated honestly) is madness. You need to do a 500-mile journey in winter in one day, hire an ICE car! Oh, but this was the last straw. What else happened, Madam?

I'm a bit tired of all the anti-EV hatchet jobs, and especially the ones where the complaint is about the charging network, but this is used to fuel a rant against the cars themselves. I mean, what is the agenda here?

 

[Gadget Geek]

Valid points about the number of reliable chargers and where they are sited, but the rest of it can be put down to user error and a huge chunk of artistic license for dramatic effect.

 

[Rolfe]

Dramatic effect being more anti-EV rhetoric. It sounds a bit like a Londoner going well outside her comfort zone and indeed competence zone, and not realising it. As if the actual car is to blame for the owner's lack of planning. I think the DM liked it because a repentant enthusiast (or claimed enthusiast) is always good knocking copy.

A major rant about why EV drivers are expected to get out of their cars and initiate a charge in a downpour, then walk five minutes to the nearest coffee shop in said downpour, now that would be something. Nobody builds petrol pumps without a canopy!

But that wouldn't be dissing the EV concept, would it?

 

[Ruislip Resident]

This story here.

NADINE DORRIES: Why I handed my electric car back

NADINE DORRIES (pictured): One Sunday last December, it was snowing when I finally admitted it to myself: I had made a dreadful mistake in buying an electric car.

www.dailymail.co.uk

OK, it's the Daily Fail, and it's going for the controversial click-bait, but this is an article published today, referring to events last December, so it's not old (like the 2019 story the Spectator keeps re-tweeting).

The Zoë has a 52 KWh battery with a claimed range of 239 miles. But not on a motorway in December, madam. It's a 250 mile trip. She doesn't say if she returned the same day or not. But we seem to pick her up at the start of her return journey when she's on 30% charge and panicking because the car heater is causing the range to drop precipitously. So she's asking about charging opportunities in the town from where she is setting off.

There are three rapid charging locations in Lytham St Anne's, and the one she rejected as being broken (Booth's) actually has two Instavolts. Both broken? Really? And the other two locations? There are three more locations in nearby Lytham, including another Booth's with another two Instavolts. She's insisting that "Available fast chargers, I had come to realise, more or less vanished north of the Watford Gap." I don't think that four Instavolts and four Blink chargers in a fairly small radius is "vanished".

The next move is to "pull in to Stafford services" (on the M6). That's a good hundred miles into the 250-mile return journey, from the failure to get a charge in Lytham St Anne's. She can't have got there on 30% SoC, in a Zoë. Something really doesn't add up here. Gloss over the obligatory complaint about not being able to find the chargers, and then the charger taking ten minutes to talk to the car. She then has a wait of "at least an hour" but doesn't want to walk to the service station in the freezing rain. Well, we can all sympathise.

This was apparently "the last straw" that caused her to sell the car (and get a plug-in hybrid). She lives in London and most of her driving is done using home charging. (She seems to be implying that she only got her home charger after she got rid of the Zoë, but that would be very odd.)

In fact the rant is almost entirely against the public charging network, and there's no doubt she has a point. Too many broken chargers, and too many chargers sited with no shelter at the far end of a car park from the coffee shop. But the tenor of the article is all implying that this is the car's fault. And of course it's the fault of the car heater that she had to stop to charge at all!

A 500 mile round trip in the depths of winter, with presumably no chance to charge at her destination (she was picking up her mother). That's arguably four charging stops, to be reasonably safe. What happened at the other three? How did she get from Lytham St Anne's to Stafford anyway? She doesn't mention this. What about planning? Panicking at 30% charge, in an area with eight rapid chargers on six sites, but going on another 100 miles before stopping at a motorway service station? Having gone past multiple available chargers to get there?

It's a complete taradiddle. Complain about the siting of chargers by all means. Complain that sometimes one is broken, for sure, but don't make out that there's only one charger north of Stafford and that was broken, because it's nonsense.

Pootling about London and the Home Counties in an electric car you can charge at home should be a walk in the park. Even using the heater! Getting rid of it because of one experience where the main issue was lack of planning (and isn't even being narrated honestly) is madness. You need to do a 500-mile journey in winter in one day, hire an ICE car! Oh, but this was the last straw. What else happened, Madam?

I'm a bit tired of all the anti-EV hatchet jobs, and especially the ones where the complaint is about the charging network, but this is used to fuel a rant against the cars themselves. I mean, what is the agenda here?

She is out of work and maybe needed money .

 

[Rolfe]

And the Daily Fail will pay for an article knocking EVs. Even though the real culprit, if you read the subtext, is the present government for failing in its pledge to improve the charging network. And she's not even right in what she says about that.

 

[paulm]

Thanks for reminding me never to read the daily bigot (allegedly a newspaper) or any drivel penned by Dorries.

 

[Gomev]

The Daily Fail loves anti-EV stories, it has loads of them.

 

[Rolfe]

It's depressing. A campaign to get the charging network better, and/or to get charging locations provided with the ameneties ICE car drivers take for granted, would be really useful. But dissing EVs themselves because of deficiencies in the charging network is counter-productive.

That article reads as if the author has simply set off on a 500-mile round trip in snowy weather without even thinking about where or when she's going to charge. Getting an EV without thinking about this is pretty daft. Getting to 5000 miles and still not thinking about it is perverse.

She was even complaining about a shortage of chargers in London, which was downright weird. If she lives in London with a home charger, why does she care? Or did she really not get her wall box until she'd traded in the Zoë for a hybrid?

There could have been a story there. 500 miles in winter, in snow. You could do that in an ICE car with only one five-minute stop to fill up. To do it in a Zoë you'd need at least three charging stops. And each stop would be something like half an hour to an hour. And every time you'd be getting out somewhere with no shelter, and probably a walk of several minutes to get to anywhere with a cup of coffee.

That's a genuine issue. Do you want to stop for that length of time every couple of hours? Even if you do, the discomfort of cold and wet and dark and no facilities is pretty off-putting. She could have written about that. But instead we got a mish-mash of poor planning and frankly inaccurate narrative.

 

[Ruislip Resident]

It's depressing. A campaign to get the charging network better, and/or to get charging locations provided with the ameneties ICE car drivers take for granted, would be really useful. But dissing EVs themselves because of deficiencies in the charging network is counter-productive.

That article reads as if the author has simply set off on a 500-mile round trip in snowy weather without even thinking about where or when she's going to charge. Getting an EV without thinking about this is pretty daft. Getting to 5000 miles and still not thinking about it is perverse.

She was even complaining about a shortage of chargers in London, which was downright weird. If she lives in London with a home charger, why does she care? Or did she really not get her wall box until she'd traded in the Zoë for a hybrid?

There could have been a story there. 500 miles in winter, in snow. You could do that in an ICE car with only one five-minute stop to fill up. To do it in a Zoë you'd need at least three charging stops. And each stop would be something like half an hour to an hour. And every time you'd be getting out somewhere with no shelter, and probably a walk of several minutes to get to anywhere with a cup of coffee.

That's a genuine issue. Do you want to stop for that length of time every couple of hours? Even if you do, the discomfort of cold and wet and dark and no facilities is pretty off-putting. She could have written about that. But instead we got a mish-mash of poor planning and frankly inaccurate narrative.

To add to that though if you have home charging, the relative disadvantage of stopping 3 times for 30 minutes v one 5 minute petrol stop [assuming no refreshment or rest stops by swapping drivers, toilet breaks being straight in and out] on a very occasional 500 mile jouney is more than offset by the advantages of not going out for petrol in your normal domestic routine. Even with decent local public charging as in London its worth that occasional inconvenience.

 

[Rolfe]

Totally agree. That's why I bought my EV! My nearest petrol station is an 18-mile round trip. With my Golf I was always calculating, where do I stop to get petrol to save making a trip to Penicuik just for that. (A friend remarked recently that she does the same thing - "I really resent having to make a special journey just to get petrol!") Now I always know I have enough charge to do what I'm going to do when I take the car out of the garage. It's brilliant.

Long trips are a different issue though, and the balance of convenience shifts. The question is, how often are you likely to do such a trip, and how much will it inconvenience you? With the best will in the world, charging stops will prevent you doing the journey in the time an ICE car could do it. In winter, in the dark in freezing rain, this is going to be a lot less pleasant that on a summer afternoon. It's something to think about.

I got the impression that the author of that article hadn't, she just drove off into the winter night with no plan, imagining she'd just find a charger as and when she needed it. Maybe some day it will be possible to do that! But if she had thought about it, what would she have done?

If I found that I had to do a 500-mile round trip in one day in winter, I would hire an ICE car for the day, no question. Drive my EV to the car-hire depot, park up, use the ICE car to do the trip, then drive home in my EV after handing it back. I'll probably never have to do this, but it's something I thought about when I bought my EV.

That would make a genuinely interesting article, highlighting the huge advantages of EVs for day-to-day driving, but also the disadvantages for a very long trip, and looking at ways to deal with that.

ETA: Her journey was actually 250 miles. I think it's reasonable to do that without stopping. Or maybe that's just me. I've always been surprised when passengers have asked me to stop when we didn't need fuel. But a five-minute toilet break is a different thing from a 45-minute charging break.

As I said, if I'd had to do the round trip in a day, in December, I'd have left my EV at home, full stop. If I'd been staying overnight at the destination I'd have taken the EV. I'd have planned a charging stop on the way out. I'd have taken the granny charger if there was any hope of being able to charge overnight and set off at a high SoC, but if not, I'd have planned a charge at of near the destination, either before arrival or on departure. I'd have planned another on the way home.

I think as a two-day exercise that's entirely practical and not a terrible imposition. But the round trip in one day in winter isn't something I'd want to tackle.

 

[Gadget Geek]

I got the impression that the author of that article hadn't, she just drove off into the winter night with no plan, imagining she'd just find a charger as and when she needed it.

The quote, "I'm going outside now . . . I may be some time" comes to mind.

 

[Rolfe]

Except, Captain Oates knew exactly what he was doing.

 

[tsedge]

Anti-EV articles are par for the course and two a penny at the moment, many do seem to originate in London where a car is often an optional extra, not a necessity, and people do not typically have experience of long EV journeys.

I'm sure they will continue until most of us have EVs and then something else will be the new headline.

I stopped reading the papers around the millennium.

 

[Rolfe]

I only saw an image of the front page of that paper, tweeted because of the headline (something entirely different) and when I saw that article punted as well, I googled it to see what it was all about.

I don't understand the agenda. Everyone I have spoken to who has an EV is full of praise for the driving experience and the convenience of home charging. I've had several people congratulate me on going all-electric, and no negative comments. But certain interests (and they seem to be right-wing) seem to want to persuade everyone that EVs are a disaster.

 

[tsedge]

I only saw an image of the front page of that paper, tweeted because of the headline (something entirely different) and when I saw that article punted as well, I googled it to see what it was all about.

I don't understand the agenda. Everyone I have spoken to who has an EV is full of praise for the driving experience and the convenience of home charging. I've had several people congratulate me on going all-electric, and no negative comments. But certain interests (and they seem to be right-wing) seem to want to persuade everyone that EVs are a disaster.

I think the agenda is just to sensationalise and sell papers, EVs are just a convenient target, then the stories are angled and slanted and exaggerated to fit the narrative.

I stopped reading the papers when the internet started to provide alternative news sources that were less driven by sales and more interested in facts and practical help.

 

[Rolfe]

One can still read the bits of the papers one wants on the internet, too!

I said to a friend the other day, "there was a good review of this show in the Guardian". She replied that she didn't read the Guardian. I said I'd simply followed a link to the review, tweeted out by the group performing (which I follow). She shrugged and just repeated "I don't read the Guardian." I don't think she was telling me that she boycotts the paper, and wouldn't click on a link to it. But she isn't on Twitter and I don't think she realises how people graze content these days, looking at the odd article from a wide range of publications.

 

[tsedge]

Agreed. I am not saying I don't read articles from papers from time to time, via the internet, I do, but I rarely find them useful other than a starting point from which to begin researching the true facts (separate from their filters/spin/bias) and I don't sit down and "read the paper" or anything like that.

 

[Rolfe]

Me neither, not any more. And yet when I bought this house, one of the plus points was that a schoolboy could be engaged to put a paper through my letterbox every morning!

Then stuff happened.

I'm just surprised that there are still people who say "I don't read the xxxx paper" as if that's the only way you'd come across an article.

 

[Gomev]

Totally agree. That's why I bought my EV! My nearest petrol station is an 18-mile round trip. With my Golf I was always calculating, where do I stop to get petrol to save making a trip to Penicuik just for that. (A friend remarked recently that she does the same thing - "I really resent having to make a special journey just to get petrol!") Now I always know I have enough charge to do what I'm going to do when I take the car out of the garage. It's brilliant.

...

And not only that, think about the cost. 18 mile round trip, possibly a third to half a gallon and at todays prices somewhere costs around £2-£3 just to fill and end up with the car in exactly the same place.
With your EV plug in overnight with an EV tariff you'd get at least 20-30 kWh for that wasted money on the trip.

 

[Rolfe]

Practically never actually did it, mind. I always filled up while I was out and about for other reasons.

I don't have an EV tariff, but the principle still holds.