Tips before setting off on first long journey

[BishiBoshi]

Cheap V2L adapter from eBay, kettle

 

[Bam Bam]

All the above plus a couple of folding chairs, sarnies, beverages, and cake. You are on holiday ,enjoy the charging experience. Scrub the above if its a rainswept, windy. foul day on a boring industrial estate after closing hours. Choose wisely?

I remember driving across France there were lots of off motorway points that were basically little picnic areas surrounded by Forest. Lovely.

Sounds like you are familiar with the more likely UK experience.

To be fair Tot Hill on the A34 which is where we did our 'practice' had a couple of picnic benches!

 

[Bam Bam]

Cheap V2L adapter from eBay, kettle

Already got the cheap V2L adapter

Wasn't going to take it on holiday but maybe I will after your message!

 

[BishiBoshi]

Already got the cheap V2L adapter

Wasn't going to take it on holiday but maybe I will after your message!

Never leave home without it!

 

[Caramaddy]

Bam Bam - do let us all know how you get on!

 

[Caramaddy]

Good luck and have a nice break!

 

[Rolfe]

I'm going to disagree with a few folk here. I can't see the point in running a car down only to 30% charge before recharging. You're missing out on the fastest part of the charging curve, which is 10% to 30%, and in the SR in particular you're not going to get that far and you'll probably end up doing one more charge than need be. My long trip aim is to charge 10% to 85% at each stop.

First, I would caution you to make sure the car has balanced recently and regularly before you go, but as it's an SR you probably do that routinely. That way you can have reasonable confidence that the GOM is not lying to you. Another thing to reassure you in that respect is to do a single non-stop AC charge from <10% to 100% and balance not too long before you go, or at least in the three months before you go. The car needs to see the whole range of the battery now and again (hysteresis curve, coulomb counting, yadda yadda) to calibrate the GOM accurately. Might be a bit late to do that now, but if you've already done it then you know you're in a good place.

What I have taken to doing is to titrate the range showing on the GOM with the distance to my next planned charging stop as shown in Android Auto. If the margin of error is looking a bit dicey then I just slow down a bit until it's looking more reasonable. That's how I arrived at Annandale Water with this showing.

4% charge, six miles range. With the ACC set to 75 mph. Swept into the service station without a care in the world. I trust Caliban, having done this a few times. Never experienced any sudden unexpected drop in range when close to zero.

Sure, turn everything to eco and turn off the HVAC so you freeze or fry if you want to. Slipstream at 60 behind lorries if you want to set some sort of personal best. But electricity isn't that expensive, especially if you don't go off road-tripping too often. I say enjoy the car, enjoy the speed it can go at, use its features as you want to, and be comfortable in the cabin, and don't make a fetish of paying a fiver less to Gridserve just for some sort of bragging rights.

If you were in an ICE car you wouldn't suddenly start hypermiling and not using the aircon just because you were on a long trip, would you? So why do it with an EV?

 

[Bam Bam]

Journey out was textbook!

Stopped at a Tesla supercharger while wifey picked up the provisions from the nearby Lidl.

Plugged it in during torrential Welsh rain, but after a while it died down.

Most of the stalls were in use when I arrived, but almost all were empty when I left.

Arrived with just under 50% battery left so the charge speed wasn't that quick. Got up to about 60, but then tailed off a bit when I checked a bit later. Wasn't religious about checking the speed though - took the dog for a wander around the local streets.

After 22 minutes It was up to 80% and I stopped the charge and went back to Lidl. About 33% added (16.5kWh). Tesla charged £6.97 for 17kWh.

Journey interrupted by some bad traffic on the M4 at Newport and Swansea, and a period stopped as the emergency services dealt with something serious right at the point the motorway ends.

We had to stop at the Aldi which was our alternative store, which had another cheap set of chargers nearby. Could have stopped there after all!

We arrived at the cottage with 32% left. So we would have nearly been able to make it on one charge, but it wouldn't have been comfortable!

The charging here at the cottage is paid for (when I assumed it would be free but maybe that was naive of me!) and surprisingly expensive for AC. Still slightly cheaper than DC charging though so may as well fill up at some point while we are here.

Got about 3.9 miles per kWh average. Mostly drove at 67 or 68 on the Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), but put my foot down a couple of times when I got in the fast lane to overtake.

Overall - the car was a dream and there are a plethora of charging options. I went for Tesla as it was cheaper, but might use an electroverse or gridserve one on the way back.

 

[Caramaddy]

Journey out was textbook!

Stopped at a Tesla supercharger while wifey picked up the provisions from the nearby Lidl.

Plugged it in during torrential Welsh rain, but after a while it died down.

Most of the stalls were in use when I arrived, but almost all were empty when I left.

Arrived with just under 50% battery left so the charge speed wasn't that quick. Got up to about 60, but then tailed off a bit when I checked a bit later. Wasn't religious about checking the speed though - took the dog for a wander around the local streets.

After 22 minutes It was up to 80% and I stopped the charge and went back to Lidl. About 33% added (16.5kWh). Tesla charged £6.97 for 17kWh.

View attachment 27899View attachment 27900

Journey interrupted by some bad traffic on the M4 at Newport and Swansea, and a period stopped as the emergency services dealt with something serious right at the point the motorway ends.

We had to stop at the Aldi which was our alternative store, which had another cheap set of chargers nearby.

We arrived at the cottage with 32% left. So we would have nearly been able to make it on one charge, but it wouldn't have been comfortable!

The charging here at the cottage is paid for (when I assumed it would be free but maybe that was naive of me!) and surprisingly expensive for AC. Still slightly cheaper than DC charging though so may as well fill up at some point while we are here.

Got about 3.9 miles per kWh average. Mostly drove at 67 or 68 on the Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), but put my foot down a couple of times when I got in the fast lane to overtake.

Overall - the car was a dream and there are a pletora of charging options. I went for Tesla as it was cheaper, but might use an electroverse or gridserve one on the way back.

Brilliant! That is good to know!

 

[JeanLeFlambeur]

I'm going to disagree with a few folk here. I can't see the point in running a car down only to 30% charge before recharging. You're missing out on the fastest part of the charging curve, which is 10% to 30%, and in the SR in particular you're not going to get that far and you'll probably end up doing one more charge than need be. My long trip aim is to charge 10% to 85% at each stop.

First, I would caution you to make sure the car has balanced recently and regularly before you go, but as it's an SR you probably do that routinely. That way you can have reasonable confidence that the GOM is not lying to you. Another thing to reassure you in that respect is to do a single non-stop AC charge from <10% to 100% and balance not too long before you go, or at least in the three months before you go. The car needs to see the whole range of the battery now and again (hysteresis curve, coulomb counting, yadda yadda) to calibrate the GOM accurately. Might be a bit late to do that now, but if you've already done it then you know you're in a good place.

What I have taken to doing is to titrate the range showing on the GOM with the distance to my next planned charging stop as shown in Android Auto. If the margin of error is looking a bit dicey then I just slow down a bit until it's looking more reasonable. That's how I arrived at Annandale Water with this showing.

View attachment 27858

4% charge, six miles range. With the ACC set to 75 mph. Swept into the service station without a care in the world. I trust Caliban, having done this a few times. Never experienced any sudden unexpected drop in range when close to zero.

Sure, turn everything to eco and turn off the HVAC so you freeze or fry if you want to. Slipstream at 60 behind lorries if you want to set some sort of personal best. But electricity isn't that expensive, especially if you don't go off road-tripping too often. I say enjoy the car, enjoy the speed it can go at, use its features as you want to, and be comfortable in the cabin, and don't make a fetish of paying a fiver less to Gridserve just for some sort of bragging rights.

If you were in an ICE car you wouldn't suddenly start hypermiling and not using the aircon just because you were on a long trip, would you? So why do it with an EV?

Here, here, to enjoying the car and not compromising on your ride or comfort to squeeze out a few extra miles or baby the battery.

Still, I'd have so sweat stains in several places getting that close to running out of fuel, regardless of petrol or electric. ?

 

[tonybridge]

I don't see the point in buying a car for 35-ishK and not using the AC?!

You've done your trip now, so more tips are probably redundant - but charge when you can, and don't wait until the very last moment and run the car down to 10%, as that's when you'll find all the charge points occupied or broken

 

[Bam Bam]

I don't see the point in buying a car for 35-ishK and not using the AC?!

You've done your trip now, so more tips are probably redundant - but charge when you can, and don't wait until the very last moment and run the car down to 10%, as that's when you'll find all the charge points occupied or broken

Got the journey home to come!

Got my eye on a top-up either the Tesla chargers at Newport or the Ionity ones at Magor.

 

[DrCAN]

My tip would be to use open to all Tesla super chargers if you can. Many are open to all now and far cheaper than everyone else. If you get the Tesla app it’s easy to find them and you can use the ones that don’t yet support contactless payment.

Often there are Gridserve for 79p per kWh with Tesla across the way for 45p per kWh. Big saving! Plus if everyone does that they will have to reduce their prices!

Haha, I really need to start reading through everything before I post. ?

I really like the Tesla arrangements but have found great difficult with the app. Friendly Tesla drivers nod in understanding so it must happen a lot. The chargers I use are at country locations so the mobile signal can be poor. I find it very difficult to connect early morning - maybe the servers are in the US? Consequently make sure you have a Plan B.

 

[Martinonline]

@DrCAN, do you have mobile problems through your phone's network and/or through the WiFi hotspot on your Trophy?

 

[Bam Bam]

Just to say the journey back went fine with a different Tesla stop (Newport Celtic Manor).

The final journey didn't start well as the charger at our cottage was very slow when I used it that morning (2kw vs the 6.5kw it should have been), so we were leaving at 85% rather than 100%. Annoyingly there was an idle fee on it, so I didn't leave it plugged in overnight as I would have been charged for nothing!

I mostly set the ACC to 68mph, but at quite a lot of points in Wales the M4 wasn't going that fast so it dropped us down to 60 odd.

Stopped at the Tesla charger for about 22 minutes and bought 17kw to get up to 68%.

Arrived home with 18% left, with efficiency of 4.0 (surprisingly good!).

So I still haven't got the battery below 10%

I plan to write the journey up on my blog but my takeaway was:

• It is perfectly fine to do a long journey in a standard MG4 (which we all knew)
• Tesla chargers are great - no problems at all. Lots of other Tesla's there and a couple of other brands of car as well (Volvo, Mercedes).
• It would be good to have more charging options off the motorway - the options were pretty poor going Eastbound on the M4 in England. I might have pushed on to somewhere like Leigh Delamere services and had a little top-up if there was more than one charger there.

Overall, those who are worried about having an EV as their only/main vehicle don't really need to worry about driving beyond the range.

It takes a bit of planning ahead but certainly do-able, and will only get easier as more chargers come online.

 

[DixieTGS]

Thanks for the write up. We were in the same traffic as you on Monday for a week in the Cardigan area, but due to luggage space not in the MG.

Although the charger maps look a bit sparce that far West, I think in future we'd be OK using the chargers at some of the Pembrokeshire National Park beaches as you can do 4 hours at a time. Connecting an rfid card to Dragon charging looks pretty essential as phone coverage was a bit patchy on the coast.

Our first long trip is up to Kendal in a week or so. Hopefully M5, M6 will be as easy as it gets, although at a first glance the number of chargers at the service stations is less than I was expecting ?.

 

[Bam Bam]

Although the charger maps look a bit sparce that far West, I think in future we'd be OK using the chargers at some of the Pembrokeshire National Park beaches as you can do 4 hours at a time. Connecting an rfid card to Dragon charging looks pretty essential as phone coverage was a bit patchy on the coast.

We had a charger at the cottage, so it wasn't an issue.

However, there were several car parks that we visited (e.g. in Amroth, Tenby) which had chargers we could have used if we didn't have charging at the place.

All the car park chargers we saw in Pembrokeshire were available.

"Our first long trip is up to Kendal in a week or so. Hopefully M5, M6 will be as easy as it gets, although at a first glance the number of chargers at the service stations is less than I was expecting ?."

Yes the slowness of the roll-out can be a bit disappointing, so it is worth checking. Some services only have one charger (not necessarily that fast), which is a much more risky place to stop than somewhere with 12.

Sometimes there are other chargers not too far off the motorway, though they might not have the same degree of services. Tesla chargers are often in isolated car parks from what I can tell. But might be worth a small detour for a better/cheaper charging experience.

 

[DixieTGS]

Sometimes there are other chargers not too far off the motorway, though they might not have the same degree of services. Tesla chargers are often in isolated car parks from what I can tell. But might be worth a small detour for a better/cheaper charging experience.

The Teslas at Trentham are just a couple of miles off the motorway and look perfect for my range. Possibly in both directions ?.

 

[PeteC]

It would be good to have more charging options off the motorway - the options were pretty poor going Eastbound on the M4 in England. I might have pushed on to somewhere like Leigh Delamere services and had a little top-up if there was more than one charger there.

Chippenham Pit Stop is just off junction 17, so only a very few miles after Leigh Delamare going East. It has 6 Ionity chargers. I often use that when visiting my son's family in Cardiff. Got a cafe there if you hit it at opening times.

 

[Bam Bam]

Thanks for the write up. We were in the same traffic as you on Monday for a week in the Cardigan area, but due to luggage space not in the MG.

Although the charger maps look a bit sparce that far West, I think in future we'd be OK using the chargers at some of the Pembrokeshire National Park beaches as you can do 4 hours at a time. Connecting an rfid card to Dragon charging looks pretty essential as phone coverage was a bit patchy on the coast.

Our first long trip is up to Kendal in a week or so. Hopefully M5, M6 will be as easy as it gets, although at a first glance the number of chargers at the service stations is less than I was expecting ?.

Dragon is on the electroverse so we could have used our electroverse RFID card if we didn't have charging at the cottage.

Those Tesla chargers off the M6 look good!

Chippenham Pit Stop is just off junction 17, so only a very few miles after Leigh Delamare going East. It has 6 Ionity chargers. I often use that when visiting my son's family in Cardiff. Got a cafe there if you hit it at opening times.

Good shout!

ABRP suggested the MFG chargers to the North of that junction, which is also on Electroverse like the Ionity ones you mentioned.

So perhaps that would have been fine were we not lured by the Tesla prices!

As promised, I wrote up our journey experience on my blog.

Link here if anyone is interested.