Electric cars remind me of that old line about BBC Radio 3: I’m happy it exists without planning on using it myself. I’m a conscientious recycler, I switched to LED bulbs long before the law demanded it, I grow my own tomatoes – but at the same time I cheerfully charge about in a petrol vehicle. Electric cars are a brilliant idea … for other people. I don’t have a commute; the school run is done at a walk (sometimes in slippers). The only thing on charge in my garage is a cordless drill. It’s therefore with plenty of curiosity, but no little trepidation, that I watch the Renault ZOE being carefully decanted from its trailer. This is my first time. It’s very exciting.
The advantages of electric cars are easy to see on those regular short-haul journeys – the drive to work, the trip to the shops – but what about the longer haul? Is an electric car viable for destinations further afield? My assignment is to find out. Milton Keynes and Nottingham are two of the UK’s more progressive cities when it comes to sustainable transportation initiatives. They’re also 82 miles apart which, not entirely coincidentally, is an ideal distance to test how the ZOE performs when pushing its range limit.
First, we need a full charge. ZOE’s satnav is capable of locating charging stations but we’re using Zap Map, a smartphone app that has a constantly updated plot of charging points. Today Zap Map lists 10,754 connectors at 3,912 discrete locations around the UK – with 238 of those connectors having been installed in the past 30 days. We’re starting our journey from Stadium MK.
If you’re the sort of person who still refers to dialing a number or taping a TV programme, you’ll appreciate the colloquialisms of electric charging: you have an electricity pump; you fill up a tank. It feels rather tongue-in-cheek, but the joke transfers into the visual form too – the charging point at Stadium MK looks suspiciously like a traditional petrol pump, complete with hoses and nozzles.
The charging process is similar too. Plug the nozzle into the socket, tap your charging card on the reader, and the power starts to flow. The point at Stadium MK belongs to the POLAR Network – it offers access to more than 4,000 points across the UK, of which a small number are pay-as-you-go but the vast majority work on a flat rate. Membership to the POLAR Plus scheme is £7.85 a month, free for the first six months, and for this price you can charge as often as required.
The 43kWh charger at Stadium MK falls into the “rapid” category, commonly located at service stations on motorways and other major roads. ZOE has a 22kWh battery pack, so it should get an 80% charge in 28 minutes, according to the dash. Time for breakfast.
One unintended consequence of driving around in an electric car for any length of time is that you start to pay more attention to energy consumption of all kinds. A 1,500kcal fry-up equates to 1.74kWh. While I’m filling up with that, ZOE will take 12kWh on board.
Milton Keynes champions sustainable living and a low-carbon future. It was the first city in the UK to incorporate energy standards into its building regulations; encouraging on-site energy generation and windfarms. The city’s “redways” are an extensive network of cycle and pedestrian routes that parallel all the major roads. On the roads themselves wirelessly-charging electric buses are being trialled and, of course, charging points are springing up at pace. Partnering with POLAR, the city council has installed 170 “fast” and 56 “rapid” publicly-available points.
With a full charge on board, ZOE is showing a range of 82 miles. We programme the satnav for Nottingham, and it asks if we’d like to add in a charging stop, so we schedule a top-up at Watford Gap Services. Realistically, 10 minutes on charge would be ample, but we stop for 20 and give it a full charge.
The two charging bays at Watford Gap are part of the Ecotricity network, which offers more than 170 charging points along major highways. As the name suggests, this is power from renewables. Use of the pump is free – you simply need to register.
Our 20-minute break at Watford Gap gives plenty of time for a coffee and a leg stretch and the rest of the trip is pleasurable: ZOE is comfortable and easy to drive. The complete journey, including the charging stop, comes in at a little under two hours. A free charge at the Ecotricity point provides an excellent view of the BP forecourt, on which unleaded was retailing at £1.20 a litre. Obviously a petrol car would have made the trip 20 minutes quicker but fag packet maths suggests a comparable Renault Clio petrol hatchback, returning a frugal 61mpg, would have consumed fuel worth £7.33.
Green car on campus
Nottingham University’s Jubilee Campus is a study in urban sustainability. Built on brownfield land, it features rainwater harvesting, biomass boilers, and ground source heat pumps. In the 2015 GreenMetric sustainability rankings, Nottingham was declared the world’s most sustainable university for a third time. It has a hydrogen pump for the hardcore low-emissions driving enthusiast but, happily for us, also offers electric points.
The campus is the first place ZOE’s electric nature becomes obvious. The roads are mixed-use, the odd vehicle jockeying for space with students on foot or cycling. ZOE is quiet – listening-to-birdsong-while-driving-through-countryside quiet – but it isn’t silent. There’s an electrical hum from the motors and noise from wheels on the road – but crawling along at 5mph, these noises are slight. Thankfully the Zoe has a noise generator to warn people it is there. Gratifyingly, at least one pedestrian jumps when they realise they’ve been stalked by a car.
The campus charging points require the car’s own cable. They’re free to use during office hours for anyone with a parking permit or ticket. These are the standard-type chargers, supplying 7kWh and similar to the wall units that come with the car for home installation. It is possible to simply plug ZOE into a standard three-pin socket, and an alternative cable is also supplied for that eventuality – but it’s the emergency option as charging directly off the mains is best completed overnight. For us, needing 75%, the dash says we’ll be full in a little under three.
This is a situation you won’t come across with a daily commute, but it doesn’t cause any problems on this longer journey as we put our three hours to good use. Logic suggests that anyone making an occasional 150-mile round trip probably will need a three-hour stop anyway, because they’re going to a shopping centre, or having a day out, or attending an event. It’s quite unlikely this sort of distance involves neither a long stop nor a convenient rapid charger.
Our trip was outside the normal bounds of operation because, frankly, we’re playing with the technology. Had time been pressing, we’d have used a rapid charger at the Nottingham Park & Ride. We wanted to test the standard chargers, and so headed for the University.
Get over the cultural conditioning that insists everything has to happen quickly, and suddenly being compelled to make a longer pause actually becomes quite appealing: for us, that meant a photoshoot bereft of the usual hurry-up; a meeting without the watch-tapping haste; the opportunity to take a stroll around an RIBA award-winning campus and a tour of its cutting-edge vehicle engineering and aerospace labs. It was a longer, but more satisfying day – made all the more satisfying by journeying in a car of the ZOE’s calibre.
