I glide around the streets looking for a charger... not working, not working, not working, full, full, full
On a Friday night recently with a longish drive ahead the next day, I headed out to find an electric car charger in Glasgow.
Not working, not working, full, full, full. Nothing unusual about that but for the first time I noticed loads of other electric car drivers eerily gliding about doing exactly the same thing. Tesla Model 3s, Nissan Leafs and now suddenly lots of Volkswagens.
Uh-oh. I gave up and, not having an electric charger at home, got up very early the next morning to start the search again.
Literally seconds after I found one and plugged in a man in an electric Renault pulled in behind me. Now, the fastest chargers – the only ones that are practical to use unless you are happy to take hours – may look like they take two cars at a time, but they don’t. So he had to wait for an hour until I had filled up. That’s life with an EV or, more formally, an All Electric Vehicle.
I do this charger jig three or four times a week, putting up with the other things they don’t tell you on the EV tin, like dragging heavy, often wet, cables about, going through the hopeless RFID swipe card dance where it’s a lottery whether the charger will even accept my Chargeplace Scotland card and then it’s been 16 minutes recently for a helpdesk somewhere in England to answer a call and, er, they’re nice enough.
Everybody knows the cars don’t do a fraction of the distance the manufacturers claim but neither do petrol or diesels, but did you know you’re not supposed to charge your battery regularly to its max or you will damage it? The real range on my Tesla Model 3 with some motorway driving? Probably nearer 140 miles a fill. Yes I got to Inverness once, very slowly, then spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to find a vacant, working charger to get back home.
Why put up with all of this when, frankly, the build quality of the car is not great and I shudder to think how I’m going to get it fixed if anything goes wrong as most mechanics won’t, touch them. And all that Elon Musk self-driving stuff? Save your money for a magic bean with a steering wheel.
Well, there are the tax breaks, a six-year government interest-free loan available to anyone and as the electricity on many public chargers has until now been free, it offsets the high purchase price. One of the biggest surprises on getting a new electric car – and I got my first four years ago – is how run down and dog-eared that charger network already looks. And if they are really still building new chargers in Scotland, I can’t say I’ve noticed them. Rapid chargers are still startlingly few and very far between and break down with genuinely astonishing regularity. For too long.
So what I’m saying is this: electric cars? Still pretty rubbish unless you’re using them locally and charging at home. And if you’re charging at home? Four charges a week, say £11 a charge, is getting dangerously near the cost of running a better built, easier fixed, more comfortable and – get this – quieter to drive – because noise comes from tyre roar and wind not engines of a diesel or petrol car.
Yes, there are more EVS on the road, but instead of building enough chargers to support them councils seem to be controlling demand by charging for that electricity instead. Many councils across Scotland have done that. Inevitable? Yes.
Too early? It will be if it stops the growth of cleaner, healthier, all-round electric cars.