POLESTAR 2
Motorway top-ups could be a thing of the past for our EV
WHY WE’RE RUNNING IT
MATT PRIOR
To see if an electric car fits into a high-mileage life
Maths and paperwork. Yikes. That is what’s occupying my Polestar time when I’m not driving the car at the minute. It’s new and an EV, so there are a few things still to sort out.
One of them is ensuring I get a £350 grant under the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme, which until April this year allows new EV buyers to part-fund a domestic EV charger. From April, it will apply only to flats or rental properties, so if you own a house, you’re on your own, squire.
The grant made the charger cost slightly more palatable: a high-three-figure bill (£930), rather than a four-figure one. I called a local company with decent reviews: they then recommended, and I agreed to, having them install a British-made unit from Hypervolt.
To comply with the grant regulations, it needs to be a smart charger in range of one’s wi-fi; apparently it will be pinged a few times a year by the grant giver. Not sure how you will comply with those regs from the sixth floor of a block of flats you don’t own, but there you go.
A smart charger like this allows owners to schedule cheaper off-peak charging, but the advantage for a high-mile work driver like me, who usually needs juicing to start as soon as I plug the car in, is that I know how many kw and pounds sterling I have deposited into the Polestar, so I can work out my expenses. (HMRC alternatively allows a rate of 4p per mile to cover business miles, which doesn’t really cover it.)
Which brings me to maths part two: working out precisely what the Polestar’s efficiency is, and how long public chargers take, by way of a spreadsheet and some head-scratching. For internally combusting long-term test cars, we just have a card sheet on which we scribble the mileage, litres and cost of each fill. EVS are necessarily more complex. I’m still working on it, because there are lots of things we, as a number of editorial teams, could calculate from the data, down to rating the average speed and reliability of charging networks.
Anyway, what I can tell you is that having a solid 7kw charger at home is transformative for heavy EV users (you will be absolutely unsurprised to learn).
Recent trips include the shortish hop to my younger child’s new university digs. For all of the Polestar’s high window line, rakish rear screen angle and narrow glass area, it’s worth remembering that it kind of comes from the people who bring you Volvos. So the rear seats fold to lift the luggage volume from 405 litres to 1095 litres and the frontmost cupholder is perfectly sized to take a small Japanese peace lily, almost like they planned it.
Longer trips include visiting my folks in Hampshire, a round trip approaching 200 miles that, at this time of year, is borderline makingit-without-stopping territory if you cruise relatively quickly.
Will it be faster to give a quick squirt of juice at the Instavolt chargers in West Meon while
I’m looking at some motorbikes? Or should I just back off to a slower cruise to get home with a comfortable few per cent to spare?
I suspect the latter would usually be true and is more efficient and cheaper. But more answers next time.