The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Epic rally proves electric vehicles can be the future
The Beast. That’s what they called the third day of the Electric Vehicle Rally of Scotland (EVROS). We’d cover more than 320 miles on roads that twist, wind, turn and crawl through some of Scotland’s most majestic scenery.
Our purpose? To find out whether you can do huge journeys through remote parts of Scotland in an electric vehicle.
EVROS took place over five days last week and saw 23 electric vehicles cover a sweeping 1,200-mile loop.
Myself and my partner Eilidh took part in days three, four and five, guests of Polestar, an electric vehicle company owned by Volvo. Our steed was the Polestar 2, a fully electric five-door hatchback. Its official range is 298 miles and our dual-motor version was four-wheel drive.
We were up at 6.30am and had a driver briefing over breakfast at seven. By eight, we were raring to go.
Our stunning route took us along part of the Great Glen, through Glen Garry, and up the north west coast to Thurso. Polestar’s pro driver, David, informed us the best way to stretch our range was to switch the heating off.
“Put an extra jumper and a woolly hat on,” he advised us cheerily.
“We will,” I assured him, before setting the climate control to 23 degrees and whacking on the heated seats and steering wheel the moment he was out of sight. This is the Highlands in November. David’s other piece of advice was to charge “little and often” and this was counsel we did attempt to follow.
Our satnav had a full list of charging points. We plugged in at Kyle of Lochalsh, Ullapool, Scourie and a lovely little village called Bettyhill.
Apart from the first stop, each had 50kW chargers, which are, generally, the most powerful in Scotland (more on that later). There are also 7kW slow chargers to be used overnight.
Everything worked smoothly, except Ullapool, where one of two charging stations was broken. Just what you need with 23 electric cars doing the same route at the same time.
We joined a line of five EVs and waited our turn, departing two hours later and topped up enough.
We arrived in Halkirk, just south of Thurso, tired and hungry but happy at
8.15pm, just over 12 hours after we set off. I was ready for a burger and a beer.
After a good night’s sleep and a bit of cable-out-thewindow trickle charging, we were good to go.
By 10am, we were at John O’Groats, where we stayed for the two-minute silence.
From here, the roads were faster and charge points more numerous. We finished in Aberdeen with 50% battery and charged up overnight. By 10am on Friday we were at Dundee’s Michelin Scotland Innovation Parc for a major COP26 event. After half-anhour poking around hydrogen and electric concept cars, we had to move on. A quick plug-in at the Dundee charging hub, coffee and cake at the V&A, and we set off for Falkirk.
After a check-in at The Kelpies, we took the M8, which has Scotland’s first ultrafast 150kW chargers. These hurl charge in at a tremendous rate and by the time we’d had a sandwich, the battery was almost full. Half an hour later, we crossed the finish line in Glasgow.
Except for a small snafu at Ullapool (only an issue due to the convoy) keeping charged was simplicity itself. And we covered over 750 miles without emitting a single gram of CO2.
We need to move away from petrol and diesel urgently to prevent a climate crisis. EVROS showed this can be done without any sacrifices.