Lovely car but I don’t need the ‘range anxiety’
JABBING away at a confusing array of shiny buttons and colourful dials on the ultra-modern dashboard, it felt as if I was preparing the car for lift-off into space.
But all I was doing was desperately searching for the button that would kick-start my Mini Electric into life. All rather embarrassing given that unbeknown to me I had already pressed something that had turned on the car’s engine – quiet as a mouse compared to the growl of an internal combustion engine.
Putting my foot down on the pedal, there was a sudden whoosh of wind. The sensation is like squeezing the trigger of a Scalextric remote control – but instead of powering a toy, this is a full-size electric car.
Packed with plenty of punch, the motor puts many petrol-fuelled rivals to shame, managing zero to 60mph in a racy seven seconds.
My car came with a couple of recharging socket options – so I could use most paid-for charge points. It also had an adapter, allowing it to charge through a standard three-pin electric socket at home – though requiring an overnight charge of a dozen hours.
On the road, I soon suffered serious ‘range anxiety’. The 79 miles of charge showing on my high-tech dashboard should have been plenty to complete the 54-mile journey I was making from home near Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire to Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.
But towards the end of my journey, the words ‘electric range insufficient’ started flashing up. This inevitably triggered a panicky search for a charging point, a halfhour wait at a Texaco garage while two other electric cars were charged, and then an hour for my Mini Cooper to be recharged.
I also had to download the GeniePoint app in order to pay.
The result? A journey that should have taken an hour consumed three hours of my life.
Electric cars may indeed be the future, but I won’t be buying one just yet.