Packing up the ZOE in Brighton ready to go home (Image: T. Larkum)

Once our Brighton trip was over, after lunch we packed up and headed north out of town. We charged up at Cobham services again without incident, and then headed into London to visit family.

An EV Queue at Cobham (Image: T. Larkum)

Late in the evening after our visit was over we went to Cobham again. This new opportunity to charge (Cobham has only been open a few months) has been a real boon to us as a family. Previously there had been no chargers in this area, and so we’ve had to visit family by driving through London and using the Scratchwood/London Gateway services, with all the potential delays that entails. Now we can just stay on the M25 and charge ‘as we go past’.

A BYD E6 electric car at Cobham (Image: T. Larkum)

Anyway, things didn’t go quite as smoothly as we’d hoped this time. There was a small queue of other EVs waiting to charge – two Nissan Leafs were ahead of us. By this time it was pouring with rain and we needed to eat so we decided to just wait anyway and have dinner. In fact less than an hour later we were charging up so it wasn’t a huge delay. Another EV turned up before we left, a Chinese BYD E6 – a type I have seen a couple of times charging at Cobham.

364 Miles: A new ZOE trip range record (Image: T. Larkum)

The rest of the journey home was uneventful – just another top-up and loo stop at Toddington, and we were home. The final tally for the trip was 364 miles to Brighton and back in the weekend. It had been very straightforward, indicating that an EV is practical as a primary family car, even for cross-country trips.