A few months back I beat my previous record of driving our ZOE 300 miles in a day by taking it from Northampton to Falmouth and back in a weekend. The occasion was a friend’s 50th birthday party (which I confess took place just a month after mine).
Just about to finish at Cherwell (Image: T. Larkum)
I took notes of the various charging stops (timings, energy usage, etc.) but rather than give a blow-by-blow account I’ve put all the details in the table below. The consumption figures are from the ZOE’s dashboard, mpkWh is miles achieved per kWh used, and total kWh used. The charge percentage figures were before charging, each charge took this back to 99%.
| Time | Location | Map Key | Distance | Charge | Consumption |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1245 | Northampton | A | |||
| 1345-1420 | Cherwell Services M40 | B | 32.0 | 59% | |
| 1440-1540 | Kidlington (family visit) | C | 10.5 | 4.88 mpkWh | |
| 1700-1750 | Leigh Delamere Services M4 | D | 69.1 | 29% | 4.49 mpkWh, 15 kWh |
| 1915 | Tiverton Services M5 | E | 70.0 | 28% | 4.18 mpkWh, 16 kWh |
| 2010 | Exeter Services M5 | F | Failed to charge | ||
| 2115-2150 | Cullompton Services M5 | G | 38 | 58% | 3.58 mpkWh, 10 kWh |
| 2340 | Cornwall Services A30 | H | 83.6, 8 left | 10% | 4.24 mpkWh, 19 kWh |
| 0100 | Falmouth | I | 29.8 | 55% | 4.10 mpkWh, 7 kWh |
The Key letters in the table for each location relate to the map below.
Google Maps view of the route and stopping points (Image: T. Larkum)
On the whole the journey went pretty well. Although charging points are increasingly busy – for example, an orange BMW i3 was leaving the Cherwell charger just as we arrived – we never had to queue for a charge. However, reliability and availability are still an issue. To start with, the charges at Leigh Delamere and Tiverton started on the third and fourth attempts respectively.
Charging at Leigh Delamere (Image: T. Larkum)
As many EV drivers are aware, the south-west is a charging desert with very few opportunities for rapid charging after you come off the end of the M5. I knew in advance that it would be a stretch to get from Exeter all the way to the Cornwall Services at Victoria without a charge (73 miles) so when planning the route was only nervous about this part.
Topping up at Tiverton (Image: T. Larkum)
Unfortunately, it turned out to be worse than expected. We tried the charger at Exeter only to find it broken. Since I knew that going on was not an option we had to turn back and return up the M5 to Cullompton Services. We charged there fine, but of course we now had an even longer distance to get to Cornwall Services (84 miles).
Setting out I was pretty confident that we would be fine – I can generally coax 90-95 miles from the ZOE when needed. However, the weather deteriorated and we were soon driving into heavy rain, and driving on wet roads. Over the first half of the route it was very difficult to keep the consumption/mpkWh figure up high enough to be confident of arriving.
A miserable Cornwall Services late at night (Image: T. Larkum)
However, once past the half way point it started to improve – perhaps we had actually been climbing in altitude too and gone over a peak, and we actually arrived at Cornwall Services without incident. Having said that, we had gone 83.6 miles and the range predicter was showing just 8 miles left and was beeping in panic. It was a welcome sight to turn into the services after midnight despite it being cold, dark, wet and closed.
The view from our hotel window in Falmouth, ZOE in foreground (Image: T. Larkum)
The last leg of the journey was uneventful and we arrived at our hotel at 1am, with at least an hour of the journey time down to the broken charger at Exeter. Overall we had had 5 successful charges out of 6 attempted.
Cornwall Services looking better in daylight (Image: T. Larkum)
We had a good weekend in Falmouth and the party went well. We had a nice room at The Greenbank Hotel with a lovely view over Falmouth Harbour. Unfortunately neither Falmouth nor the hotel had facilities for charging so we had to explore the town on foot to conserve the charge for getting back to Cornwall Services on the return journey.
An extra stop at Sedgemoor (Image: T. Larkum)
The journey home was straightforward, the only issue being a broken charge point at Leigh Delamere East Services, forcing us to cross over to use the westbound services. Returning home is always easier than outbound trips since you know that there’s a working chargepoint at your destination, so you don’t need to charge once you’re within reach of it. We could have managed with four stops to charge, but in fact stopped an extra time (at Sedgemoor) for a toilet break having been stuck in traffic and made use of that with an extra charge.
The dashboard display on arriving home (Image: T. Larkum)
On getting back home we found we had driven 619.3 miles between Friday lunchtime and Sunday evening.