Ask my friends and family and they’ll tell you: I am an electric car bore. I’m not a gushing enthusiast. I’m more the negative kind of EV dullard. I can’t stop telling people about the horror of driving these wretched things.
I’m really not like this about other subjects, or indeed about life. I’m generally pretty positive and optimistic. But I have an EV. I rely on it to get me from A to B, at all hours, in all weather conditions, and perhaps, heaven forbid, even at short notice. You might not be surprised to hear that my electric car is sorely deficient in doing all these things.
Let’s start at the dreaded beginning. I came upon my EV through the company car scheme at work. This was a few years ago and I had learned about the Benefit in Kind EV wheeze, which meant I could pay several thousand pounds less in tax each year for the pleasure of driving for work. On top of that, I fancied a Tesla as they seemed really cool.
In my experience, cold weather by itself can shave 30 per cent off an EV’s range, and switching on the heater seems to get rid of about another 30 per cent
But there were no electric cars on my employer’s company car list. For those who don’t drive a company car, this is the list of cars that are made available to you through your work. For car lovers it’s a borderline magical experience. Imagine, you just tick a box and get a car!
So I used all my powers of persuasion (I work in sales) to convince HR that we really should have an environmentally friendly option to help us in our march towards net zero and battle climate change. They duly agreed. Alas the allocated budget did not stretch to a Tesla, so I ended up with a Kia e-Niro, surely the least cool of all EVs. I should have seen this first disappointment as a portent of things to come.
Then followed a couple of years of doing perhaps the longest electric car commute in Britain – from my home in the Scottish Borders to Wolverhampton. This proved particularly arduous in winter. In my experience, cold weather by itself can shave 30 per cent off an EV’s range, and switching on the heater seems to get rid of about another 30 per cent. Of course, in a sane situation, the colder the weather, the more you would use your heater. But no. Off I would go in the mornings, all dressed up in my car coat and snow boots, looking like an Artic adventurer but in reality just setting out for an office in the Midlands.
Fast forward to the present and I no longer commute to Wolverhampton. Now, mirabile dictu, I travel around Europe fairly often. This also means regular trips in the electric, but mostly just to and from the airport, which is about an hour and a half’s drive.
The return leg is what I did last night. I landed late, got into my car with that familiar mix of trepidation and frozen breath, and paused for a moment before daring to look at the range displayed on the screen. Did I leave enough in the tank to get home in one go? Or would I have to stop to charge in some dark and lonely corner of a trading estate? The car told me that I had about 30 miles more than needed. I could relax, put on a podcast and cruise on home.
Or at least that would have been the case had it not been cold, which it was. And if there wasn’t a diversion, which there was.
There were no more chargers for the 50 miles of the remaining journey. And it was too late to wake my wife, and the kids, to pick me up if the worst happened. So the die was cast. I absolutely had to make it home on the remaining charge in the battery. There was no other option. What would I do if I ran out and the car ground to a halt? Would I have to sleep in my car until morning? Would I freeze to death?
I knew I had to deploy all my wits. Electric cars have regenerative braking, which is when the kinetic energy from the braking system is converted into electricity to top up the battery. You can increase the level of this energy harvesting, essentially by clamping on the brakes, normally on a hill, but it slows you down a lot. Only a small amount of energy is produced in this way, but in such emergencies every little bit really does help.
I have by now become hyper-aware of any small gradient in the road, and was using the energy recovery system on every descent, almost grinding to a halt at the bottom of each hill having turned my kinetic energy into watts in the battery. That was my strategy: gravity would save me. Isn’t modern technology wonderful?
But as I continued, the car’s range, as is its habit, decreased at a greater rate than the actual miles covered, and soon the little tortoise came on the screen to notify me that I had 2 per cent charge remaining. I was now in limp home mode. This happened too soon for my liking, but all I could do was carry on, squinting hopefully through the windscreen, which had by now almost entirely misted up as obviously I couldn’t turn on the heater.
I did make it home, just – much later and more tired than planned, but relieved. I’m now recharging my batteries, preparing myself for another voyage into the unknown when I go to the airport next week. One day, I fear, I’ll find myself freezing to my last gasp in a lay-by, with no phone signal for help. I take comfort from the thought that my loved ones might at least acknowledge that I had a point about EVs.
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