Energy: squeaky bum time

By Richard North - August 11, 2021

It’s often the case that, after writing a piece on a particular, you start picking up all sorts of useful bits which could have been very helpful. So it is with my Mail on Sunday, although one especially useful tip only came in the comments, which I would never have picked up by myself.

This related to an article in the Grimsby Telegraph concerning “famous petrolhead Guy Martin”, who decided to try his luck driving an electric car from on the 1,100 mile round trip Grimsby to John O’Groats (where else?) in one day.

His choice of steed is a new Hyundai Ioniq Electric which claims a battery range of 193 miles, with the smallest of small print warning that the range is “dependent on ambient temperature, battery state of charge and condition, driving style, vehicle payload, vehicle electronics, heating and climate settings”.

Considering how important the question of range actually is, some might think it a tad dishonest tucking these details away, but there you go. In any event, Martin overclaims for the car, saying he is told, “it will do the thick end of 300 miles to a tank full”. Thus, he had worked out that, starting with a full charge, he needed only to “fill up at three different places on the way up with fast charges”.

This doesn’t say much for the man’s preparation, but I guess it’s not that untypical of a certain sort of driver embarking on a long road trip. Apart from anything else, many fast charging stations only give you a 60 percent boost, in the half-hour taken.

That apart, there is the speed factor. At motorway speeds, EV range suffers so, as was inevitable, less than an hour into the journey Martin finds his car’s battery has already dropped to 69 percent of its charge. He only makes 150 miles before he is forced to make an unplanned pitstop in a Penrith supermarket car park and attempts to charge the car.

However, after his emergency pitstop, he drives to Gretna Green, where he attempts to use one of “fastest chargers” in the country. He’s initially shocked by the price which comes to 70p per kilowatt-hour. But, we are told, the high price is paid because the charger is expected to boost the car to 80 percent of its battery within 18 minutes.

Unfortunately, that is only the theory – as Martin finds. After a break for a scotch pie and a cup of tea he returns to the car to some bad news. “I am not joking”, he says, “that is saying 34 percent and 53 minutes remaining. I am disappointed”. In the end, the charging takes one hour and costs £40. In the end it takes him more than 27 hours to complete the whole journey.

Turning to the Guardian, we see feature writer Sam Wollaston attempt a slightly longer journey, recounting his experiences in an article entitled: “Leading the charge! Can I make it from Land’s End to John O’Groats in an electric car?”

He picks a “fully electric” Skoda Enyaq, with a website which offers a range of “up to 256 miles” – but clearly not enough for Wollaston. “Range anxiety”, he writes, “hits hard on the A9 in the Highlands of Scotland”. For the uninitiated, he adds: “this is the fear that an electric vehicle (EV) won’t reach its destination before running out of power”. Continuing on this theme, he tells us:

I’m driving through some of Britain’s loveliest landscape – mountains, rivers, lochs and firths – but I hardly notice. I’m focused hard – on the road in front, but mainly on two numbers on the dashboard. One is how far it is in miles to where I’m going; the other is the range in miles remaining in the battery. Sometimes, especially on downhill stretches when what is known as “regenerative braking” means the battery is getting charged, I tell myself it’s going to be OK, I’ll make it. But going uphill the range plummets. Squeaky bum time.

To this, he adds:

It’s the hottest day of the year so far, but I can’t risk the air conditioning, because that immediately wipes about ten percent off the range. I’ve heard that opening windows makes a car less aerodynamic, so they remain closed. Sweaty bum time, too. Driving as gently as possible, nursing the car along, barely touching the accelerator or the brake, phone unplugged, radio off, I head north in sweltering, silent panic.

But, such sacrifices were clearly worth it for Paul Clifton, BBC South transport correspondent. He took a Ford Mustang Mach-E, a snap for a mere £41,330 with a posted range of 379 miles on one charge. Actual range, we are told, “varies with conditions such as external elements, driving behaviours, vehicle maintenance, and lithium-ion battery age”.

Clifton says he was attempting to show whether electric cars were viable for “real-world long distance use”, to which effect he and two co-drivers, supported by AA breakdown drivers and Ford engineers, drove the 840 mile route to prove the point.

“To save energy on the journey south”, he tells us, “the air con was kept off, the windows closed and the radio was not used, and the team travelled through the night to avoid any traffic congestion”. The car was charged at public service stations along the route and made it to Cornwall 27 hours later, achieving an economy figure of 6.5 miles (10.5km) per kilowatt hour.

To make this record attempt, averaging just over 30 mph, he blithely tells us that “top-drawer driving skills are required, but so too are months of planning, selecting and testing the right car for a journey of hundreds of miles”.

Before the journey, he admits that he “wasn’t convinced an electric car was yet quite a match for petrol or diesel for very long distance travel”. But, once he arrived, he proudly tells us: “I’ve changed my mind. We have reached the tipping point” – at an average speed of 30mph. You just know this makes sense.

Mind you, according to Graeme Cooper, National Grid’s Project Director – Transport Decarbonisation – we don’t need the range offered by Clifton’s Ford. Really simply, he says, the sweet-spot for the range of an EV is between 200 and 300 miles, this gives the optimal balance between cost and range. Most people don’t need a range of more than this – after the time it takes to drive this distance most of us need a pit stop anyway.

Statistically the first car in a family does around 37 miles a day on average and any second car covers around 11 miles daily. Understandably people don’t however buy for their average journeys, they buy for the longest ones they do.

In reality, when we take longer trips, most of us already do stop for 15 to 20 minutes at a service station to grab a drink and perhaps head to the loo or fill up on petrol or diesel. That, Cooper adds, would be all the time it takes to power up your EV via the new range of ultra-rapid chargers that are already available.

In another piece, he tells us: “you don’t need a 500-mile range battery car because nobody drives 500 miles non-stop”. The limiting factor, we are informed, “is biological – it’s how long you need between comfort breaks or ‘bladder range'”.

“If your ‘bladder range’ is three hours driving – about 200 miles – what you want is to stop and charge your car quickly in the time it takes to walk across the forecourt to the services, have a comfort break, buy a sandwich and a cup of coffee and get back to your car – and drive the next 200 miles”.

Clearly, this man doesn’t live in the real world. Has he looked at the prices of service station sandwiches and coffees recently? I’d rather take the diesel.