We've had an EV since last December - a Subaru Solterra - and it's been close to perfect for our use-case: decent range, spacious, AWD, fast-charging, great tech, and not a bloody Tesla.
So, come last week, we used it for our 750 mile trip to the Isle of Wight Festival. We have charged on the public network but not really out of essential necessity. We were long-distance virgins.
How did it play out? Simple, mostly.
We left our home in Yorkshire with 100% charge and battery preconditioned. Our first night we were staying at Dave's near Newbury some 220 miles away. The car could theoretically just about hit it in one but we chose to have a splash and dash at Rugby services after 2.5 hours and 130 miles.
Come our stop, and with the battery only down to 45%, we could have made it easily but chose to take a break for a quick lunch and fast charge. 30 mins, one coffee and a wrap later and we're ready to go with the battery back past 80%.
Arriving at Dave's we plug into his 7kWh home charger - set to charge on cheap rate leccy at 2am. Naturally, we woke up the next day to a fully charged car to cover the 75 miles to the ferry at Southampton. Add in 15 miles at the other end and the car arrives at our accommodation with well over 50% in the tank.
We then used the car to rack up about a hundred or so miles around the island in the next week - helped by a 20 min charge at a local medium speed (40-50kWh) charge point when we went shopping in Ventnor.
Heading back was going to be trickier. Much trickier. We were attempting a near on 300 mile single journey in hot conditions, hence requiring full-on aircon. No safety net of an overnight charge and no full charge or preconditioning to help us at the start. Yikes, this was our first real test - you cannot really travel much more than 250 miles from our house anywhere in the UK: Loch Lomand is under 250, Dundee is barely 300. But Cardiff, London, Bristol and Edinburgh are all ~200 miles. Calais in France in under 300!
Our goto app said the choice was two short stops (sub 20 mins) or one long one. We opted for two - one on the M40 and another on the M1. So, whilst waiting for the ferry in Cowes we topped up to 85% at the local Waitrose and off we went for our 1 hr ferry.
The first stop went really well at the 100 mile mark. We reached J10 on the M40 after rattling up the M27, across the M3 and M4 to reach Cherwell Services in 2 hrs - a 100kWh charger blasted us back to 80% in less time than it took for a comfort break and a coffee.
Next stop failed, the single charger at Tibshelf was in use, but 3 miles later we (our plan B) used another 100kWh unit outside a KFC and we settled down to a pint in the sun outside the Marston's pub. After a longer than planned stop - it's becoming a thing to enjoy the relaxed pace of travel - we're back past 80% charge for our last 90 miles home.
All the chargers we used were contactless, worked efficiently and simply so barring the single charger blocked at Tibshelf, we had a wonderful and painfree experience - except a mild in-car disagreement when trying to live re-route after our first stop on the return leg.
Learning: Have a plan and a backup, avoid charging at peak periods, and enjoy your breaks - embrace the joy of travel and avoid smelly petrol stations. Oh, and there really is no need for range anxiety. I spoke to lots of fellow fast-charge users on our trip and most had a good experience with the exception of commercial travellers who moaned about not having a 300 miles range and the absence of destination charging.
See you out on the electric highway 👍🏻
