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Although it appears that there’s been a bit of interest in this trip already. The strange stuff at Pease Pottage was me walking BTW. I had a 5 month old spaniel with me for the trip, so he appreciated the stroll – phone in pocket, doh!
Well done tim! Looking forward to the write-up.
Return trip planned for the morning. This time not going via Oxford, so M1 much of the way. Hopefully Electric Highway continues to deliver. If so i’ll be home in time for dinner,
Following the success of the south-bound trip, one of my daughters (8 yrs) has decided to ditch her twin sister, mother and fast train for a trip in Zoe (her name sake). Now it got interesting- puppy and small child, 300+ miles in a day…..
@tim_battersby and Glympse (hopefully I’ll remember to renew as we travel). Will do full write-up asap.
Good luck!
Another success. 327.5 mile return journey done in total of 10h10m (7h17m driving). 70kWh. 6 charges – thanks to the Electric Highway.
Only one charging problem at Leicester, otherwise straight forward again. I noticed a decent range too – is this because I was driving steadily, or due to the warmer weather – 4.6MpkWh – not bad for motorway.
Having stopped at 6 rapid chargers, I also collected some good fast charging data, so will do a fast charger graph to match Trevor’s 7kw one.
4.6mpkWh is very good on the motorway – what speed were you aiming for, and did you use cruise control or the speed limiter?
I also did a fast charger test today – it’ll be interesting to compare notes. Bizarrely mine charged to 99% in about 30 minutes, and then stayed at 99% for most of an hour (by which time I had had enough and unplugged it). It gives a whole new meaning to ‘fast charge’!
i assume you had an issue with the rapid charger northbound leicester forest east services?
This charger does not rapid charge and in my opinion slow charges @ 7KW.
i’ve complained to ecotricity over 10 times and was told this was a fault with my car… (which is B.S) as my car accepts the full 43KW at all other ecotricity charges. made me think i was a crazy man, as they said that the AC charger is a direct line to the mains and the car accepts any level of charge and the charger makes no decision or throttling etc.
could you be kind enough to call ecotrcity and complain about this charger? only way we can get this fixed is if we all complain…
01453 761455
Spot on! I also got only a 7kW charge from the unit. Needless to say I soon stopped it (it was my 3rd rapid charge of the day and I had 150 miles still to do, so was in no mood to wait 2h45!).
As I said on a Twitter post to Ecotricity this afternoon, I had 6 rapid charges at 6 of their other locations yesterday, so I’m not convinced there’s a problem with the cars! Much more likely in my opinion is that this (relatively old?) unit predates the release of ZOE and as such it’s set up or happens to be just outside the parameters that ZOE looks for. Consequently when the car and unit ‘talk’ at the outset, they can only agree on 7kw.
And a word of warning, I then tried the 22kw charger next to this one – only to find that as soon as the charge started, it almost immediately cut-off – which suggests to me that, as the unit ramped up the current, it reached a point at which Zoe thought it unsafe etc.
Perhaps, given that both units seem unable to do the job, this is an indication of an earthing problem at the site?
Whatrever it is, I’m pretty sure that it’s not our cars, I’ll get onto Ecotricity to complain in the morning.
@trevor
Good questions. I drove at similar speeds in both directions. This best summarised as steady 60 mph with occasional bursts to 70 to pass lines of lorries. The only differences between my southbound trip on Sunday (3.95mkwh) and yesterday’s return (4.62mkwh) were:
– route not quite the same (M25/M1 all the way home cf. the A43/M40 on way down) [unlikey to be big difference?]
– ambient temperature (5-8C southbound cf. 6-10 northbound) [too small a difference to notice?]
– I used cruise control extensively southbound, but not at all northbound
– more traffic congestion on way home (20+ miles of slow moving traffic on M1)My immediate conclusion is that it’s a combination of not using cruise control and the benefits for efficient driving of slow-moving motorway traffic. I kept a log of total KW used at each charge point on the way home, and it looks like my most efficient leg was between Tibshelf and Wetherby (5.25mkwh). It was the first part of this leg that had the congestion on M1. Similarly, the leg between M4 and Newport Pagnell was next best and again traffic was running slower….
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