EV driving experience

I am fascinated by the world of electric cars and keep trying them to see if I should take the plunge. Hired the BMW iX over the holiday for another attempt. It’s a car that has marmite looks, the kidney grill is frankly grotesque but over the car is attractive and the interior is beautiful.

So far, so good but….. range quote for this 76.6 kw battery car is 253-264 miles WLTP. Charged to max - I managed to get 220 miles showing and that was after 4 charging attempts. With heating off and no phone charging the best we could achieve was 200 miles. Considerably less if we used the heater and at 4.5 degrees outside it was needed. So real range nearer 180 miles.

Next issue is the charging infrastructure, basically it’s terrible. Expensive (79p per KW at the fast chargers), queues at everyone, half not working and even the street chargers occupied.

There is no decent app (I am sorry Zap-Map is not great) and the street lamp chargers take around 10 hours to fill the battery (accept that it’s much cheaper, £30 or so)

I have an underground parking space in London - the car park owners will not allow anyone to put electric charging points in so that’s no use!

I really want this to work but it’s just not yet practical.

So I remain car free and will hire as needed and use public transport in London. Trains are now ridiculously expensive and frankly don’t work.

I am still not sure that the end to end environmental impact from electric cars is all it’s made out to be. They are still made mostly of metal, but it’s the end of life batteries and the environmental damage to make them that bothers me a lot.

I will keep trying! #infrastructure #electriccars #bmw #esg #batteries #cars #london