Another Guardian article - issues charging a Tesla across the UK..

[12Pack]

Oddly didn’t seem to use available Superchargers. Perhaps the point was to use non Tesla SC’s. Are we all just better informed than clueless journos, or there something more sinister in this sort of reporting.
One man and his Tesla: an electric car's journey from Brighton to Edinburgh

 

[Tevvy]

What a ridiculous article.

The journey looks to be about 450 miles and he had a 300 mile range.

So he could have stopped once for about 40 mins but no. He chose to stop 5 times for a total of about 3 hours??

Maybe the point was to show the non Tesla chargers as you say. But then do the trip in a Zoe or Leaf! Not making a Tesla look stupid.

 

[Fellsteruk]

Bit of a joke that but at least he’s not Tesla bashing. Would have liked to see him do it in a leaf or i3 like a real test.

Sadly people will just see Tesla = pain in the a$$ to charge.

 

[thegruf]

Stupid ill informed and misleading article by The Guardian as usual, a pathetic rag these days but dangerous becuase ppl read this drivel and believe what they see.

2 stops needed at most, Warwick and Chorley or Grantham and Scotch Corner SCs probably best
Total charge time en route more like 30 mins - aka a couple of sensible breaks in a 450 mile trip

 

[WannabeOwner]

I had a go with A Better Route Planner

M6 - Stoke-on-Trent for 6 minutes (charge to 34% so could charge more there) and Chorley for 33 minutes (15% to 78%) arrive Edinburgh with 10% left. Journey 457 miles driving time 7h01m, charging 40 mins., Total 7h41m, 8.7% charging

M1 - Northampton (12mins) and Scotch Corner (22mins) Journey 444 miles, driving time 7h08m and charging 35mins. Total = 7h43m, 7.6% charging

ABRP has recently added Bolt and Ampera, so I tried that as an equivalent public-charger-only comparison ...

The plethora of public chargers means that for a kickoff ABRP takes a long time to calculate optimal route and charging ... so no surprise that the result is convoluted too. Only 4 charging stops, up the M1 as the shortest route, 445 miles, 7h12m driving ... and 1h55m charging, Total 9h08m. 21.0% charging. Gawd help anyone with a smaller range vehicle.

 

[Tevvy]

I had a go with A Better Route Planner

M6 - Stoke-on-Trent for 6 minutes (charge to 34% so could charge more there) and Chorley for 33 minutes (15% to 78%) arrive Edinburgh with 10% left. Journey 457 miles driving time 7h01m, charging 40 mins., Total 7h41m, 8.7% charging

M1 - Northampton (12mins) and Scotch Corner (22mins) Journey 444 miles, driving time 7h08m and charging 35mins. Total = 7h43m, 7.6% charging

ABRP has recently added Bolt and Ampera, so I tried that as an equivalent public-charger-only comparison ...

The plethora of public chargers means that for a kickoff ABRP takes a long time to calculate optimal route and charging ... so no surprise that the result is convoluted too. Only 4 charging stops, up the M1 as the shortest route, 445 miles, 7h12m driving ... and 1h55m charging, Total 9h08m. 21.0% charging. Gawd help anyone with a smaller range vehicle.

Genuine question, but would anyone go and visit a supercharger for 6 minutes? I've always found Better Router Planner to be worse than just working it out in my head!

 

[WannabeOwner]

would anyone go and visit a supercharger for 6 minutes?

Yes, I would (although by the time I had had a pee and got a coffee it would have been longer, and I would have got more range)

My real world range is 220 miles, allowing 20 miles "comfort" that would be 200 miles. Almost all my out-of-range journeys are when I have days between 200 and 300 miles (so max of one stop). Most of those are nearer to 200 than 300, so sometimes I do just need a splash-and-dash.

6 minutes is just short of 30 miles for me ...

For those 30 miles: I have 20 mile "comfort", and I could perhaps drive slow to eek that out to 30 miles, AND it will take a further 5 minutes, or so, to drive into, and back out of, Supercharger ... so 6 minutes charging is a 11 minute detour ...

... but the 20 miles "comfort" is there for whatever might happen on the journey ahead, so (personally) i never choose to eek that out, instead of Supercharging, and running the battery low is not good for the chemistry (although not sure its enough to actually worry about, certainly not "once in a blue moon"), and on balance I would prefer to charge and driver faster and be sure to have "comfort buffer", rather than drive slow. If there was no Supercharger on route then Yup, I drive slow and eek it out

Forgotten what the sweet spot is - drive faster, charge longer but overall time is saved - but the Stats that ABPR has published suggest its somewhere up towards 90 MPH.

The longer I stop to charge, the less then 5 minute in/out overhead matters ...

The fact that Supercharge electricity is free is not something I take into consideration at all (but others might). 27,000 miles a year, and £700 electricity, more than half of which is "free" at work, means that my cost of motoring for the year, and the occasional "personal cost hit" is neither here nor there for me, but might be for others.

 

[WannabeOwner]

P.S. Actually in the above example:

ABRP assumed charging just enough to get to next Supercharger at whatever you have set, e.g. 10%. I would much prefer to always Supercharge to minimum 70% (the point at which Taper begins), so I would do that at the first stop, and reduce the second stop commensurately, so my wibble above was for the "last Supercharge before destination" scenario, not the "charge-drive-charge-drive road-trip one.

 

[MagicMagicD]

Granted the car they had made it a pointless test, but if they'd taken a first gen Leaf or even something like an eGolf, but in cooler conditions it would have been a perfectly valid test.

It makes apparent how hit-and-miss public charging can be. I think we sometimes forget how lucky we are that Tesla puts so much into building the Supercharger network - if we were stuck relying on the public charging networks for longer journeys I suspect this article wouldn't have been dismissed quite so easily.

 

[mrkisskiss]

There's always two ways to look at things.

I mean, in his 100D Tesla he can do it in two supercharger stops:

- Brighton

-> CHARGE Newport Pagnell Supercharger
-> CHARGE Barnsley Supercharger

- Edinburgh

There's a supercharger in Edinburgh, so I don't know why he didn't just use that. Total driving time 8'30" (eeshhh), plus a charge time probably around 30/40 minutes each stop, so it's a 10 hour trip.

But, I would stop for that anyway (probably more) due to fatigue and my general human bladder and hunger limitations!

Also, if he has free supercharging, it's pretty much a zero cost, zero emissions trip, and most of it's motorway that Autopilot handles well, so it's an easy drive.

So, you could rewrite this article as "Tesla by far the best automobile for getting from Brighton to Edinburgh".

But, I think the point he's trying to make is that if you're screwed if you don't have a Tesla, since the UK's charging infrastructure is absolutely and utterly terrible once you step outside the Supercharger bubble.

 

[MrDoor]

Clearly he has an agenda here, why else 4 stops of less than 60 miles for a total of 169 miles and taking 144 minutes.

The article is bashing EV's and indirectly Tesla because he is in one and is going to make Tesla to be the same as the other low range cars.

 

[MrDoor]

Also they put Edinburgh charging unavailable, when there are superchargers at the airport and I am sure they weren't down.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

I put a bunch of disagrees because you missed the point of the article. It was to talk about all the fragmentation and the hit-and-miss nature of charging in general, with a bit of ICEing thrown in.

The benefit of doing the trip in a Model S was that he _wasn't_ really going to get stuck and could always move on.

 

[thegruf]

@ItsNotAboutTheMoney and you get one back because you completely missed the point that even if the article was highlighting the fragmented nature of public charging, the point of a Tesla is that Supercharging makes this simply a non issue in most circumstances.

Had the Guardian wanted to make the fragmented nature of public charging they should have done the article with an i-Pace, then gone on to say that it's an issue for all EVs except a Tesla who are the only manufacturer so far to have given proper consideration to the issue.

The vast majority of Guardian readers will simply take away that EV's are not yet usable in the real world except for short trips, which as we all know is fundamentally wrong, which is why it is a junk article.

 

[Fellsteruk]

I was getting my hair cut today, quietly waiting on my phone when I overheard one to the customer chatting to the hair dresser.

I’d never heared such misinformed crap, spouting what they had read or listened too in mainstream news. Some of my favs where:

You can’t tow a caravan with an electric car
What about a lorry that won’t work
How about these people who drive abroad.

I tried my best to steer them but no luck, neither knew what Tesla was but it’s content like this story that feeds people like this rather than showing EVs are the future.

 

[WannabeOwner]

you completely missed the point that even if the article was highlighting the fragmented nature of public charging

FWIW I read the article exactly the same why that @ItsNotAboutTheMoney did ...

I’d never heared such misinformed crap,

My best was "Why don't they fit an alternator so that it charges while it drives?"

 

[thegruf]

FWIW I read the article exactly the same why that @ItsNotAboutTheMoney did ...

the issue being that we are EV literate, the typical Guardian reader I would suggest is less so.

Therefore the takeaway is that even with one of the expensive Teslas you would still have to charge 5 or 6 times to get from Brighton to Edinburgh, and even that is only possible by relying on the flaky public charging infrastructure.

Tesla is essentially the exception to what the article is attempting to say.
Had they done it with an iPace/Leaf/Ioniq etc and the pointed out that Tesla are ahead in this regard due to their dedicated high speed Supercharger network, so indeed long EV trips are possible, then fair comment.
As is stands it is just poor quality journalism.

 

[WannabeOwner]

the takeaway is that even with one of the expensive Teslas you would still have to charge 5 or 6 times

Agreed, someone could form that opinion as an unfortunate side effect. It would have helped if they said "This is not a problem with a Tesla we are just using a Tesla for the test".

That sub-text is there, but I agree it may be hard for the EV illiterate to spot ...

"“Oh, I rarely use those,” said Manoj Varathodiyil, gesturing at a pair of public electric car chargers at a West Midlands service station.

Instead, the GP has plugged his car into a “supercharger”, one of a network built by US electric carmaker Tesla, exclusively for the use of the firm’s customers."

"Fortunately, the Guardian had borrowed a Tesla Model S, which has the longest range of any electric car on sale in the UK, at 319 miles at 70mph, "

If it does 319 miles I'll eat my hat ... but if the EV illiterate think that then that's fine

"The Tesla chargers in a Northampton hotel car park were super ones, so half an hour provided another 121 miles of range."

 

[MrDoor]

I put a bunch of disagrees because you missed the point of the article. It was to talk about all the fragmentation and the hit-and-miss nature of charging in general, with a bit of ICEing thrown in.

The benefit of doing the trip in a Model S was that he _wasn't_ really going to get stuck and could always move on.

I get the point of the article, to bash electric car charging facilities and doing it in a Tesla where he wasn't really stuck but to the uninformed public they may not know about the Tesla and its network.

Its quite clear when he put no charging in Edinburgh when there are 2 chargers at the airport that this article was poorly written, I'd be surprised if he actually went out of the parking lot with the Tesla because putting Edinburgh into the Navigation system would have given him a much easier route to the one he took.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I'm going to Edinburgh soon and I am not planning to flog out to the airport to charge ... unless I have to. its only 16 miles, round trip, but even so ...