Finding the chase and cutting to it

begins with one small step.

Today is a beautiful Autumnal day in the East of England.  Last Friday, my family and I finished the final stage of a flight from Cape Town, ZA to Heathrow Airport, UK and finally the last lag home.

Not an environmentally friendly trip, but over the past three years we’ve travelled to Europe by car rather than aeroplane for our holidays so we don’t increase our carbon foot print more than we have to for this special journey.  It was incredible, if you get the chance, South Africa is an amazing country.

So, you took the Leaf to Heathrow?

Unfortunately, I lost the distance argument.  Seriously,  I believe the Leaf would have breezed the 111miles from Heathrow Terminal 5 to our place.  We travelled outside of rush hour, so kept a constant speed the majority of the way (roughly 67mph on average).

I think we could not only have made it there on one charge but it would have been as convenient as taking the diesel.

Here are the sums 🙂

Our road to Heathrow Terminal 5 = 111.86 miles (as the car drives or rather Google Maps and Nissan’s zero emission route master).

So that’s only a maybe.  Looking at Zap-map and the various web sites the obvious thing to do is fast charge at South Mimms going to and returning from Heathrow.  It has to be said at this point, South Mimms services has no mention of having a charging point on the South_Mimms page!

So, home to South Mimms is 81 miles approx.  Allowing a 100% battery to get us there at an average of 60mph.  On a good day that should take us 90 minutes.  As I have a Ecotricity card, we can charge there for free.

From there, onwards to Terminal 5, another 30 miles.  We can charge here for free if we need to but that charge would need to be done while we were through security, potentially, as it is a 3kW charger.

Or we could leave the car, while away on holiday and come back to a car which will almost certainly need a 30 minute charge before getting back to Ipswich or even South Mimms.

The closest fast charger (CHADeMO), to Heathrow, seems to be the Moto Services on the M4 Junction 23.

That would give us a fair 95% in 30 minutes – so we could make it all the way back to Colchester (our nearest fast charger).

In short, going there:

1. Leave Ipswich with full charge
2. 80-90 minutes later have a 30 minute break 90 miles from starting point, 95%
3. Park at Heathrow normally.  Total journey time approx. 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Coming back.

1. Leave Heathrow with 50% charge.
2. After 10 minutes, charge for 30 minutes, giving approx 95-97%
3. 98 miles later, park in the centre of Colchester and fast charge to 80%, 30 minutes.
4. 16 miles to home.  Total journey time, approx. 3 hours 20 minutes.

What would have enabled this journey to be a guaranteed choice?

Let’s face it the Leaf would have got us there, we just weren’t willing to make the choice.  We did discuss what would have made it an immediate yes rather than a no for where we live in the country.

A single step would do that: charging points every 60 miles along the major routes, e.g. all dual carriage ways and a fast charger every 120 miles.  It’s beginning to come, in large thanks to Ecotricity who are installing many of the fast chargers at service stations along the major routes.  This is a completely free service, which is amazing.

(Personally, I think a fast charging point at the junction between the A12 and M25 would have sealed the deal, even a paid one.  This is currently a void, the nearest one in Romford, within the M25).

I say 60 miles as a 3/7kW charge point, the Leaf seems to get about 10% in 30 minutes (remember the trip back from Colchester) which if you are driving carefully and getting something back on the regenerative braking that would allow you to to ensure you had an extra 12-18 miles.  The 60 mile distance then ensures you have opportunities to get enough to get to a quick charger if you stick to the UK speed limits.

When we bought the Leaf in January 2014 there were only 146 fast DC chargers available in the country and few public charging points in East Anglia.

Since then the numbers have grown in the UK.  There are 490 rapid DC chargers sited throughout the UK today and 210 AC ones.  Nine of these rapid charging points are in East Anglia including Bury St. Edmunds (9am-5pm most days) and just past Cambridge on the services bridging the A14 and M11 (this is really new, the last time we looked at going to Cambridge we had few options of getting back to Ipswich on a Sunday).  This really opens the country up for the Leaf.

What seems to be happening on the A12 and A11 is the adoption of “Charge your car” pods.  This works by attaching a credit card to the account allowing a fixed price per charge.  The charge is only collected by “Charge Your Car”: the pod owner actually gets the cash.

The most common form of pricing for these is a fixed price per charge no matter how much electricity you use or time you spend occupying the point.

A fixed price per charge is fine if you are charging from 0-80% but not so good if you only need an 10% to get you home.  This something I have used on longer journeys because that is only 8 minutes on a 50kW DC charger.  £5 is a high price for 10 units of electricity (retailing at £1.60).  There is much debate on the forums about how this should work and compared to petrol which is governed by the weights and measure act 1985 this seems to be an unregulated market.

As per the map above, I am really glad I don’t live in North Wales or North West Scotland.  Outside of the M4, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in providing the infrastructure for the Welsh despite a reasonable population size.  I am not sure what the population of North West Scotland or whether that’s reasonable.  The Isle of Harris looks good though 🙂

Part of me wishes I lived in Northern Ireland.  All of their points are free and within the magic 60-80 miles.

In fact, while we were discussing it, I’ve noticed that my husband could easily take the Leaf down to his office in Woking the next time he has a meeting: there’s a new fast charger on the M25 at Junction 9/10.  Thanks Ecotricity 🙂