Long distance trip

[duncsand]

I’ve just done my first long-distance trip of nearly 500 miles, travelling from south of London to north of Edinburgh. A few experiences / tips:

1. I pre-planned my stops, trying to find places with many chargers, so my risk of finding a site with just one or two chargers that might be in uses/broken was minimised. In practice this worked really well and I had no issues with charger availability.
2. I avoided running the battery really low, which made it all very stress-free as I knew I had plenty of options should my planned charge site be full. The lowest % my battery got was 19%.
3. The car generally charged faster than I could make a toilet stop, stretch my legs and get a coffee. I wasn’t hanging around waiting for it at all.
4. ACC is a complete dream on the motorway - just set it to your desired speed and let the car handle all the acceleration/braking. I found this a huge benefit and reduced fatigue. Also, I find the ID.3 seats (Family Pro Performance) really supportive/comfortable, which helps a lot for someone like myself who suffers from back pains on long trips.

In terms of charge locations, I used 3 on my trip - Gridserve Rugby, Gridserve Burton-in-Kendal, Ionity Gretna. All are recommended, Rugby especially as the whole setup is about perfect with nice modern facilities for food etc. I would have stopped 3 times anyway in my previous diesel for biological breaks, so really this was no different. My conclusion? Long distance travel in an ID.3 is easy!

[Warminster id]

A good report, I feel the same with mine,
Hopefully some of the people who drop in , in curiosity will read this positive report

[sidehaas]

Agree with everything you said
One slight downside I've found with ACC on a busy road is that I can drive more economically myself, but it's a minor thing.

[monkeyhanger]

I find the charging rates with gridserve chargers to be pretty poor, but they're plentiful and generally well maintained on the motorway services, as well as being competitively priced. I'm lucky if I average 40kW charging rates on these so called 125 and 150kW rated chargers between 10 and 80%. Perhaps the battery is too warm after doing almost 200 motorway miles, to give optimal charging rates?

[sidehaas]

I find the charging rates with gridserve chargers to be pretty poor, but they're plentiful and generally well maintained on the motorway services, as well as being competitively priced. I'm lucky if I average 40kW charging rates on these so called 125 and 150kW rated chargers between 10 and 80%. Perhaps the battery is too warm after doing almost 200 motorway miles, to give optimal charging rates?

No, it's just that the older Gridserve chargers (that come in groups up to 3) are slow because they are limited by the supplies that were in place for the old ecotricity chargers, your car isn't the problem. Gridserve have now admitted none of them will do >60kw, and I suspect you only get that in an 800V car. I always get between 35 and 45kw.
The Rugby and Burton sites are both hubs with lots of high power chargers that will throw anything at the car it can take.

[OB1CCFC]

Agree with the OP.
Aa an aside I would definitely recommend using ACC in Normal mode rather than Eco. Far more responsive and inline with other motorway driver behaviours.

[monkeyhanger]

I find the charging rates with gridserve chargers to be pretty poor, but they're plentiful and generally well maintained on the motorway services, as well as being competitively priced. I'm lucky if I average 40kW charging rates on these so called 125 and 150kW rated chargers between 10 and 80%. Perhaps the battery is too warm after doing almost 200 motorway miles, to give optimal charging rates?

No, it's just that the older Gridserve chargers (that come in groups up to 3) are slow because they are limited by the supplies that were in place for the old ecotricity chargers, your car isn't the problem. Gridserve have now admitted none of them will do >60kw, and I suspect you only get that in an 800V car. I always get between 35 and 45kw.
The Rugby and Burton sites are both hubs with lots of high power chargers that will throw anything at the car it can take.

Wetherby services, just outside York has a new bank of 8 Gridserve 150kW units. I didn't see them and headed straight ti the old ones, getting 28kW! Then I noticed them while wandering the car park waiting for my car to charge at a paltry rate. Plugged in there and got 57kW, and an M3 was getting 67kW. Not great, but massively better than the older units.

[durhamlad]

Is there an app for Gridserve chargers? How do you use them?

[Warminster id]

Is there an app for Gridserve chargers? How do you use them?

Hi
No app, just turn up plug in and tap your contactless card. There will be a pre auth on the account before you get charged for the charge

[durhamlad]

Is there an app for Gridserve chargers? How do you use them?

Hi
No app, just turn up plug in and tap your contactless card. There will be a pre auth on the account before you get charged for the charge

Excellent, thanks for that.

[EVCal]

Thanks for posting. Very informative and reassuring.

I have the pleasure of driving from Bradford to Inverness next weekend, when I pick up my ID3 and head home.
The Zap-map App looks to be really informative and hopefully accurate!
I've planned my journey stops already and hope to use the App during the journey to keep me updated of charger availability as I go.

[smyth1492]

I find the charging rates with gridserve chargers to be pretty poor, but they're plentiful and generally well maintained on the motorway services, as well as being competitively priced. I'm lucky if I average 40kW charging rates on these so called 125 and 150kW rated chargers between 10 and 80%. Perhaps the battery is too warm after doing almost 200 motorway miles, to give optimal charging rates?

It's the chargers, not the car. I ran my ID.3 at 80±mph (130kph) for 500± miles in a day in the summer with Aircon and the car laden, still saw 128kw charging at 10% battery

[sidehaas]

If the battery starts to get to warm, the car cools it, there is an active cooling system for the battery.
It's actually charging that adds more heat than motorway driving. If you arrive at a rapid already quite hot and charge at a high rate the cooling system will likely be active. If, despite this, it still heats up, then when it reaches approximately 50C the charge rate gets throttled a bit to prevent it heating further. It's a very minor thing in MEB cars though. There are YouTube videos evidencing this.
I very much doubt you will ever get the battery close to 50C just through driving on a normal road. Maybe if you took it to the Nurburgring where you are putting down maximum power a lot of the time.

[duncsand]

I've just done the reverse journey, back home to southern England from Scotland. I stopped again at Gretna, as it's perfectly located for my first charge on leaving Scotland. I had to q for about 15 mins as it was quite busy – motorway chargers seem a bit short on the ground north of Gretna, so I suspect this location gets used a lot because of that. No problem though and the other EV owners were very friendly to chat to. Everyone was very polite and keen to make sure the right car was next to charge - a very positive experience that restored my faith in human nature. My other two stops are very simple and quick. I stopped again at Rugby, which is definitely my favourite charging location - nice and modern, lots of food options and loads of fast chargers! Overall I feel very positive about long distance driving in the ID.3 – I didn't stop more often than I would in a diesel, as driving 500 miles is pretty tiring in any car!

[G43FAN]

Wetherby services, just outside York has a new bank of 8 Gridserve 150kW units. I didn't see them and headed straight ti the old ones, getting 28kW! Then I noticed them while wandering the car park waiting for my car to charge at a paltry rate. Plugged in there and got 57kW, and an M3 was getting 67kW. Not great, but massively better than the older units.

I've just come back from a week up in East Yorkshire (and North). Discovery of the trip for me was the Hyper Hubs at Monks Cross and Poppleton Park and Ride sites on the A64 (bit of a detour if your just passing on the A1(m) though.
4x50kW chargers and 4x175kW on each site. All week they were @ 25p kWh. Over the road from the Monks Cross one in the Park and Ride parking area there was an area with 30 7kW chargers. I think similar is in progress at Poppleton.

Got 98kW briefly on one day..