First long road trip

[roybosh]

My wife and I are driving from North East Fife to St Albans to visit friends for a long weekend, next month. Due to hairdressing commitments (quote: I just can't move my hairdressing appointment, he's booked months in advance) we plan to stop overnight in Alnwick and pop in a 100% charge. I love the A68/A697 so the first leg will be around 130 miles and quite economical compared to constant motorway speeds. I will start with a 100% charge.
The next day will mostly be motorway speeds and we plan to stop off for lunch and a charge, somewhere between Doncaster and Sheffield, 150-160 miles depending on the state of charge at lunch time. Then St Albans is 140 miles down the road and a solar powered home charger awaits. My mate should have his iBuzz in his driveway this week but as ever there have been big delays.
We've not planned the return route back to sunny Fife.
I've covered about 2300 miles since January the 12th and I've averaged 3.2 miles per kWh in that time.
The first few weeks of ownership saw sub zero temperatures and I have given it a bit of stick on occasions so I'm quite happy with 3.2. Some more sedate driving in 10deg temperatures has shown 3.7 miles per kWh
We will be driving fairly sedately so expect between 3.2-3.7, that should give us around 185-214 miles on a full charge, we're prepared to have a splash and dash, to use ICE parlance, if necessary.
I'll keep some basic details of the trip and post my musings.

[DumfriesDik]

Sounds like a good well planned trip away. Let us know how you get on, especially with the warmer weather.

[roybosh]

My wife and I are driving from North East Fife to St Albans to visit friends for a long weekend, next month. Due to hairdressing commitments (quote: I just can't move my hairdressing appointment, he's booked months in advance) we plan to stop overnight in Alnwick and pop in a 100% charge. I love the A68/A697 so the first leg will be around 130 miles and quite economical compared to constant motorway speeds. I will start with a 100% charge.
The next day will mostly be motorway speeds and we plan to stop off for lunch and a charge, somewhere between Doncaster and Sheffield, 150-160 miles depending on the state of charge at lunch time. Then St Albans is 140 miles down the road and a home charger awaits. My mate should have his iBuzz in his driveway this week but as ever there have been big delays.
We've not planned the return route back to sunny Fife.
I've covered about 2300 miles since January the 12th and I've averaged 3.2 miles per kWh in that time.
The first few weeks of ownership saw sub zero temperatures and I have given it a bit of stick on occasions so I'm quite happy with 3.2. Some more sedate driving in 10deg temperatures has shown 3.7 miles per kWh
We will be driving fairly sedately so expect between 3.2-3.7, that should give us around 185-214 miles on a full charge, we're prepared to have a splash and dash, to use ICE parlance, if necessary.
I'll keep some basic details of the trip and post my musings.

My Wife and I decided to take a road trip from N E Fife to visit some friends in St Albans. We also wanted to visit the fabulous 'Bargain Bookshop" in Alnwick. The outward journey was planned and the return trip was 'play it by ear' We didn't factor in trying to get to less expensive chargers....this time.

On Thursday, after her hair appointment, we headed 140 miles to Alnwick. We had booked into the Premier Inn and had dinner in the Hogs Head Inn.
We left Fife with a 100% charge and arrived in Alnwick with 32%. We used a 350kWh Ionity charger across the road from the Inn while we were having dinner, to get back to 100%.
The cost at £30.20 @ 74p per kWh over 48 minutes, hardly the max the car can take.

After checking out the bookshop we headed to a planned stop at Markam Moor on the A1 (A1(M)) We arrived at the 120kWh Instavolt charger near a Starbucks with a 10% charge having driven 172 miles and charged up to 80% for the remainder of the trip. The cost was £30.45 at 75p per kWh over 30 minutes.
So far the stop times were not so different to when we made this journey in my diesel, Markham Moor is a good lunch stop.

We then drove to or friends house, arriving there with around a 20% charge, after 135 miles driving.

The return journey started off with a, thanks Steve, 100% charge at 10p per kWh from his home charger. Cost £4.64

We decided to stop at Keele services for lunch at around 140 miles for a Gridserve charge to 100%. 139 miles arriving with a 29% charge costing £26.88 and we were there for an hour. It was warm and sunny and we sat in the sun for a while.

The next stop was at a Chargeplace Scotland charger in the Glebe Car Park in Moffat. A 50Kwh charger got us to 70% in 51 minutes at 25p per kWh, costing £9.25.
We found the Moffat Spitfire very close to the charger. It's in a garden and there are plaques telling its story.
In hind site we would have stopped 20-30 miles later than Keele because we arrived in Moffat with 3% remaining. The guess-o-meter showed we could get there with 10% in the fuse box. Maybe it was that we were sitting at 70mph for the majority of the road to Moffat and it was 198 miles.

We had around 100 miles to get home and the 70% charge was more than enough for that.

The car was brilliant, we achieved 3.7 miles per kWh for the whole journey, of around 870 miles. We used ACC for as much of the trip was we could, keeping to the speed limits on the dual carriage ways and motorways. I felt very fresh after each leg. I would have had to creak my way upright if I were driving my Civic after a couple of hours.

There were no queues at the chargers, all of them worked the first time of asking and all in all the trip was pretty easy.
None of the chargers delivered their promised power, I know the ID.3 can draw 124kWh. From memory the 350kWh was around 80kWh, the 120kWh was also around 80kWh, the 50kWh was around 40kWh

The total cost for the trip was very similar to an ICE that can achieve 50mpg due to the expensive 65/74/75p per kWh being charged anywhere close to the motorways. The upside is that they can be quick. That was our decision so we'll take the hit, this time. The 25p per kWh at Moffat shows savings can be made

This trip was our first long distance foray into EV driving and we were not trying to find the most economical way or the shortest distance, motorway Vs non motorway chargers or pre planning vs seat of the pants. Thats for the future.....

[MotMot]

Ace write up. Thanks!
FYI the 120kw IV chargers max out at 80 on 400v cars. The chargers are current limited - so can deliver 120kw on 800v cars only..

[roybosh]

Ace write up. Thanks!
FYI the 120kw IV chargers max out at 80 on 400v cars. The chargers are current limited - so can deliver 120kw on 800v cars only..

Ah, good to know. Every day is a school day

[EdinburghID3]

Thanks for sharing, really good write up.

[smyth1492]

Ace write up. Thanks!
FYI the 120kw IV chargers max out at 80 on 400v cars. The chargers are current limited - so can deliver 120kw on 800v cars only..

Almost a year of electric car driving and this is a new one for me as well. Thank you.

[sidehaas]

Ace write up. Thanks!
FYI the 120kw IV chargers max out at 80 on 400v cars. The chargers are current limited - so can deliver 120kw on 800v cars only..

Almost a year of electric car driving and this is a new one for me as well. Thank you.

Some other chargers have similar limitations. Those badged in the 120-150kw range are often limited to 200A (most Instavolt, the smaller Gridserve sites*) or 250A (some of the MFG chargers).
Giving ~80kw or ~100kw max respectively.
However most 150kw chargers, and anything I've seen with 175kw+, will do enough current that an ID3 won't be limited.

*The Gridserves ones have greater limitations due to the actual power supply anyway.