Did you see the Guy Martin thing trying to beat the EV standing quarter mile record?
as part of the show he drove a lecky car up to John O Groats and back, he was getting
about just under 200 miles on a charge but on some chargers was paying £40 a charge,
My little Diesel will do 200 miles on £12 worth sod that.
Yes. That was a good program.
They ramped up the battery pack and the way the motor uses the power etc etc, did all the tricks with aero and spraying glue on the track etc, only to watch Jay Leno beat the existing record on the day before, using a tesla.
Then Guy did his run in the Voltswagen but couldn't crack under (IIRC) 10.6 seconds.
Now I don't think I was the only person to spot that where he went wrong was using a leccy motor that only powered the rear wheels, as opposed to the tesla which puts drive to all 4 wheels.
A lot of the extra power guy had available to him was being lost through wheelspin at the back.
And on to the charging and range he had on the long trip to JoG.
That was a brand new car leant to him by the manufacturers so you can be sure that it was proper sorted, and under ideal conditions too, in the summertime, leaving early in the morning so he didn't have to contend with busy roads.
If he was trying to do the same journey in (lets say) an 8 year old Nissan Leaf that had 90,000 miles on the clock, in winter, leaving from London at 8.30am, I wouldn't expect his charge to get him further than Luton before having to stop to juice up.
Also I have seen the state of a lot of public recharge stations and TBH unless you're sticking to well frequented, well maintained stations, with multiple charge points, you're going to run into issues, similar to what Guy did, with poor charge rates, or ones that just don't work.
Plus not all cars use the same 'plugs'.
As Guy said - if you expect to only be driving around town without having to do any long runs then yes, buy an electric car, but if you've got long runs to do, don't buy one.....yet!
Indeed, the technology will improve over time (it already has over the past 10 years) and more, and better quality, charging stations will be created.
If the battery technology can be improved so that charge times are shorter and range is increased then we will really see them being adopted more quickly.