So I’m a huge EV (electric vehicle) fan… Beloved and I own two Chevy Bolts (an EV and an EUV) and they’re terrific, except for long road trips (going to visit Blondie is an 11 hour drive, and to do it in one day in the EUV was a 14 hour excruciating extravaganza… never, ever doing that again).
So, heading over to the UK, the place I rent from (Kendall Cars, they’re awesome and no, I do NOT get endorsements from anyone) had EVs for a similar price to an ICE (internal combustion engine).
Alas, PlugShare, my trusty app for finding fuel on the road, came up short in England. However, ZapMap did the trick. We’d rented an AirBnB near my relatives and the joint was surrounded by fueling stations.
For the uninitiated, there’s three levels of fueling:
Drip charging, which is plug the car into the wall socket and wait… and wait… and… waaaaaaait. It takes 60 yes sixty hours to fuel up from empty using the drip. Drip. Drip… as those little electrons meander over to your vehicle.
Level 2 charging is what I have in my garage at home. It shortens the time to 5 – 6 hours to fuel, which works well, I plug in overnight and he’s happy and stuffed fat as a tick when I roll out the door.
Woe betide you, however, if you forget to plug in. That will necessitate a stop at at…
CCS, which is an ultra-fast charger. Wheeeee… those little bolts of lightening disappear into your vehicle like Doritos into teenage boys. Don’t bother asking if there’s any left, there’s just the empty package lying forlornly on the kitchen table, with DNA evidence applied where they upended the bag into their gaping yobs.
So with two CCS chargers in convenient locations and you can’t swing a cat without whacking the carcass into a Level 2, I figured what the heck.
Totally unfamiliar with British EVs… okay, why don’t we take what seems most similar to my little Bolt. A Renault Zoë.
Bonus: it’s not a stick shift, which is what my tightfisted little self usually rents, resulting in Beloved also suffering from tightfisted syndrome, as she clutches the door handle while I attempt to change gears using my left hand and avoiding oncoming traffic because the roads are wide enough only to maneuver a horse and cart and not a parked vehicle and two others passing each other.
You get all that? Hmmm. It’s a little stressful at the best of times, but I only got three “TOO CLOSE! TOO CLOSE!!!” shouts this trip. Not bad, if I do say so m’self.
Arriving at the rental car agency, Sue (our trusty picker-upper/dropper-offer, for the past several years she’s been to Heathrow or Gatwick for us) looked dubiously at the three 25” cases and three 22” inchers, all stuffed full, then at me, Granny and Beloved, then at the little Zoë.
“Well,” said Beloved, “I can wait here while you drop Granny at your Aunt’s.”
Thing about driving in England, you take the number of miles you’re going then to get the approximate minutes to traverse the distance, you double or triple that number. These ain’t no American roads. These be Roman roads or trails used for multiple hundreds of years, paved over and pretending to carry modern vehicles.
The other thing about English (don’t know about the rest of the UK) roads: they use the same color paint to denote lanes, whether you’re on a one-way street or a two way. There’s no way to tell by the lane markings if the person driving next to you is going to overtake you or slam into your sorry self.
Ergo, you really have to pay attention to whether there’s oncoming traffic.
Oh… and at night… the Botts’ dots have red reflective coatings on them – you know, the raised bumps in the road that go bumpity bumpity when you change lanes? Botts’ dots. In the US (or California at least) the dots shine red when you’re going the wrong way. In England, they shine red to show the edge of the road.
No wonder I’m taking so much migraine med.
Anywho… no one wanted to leave Beloved and luggage behind, and I sure as hell didn’t want to head back to get her.
Thankfully, one of Beloved’s hidden talents is viewing things in 3D in her head, so she can tell how best to jam six sizable bags, two backpacks, miscellaneous jackets and various other purse-y objects into one small vehicle with enough room left over to seat three adults.
I’m not clear on how that happened but who am I to mess with perfection?
Off we went.
Fueling the car up was a little different – I figured on using the Level 2 chargers when we could (45p – 49p per kilowatt hour (kW/h)) then falling back on the fast chargers (85p per kW/h) when we needed them.
Great idea in concept. Not so much in practice.
Level 2s require the use of your own cable (supplied with the car). That wigged me out a bit in the beginning – how… do you know someone isn’t gonna nick your cable? No offense, but things do rather get appropriated by non-owners in this country. Not a lot of hard crime, but what a bunch of sticky fingered twerps.
No idea why someone might want a charging cord, but why do they pinch other completely illogical stuff?
In the US, the cord is always permanently attached to the charger and you simply plug in your car. You get a drip charger when you buy your car, but otherwise, nope.
Turns out the cars and the Level 2s have a mechanism to lock the cords in place – the only way to get them out of the car or charging port is to re-swipe your RFiD card or your app.
I was posed there like a cartoon with my feet on the charger attempting to yank the cord out and damn it wouldn’t budge. Likewise, it wouldn’t exit the car, either – I had visions of driving around with a cord coiled on the hood of the car and plugged into the port on it’s nose for the duration of the holiday.
Beloved to the rescue once again. “How about… you try swiping your card?”
Me: what the heck will that do??
Beloved: Could it hurt to try?
Me, snorting: So they can charge me a second time?
Beloved: just… do it…
Voila! The charger and the car visibly relaxed and let go.
Then I realized the damn thing hadn’t actually done any charging. AAARGH.
Fortunately, we had better luck with the CCS, but we could only get one Level 2 going, despite multiple attempts at different locations. I do NOT understand why you cannot download some apps if you’re using an eSIM in a foreign country – so I couldn’t get the necessary apps to make them run. Stupid apps.
bp forced me to download their app (if I wanted to save 10p per kW/h – yes, yes I do, thanks) then refused to let me register without a texted code. Unngh, I only have texting through TextNow, a (supposedly) free worldwide app, which refuses to allow you to receive texted codes unless you subscribe to pay $1.99/week and you’ll likely never be able to cancel or escape the subscription charges until you’re good and dead. Well, bugger that.
Checked Verizon – maybe I could get a one time text?
Voila! 25c/text! Okey dokey, let’s enable that text.
Well, yeah. Except you first have to pay for all the other texts lined up in your phone which have been lurking until you pony up. Five bucks later, I had my code, but at that point I was dubious as to whether I would make enough back to save the 10p.
This was confirmed when I got to the bp station and the app claimed there WAS no station there.
Me: I’m standing in FRONT of the damn thing. Not only that, it’s offering me 50% off a hot drink in the attached shop.
App: Nope, nothin’ here. How do you feel about Wales?
Me, becoming infuriated: Fine, I’ll type in the station number.
App: Sorry, no station GP000089. Wanna try again? Or I hear Scotland’s nice this time of year… we have a station there…
For the eight days, we paid $93.20 for fuel. Gas per gallon is $5.10/gallon in England (1.35/liter). For the number of miles we drove, I figure we spent about the same amount as we would’ve paid in gasoline.
Yep, I’d definitely do it again.
Examining Misadventures 