When my son suggested a road trip this summer around the UK and Ireland, I wasn’t sure. He wanted to go from our home in Brighton to Manchester, Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin, Dingle on Ireland’s west coast, Rosslare on Ireland’s east coast, and Cardiff. We worked out a route and looked at booking hotels, a treehouse, a campervan and a lighthouse; we’d visit friends and family; and we’d explore the capital cities of four nations – it sounded amazing. The only problem was that we’d be doing it in our electric car – and it holds less than 100 miles’ worth of charge.
I’m a convert, but even I was affected by the fearmongering that haunts the electric vehicle market. A relentless campaign in the rightwing media against government plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030 reflects the views of an increasingly desperate fossil fuels lobby, and I had read story after story about a lack of working chargers in the UK. I took out a second breakdown policy when I realised that mine covered only one callout in any 28-day period. I expected an adventure, and to come back with tales to tell, like running out of charge halfway up a mountain, or making friends for life with a random farmer as the car took all night to charge on their three-point socket.
But, sorry, I have no such tales. This isn’t that kind of article – it all went boringly well. My son had plotted our course on the Zap-Map app, which maps all the chargers across the UK and Ireland, choosing stops that had a backup charger down the road. It was this careful planning that meant I soon stopped anxiously watching the number of miles left on the dashboard display and started to enjoy the drive. We played games, set the world to rights, made up daft songs and laughed at each other’s bad jokes. We did see a lot of service stations and industrial estates, but we never needed any of the backups.
Sometimes the chargers were at pubs where we could have lunch. Sometimes they were in town centre car parks, and we could take a look around or grab a coffee for the 20 minutes or so it would take to recharge. Twice we had to wait about 20 minutes for someone who was already at the point we wanted to use, but that was as dramatic as it got. We generally had to stick to main arteries, but once we got to the north of England even these offered beautiful scenery. And that’s in a car with a lower range than most – vehicles sold now can usually run for at least 200 miles.
I was also expecting to find problems associated with the sheer number of different charger providers across the five nations, with connection failures or malfunctioning apps, for example. But I either used my debit card or downloaded an app that worked smoothly every time.
The journey did take longer than it would have in a petrol car – we stopped about every hour and a half. But we weren’t in a hurry, and had made sure we had no deadlines to meet. I tend to get tired quite quickly when I’m driving, but on this trip, despite being the only driver, I found myself feeling rested when I arrived at each destination, rather than dazed and exhausted after staring at a motorway for hours without let-up.
When I first got an electric car three years ago, I did worry about charging, and once hired a petrol car to drive to Dorset for a festival. I found it noisy and smelly, it had no acceleration to speak of and I felt uncomfortable driving it. I was relieved to hand it back. My seven-year-old Nissan Leaf is powerful, it has never broken down, and it is quiet. When I go to the beach or into town, I can leave it as long as I want on a free-parking lamp-post charger, spending the money I would have paid for parking on a few extra miles of charge. For a full tank, I leave it on a local lamp-post overnight, many of which now have allocated bays to prevent ICEing (being blocked by a car with an internal combustion engine). Brighton is quite well served, but I like to think it’s at the forefront of widespread adoption rather than being an exception. Local provision has to be a gradual process, to be approached by councils delicately – my neighbours would be entitled to be upset if 10 of their parking spaces were suddenly taken over by EV-only bays that largely sat empty.
You may or may not be ready to go electric. For me, it was a change, but that’s all it was. All I’d like to suggest is: consider how an electric car could work for you – don’t let the petrol lobby make the decision for you. There may not be sufficient chargers yet in your area – or you just may not have noticed them, and many more are appearing all the time. The cars are still too expensive – as is electricity at the moment, but overall it may turn out to be cheaper than you expected. And – just possibly – more fun.
• This article was amended on 24 August 2023. The main image shows an EV charging station in Eaglesham, near Glasgow, not Ingliston, Edinburgh, as an earlier version of the caption said.
Charlotte Naughton is joint production editor of Guardian Opinion
