It's About Time

(Not Range)

I was inspired to explore this notion when I glanced at the stats on the dash screen of my MG4 electric car last week.

I want to apologies for the rubbish quality of this picture. It’s really difficult to wiggle your phone into position to capture the figures.

These figures were for a period of 8 days. All the journeys I made in the car over this time were under 30 miles, the 188.2 miles was all from going to the shops, the dentist, the barbers, giving people lifts to the station etc.

When I took this picture, the battery was at something like 25%, I can’t remember because it’s not important, I know I could have driven 60 or 70 miles further without stress.

The figure I think is really important is the time.

I had sat in that car for 6 hours and 32 minutes over that 8 day period. That, dear readers, is surely a sobering example of the insanity of our lives.

And the average speed is a mere 28 mph. Now, I want to underline that that is the average speed, I’m not crawling along wide open roads at that speed with a long line of furious motorists behind me. I drive at the speed limit, not above it, not below it. Spot on the speed limit.

So after seeing that I thought, I should make a note of the journey I undertook last Friday.

I had charged the car to 90% over a couple of days using excess electricity captured by our solar PV array (12.2 kilowatt peak). The only reason I mention’ this is because the ‘cost’ of that fuel was of course zero. I fully acknowledge that the panels cost money, the inverter and charge socket cost money, the car cost money, but no matter how you try to spin it, you cannot fill your petrol or diesel car at home for zero cost.

I then drove around 85 miles to a filming assignment and 85 miles back home. This is not about charging but of course I didn’t stop to charge. I didn’t need to.

However I did stop once on the journey but that was for me. A comfort break, nothing to do with the car.

I would say 85% of this journey was on 70 mile an hour (112 kph) max speed UK motorway/freeways, so driving at the speed limit although going down one long hill outside Newbury I admit reached 72 mph. Don’t tell anyone.

Of course for the entire journey I was being overtaken by massive, heavy, inefficient petrol and diesel SUVs, all travelling well over 80 mph (130 kph) and thereby achieving sub 10 miles to the gallon fuel consumption. I’m not making this up, these are the stats known by the manufacturers of these embarrassing monstrosities.

But forget all that waffle, once again look at the time.

170.8 miles took me four hours thirty minutes. Even though I spent close to 4 hours on high speed roads, I don’t live on the slip road leading to a motorway. I had to drive around 25 miles on narrow B roads and wider A roads with lower speed limits.

The average speed reading and time spent driving had nothing to do with the fact that I was in an electric vehicle. Any petrol, diesel or petrol-hybrid car would have got exactly the same figures on the same jourtney.

Now this was not a single trip 170 mile journey, I drove somewhere, worked for 6 hours, drove home. If I had done a single 170 mile journey, maybe my average speed would have been higher and the time would have been less.

But I know from experience it wouldn’t have been much less.

And the reason behind these idle musings? Well, they were inspired by a woman I conversed with recently, she explained to me she can’t have an electric car as she regularly drives from the Birmingham to Falmouth in Cornwall to visit her daughter.

This is a journey of approximately 265 miles, and after gentle questioning she admitted on a good day it takes about 5 hours 30 minutes.

On a bad day around this time of year when there is horrendous holiday traffic, it’s more like 7 to 10 hours. For those not familiar with south western England, the coastal regions of the peninsula are very popular holiday/vacation areas.

Of course in her diesel car she can easily drive that non stop, but she did finally admit to me she often stops for a comfort break and a coffee.

Of course she does, any human being, sitting in one position for 5 hours 30 minutes is likely to suffer long term consequences. Ask any doctor, highway police officer, automobile specialist, they will always say you should take a break.

Ask any truck driver, they are only legally allowed to drive for 4.5 hours in one go. They then have to take a 45 minute statutory break, it’s the law. And the law was enacted to reduce the amount of truck drivers falling asleep at the wheel and causing catastrophic road accidents.

So, you drive 4.5 hours in an electric vehicle, you stop and have a rest for 45 minutes. In that time you can charge any car from near zero to near 100%. You can then drive another 4.5 hours. It genuinely is NOT a problem.

It’s not about range or speed, it’s about time. It’s about the human body and what it can deal with.

There are now 65,779 publicly accessible rapid chargers installed in the UK, anyone can drive an electric car anywhere on this damp island in exactly the same time as anyone sensible and safely drives an expensive to fuel, inefficient combustion vehicle today.

Electric cars are not the solution to all the problems we face with transport and infrastructure in this country.

They are just a much better option to the technology we’re lumbered with at the moment.