Testing the hypothesis that "You can't use an EV for your big family holiday"

One of the most common complaints I've heard about electric vehicles over the years goes along the lines of "I couldn't switch my main family car to an EV because I need to do my family holiday to Scotland/the south coast/France", and generally these people have been right. In fact, up until recently I was one of them!

However, over the past year or two, the EV market has taken some colossal steps forwards in terms of shapes and sizes of vehicles, potentially changing the game. So, over my summer holiday this year I decided to test this hypothesis by taking my family on a holiday in Devon using our new electric car - a rather family friendly Tesla Model Y. The journey was just under 200 miles and took 5-7 hours each way (the majority of which were spend queuing near Bristol!). In terms of passengers, there were my two daughters, my wife, my dog (Golden Retriever) and myself. Now, the thing is - a large dog like mine instantly fills the entire boot, meaning that we were really testing the capacity of the car! Now, before you hear how it went, let's really consider the challenge.

There's a few nuances behind this hypothesis, so let's unpack it. While I'm sure there are some people who have a specific and highly unusual holiday plan which will really prohibit driving an EV (I'm thinking, a week in the Arctic circle, followed by a week in the Sahara desert!), for most people the issue boils down to the following points:

1. Luggage space

2. Range

3. EV Charging Infrastructure (EVI)

Luggage Space

You wouldn't believe how often I've googled the term "EV's with the biggest boots" over the years, longing for a decent family car to make it onto the market! I got quite excited a few years ago when MG released the "5" which was advertised as an estate. I was then deeply disappointed when 1) I looked at the boot space and realised it was still pretty small (less than 500L), and 2) discovered that the roof bars were only for show (on the first model at least) and definitely NOT for attaching a roof box!

Many people I know have coped fine with the boots on current EV's and already use it as their main family car, but as I've mentioned already - when you have a large dog things get complicated. Thankfully, some EV's have a couple of neat little tricks up their sleeves, and in fact it's these features that first sold me on the Model Y. You see, some EV's (mainly Tesla's if I'm honest) have a frunk! Now, before you call RSPCA - no, I didn't put the dog in there 😱. However, it gives you a space separated from the dog where you can store luggage. It's not huge, but we managed to fit both children's holdalls in there, along with a few loose or smaller bits and bobs. For it's second trick, the Tesla has a false base in the boot, meaning that you can pack under the dog! Even so, if the car hadn't been able to have a roof box we still would have been a bit stuck as beach gear just takes up a lot of space. In the end, we had the car fully packed and the dog and kids all had plenty of space, which was a real blessing. As an aside, the Model Y can also have a tow bar fitted - which would have been essential if we'd been going camping and therefore had a tent etc to take with us.

So, is luggage space an issue for EV's anymore? Unfortunately, yes. I'm well aware that the Model Y is a bit of a special case and that most EV manufacturers are still a little way behind when it comes to things like roofboxes and towbars. Things are getting better, but we're a long way off yet. There have been some bigger cars come out recently, such as the Vauxhall e-vivaro, but these suffer from two significant issues - firstly they are extremely inefficient, and secondly the passenger versions only come in the smaller battery size - which brings us to problem 2: Range.

Range

It's not that long ago that the average battery capacity for an EV was 24 kWh, and 30 kWh was considered "long range". I generally use the rule of thumb that you multiply the capacity by 3 to give the realistic winter range and 4 for the summer/most optimistic range (or 2 if it's a van like the e-Vivaro above!). Going by this, even a generous estimate means you'd struggle to get 100 miles of driving out of an EV with a 24 kWh battery pack. The problem is, EV's like low speed, start/stop driving. To put it simply, EV's are most efficient being driven around cities. Take them onto the motorway at 70mph and you can watch the efficiency take a nose dive. As a result, trying to drive to Devon from Nottingham would have been a long and frustrating drive, requiring multiple stops to recharge. Unfortunately that wouldn't be the end of your troubles as many EV's at the time only allowed one rapid charge a day. This was to protect the most important and expensive part of the vehicle - the battery, but it made long distance travel near impossible.

Fast forward to 2023 and on average EV's now come with two relatively standard battery sizes - around 50 kWh and around 75 kWh. At the same time, EV's have become more efficient, so multiplying the capacity by 3 gives you an extremely pessimistic view and multiply the capacity by 4 starts to become much more realistic. Based on these figures, most new EV's will have maximum ranges of 200 - 300 miles!

So, what did this mean for my holiday challenge? Well, I had a 200 mile journey and a 75 kWh battery, so things were looking pretty comfortable! Now, I have a top box to ruin the Tesla's well designed aerodynamics, a full and heavy car and I'd be driving (I hoped) at motorway speeds, so I was expecting my range to be quite a bit down on the "boiler plate" figures. However, when I used a route planner to plan my charging en-route, I was encouragingly informed that everything would be OK, as long as I was fully charged before I left home - perfect!

So, that was the theory - what was the reality? Well, I'm pleased to say that even with the roofbox the car performed incredibly well. Now, it is the summer (though I would forgive you for thinking it was Autumn already based on the amount of rain we've been having!), so looking back at DriveElectric's real world range analysis I should be getting the higher end of the range predictions for the car. But even taking this into account, I was surprised how well it went. On the journey home (only 5.5 hours this time!) I fully charged before we left and arrived home with 30% charge still in the battery - that's about another 90 miles I could have driven, which would mean I could potentially drive from Nottingham to Truro in Cornwall on a single charge! Not bad.

All in all, I'd say that the newer EV models being released have pretty much solved the issue of range - especially as they can now drive further and longer than my bladder can last, meaning I'll be making a stop along the route anyway!

EV Charging Infrastructure (EVI)

Many of you will know that EVI is my specialist topic and I spend a lot of time encouraging people that it's probably better than they think and that it's getting better every day. So, this journey was a test for me to prove whether I've been telling the truth or spinning marvellous fiction. My experience was probably unlucky, and I can see many simple ways that things could have gone very differently, but unfortunately this time I have to say - the infrastructure let me down.

Problem 1 - So, I have a very plain and simple Rolec charger at home. It's not smart, it's not pretty, but it does the job. Or rather, it has for every EV I've had up until now! It turns out that my Tesla does NOT like my Rolec and refuses point blank to charge on it. I'd been getting away with charging at the office so far, but for this journey I needed to charge at home, so I decided to charge using a standard 3-pin "granny cable". To keep the cost down, I wanted to charge using my overnight rate, so I went ahead and set the timer in the Tesla for 2am, plugged everything in and went to bed. The next morning I got up to find that the charger had blown the fuse part way through charging and had therefore delivered next to no energy to the car 🤦‍♂️. Thankfully the car wasn't completely empty, so I decided we'd just get going and charge on the way. Zap-map now told me that there was a very nice bank of Tesla chargers half way and that I should have just enough charge to get there, so off we went.

Problem 2 - If you've ever driven along the M5 near Bristol, then you probably know quite how painful that experience really is. Unlucky for us, the entire northbound side was shut due to a multi-vehicle accident and the southbound side was barely moving in sympathy. After 4 hours we were diverted off the motorway...and away from our target Tesla chargers. No matter I thought, and I quickly darted into the services just before the diversion. The services advertised that they had EV charging and when I arrived I found them all there and working - and a long queue of like-minded EV drivers hanging around waiting for them. They were only 50 kW chargers, so this wasn't going to be quick. I made the executive decision to keep going, promising my wife that we'd find more along the way.

Problem 3 - With range dwindling on the car, I sought out a nearby charger on the diversion route and we headed there. It was a 120 kW Instavolt charger at a McDonalds. It's the most expensive public charger I've come across at £0.75 / kWh, but at this point we were desperate. We drove in and parked up in the one remaining empty bay. At this point I made the mistake of turning to my wife and suggesting "Do you want to set up the charging? I'll talk you through it." My wife has never charged the EV on a public network before, so I thought these shiny, new looking chargers would be the perfect experience. We got out and promptly found that the payment terminal was on the blink. I rang the helpline and after 10 mins got through to a human, who told me to try the app instead. I hung up and went in search of a strong enough signal to download the app. After another 15 mins faffing about I returned, ready to get going. Unfortunately the app couldn't initiate a charge either. The charger was officially broken. Thankfully, EV drivers are a lovely lot and the car next to me announced that they only had another 15 mins to go and then we could take their space (thankfully there was no queue at the time). So we waited and quickly jumped in the space as soon as it was available. Now, I have another rule of thumb for EVI - the power rating is how many miles range you'll add to your car in 20 mins charging....except when it isn't, and unfortunately today was one of those times. The chargepoint said it was 120kW, but despite no-one else charging at the time and my Model Y being able to easily take this power, the charger never went above 62 kWh. After 25 mins charging we realised we were now going to be late for checking into the cottage and so stopped charging and set off to complete our journey.

Problem 4 - Staying in a remote, rural location like Somerset is lovely. But it's no good for EV charging. None of the houses in the area had drives so if you had a car then you had to park in a local council car park. This wasn't too bad, and if the car park had had EV charging it would have been perfect. Unfortunately it didn't, so half way into our holiday I set off one evening to find a charger. Again, Zap-map came in very handy, locating more Instavolt chargers at another local McDonalds. There were a handful of low powered chargers around too, but they were all for private businesses or places that I didn't need/want to visit for the 8+ hours it would take to get my car to full charge, so I needed a rapid/ultra-rapid charger, and here my options were limited.

Even so, I set off actually looking forwards to my charging session as it would give me a chance to grab a banana milkshake and read my book in peace. This was not to be however, and within 5 mins of arriving I was off again as the charger was powered down with no hope of getting it up and running again! Thankfully there was another charger about 10 mins away, but to my horror it was also Instavolt, who were fast becoming my least favourite brand of EVI. Thankfully I arrived and this one worked perfectly 👼

The rest of the holiday was thankfully uneventful, and we managed the return journey on a single charge - giving the clear lesson that public EVI is fine, as long as you don't have to use it and can charge at home (joke)!

All that said, in my role at Cenex I'm involved in managing the Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) fund where we are helping councils across the UK deploy EVI for their local communities. My experience demonstrated to me quite how important this work is. There were a number of places that would have been perfect for slow charging while I was on holiday - at the beach, in the local council car park or at the National Trust site nearby. Had any one of these locations had EV charging then there would have been virtually no need for (ultra)rapid charging infrastructure in the area (or at least, what's there would have been sufficient) and it would have been much more convenient as I was visiting these places anyway. If I was a local resident, these locations would be ideal too - though if there are any entrepreneurial thinkers living in the area with a driveway or parking on the road outside their house, then I'd highly recommend installing an EV charger for public use and getting yourself set up with an EVI sharing company like Co Charger - it'll pay for itself in a heartbeat!

Conclusion

So, what does this all mean? Does the hypothesis "You can't use an EV for your big family holiday" hold true? Well, I'd have to say that my experience over the summer has convinced me that we have finally reached the tipping point - where EV models are coming on the market that enable drivers to overcome all their major concerns about having an EV as their main family car. Don't get me wrong - the cars that can do this are currently quite expensive, but it's possible, and leasing helps make it much more comparable to the cost of owning a petrol or diesel car. So, the major barriers that remain, or at least as far as my experience goes, are:

1. Having sufficient low power EV charging at long stay parking locations, like tourist attractions and car parks in communities that don't have driveways.

2. The reliability of (ultra)rapid EVI on motorways

3. EVI not delivering their "boiler plate" powers, which is just annoying (if I plug into a 120 kW charger, with a car that says it can charge at 120 kW then I expect charging powers of at least 100+ kW unless I've already reached 80% charge)

So, overall it was actually pretty positive, but it has convinced me that, for now at least, we all still have a job to do!