NWR Renting an EV - charging question

Leon Marks

Leon Marks

Location
London
Brains trust!

This weekend I’m renting an EV (a polestar 2) - I’ll be collecting from and returning to Heathrow, and the rental agreement seems to be “full to full”.

In the old days I would have just refueled the car at the closest petrol station - what does one do in the current era? Go to the petrol station, find a charging point and download the relevant app?
 
Normally the rental agreement will have a cost in the event you take the car back less than full. Ie a KWh cost in this case. Maybe less stressful!

For charging point locations I’d recommend the Zap Map app which has location, price and comments for all over the UK.
 
Leon Marks said:
find a charging point and download the relevant app?
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Not usually required… debit card usually is all you need. Zap Map will usually have the info.

Membership cards and charging apps are more useful if you own an EV and want to get the best possible deal based on your scenario.

We charge at home for 7.5p with Octopus Intelligent overnight (£4.50 to fill car up from empty!). On longer journeys we just use a debit card.

What are your plans with the car Leon?
 
Likewise routinely use Virtuo to rent a Tesla and i think they just ask it's returned with a minimal viable percentage vs whatever the EV equivalent of running on fumes is
 
Let us know what you think of it, we have had the dual motor version for last two years. Quite pleased with it overall.
Lease is up in a year and given the finance costs and monthly price now it may be we jump back to petrol.
The cost of the Mini Convertible and Polestar 3 was an eye opener but I’ll see what pricing is like next year.
 
I think the old EV thread was lost in the cull?

Anyway. I made a point of looking for fast chargers on my recent Bordeaux-Mosel-Beaune-Bordeaux trip and noticed that nearly every ‘Aire’ that had a petrol station also had at least 6-8 fast chargers, IONITY the most popular but several other brands. All at €0.59 / KWh.

That’s probably 50km intervals.
 
I think , like I suspect the majority of people, that EV vehicles are too much of a hassle until there are nearly as many charging points as there are petrol pumps . And I doubt whether this will happen in my lifetime …….
 
The main to remember about returning your car full, is that you need to get to the charging station a lot earlier than if you are driving a petrol car.

Does the ‘full’ indicator on an EV have the same wiggle room as a car ? We used to be able to fill up a hire car in Dundee and it would still usually still read full’ when we dropped it off at Edinburgh Airport some 60 miles down the road.
 
Diesal for long journeys will always be King. The who decide not are foolish with the current technology for the everyday driver. My current house in the backwaters of Nth Shropshire has zero charging facilities. Long live the future of hydrogen.
 
PhilWilkins said:
Diesal for long journeys will always be King. The who decide not are foolish with the current technology for the everyday driver. My current house in the backwaters of Nth Shropshire has zero charging facilities. Long live the future of hydrogen.
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It really must be a backwater if it has no electricity.
 
Agreed it’s fundamentally about circumstances. The sad reality is that if you live in a city or large town you are unlikely to be able to own an electric car as you’d need a house with a drive. Anyone who lives in a flat or house with street parking is essentially cut off from owning one as you can’t charge it at home and as others have said charging it outside of the home is more costly than petrol.

Sadly unless on street charging at very cheap rates as well as charging points for flat owners come in I can’t really see ownership really getting very high as the practicality is simply not there. I would guess we are really at least ten years away from this.

Also for those of us who grew up with petrol then it’s difficult to resist the lure of an unadulterated V8 or V12 and the thrill of that sort of driving.
 
EVs are coming - it's as simple as that, but there are definitely problems with owning one in a high density urban environment with multi-occupancy buildings. The government seems to be completely hands-off in relation to the required infrastructure hoping that the market will deal with it. It is not just about charging points though, it's also about the (expensive and longterm) reconfiguration of the transmission infrastructure which will allow new wind and solar plants to connect to the grid and to redistribute the power from where it's generated to where it's consumed. Some wind farms have been quoted a ten year wait for connection - I kid you not.
 
The last statistic I can see shows UK mid table for EV ownership percentage. Just behind Germany and just ahead of France. Norway by many percentage points ahead of any other European country.
 
Russell Faulkner said:
UK infrastructure must be far behind the rest of Europe for people to still hold such outdated views on EV ownership.
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Not really @Russell Faulkner maybe check the facts. As of the summer of this year the UK has the second highest number of EVs on the road after Germany and 20% more EVs than France as a % of cars on the road. We’re actually sales wise doing very well much better than the EU. So we’re ahead of you there buddy :p

It’s just all major countries where a large % of the population lives in cities face the same problem. Governments seemed to rely on cheap electricity at public charging stations but as we know that idea has been dashed. Though maybe things will change.

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