IAIN DALE: My 11-hour journey from hell proves Britain is hopelessly unprepared for electric cars

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Towards the end of last year, I acquired an electric car, an Audi e-tron GT. While some of my social media followers claimed I was ‘virtue signalling’, it was actually a very rational decision.

Or so I thought.

Getting a petrol or diesel car nowadays is buying a rapidly diminishing asset, seeing as no one will be able to purchase a new one after 2030. And when I found out that I could offset the costs of an EV (electric vehicle) against company tax, it made perfect sense to buy it through my company.

Plus, with EVs there are very few personal tax liabilities — although I am sure this is an incentive that will change when more people go electric and the Government needs revenue. 

Instead of buying the car outright, I used a contract hire scheme because I figured that if battery technology improved dramatically, I could be left with a car that had little second-hand value.

I was well aware that it would take time to adapt to an electric car, and I appreciated it would be necessary to plan any longer journeys.

What I hadn’t bargained for was that the advertised range of 298 miles would turn out to be fiction. It is, in fact, 206 to 217 miles. Quite a difference.

Perhaps I was naive. It has been widely reported that EV manufacturers are prone to, er, exaggerating the expected range of their vehicles.

Nonetheless, on Friday night I was due in Yorkshire to speak to Beverley and Holderness Conservatives at the local racecourse, and so I meticulously planned my journey of some 200 miles using the Zap-Map app, which shows charging locations around the country.

I set off from London, having driven up from my home in Tunbridge Wells the afternoon before, using 42 miles of charge. I would have recharged at the Leicester Square car park but all three units were occupied.

Obviously, I would have to charge up the car en route. And so I made a pitstop at Donington Park service station on the M1, which had three 120kw-per-hour charging units (most on motorways charge at 50kw per hour).

All three were in use, but it was a short wait.

I added 125 miles of charge, which took about 40 minutes.

So far, so good, although the cost was a slightly horrifying £25. In effect, that means it’s as expensive to drive 600 miles in an EV as it used to be in my diesel car.

Of course, if I’m not on the road, I can do most charges at home via my reduced overnight tariff, on which I have to pay only 5 per cent VAT. (In contrast, for every pound you spend on petrol or diesel, around 60p goes to the Exchequer in tax.)

But as more people start driving EVs, I am sure it won’t stay quite so cheap.

When I arrived in Beverley, I had only about ten miles left on the clock. I wasn’t worried: I’d done my planning. I knew there were four charging units at Tesco, where I could charge up in the morning before heading south to Norfolk. Best laid plans and all that …

The speech went well. I had a great night’s sleep, a fantastic breakfast and, at 9am, off I set to the local Tesco.

Five of six chargers were in use and the other blocked by a badly parked car. I waited. And waited … and after about an hour a slow charger (22kw- per-hour) became free.

Twenty minutes later it had given my car enough charge to last about four miles. Forget it, I thought.

So I used the little charge I had accrued to make it — just, with two miles to spare — to a unit at a nearby Morrisons, which I thought would be quicker. It wasn’t. The fast charger wasn’t working; the slow one was.

I worked out that if I charged my car up to 55 miles, I could get to a pub on the M18 which had an even faster charger. I started charging at 11.03am, and by 12.30pm I had enough to set off. I got to the pub at 1.10pm.

At this point, I just wanted to get to Donington Park, another 70 miles away, so I could plug into the fast 120kw-per-hour unit that I knew was there.

After about an hour, I had enough charge to get there.

Luckily, the Donington Park unit was free — and it worked. After charging there for 45 minutes, I left at 5pm with 160 miles of charge.

By now, I’d given up on going to Norfolk as I knew there were no 120kw-per-hour charging units anywhere on the way, and what if the 50kw ones didn’t work?

Exhausted and furious, I eventually arrived back in Tunbridge Wells at 7.45 pm.

A journey that should have taken four hours took nigh on 11. A completely wasted day.

I certainly won’t be using the e-tron on a long journey any time soon. The charging network is just totally inadequate for the number of EVs that are now on the road. Too many are unreliable or too slow.

I’m lucky to have an easily accessible charger at home. But 40 per cent of UK households don’t have access to off-street parking, meaning they will have to find a nearby charging point — likely to be more expensive than a cable from their home supply.

And if you’re not living in a big city, it’s very hard to find a charger in the first place. Areas such as Yorkshire and the Humber have just a quarter of the number of charge points per head compared to London, according to a study published last year.

I knew from my experience on the A11 to Norfolk that this is a problem. Even at Donington Park, a major service station, there were only six EV connectors servicing Britain’s second biggest motorway in both directions. And expanding the network will be no mean feat. There are currently more than 42,000 chargers in the UK, of which only 10,500 are rapid chargers.

Yet we are a country of 32 million cars (of all types). If everyone replaces their petrol or diesel vehicle with an EV, then millions will have to be charged almost every night.

In 2020, it was estimated that the overall cost of installing the hundreds of thousands of public and private charging points needed (assuming every home with off-road parking has one) will be £45.5 billion. 

Not to mention the huge increase in power production needed to charge millions of electric cars. Ministers have been told that the National Grid will come under increasing strain as more drivers buy electric, unless they are convinced to plug-in at off-peak times.

And, of course, an electric vehicle is only as clean as the electricity you use to charge it. If we continue supporting inefficient renewables with cheap fossil fuels, we would be undoing many of the environmental benefits the EVs offer.

Considering personal cars account for just 7 per cent of global emissions, I find myself wondering if the stress and hassle is really worth it.

I’ll be the first to admit that the e-tron drives as smoothly as a limousine, but I still prefer driving my trusty five-year-old diesel Audi Q7 because it comes without the ‘range anxiety’.

In the e-tron, you worry constantly about putting on the heating or air conditioning for fear of losing charge — and, therefore, mileage. Even accelerating fast too often drives this down.

Many ask if I would recommend that they should buy an EV. My answer?

Yes, if you don’t do many long journeys. No, if you do.

I realise that this could be described as a ‘First World problem’, but anyone thinking about acquiring an EV needs to be aware of the potential pitfalls — and the added stress that is part of the package.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!