Blog 2: Driving an EV, first experiences - Oh this car is good!

Author: Michael Thompson, 12 August 2021

So this blog is primarily about the experience of owning and living with an EV versus a typical ICE vehicle. It’s not intended to be a car review – but I have to say this Tesla 3 is really very good. As with most EV’s the acceleration is quick, and in this one really quick (0-60 is 4.2s apparently). Somehow the car combines feeling heavy with really agile and responsive so it ends up feeling balanced and under control. The regenerative braking automatically slows the car as soon as you lift off the accelerator. And the tech is good too – a lot of features that are on other cars but brought together in a straight forward touch screen system with some fun features. I know Tesla’s have their critics but so far so good.

But once past the fun how practical has it been? Well the key issue with EV’s in NI is still range and access to charging. Given that I’m in the EV Charger installation business I’ve been able to organise a quick installation of a home charger and one at our workplace – both of them running on single phase 7.4Kw connections – that’s been enough to add 30 miles of range for every hour connected at either location, and been sufficient for me to charge once or twice per week, either overnight at home or daytime at the office. For businesses with a 3 phase connection standard AC chargers will run up to 22Kw and provide a faster charger rate.

Most of the public chargers also run on 22Kw connections, but I’m now getting to see first hand the frustration with access to the ECarsNI public charger network. Having tried and failed to get access to chargers at Sprucefield and Bushmills I finally got on one in the Kennedy Centre this week. To be fair my previous attempts were blocked by other EV users being connected, and I wasn’t desperate for a charge but rather just wanted to see how the system worked. And it worked fine with my swipe card gaining me access and one hours worth of charge delivered for free, which is obviously a bonus! (More on the costs and who should pay in a future article).

So thus far I’ve resisted plugging in every day in order to monitor just how often I really need to do it. And while, as I’ve said previously, I have a car with a 300+ mile range I do find myself checking the battery a lot. When going to the office my daily round trip is 40 miles and at the weekend we tend to take a longer day trip drive. But actually it hasn’t been any hassle yet and I find I’m plugging in no more than twice a week. The key is convenient access and this is the real challenge in the long term to ensure the network develops to facilitate home, workplace and destination charging that fits with our daily / weekly driving patterns.