It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here concerning my life with an electric car, mainly because it seems that a lot of people, including journalists, have taken on the challenge of expelling some of the claims by manufacturers and promises by governments concerning electric cars and infrastructure.
However, I was making my way cautiously north from my home in God’s own county, Wiltshire, to North Yorkshire the other day and reflecting on the making such a long journey in an electric car when I realised that such journeys have something in common with taking part in an F1 race so I thought I would share a couple of thoughts along these lines:
Strategy: as part of their planning prior to a race they have to adopt a stop strategy something one has to do with an electric car, although in an F1 car one doesn’t drive in to the pits to find the pit crew missing, or the equipment broken which is something one has to constantly contend with an electric car.
Battery range: one often hears about having enough charge on the battery to execute a tactic (specifically for overtaking and DRS I believe) which is something one is constantly wrestling with although with an electric car is all about having enough battery to complete a journey with enough left at the end to get to a charging point at ones destination.
Unfortunately there seems to be a lot more focus on making F1 more efficient and enjoyable than there is to electric car ownership which leads me on to another point, one which I found quite shocking. Since I've had my electric car I have spent in excess of 830 hours charging my car, or over 34 days (of 24 hours) which in real terms means I have lost 52 days of my life charging my car (if one uses a 16 hour day). This also does not take into account the hours I have spent waiting to charge, or driven around trying to find a charger that is working so one could easily double this if those aspects were taking into account. It is shocking isn’t it? I had to do the calculations several times over as I couldn't quite believe it! Yes I know that manufacturers are looking at every aspect of car charging to try and bring this down, but shouldn't this have been a consideration BEFORE respective governments mandated their adoption? For much of my earlier career I was a business consulting working with companies implementing technology to help them improve the efficiency of their processes and ultimately their workforce to me this seems like a complete antithesis to that.
My advice to you; unless you are a young person who doesn’t have a busy life, who is just a your car to potter around town I would seriously reconsider your decision to get an electric car. If you are a company looking to get the most out of a mobile workforce, then don't event think about investing in electric vehicles.
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