Letter: ‘I drove my electric vehicle from New Forest to Slovenia for an experiment’
Some time ago I wrote about the exorbitant cost and difficulties of charging an EV on or near the UK motorway system. While I accept there are many who have range anxiety and only charge at home because it is cheap, I decided to see what it is like in the EU and drove to Slovenia (a round trip of over 2,000 miles).
I never thought I would say or write “well done France” but with pay-as-you-go chargers at nearly every motorway service area and at the places, where I stopped, a choice of 10 high-speed (350Kwh) chargers, France was a delight – even in the cities the major supermarkets had the high-speed chargers; what a pleasure.
Germany was not as good, many service areas had a few high-speed chargers but most were busy, and while there were always chargers available they were 100Kwh (much slower). The main issue was when you left the motorway – in the Black Forest we left the car in a closed supermarket carpark for five hours while it charged at a paltry 22Kwh.
In contrast, Austria was a mixture of France and Germany in that high-speed chargers were available at some service areas but even the hotel in the high Austrian Alps (above 3,500ft/1,100m) had two high-speed and four slower chargers available.
Now Slovenia is not a big country so they are not as well equipped as any of the other countries I visited, and the chargers I used were time-limited to three hours, but it was enough for us, and three hours cost only 4.49 euro!
The overriding impression is that the EU is well ahead of the UK, in that the cost of electricity is much cheaper and chargers are readily available. On the upside, compared to using my petrol plug-in Hybrid, I saved £124. On the down-side the journey took about four hours longer, but at least I could have lunch, read a book or go for a walk in the sun while I waited.
The UK should be doing better.
Iain Robinson
Barton