Six lessons learned from nine months of driving an electric car

Last year we bought our first (and hopefully last) new car. It was the cheapest electric car we could find with the range we wanted. Most of our journeys are still by bike, foot, train and bus. Electric driving is used when we need to bring equipment, trees or extra people long distances, and our large dog who is not welcome on public transport in a way that she would be in the UK.

We have driven to France and the UK, discovering the joys of charging in three countries. Here are the lessons we’ve learned from our nine months of electric driving. There have been some challenges. And yes we need better infrastructure, more public chargers and better behaviour around the existing ones. But driving cleaner and cheaper is a joy.

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1. Lighten up on your speed. Driving at 100km/h on a motorway will keep your range comfortably long. There are settings on many electric cars that allow you to set this speed almost automatically. It also makes for less tiring driving.
2. Sign up for a night-time rate on your electricity. If you have a home charger you can plug in before going to bed and programme the car to begin charging in the hours when the electricity is cheapest (4am to 8am, for example). Not only do you get a cheaper charge, as much as half the rate, but you’re also less of a drain on the grid.
3. Programme your charge to finish at 90 per cent. Charging to 100 per cent might make you feel happier but it will reduce the life of your battery. Similarly you can do the electric version of “driving on fumes” and arrive home with under 5 per cent, but that too isn’t good for the battery. Aim to charge to 90 per cent and not let it go under 5-10 per cent.
4. Don’t be the person who plugs in at a public charging station and then disappears for 90 minutes. Where do these people go? After 45 minutes you will be charged extra but poor public charging etiquette is still a problem. The best users stay with their cars and let the person queuing to charge know when they’re going to be finished.
5. Plan your journey and trust your dash readout. Our hybrid used to plummet from 30km in the tank to zero depending on the steepness of the hills. There’s no guesswork with our electric car. It can be trusted to tell us how far the battery will take us, to the last metre.
6. Best public chargers we’ve encountered? The Kinnegad services where the fast chargers will have you back on the road by the time you’ve bought a coffee and strolled back to the car.

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