The maiden voyage of Guy Stenhouse’s new Jaguar I-Pace in 2019 did not go well. His 145-mile route from Glasgow to Sedbergh in Cumbria was lined with charging points – but most would not charge his car, meaning a trip that should have taken about 2 hours 45 mins took seven hours.
Mark Carpenter, chief executive of Motorpoint Group, says: “It’s clear that some have found an electric vehicle isn’t right for them. There doesn’t seem to be one reason. Instead, it tends to be a range of factors, for example, moving to a property without a home charger, a new job with a longer commute, or the high price of public chargers.”
Tyres are also an issue, which is the number one problem the AA breakdown service sees in EVs – not running out of charge or fires, contrary to common EV myths. “I hit a pothole in my electric car and the replacement tyre was £160 as opposed to £80 because for an EV the compound is different as it’s got to carry more weight,” says Baker. The AA is seeing an increase in its overallthough, rising from 3.5 per cent over the past 12 months to 4.
After that seven-hour incident, Stenhouse tried to find out the cause of the charging problem. “The charger manufacturer blamed the car, but the car manufacturer blamed the charger. Jaguar said the current was ‘too dirty’ with ‘too many spikes'”. As well as the car and charger not liking each other, the range was also an issue. The car is billed as having a 240-mile range, though Stenhouse says his car “always showed the range as 221 miles”.
Instead of wanting bigger batteries, Baker says it is attitudes to charging that need to change. The sooner we treat charging EVs in the same way we do our phones, which she describes as the “splash and dash” approach, the better. To encourage more people to EV, “getting the charging infrastructure sorted” is the number one priority. “It’s no use having 22kW or 7kW points at motorway service stations – it’s got to be the really rapid ones,” she adds.