For years, I’d assumed an electric car wasn’t a practical option. I live in London with no driveway and nowhere to fit a home charger. But when our petrol car finally died, I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint. Friends told me not to go electric, though – even those I’d consider true environmentalists. They were suffering from “range anxiety”, having heard about someone’s sister or brother who’d once sat for an hour at a broken charger off the M5.
We’d dipped a toe into the electric future already: last summer we hired a Kia EV5 through Europcar for a few nights at Center Parcs Longleat Forest, in Wiltshire – about 110 miles from home. The site was better equipped than anywhere I’ve been before or since: 92 charge points, eight for daytime use and 84 for overnight. Ours filled slowly through the night, costing just £20. A full tank of petrol in our old Skoda Octavia would have been about £75.
Before buying an electric vehicle (EV), I wanted to put my charging fears to bed, so I decided to test one on a long-distance road trip: from London to the Lake District and back, with two kids, in an MG S5 EV – an entry-level family SUV with a range of just 220 miles. If this 750-mile round trip was successful, I wouldn’t have anything to fear.
