BEDKNOBS

The charging points were donated by Zero Carbon World and installed by us in 2013.

Zero Carbon World is a charity set-up by Kevin Sharpe to promote a carbon-free society. He donated £1m that was used to purchase numerous charging stations that have now been installed throught the UK. ZCW now rely on donations to continue their work, so we encourage everyone that make use of our free-charging to do so by way of thanks.

ZCW also supports ZeroNet, that maps all charging stations across the UK with details of facilities available. You can find this and loads more on their website at Zero Carbon World

Here is the tale of Mike Large's journey from Beckenham in Kent to Bodmin and back in February 2014.

I drive a 2013 "Generation 1" Nissan Leaf 100% electric car (it has no internal combustion component at all). Being the 1st generation Leaf it has a maximum practical range of about 80 miles on a full charge without the aircon / heating on (using aircon / heating constantly reduces the range by about 10-15 miles). The later generation Leafs have a greater range, I'm not sure what that is in practical terms - I think its about an extra 10-20 miles but don't quote me :)

The journey I undertook was from Beckenham in Kent to Bodmin and then back again. I've never done a journey in the Leaf that was anywhere near the distances that I did this last weekend - I've never really been more than 40 miles away from home with it! It was a HUGE learning experience, not to everyones tastes I suspect but I really enjoyed it.

I've been down to Cornwall on a number of occasions to visit family in a petrol car - that usually takes about 5 hours door to door with little or no stops. The journey this weekend *down to Cornwall* took about 11 hours eventually - a lot of that time was because I was nervous about using too much range and charged up a lot more often than I needed to and went a different route than I normally would.

For 99% of the journey I used the Ecotricity - Our Electric Highway. The Ecotricity system is completely free to use. You just need to register with them and get a card to activate the machines. At one of their "rapid chargers" the car will charge up in from 0 to 80% in about 30 mins A full 100% charge would take about an hour (the last 20% takes 30 mins because of the way current battery technology works ...which I won't pretend to understand) Normally I would travel the A303 route in a petrol car but the M4- M5 corridor has a proliferation of chargers and so for that reason that's the route I took on this occasion.

Having done the journey on the "electric highway" I now have a much better understanding of the cars actual range and capability I think and I'd be a lot more comfortable extending the range I use and trying a different method down the A303 (although not 100% comfortable until I'd done it at least once)

I made a total of 7 stops on the way down and had a couple of 1 hour plus charges during that time - now that I know how the car performs better it's clear to me that I didn't need to do quite so many stops and I didn't need to charge for that long. On the way back it only took me 9.5 hours as I pushed the range a lot further (I did hit a lot of traffic as well that probably added at least an hour on that). With that said - even on the A303 route I still think the absolute minimum time I could do it in it would be around 8-9 hours. It's worth reiterating that that isn't 9 hours of driving!! ...that's 5 hours of driving and the rest of the time drinking tea with my feet up while the car gets some new electrons squirted into it :)

So ...am I going to do it again? Yes I am ...at least once. I'm moving to Cornwall in the very near future and the car is coming with me. When I do it again I'll try the A303 route. There's less Electric Highway stations but as a Nissan owner I can use the rapid chargers at Nissan car dealerships - you just need to phone ahead and plan your journey around their opening times. Again there's no charge for this service.

After I move I plan on visiting friends back in London and still need go there for business on occasions and I'd really rather not burn petrol to do that so I think I'll be a semi regular on the route in the future.

Cornwall council has a plan in place (and a government grant) to install a number of Rapid chargers across the county. It's my understand from the council that this process has been delayed slightly as the units need to be specially protected against the harsh cornish weather but they are apparently coming eventually.

It's my humble opinion that as the situation stands its absolutely possible to have an all electric holiday in Cornwall (and therefore no car emissions or fuel costs), Right now it would take a little planning everyday to make sure you were close enough to a friendly charger for your days out but it is doable. Once the rapid charger network goes in it should be an absolute breeze and you can afford to be a bit more random and spontaneous! :)

If you're interested in learning more about the electric car revolution then here's some useful further reading and watching that I'd highly recommend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfTiRNzbSko http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHcC65ZoyBw Zap Map - by Electric Vehicle Charger

Mike Large
EiKON Games