It was my first weekend with the iOn and I thought I'd give it a few little test. Although the most interesting thing to happen had almost nothing to do with the car but we'll come to that later. As I've mostly been driving on motorways on Saturday I decided to have a ride into Durham. Partly to see how it deals with lots of roundabouty A road driving and also to see if, in a highly pedestrianised city we should maybe nickname the car "Whispering Death". It turns out, as expected it deals very well with that environment. The regenerative breaking really comes in to its own. I started the day with 70 miles and after going to Durham and back the long way and pootling about Chester-le-Street a bit by the end of the day I still had 50 miles left. The pedestrians do notice it. The tyre noise and it's gentle hum is enough to alert them that there's something coming although lot's of them do a double take and you can see them saying "Oh, there's one of those electric cars. Like off Top Gear..."
The big event though was in the car park in Durham. There was about four of us waiting for the lift to get up to street level and it seemed to take ages. This should have been a warning sign, but when it arrived and the doors opened the people in it already didn't get out or say anything so we all crowded in. It went up a bit, then down a bit, then it kind of went "dong" and stopped. It was at this moment one of my lift using compatriots mentioned it had gone up to the top then down to the bottom before we got in without opening its doors. We stood for a bit wondering if it was going to move again but apart from shuddering a couple of times it didn't. I began to look around at the eleven people in there, trying to work out who we could eat first and which child we could try and squeeze through a vent to go and get help. It really was like the cast from a movie in there: there was the alpha male, making jokes and telling people they'd be OK. There was the wise, bearded old man and the bookish middle aged spinster. The sick child, the annoying teenager complaining about not being able to breath and the mother telling her to shut up, stay calm and think about the younger kids. There was the busy lady who had an appointment to get to. Honestly, all manner of life was there in that lift. We were stuck for twenty minutes pressing the emergency button over and over again and getting an electronic voice telling us that help was on its way while the air gradually got hotter and more stifling. The sick child was actually sick on the floor which really didn't help the breathing situation. Eventually the lift came back to life and we moved about a foot, the doors opened and fresh oxygen rushed in. Amazingly there were still people standing there waiting to use the lift even though there was some king of security guard waiting there to put a sign up saying it was out of service. I don't know who was more stupid, the guard for not telling them to take the stairs or the members of the great British public for just standing there thinking "Oh, it'll be OK for me."
So that was the excitement. On the Sunday I took it to South Shields. Nothing much to report about that other than because it was a lot of quite high speed motorway-like driving it used up charge faster than a Londoner can try on and then loot a pair of trainers. All in all more evidence that the iOn is a great little city car and runabout but not so hot for the distance driving.
Anyway, I've got to go and see a person about a thing so I'll see you all next time.
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