Range Rage

I suffered my first bout of "range anxiety" tonight. For some reason charging the car at work today only got me 54 miles instead of the expected 70 (I'll have to look into that tomorrow) and due to particularly rubbish traffic (there was a bit of rain so therefore you have to slow down to 15 mph on the motorway, just have to) got home with about 30 left. Now that would have been fair enough, charge it over night, job's a good 'un. Except I got a call from my brother asking if I want to go and see one of his friends band in Newcastle so I suggest he might want a ride in the iOn - which he does. So by the time I'm ready to go the car has been charging for about an hour which you would have thought would top it up a little bit but no, by the time I get up to my brothers I'm down to 29 miles - very, very close to the distance of a round trip to Newcastle and back. I didn't want to by the guy that ran out of charge on the A1 so in the end we went for a quick drive round the block and then went to Newcastle in his diesel car. Which he had to fill up before we left...

I really do think this shows up the range limitations of the current crop of electric cars. I suppose, had it been a Leaf it's extra 30 miles of range would have meant I had no trouble but in a car with a maximum range of just over 70 you can't realistically make two reasonable length journeys in one day because you won't have enough time to charge it back up in between. Now if I had access to a fast charger at home it wouldn't be a problem but that would mean having special equipment installed. Also, I suppose if I'd been prepared I could have looked up charging points in town but saying that, would the 2 hours or so have been enough to top it up to safely get home? I'm not sure.

So there you go. Tonight's story. I don't want to leave it on a downer so I'll leave you with something I'm sure loads of people have said but it still made me chuckle when I heard it tonight: "You are what you tweet."