Electric cars: Mic Morgan gets a jump start

‘I suppose we are early adopters.’

‘Be patterns, be examples’ wrote George Fox. And thus it seems that destruction of the environment through the running of petrol cars, entailing the extraction of crude oil from the Arctic, is not a very good life choice.

And so it came to pass that when we needed to replace our car, we chose to go for a fully-electric Peugeot e208, in bright yellow. Not only was this a car we fell in love with, but it also used less water in its construction, in more eco-friendly production plants, or so we understand. We considered the issues with mining lithium for electric car batteries, and set it against six years of filling up with petrol. This article is an account of our first month in the car, thinking other Friends might like to consider making a similar choice. Hope so!

When we told friends about the car, the usual response seemed to go along the lines of: ‘Really admire your eco choice… but isn’t it all rather too soon to go 100 per cent electric?’ I suppose we are early adopters, but we do fully understand people’s concerns. For example, it does take a while to charge the battery, which is only designed for 200 miles of driving. It takes maybe six hours of domestic charging for thirty-three per cent of capacity; at some pubs and gyms higher-speed chargers can get to fifty per cent charge in three hours; and at motorway service stations and some other car parks there are chargers that can get to full capacity in ninety minutes. Driving to and from Cornwall we found that these latter ‘super chargers’ are often badly signposted; some are out of use, and they are managed by a dozen different companies, usually each requiring an app and credit card details. We ourselves cannot charge from home as there is no adjacent parking place and running a cable across the pavement would be unsafe.

And yet, a month on, we are still truly happy with our choice! We’ve found a friendly neighbour for occasional charging; there are some free charge points nearby; and service stations offer fast charging for a small cost (about fifteen per cent of a petrol refill in our previous car). We’ve also got a phone app showing locations of charging points mid way on long journeys.

Electric car facilities are bound to improve over time, but this needs action and campaigning. We also need to find alternatives to lithium from Central Africa to power the batteries.

We’d love to hear from Friends about their own experiences with electric cars. Our car, which we’ve named ‘Mellow Yellow’, is a delight to drive, and this eco choice car is surely a happy choice too!

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Comments

Really glad to see the purchase and running of an EV highlighted with Friends. We bought our Hyundai Kona EV just before Christmas. Being honest, charging it takes a bit of getting used to and an element of planning, but this is offset by the joy we get from driving along knowing we are not harming our planet. We are very pleased with the car and would encourage other Friends to take the plunge as the more Evs on the road, the faster and more widespread the charging points will get.

By Sean Devine on 24th January 2022 - 14:50

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