Ah, the open road. There’s nothing like it. The tailbacks reaching out for… Sorry, the highway. The highway reaching out for miles and miles before you. Yup, that old open road. It’s like freedom. Freedom to go wherever you please, so long as you don’t stray too far from the public charging network… Sorry, sorry. Freedom to go where you please. Just you, your car, the open road, and all the other cars and vans and motorcycles and lorries and coaches that all seem to be going exactly the same way as you.
Home near Bristol to Cockermouth in Cumbria is 300 miles. (Almost exactly, in fact. According to the Audi’s onboard computer it’s 300.1 miles, including a bit of shuffling around various motorway service stations. I was so annoyed to see 300.0 miles tick over on the dash with the hotel just around the corner I almost pulled over and walked the rest.)
For a while I contemplated borrowing someone’s petrol or diesel car for that 600.2-mile return journey rather than tackle in it an EV, but then I remembered the whole point of borrowing this S e-tron GT for six months was to learn exactly what EV life was like. So I sucked it up, plotted the way on Zapmap (the excellent app that shows where every public charge point in the UK is, and how quickly it should deliver a charge) and stocked up on road snacks.
