Electric?

So it turns out that deciding to transform our beauty into an electric car, is quite easy . It is actually the easiest step to be honest. We’re not saying that we’re complete nit-wits when it comes to electric cars, but there’s quite a gap between knowing stuff and actually start doing them.

So I’ve spent the last few months in reading a lot on electric transformations and in getting in touch with people who have done this before.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating: driving an electric car would give us a lot of insights. This opportunity came along as my wife had the chance to get a brand new I-PACE as a job car.

Ever heard of range anxiety? We have. The very first week of driving an I-PACE was already a bit of a challenge. A day trip to the Belgian coast. So we downloaded this charging app that tells you where to charge your car. The nearest charger turned out to be right on the corner of the street of our friends. Great! Unfortunately, … it was taken. The next one was only a few minutes away, so after getting there, we took a nice stroll on the beach back, we were not in a hurry after all.

Fact is that we bought us peace of mind by plugin in our EV. With a range of 470 km’s our car could have easily made it there and back without having to recharge. To be very honest with you: so far, we didn’t manage to achieve the magical range of 470 km’s. The actual range of an electric car depends on many different aspects. There’s the place you drive them: in towns or on secondary roads, or on highways. Opposed to normal combustion engines that are more efficient on longer trajectories and at high speed, electric cars perform better on secondary roads and shorter distances. Then of course, there’s the batteries that are influenced by the outside temperature. At 20 degrees, they perform better than at 10°, let alone around temperatures around the freezing point. Our first experiences (again, driving the I-PACE mostly on highways) made it end up at a range around 350 km’s.

As we don’t have a charging infrastructure at home, we mostly charge the I-PACE at work or at a public charging station nearby. The one we use takes us not even 5 minutes by foot, conveniently and it is free most of the time. We don’t plug in the car every evening, only when we know we have a longer journey planned the next day. And sometimes also when we don’t … Range anxiety isn’t harmful, but can by quite persistent …