A couple of weeks later, and using an ICE car

I recently had to do another trip to Portsmouth. As I described in a previous post the last trip I made I used the ZOE with mixed results, but I was new to the whole EV thing, wasn't used to charging, and had a distracting colleague with me.

This time I was going to the same area, but to a different office which I knew didn't have a charging point. I could have taken the ZOE and chosen to stop off on the way home to charge, but I decided to swap cars with my wife and use her Diesel Scenic (what can I say, we like Renault cars).

First off, I started with "range anxiety" as she was low on fuel. I had to drive a few miles out of my way, queue up, and stand at a smelly petrol station, with a dodgy pump, freezing my hand off in the rain and wind for a few minutes whilst I filled up (yes the filling station has a "shelter", but the current weather means the rain is pretty much horizontal).

For the Americans, legislation prohibits us in the UK from "locking" the pumps. We have to hold them and squeeze the handle the whole time, and they often are over-sensitive and keep cutting out.

£70 later I was ready to go (that wasn't a full tank, which would have cost nearer £90). That is an experience I definitely do not miss.

Of course, from that point I had no fuel problems because the range of the fully fuelled car is over 200 miles. However, I did find the whole journey fairly uncomfortable.

Prior to leasing the ZOE I had a petrol 4x4, which I actually loved, until it got too old to be worth maintaining. It was a gas guzzler but, at the time, it was comfortable and practical. My wife had the Grand Scenic which was a newer, nicer, more comfortable car, comparatively speaking.

Since I have been driving, and getting used to, the ZOE my opinion of the Scenic has changed. I now find the Scenic to be uncomfortable, noisy, and not nearly as nice to drive as the ZOE. Part of that is due to the lack of gearbox. I have to say I generally do not enjoy driving manual gearbox cars. But the ZOE has no gearbox. That's a subtly important difference. I dislike automatic gearboxes because you can feel them change gears, and I often find they don't change gears when I want to. That's not an issue with the ZOE as it has no gearbox, period. I thought I would miss the gear stick, but I don't. I especially don't miss the clutch when I'm sitting in slow moving traffic.

I found myself, driving back from Portsmouth, wishing I had taken the ZOE. Now I'm used to it I would have stopped off to charge for 20-30 mins at one of the Ecotricity rapid chargers on the M3. As it was, after a long day, I ended up stopping there for a 20 minute break, even though I didn't need to refuel, as I was getting too tired to drive safely. I actually dove past the Ecotricity charge points as a drove in. So I actually saved no time by taking the ICE car, and it cost me around £25 of fuel in the Scenic, where it would have cost me around £3 in the ZOE.