Electric vehicles: what it's really like when you switch to an EV from petrol or diesel

Capitalising on my long-held firm belief that you should write while you care, here goes: a wee while ago a former colleague shamed me on social media in a way that made me feel guilty about driving a diesel car. I don’t overly like (read, hate) progressive right-on types hectoring others into ‘being better’ but you see it all the time. People who don’t agree with you or a view you share (that you don’t agree with either) or something you eat or wear etc: ‘oh, James. You’re better than this!’

“Oh, get lost!”

Anyway, after ramming down my throat that her EV could get to the moon and back without issue, and because in actual fact I do care about my carbon footprint, I started to explore my options and in the end placed an order for an EV … in May! MAY!!

A friend of mine advised: “While you wait, get on to the charging company. You don’t want to be without a charger when your car arrives.” Good thinking. So I get onto Ohme who assured me that such a scenario was an obscene contemplation and that such a thing could never materialise. Fair enough.

Two weeks ago, my car arrived … yes, in late November. More than six months after I ordered it. If the government and car industry are in a rush to get us all into EVs they’ve got a funny way of showing it. Anyway, no. My charger hadn’t arrived and so the only thing that was charged was my galling sense of ‘I told you so’. Incidentally, the charger arrived yesterday and so for the last fortnight I’ve been creeping around service stations, suffering the ominous looks of judgemental types wondering what that creepy man is doing here again looking like he should be on Interpol’s most-wanted list.

Anyway, turns out you can’t just plug in and charge and pay. Noooo. That would be too simple. You have to go onto websites and download apps and register everything from your inside leg measurement to your mother’s mother’s maiden name. And … the chargers have different shaped plugs, so you don’t know which one to plug in so you drive off all embarrassed (like I did) because you were worried you might zap your own arm off if you get it wrong. Then, the charger tells you you will have enough power to nip to the shop for bread in about nine hours, and that if you dare stay longer than an hour-and-a-half you will be fined! I’m not even joking. Oh, and do you recall how they told us they’d be much cheaper to fill up? Pffft. 80p per kwh (I know, I don’t know what that means, either) at public stations makes them just as expensive to run as petrol and diesel cars! Where’s the incentive in that?

All of this is why, when news of car and van factories closing down and big corporations warning this week that EV targets are going to be the death of them, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for both the workers on the factory floors and have an element of understanding when it comes to the manufacturers’ point of view. If my experience is anything to go by, we’re simply not ready for an accelerated shift into electric cars and more must be done to incentivise us out of our old cars whilst protecting jobs.

For the record, now that I’m through the pain of it all, I love my EV. I can now give it a full tank of ‘fuel’ at home for less than £10 and I’m no longer being looked at like a pervert in a petrol station. So thank you to my former colleague (who is awesome and lovely, by the way) for giving me that nudge.

Happy motoring!

JM

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