So, after a month of tootling around South London, over Easter we took our PHEV on it's first long journey.
Motorway driving was very comfortable and pretty uneventful as expected. Having an automatic was useful in the obligatory stop-start bank holiday jams on the M25 and M62 though. I did find the power lacking when doing long hill climbs at speed and it felt like I had to have a much heavier right foot than my previous turbo diesel to keep at a constant speed. In the end, using the cruise control was a way around this. I didn't use save or charge modes at all.
We enjoyed the use of the free Ecotricity charging points at all the motorway services we stopped at. Out of the four services we stopped at, we only had to wait once for a free charging bay (Beaconsfield on the M40 where a Nissan Leaf and BMW were both charging when we arrived). We encountered another PHEV charging at another, but otherwise had the bays to ourselves.
As we are only on our second tank of fuel there was a bit of second guessing the true range vs the range indicator to try and determine whether we'd have enough petrol to make it home. With a distance of 48 mostly motorway miles to go, and EV+ICE predicted range of 55 miles I bottled it in the end and topped up with £5 of petrol at the services as I didn't like relying on battery range alone on the motorway. I may well of made it home with range to spare, but didn't want to risk it on our first long journey.
For non-motorway charging, we fully charged from our lodge every night using a 13A extension lead I had packed which was great for driving around the lakes with lots of B5 on the steep descents. This meant very little petrol use each day on the local roads. It's great being able to control the speed using only one foot, and certainly saves on break pad wear!
We used the Openchargemap.org mobile app when out and about to see if there was any local charging points at our destinations. The one that would of been most useful (Ullswater) was unfortunately not restricted to EV vehicles and such was occupied by regular cars. We came across another charging point in a Blackpool car park by accident but didn't have the Chargemaster card required to charge there. Given this costs £20, I doubt I'd ever use these points enough to recoup the annual fee, despite having the cable.
Over the four day weekend, we did around 700 miles and I put in around 75L of fuel.
Overall, very happy with the trip and the novelty of creeping up behind people when silently driving round car parks still hasn't worn off! :lol:
Cheers
Neil
Motorway driving was very comfortable and pretty uneventful as expected. Having an automatic was useful in the obligatory stop-start bank holiday jams on the M25 and M62 though. I did find the power lacking when doing long hill climbs at speed and it felt like I had to have a much heavier right foot than my previous turbo diesel to keep at a constant speed. In the end, using the cruise control was a way around this. I didn't use save or charge modes at all.
We enjoyed the use of the free Ecotricity charging points at all the motorway services we stopped at. Out of the four services we stopped at, we only had to wait once for a free charging bay (Beaconsfield on the M40 where a Nissan Leaf and BMW were both charging when we arrived). We encountered another PHEV charging at another, but otherwise had the bays to ourselves.
As we are only on our second tank of fuel there was a bit of second guessing the true range vs the range indicator to try and determine whether we'd have enough petrol to make it home. With a distance of 48 mostly motorway miles to go, and EV+ICE predicted range of 55 miles I bottled it in the end and topped up with £5 of petrol at the services as I didn't like relying on battery range alone on the motorway. I may well of made it home with range to spare, but didn't want to risk it on our first long journey.
For non-motorway charging, we fully charged from our lodge every night using a 13A extension lead I had packed which was great for driving around the lakes with lots of B5 on the steep descents. This meant very little petrol use each day on the local roads. It's great being able to control the speed using only one foot, and certainly saves on break pad wear!
We used the Openchargemap.org mobile app when out and about to see if there was any local charging points at our destinations. The one that would of been most useful (Ullswater) was unfortunately not restricted to EV vehicles and such was occupied by regular cars. We came across another charging point in a Blackpool car park by accident but didn't have the Chargemaster card required to charge there. Given this costs £20, I doubt I'd ever use these points enough to recoup the annual fee, despite having the cable.
Over the four day weekend, we did around 700 miles and I put in around 75L of fuel.
Overall, very happy with the trip and the novelty of creeping up behind people when silently driving round car parks still hasn't worn off! :lol:
Cheers
Neil
