I-Pace Cornish Holiday

[TimMcC]

I promised I'd let you know how my first family holiday went in the I-Pace, so here I am. Unfortunately, nowhere near as much driving was done as we had to cancel the Hampshire -> Nottinghamshire leg when the family members we were visiting came down with Covid.

So the trip became New Forest -> Cornwall (near Liskeard) and back a week later. The car was easily capable of this 4 hour journey without stopping, but we did stop each way at Exeter Moto for lunch where they've just installed 12 new chargers to complement the existing 2. Both times there were 6/7 empty spaces (despite the services being very very busy!) and we got more than enough charge just stopping for lunch.

We arrived at our destination with about 50% charge. We were staying at Forest Holidays (which we really liked), and unfortunately our cabin didn't have parking directly outside which meant we couldn't use the 'granny' charger on the 3-pin plug. There was a single type 2 7kW charger for the 24 cabins, and there were at least 3 other electric cars which I saw charging on it. This did add undue stress when I wasn't able to get on it when I hoped, and I was looking at the pretty poor local rapid charger provision nearby. I'd have had to drive 20 minutes to charge for about an hour since the chargers were all quite slow. Thankfully, I was actually able to get on the charger twice which was enough for the driving we did. So the net effect was it wasn't any less convenient that diesel, and we did the same amount of driving. But I could have done without the worry of 'will I get on the charger?' to be honest.

Cornwall services are about to open a major charging hub like the one in Exeter, and had that been operational I wouldn't have had to worry at all.

 

[saltyamigo]

How efficient do you find the iPace in wh per mile? Shame about the lack of parking even the granny charger would likely have kept you going without any stress.

 

[Tengocity]

That sounds a bit like range anxiety - it's not necessarily that there is an issue, it's more the thought process that there might be an issue. On balance though, if this is something that needs to be dealt with a few times per year, and the rest of the year for one's day to day driving home charging is sufficient, then it's no big deal.
As ever, it really comes down to each individuals own use case.

 

[TimMcC]

How efficient do you find the iPace in wh per mile? Shame about the lack of parking even the granny charger would likely have kept you going without any stress.

Low 400s most of the time the way I drive it. Mid 300s where there aren't any dual carriageways.

Forgot to mention, for this trip we had the bike carrier on too with 3 bikes. No noticeable impact on range.

 

[TimMcC]

That sounds a bit like range anxiety - it's not necessarily that there is an issue, it's more the thought process that there might be an issue. On balance though, if this is something that needs to be dealt with a few times per year, and the rest of the year for one's day to day driving home charging is sufficient, then it's no big deal.
As ever, it really comes down to each individuals own use case.

I'd say charger anxiety rather than range anxiety. At no point was I worried about stopping in the road, and the range prediction in the IPace seems spot on.

It was 'will I have to make an annoying trip just to charge the car' anxiety.