For years, I’d assumed an electric car wasn’t a practical option. I live in London with no driveway and nowhere to fit a home charger. But when our petrol car finally died, I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint. Friends told me not to go electric, though – even those I’d consider true environmentalists. They were suffering from “range anxiety”, having heard about someone’s sister or brother who’d once sat for an hour at a broken charger off the M5.
We’d dipped a toe into the electric future already: last summer we hired a Kia EV5 through Europcar for a few nights at Center Parcs Longleat Forest, in Wiltshire – about 110 miles from home. The site was better equipped than anywhere I’ve been before or since: 92 charge points, eight for daytime use and 84 for overnight. Ours filled slowly through the night, costing just £20. A full tank of petrol in our old Skoda Octavia would have been about £75.
Before buying an electric vehicle (EV), I wanted to put my charging fears to bed, so I decided to test one on a long-distance road trip: from London to the Lake District and back, with two kids, in an MG S5 EV – an entry-level family SUV with a range of just 220 miles. If this 750-mile round trip was successful, I wouldn’t have anything to fear.
It began badly. I’d used 40 per cent of the charge on last-minute errands in London. I expected to be able to recharge while I was out, but every public charger was taken, so when we left for the drive north, we pulled away with the battery on 60 per cent.
We stopped twice along the way. First, 59 miles in, at Welcome Break Newport Pagnell on the M1, where an ultra-fast Applegreen Electric charger put back most of what my errands had eaten. The second time was 220 miles in, at Welcome Break Charnock Richard, near Chorley on the M6. Here, the battery went from 20 to 80 per cent in about 20 minutes – long enough for the loo and to pick up some magazines – for about £45. These ultra-fast chargers typically cost 70-90p per kWh, compared with about 7p per kWh for a home charge.
That was two stops before we even reached Cumbria; a full 50-litre tank in the Octavia would have taken us the whole way to Borrowdale. I’d toyed with seeking out a cheaper supermarket charger, but with two fidgeting children it wasn’t worth the detour. And to be honest, I wanted to see how fast the EV would charge. I was amazed, by the cost as much as the speed.
There was a problem, though. While the car has a maximum range of 220 miles, this diminishes when more energy is used on faster roads, the radio, lights and air conditioning. So, after a full charge (manufacturers recommend going up to 80 per cent to preserve battery health), we only had 180 miles to go on. Would we make it to our first stop, more than 100 miles away?
We arrived at Borrowdale, a remote valley of drystone walls and tumbling becks, south of Keswick, with 20 miles left. Had we been in a petrol car, a low tank would have meant a tense first day hunting for somewhere to refill. But our cottage, in the village of Seatoller, not only had a stream across the road and stunning walks from the front door, but a charger too. It filled the battery overnight for just £12.
Within a day of driving more slowly around climbing lanes, the car was promising a full 220 miles’ worth of energy. We went over remote Honister Pass to Buttermere, walked up Castle Crag and drove into Keswick twice for food, barely making a dent.
However, I am glad I only booked accommodation that had chargers, because the public ones were hopeless. The car park in Grasmere, for instance, had two that would take hours to fill the car, but both were taken every time I tried to park over a few days.
At Castlerigg Hall, a family campsite on the fell above Keswick, owner David Jackson has invested heavily in environmental measures. We spent two nights in a pod with beds built from recycled pallets and underfloor heating run off an air-source pump. But there’s only one charger. David has already paid tens of thousands for a new electricity substation and doesn’t have the funds or electrical capacity to enlarge it for more chargers.
He thinks the solution will be cars with 1,000-mile-capacity batteries, so people can drive to the Lakes and back on one charge. That’s not quite on the cards yet, but Toyota says the first solid-state batteries capable of 1,000km (621 miles) will reach a handful of expensive models in 2027 or 2028, with mass production around 2030. That would be enough to bring most of David’s guests to Borrowdale and back without plugging in.
We drove further north, to Another Place, The Lake, on the shores of Ullswater. Aira Force waterfall is a short walk away and Gowbarrow Fell rises behind it, a climb small enough for children. The hotel runs on renewable electricity, is heated with a biomass boiler, and has five chargers that are free for guests. We stayed in one of its six shepherd’s huts, tucked into the rhododendrons, with a stargazing roof and a fire pit outside.
Not everywhere is so well equipped. Booking site Cottages.com told me just 44 of its 941 Lake District properties – about five per cent – have EV charging, rising to 8.5 per cent nationally. Yet searches on its site for an “EV charging holiday” have jumped nearly 1,500 per cent in a year.
Anxious that we wouldn’t make it home without paying a small fortune for a motorway charge, I managed to book one of the last available hotels in Windermere for our final night. Linthwaite House sits on a hilltop above the lake, in 14 acres of gardens and woodland, with three chargers that are priced into the room rate.
We arrived almost empty and plugged in for the night. This was possibly the best place to unwind before the long drive home, with a restaurant overlooking the water and the mountains we’d just left behind. I’d picked this place so we wouldn’t be tempted to leave and use up any battery before the drive home. Luckily, the hotel has a boating lake, giant chess and Jenga to keep everyone occupied.
We did still have to pay a fortune to recharge on the way home, about 175 miles in. But I was converted. Our accommodation with overnight chargers meant we’d filled the car much more economically than with fuel.
Yes, public chargers are too slow and too few in remote areas. The network grew by 10 per cent in a year, to 121,171 public chargers by the end of June, but the share in rural areas has barely moved: 17.1 per cent in January, 17.2 per cent in April, according to the Department for Transport.
From April 2028, there will be added costs. EV owners will pay 3p for every mile they cover, a charge called eVED that comes on top of road tax and will cost a typical driver about £240 a year. Miles driven abroad count too – the Treasury says exempting them would mean tracking where cars go. Our round trip to the Lakes would’ve added about £21 to the bill; driving to the south of France and back would be three times that.
But our trip was good for the soul, driving around a national park without adding to the fumes. That, and the bracing fell walks, made it the greenest driving holiday we’ve had.
