269 - The EV101 Episode Part 3

Gary Comerford (: 00:00

Hi I'm Gary and this is EV Musings, a podcast about renewables, electric vehicles and things that are interesting to electric vehicle owners. On the show today we'll be going back to basics in the third of series of episodes I like to call EV 101.

Our main topic of discussion today is EV basics. This is the last of three episodes in a series. In the first of these three episodes we were looking at deciding if electric is the right way for you. We looked at what you need to do before getting your EV. We looked at dealers, leasing, salary sacrifice and your test drive. We ended with the car being chosen ready for delivery.

In episode 2 we looked at what happens when you get your electric car, getting a charger, choosing your electricity tariff, driving the car for the first time, regenerative braking, one pedal driving etc. And in the final episode of this mini-series we're looking at the two big issues that seem to stymie lots of people when it comes to EVs. Long distance driving and public charging. Now let me start by saying that a lot of the issues that you hear about on social media related to EVs actually come down to two simple things.

Either firstly, people made the wrong choice when it comes to what car to buy, or secondly, they didn't educate themselves when it comes to how these vehicles work. Now we talked about picking the right car back in the first episode of this series, ensuring you've got a car that fits your needs and that you can charge easily. The education aspect is, in my mind, the key driver. Now it doesn't matter if you've got the best EV in the world, if it fits your need perfectly, and it has exactly the range you want. If you don't understand how to drive it or charge it,

you're going to hit issues.

Now we're going to be discussing two main topics today, primarily doing long journeys and then using public rapid charging. These seem to be the two things that generally tend to trip people up when it comes to being first time EV owners. So let me start by saying that it's entirely possible to own and operate an EV without ever having to do charging away from home. For this to happen, it presumes you already have a home charger. You can charge off street.

and you tend to always return back to your home base when you're done traveling. Now that's the quote unquote ideal EV experience. Secondly, I want to say that it is entirely possible to do long distance journeys across the country or the continent without ever having to touch an app or enough RFID card or scan a QR code or anything. Just use your bank payment card to start and stop charges and your in-car navigation to find them.

It works. It's not perfect, but it works. So this is not the optimum solution. For the optimum solution, your best opportunity is to spend a little time finding and installing a couple of apps and services and ordering an RFID card or two. There's a little overhead in doing this upfront, but the savings and peace of mind in the long term are well worth it.

So let's start with the key apps you need. Because ChargePoint operators have chosen for reasons not to put large signs and totems by their chargers like the oil giants do at petrol stations, it's not always intuitive where to find public charging. Sometimes they're in public car parks, sometimes they're in their own hubs, but you could quite easily drive straight past a lot of them if you don't know about them. So you will need an app that will allow you to locate public chargers

navigate to public charges and check the availability of these charges. After all, it's no good trekking for two and a half or three hours to a rapid charger to find it's either not working or occupied. There are several of these apps on the market. Some are better than others. They all have strengths and weaknesses. My recommendation is obviously going to be Zapmap, the sponsors of this podcast.

The app runs on Android or Apple. It links into CarPlay or Android Automotive, and it has a powerful set of filters to allow you to narrow down the huge list of available charges to those that are going to be useful to you. For example, you might only want to use charges from those operators who appear in the top charge point operators as voted for in the Zapmap Customer Satisfaction Survey. You can create a filter for that. You might only want to use charges

that are part of a charging hub where there are six or more units at a location. You can filter for that. Finally, you might only want to use charges where you can pay using your preferred method of charging, be that a payment card, a roaming operator, whatever, and you can filter by that too. Plus, Zapmap will also show you how many charges are available at each site. And this avoids the possibility of actually traveling to a site where either the units are broken or there are queues to get onto a charger.

We've mentioned it before on this show, but Beckinsfield services for some reason tends to be one where the ionity charges are constantly in use. Now, if you're heading there, it would be a nice idea to know how many are available. So the flexibility of a solution such as Zapmap is obvious. However, there are others in the space, such as the Electroverse app from Octopus and the Ovo Charge Anywhere app, formerly the Bonnet app.

On top of that, you'll find a lot of ChargePoint operators extol the virtues of having their apps downloaded to your phone for when you're using their services. Now, this is nothing new. Companies like Shell and BP have had apps available for their wet fuels for years. In fact, Shell is now in the throes of wrapping its EV app into its wet fuel app, meaning you'll have to use a fossil fuel-based app to charge your electric car at a Shell charger.

Now I'm here to tell you that you do not need CPO specific apps to charge your car. They are not needed at all. However, what those apps do provide is some level of flexibility when it comes to things like pricing. For example, at the time of writing, InstaVolt a CPO with an app, will reduce the price you pay for charging from 54pkWh to 50pkWh at certain sites if you start or stop the charge via their app. There are other apps that do similar sort of pricing.

And if that's important to you, then by all means use the app. But please, I beg you, don't randomly download every single app for every single ChargePoint operator just because they ask you to do so on a charger screen. There is one exception to this. Ironically, it's the CPO that usually has the easiest way of using them of all CPOs, and that is Tesla.

For a large number of the Tesla sites around the world that are open to use by non-Tesla cars, the only way you can start and stop them is with the Tesla app. Yeah, this is a generalization. If you're using the flashy new V4 units in solid white, you can start and stop them using a credit card. But for all the others, you'll need an app. Unless you're using the flashy new Tesla solid white EV on the move chargers, which don't have credit card readers, are only usable through the app.

Yes, it's confusing. My advice? Get the Tesla app. The other thing it's worth doing is seeing which of the companies, such as Zapmap, Electroverse, etc. have an RFID available. RFID cards are simple plastic cards that allow you to swipe, to start and stop a charge. They have two advantages over other forms of payment. They're better than apps because they don't rely on having a good signal between the app and the charger to work.

and then much quicker and easier to validate than using a contactless card for payment. In fact, I have a video of me in France earlier this year swiping a card on a charger in a hotel and having it start the charge literally within two seconds of swiping. So speaking of driving to France, let's talk long distance journeys.

Firstly, me tell you that EVs can do just as long a journey as an ICE car and don't let anyone tell you differently. In fact, it's often the case that they can also do them just as quickly as ICE cars, ICE internal combustion engine cars. Now I talked on earlier episodes about a neighbor who wasn't going to get an EV because he drives to the south of France every year in his diesel without having to refuel and he can't do that in an EV.

Now when we discussed his trip we discovered that he didn't go from where I am around North East Hampshire to the south of France without stopping. Firstly he stopped at the charnel. Then he stopped for lunch outside Paris. Then he had an overnight hotel stay. And then he stopped for lunch the following day somewhere down south of Dijon etc. He also had a couple of toilet stops along the way. Now with an electric vehicle these are all opportunities to charge your car.

This is done while you are doing other things, not as a separate activity like wet fueling is. trip each year for the last three years in an EV. Year one I went to Paris, in year two I went to Geneva via Paris, and in year three I went to Amsterdam via Bruges. Now while the journey out to these places took a day or two due to the nature of the trip we were doing, the return journey in each case was done in a single day. And the total time spent waiting

for charge across all three return journeys in three years was about 65 minutes. Now what's more, if you're taking your car across on the channel, the channel tunnel, there are lots of charges at the terminal and you will usually have time prior to going across in which you can charge. Failing that, there are literally more than a dozen different rapid and ultra rapid charges within a few minutes drive of the Calais end of the channel. So let's go through how you do

long distance EV journey.

first thing to remember is that depending on what range your car has will affect how you go about it. If you're in a car with a long range such as a Tesla Model Y long range or a Porsche Taycan, it's a completely different experience to someone trying to do a long distance in something like a Vauxhall Corsa E. Let me give you a specific example from my personal experience. I mentioned the fact that I went to Amsterdam from Brighton.

earlier this year. I did it in my ID.3 which has a 58 kilowatt hour battery in a range of around 220-230 miles in summer. Now the same journey was done at the same time by the team from Zapmap. They were driving an almost identical car to me. Theirs was the Cupra Born which is the same ID.3 based skateboard with a Cupra bodywork and the other main difference was that they had the 77 kilowatt hour battery with a range upwards of 300 miles. Now

We both followed the same route. We were on the same train across the Channel Tunnel. We stopped at the same places along the route. We even parked in the same hotel car park overnight. The difference was that I charged my car overnight at the hotel we stopped at in Bruges. Team Zapmap didn't. They arrived in Amsterdam with around 20 miles left on the GOM, meaning they did the complete journey from Brighton to Amsterdam on one charge.

They left the following morning, went all the way back to their hometown of Bristol with just one charge along the way, which I believe was at the channel while they were waiting for the train.

That's difference, a larger battery made. But it also has to be said that my charging was hardly onerous. I pulled into the charging bay in the car park attached to the hotel in Bruges, showed the payment card, and it literally started charging pretty much immediately. With 7kW AC charging all night, I left the following morning with a full battery.

But what if you don't have a large battery and you have to do that long journey up to see your family in Scotland when you live on the South Coast? Well, according to a recent white paper released by Transport and Environment in the UK, all the motorway networks are very well covered from a rapid charge point of view. You can go pretty much anywhere in England with very little issue. Great Britain, should I say.

The Scottish lowlands are pretty well covered, including the Edinburgh Glasgow corridor, and both North Wales and South Wales are well covered. There are, however, certain gaps, and these gaps mostly coincide with places where fewer people live. Snowdonia, the Brecon Beacons, for example, Scottish Highlands is another example. The most startling omission, however, is the M6 corridor between Preston and Glasgow.

That's not to say there aren't chargers there, because there are, but in terms of the number of major roads within 10km of a rapid charging unit, there are fewer than other parts of the country.

Should this be an issue? Absolutely not. Should you be aware of it? Of course. The easiest way to plan a long distance journey is to use your vehicle's in-car navigation system if it has one that will send you to charge stops.

Tesla will do this, obviously, as will any of the vehicles equipped with the Android automotive operating systems such as the Polestar and Volvo range of cars. Now, no doubt there are others that will do this, but I haven't tested a huge number of them, so I can't tell you which brands do. Now, there is an issue with this sort of navigation, however, and that is that the underlying database might not be totally up to date. If it's using publicly available information that's updated in real time, it'll be fine.

But the navigation on my ID3, for example, doesn't show all the charges on route and it isn't automatically updated when new charges are added. Sometimes it's best to use a third party route planners. These tend to be more up to date. Now for the purposes of this, I'm going to use the route planner within the ZapMap app. As I say, there are others, you can use things like a better route planner, for example. Now let's assume I wanted to go from Norwich to Exeter, a distance of 286 miles.

in an ID3 in summer with a nominal range of 230 miles. If I plug these figures into the ZatMap route planner, it will show me the charges that are available on route. These are ultra rapid charges, the purple icons, or rapid charges with the pink icons. It will also identify that this is a journey of over five and a half hours. A journey that long will certainly need a rest stop or a bio stop. So that will be an ideal time to charge.

A quick look shows me that there is an Ionity Hub with 12 chargers just off the M3 near Fleet. It's 150 miles away, should take me a little under three hours to get there and I'll arrive with 31 % state of charge. There are several other chargers in the area if there's an issue and I also have enough leeway with the state of charge that I can actually travel a bit further if I wanted to or I was familiar with the range capabilities of the car. If I was comfortable with running the vehicle down a little lower

I could continue to Solstice Park near Amesbury. It has a veritable jackpot for people wanting to charge. It has two different InstaVolt locations, two different BP pulse installs, a grid serve hub and a 16 stall Tesla supercharger up to the public. It'll take me three and a half hours. It's 194 miles and I'll arrive with 11 and a half percent state of charge. I can then make it all the way to the final destination without having to stop.

Depending on the weather, the speed I travel, the hills that I have to go up and down, these stops can be changed on the fly if I find I have a greater or lesser range than I had anticipated. The key thing is that I allowed for a contingency and I planned in advance. Of course, once you're more or less used to your car, you really don't need to go to all that sort of planning. Again, with ZapMap, if you have the premium subscription,

that will allow you to use Zapmap with Apple CarPlay. And what that gives you is live, continually updated views of nearby chargers with their statuses. So I could do my journey from Norwich and as I get near to Fleet, I can check the chargers nearby and determine if I have enough charge to continue to Solstee Park. And if my battery is running a little less efficiently than I anticipated, potentially due to a heavier right foot and...

clearer roads, can elect to stop earlier near Heathrow, for example, checking the availability of charges on the way. If there's traffic and I'm using a lot less energy to travel a given distance, I can elect to go further if I want. The key is that there is flexibility and you can deal with charging according to how you want to do it, not according to what the car necessarily wants. Now, regardless of how we do it, we'll probably end up at a rapid charger at some time in our life. So,

Let's talk about public rapid charging.

Remember when you first went to fill your fossil fuel car with petrol? The very first time you did it by yourself?

Did you know how to do it? Did you feel confident? Did you pay with a credit card? Or was it back in the days of cash? Or even better, was it attended service where you didn't even have to get out of the car and some poor person, like me in my first summer job, came out in all weathers and did all the work for you? Now I bet most of you knew what to do, mainly because the first time you went to a petrol pump and used it wasn't the first time you ever went to a petrol pump.

but you watched your parents use them. Maybe one of your parents even showed you what to do one time. It was quite simple. You pull up at the correct side, obviously, closest to where your fuel cap is. You let the pump know how you're going to pay, either by swiping a credit card or by otherwise indicating that you're paying at the end of the pump. You put the nozzle in your pump. When you're finished, you replace the nozzle and you either drive off or park or pay at the kiosk or shop.

But I also bet that the first time you did it yourself, there were a few nerves. Would you get the right pump? Would you park close enough to the pump to be able to reach the fuel filler? And you know what? I you sorted things out, didn't you? But I bet you also went to a different petrol station and the pump looked slightly different. Maybe it didn't have a credit card reader. Maybe it had a big touchscreen instead of a number of little buttons on the bottom. Maybe it asked you to pay for the full amount

in advance of pumping for it, which is something that's particularly common if you learned in the United States. But I bet you also dealt with that without any problem, didn't you? So remember that when you get to your first public charge. In theory, charging public is very similar to filling a car with wet fuel. You park close enough to the unit so you can reach the connector on your car. You let the unit know how you're going to pay, usually with a payment card, but often with an app.

or an RFID card. You connect the unit to the vehicle and you charge. Now from that point of view, it's clear that the model is very similar, but many people get confused when it comes to charging because it's new and unknown or unfamiliar. They also experience issues because they expect one thing, but they get another. So I'm going to take you through the three aspects of charging that you need to know.

to make it a success and they are finding a working available charger, starting and stopping your charger and understanding charge speeds.

Now finding an available and working charger is actually really simple if you know what you're doing. Now at the time of writing there are 82,369 public electric vehicle charging points across the UK at 40,479 charging locations. Because courtesy of Zapmap. For comparison there are 8,300 petrol stations in the UK. So it's a fairly safe bet you'll be able to find a charger somewhere not too far from you.

probably closer than the nearest petrol station for most of you. The easiest way to find one is to use one of three methods. You can use your vehicle's in-car navigation system and for most vehicles this will allow you to find and navigate to a nearby charger. You can use a third-party app such as Zapmap which will do something similar to your in-car app but will probably have more charges in the database and the database will probably be more accurate and up-to-date.

Or you can use a specific ChargePoint operators app to locate the charges linked to a specific supplier, such as Osprey charging, Gridserve Ionity, or InstaVolt as a number of examples. Now, any of these ways will let you locate and navigate to a specific charger nearby. But in order to make things easy for yourself, you need to be able to identify a specific subset of charges. For the smoothest charging experience, you need to be able to locate the nearest charger, which meets

a given set of criteria. You want one that is the right charge speed for your needs. You want one that's working and you want one that's available. Now, if any of these three criteria isn't met, you might end up with a less than optimal experience. If you need a really quick charge, but you navigate to a slow charger, like a seven kilowatt one, if you get a charger and you find it's not working, and if you get to a charger and find it's working, but somebody's already using it,

All of those are going to cause problems and that's why apps such as Zapmap, for example, are probably a better option. They cover the whole of the UK and they show at each charging location how many charges are available to use alongside the given charging speed. Now with the help of specific filters, you can narrow the search down to just the charges that meet your criteria. You're going to hit the navigate button and it takes you pretty much right to where the charges are.

Now once there, you're gonna want to park up at the charging bay. Unfortunately, I can't help you when it comes to parking close enough for the charger to reach your charge port. You'll always have this issue as charger design differs between charger manufacturers port location differs between vehicle manufacturers. You're on your own there, sorry.

So we'll assume you've got to a charger that's working, that's not occupied, and you're parked in close enough to connect. Now comes the trickiest part of the whole process, payment.

Cash your mind back to Webfuel. In the big scheme of things, there was only really two ways to pay for fuel. You either flash your card at a card reader on the machine, or you paid after you'd pumped the fuel and you went into the shop or the kiosk or the store and you gave them either cash or a card there. With chargers, there are numerous different ways to pay depending on what your preferences, preparation, and charge point operator are. Now it'll seem confusing.

but only really the first time. The vast majority of chargers in the UK, the big ones that do the really fast charging, will accept a bank payment card, credit card or debit card. Somewhere on the device will be a card reader you can use to present the card just like with your petrol pump. But a much larger number of chargers will accept what's known as a roaming payment. Now we've already discussed this,

But it's something like RFID card, app, the Octopus Electroverse card, an app, the Paua Solo app if you have a car on salary sacrifice or you're with the fleet, the OVO Charge Anywhere app, and the plug serving app, just as examples. Also, many ChargePoint operators have their own app. You can download the app and use it to start and stop charges for that particular ChargePoint operator, and no other.

Now I mentioned companies such as InstaVolt, Osprey Charging and Gridserve as examples.

Here's the key thing to remember. These are all options. It's up to you to decide which one suits your way of charging. If you want to use a credit card or a debit card, that's fine. If you want to use a roaming app or associated RFID card, that's also fine. If you only ever use a specific company for charging and you want to use their app exclusively, that's also fine. Now I've done all of those in my time. Now my personal preference,

is an RFID card from a roaming service such as ZAPAY. I know the RFID process is robust, it's quick, it provides receipt functionality, but you'll work out yourself which is the payment method that suits you best. Just as you decided whether the pain at the pump or pain at the counter worked best when you were driving an internal combustion engine car. So when you get to your charger, the easiest thing to do is to sort out the payment first. Now some chargers want you to plug in and then pay, others want you to pay

and then plug in. My preference is to sort the payment out first, then plug the thing in. If you're by payment card, flash that against the card reader. If you're paying by RFID card, flash that against the RFID reader. Note, it's not always the same as the credit card reader. There may be two different things. You'll see them, they'll have different symbols. If you're paying by app, find the charger you're using in the app and follow the instructions for initiating the charge. And when the charger screen or app tells you the payment has been approved,

you can plug in. Now this is the point where the car and the charger will do what's called a handshake. And that's where the charger talks to the car about what it can provide and the car talks to the charger about what it needs. There's some security stuff, there's some connection stuff, and there's some other stuff that all happens at this point. And it can take anything up to 90 seconds, two minutes to complete. Now, one of the ways to eliminate issues caused by a poor connection,

is what it's worth doing is keep your hand on the charger cable on the the handle of the cable push it into your car to make sure there's a solid connection between the car and the charger now you'll hear some clunks maybe a fan or two whirring and then the charge will start and that's it job done we'll talk about stopping your charge in a minute but i do want to talk a little bit about how fast your car is going to charge

Now it's really tempting to go to a charger that's marked as 350 kilowatts or 400 kilowatts and plug in there thinking, excellent, it be a really quick charge. Only to find out that you're not getting anywhere near that sort of charge speed. Why is that? Well, it could be for any number of reasons, such battery's too hot, your battery's too cold, the charger's too cold, the car is the wrong voltage, the state of charge of your car.

is too high, you're at the wrong point of the charge curve. Your car simply isn't built to charge that fast. Or it's Tuesday. That last one isn't a real reason, but people often seem to think that silly things like that affect the charge speed.

I did a whole episode on charge speeds and what to expect when charging up, which is episode 253, the ultra rapid charging episode, linked down in the show notes.

The TLDR, too long I didn't read on this, is your car will have a maximum charge speed and it doesn't matter how fast a charge it is, if your car's maximum charge speed is lower than this, that's the maximum you'll get under ideal conditions. For example, the new Renault 5 EV has a maximum charge speed of 100 kilowatts for the larger battery version. Even if everything else was optimal, that's the maximum charge speed you're going to get even if you plug into a charger that promises 400 kilowatts of charge speed.

You will never get 400 kilowatts with the current Renault 5. Same for the Hyundai Insta, also 100 kilowatts. The Corsair Electric, 100 kilowatts for the larger battery. The MG4 Long Range, 142 kilowatts. The BYD Seal, 150 kilowatts, et cetera. Plus this is the maximum charge speed. As the battery gets fuller and fuller, the charger will get slower and slower. Once it reaches about 80 % full, it will drop down to a relative trickle to preserve battery life. And this is

all normal. So let's talk about stopping that charge that you've had going. The first thing to remember is that you can spend as long or a shorter length of time at a charger as you want. The key is knowing how much you need. What's usually a mistake, especially in the more modern EVs with a larger battery, is filling it up to 100 % on a public rapid charger. And there are two reasons for doing this or for not doing this. One, it's going to be quite expensive to do so.

and two, it's going to take quite a long time. Now remember when I mentioned the charge curve earlier? That's the computer control algorithm that determines how fast a car will charge as it fills up. Now for most electric vehicles, when they get to around 80 % full, the charge curve will say, right, that's your lot, I'm slowing down now to top things off. In fact, it can take as long to get from nought to 80 % as it does to get from 80 % to 100%.

which means that once you get to 80 % state of charge, it's probably time to stop charging and head out. If you need more charge to finish your journey, it's actually going to be quicker to make another short stop later on when your battery is emptier than it is to stay on this charger and continue charging above 80%. Now, by the way, when I say 80%, that's not a hard and fast rule. It might be 75 % or it might be 85%. But regardless of what vehicle you're in, there will be

a point in the charge when the car says enough I'm slowing down. If you want to find out what that is on your car check out Fastned's website where they have charge curve diagrams for lots of different cars. Again link in the show notes.

The key with stopping a charge on a rapid charge or indeed any charge is that the easiest way is usually to find the payment method you used to start it and use the same method to stop it. So if you swipe your RFID card to start the charge, swipe the same card to stop it. If you used an app to start it, use the same app to stop it. There are however, a couple of charges, and I'm looking at you ABB Gridserve, that can be stopped just by pressing the stop button on the screen.

Now that's bad because it means anybody can stop your charger. And there are some malicious people out there who will press the button just for mischief. You could come back to your car after waiting 30 minutes expecting it to be charged, only to find that someone hit the stop button and you're nowhere near full. Now most of the units that have a stop button, such as the Ionity ones, also ask for identification before actually stopping the charge.

There are also some cards that will allow you to stop the charge from inside the vehicle. There will be a button somewhere. It might be on the dash. It might be on the screen. Press that and it stops it. Once the charge has stopped, the cable should release from your car. If it doesn't, don't panic. Just lock and unlock your car again. That should release it. Remove it, replace the cable back in the appropriate holster. And congratulations, you've just done a rapid charge.

Now my final piece of advice for public rapid charging is to make sure you do this fairly shortly after you get your car and do it somewhere close to home and at a time when you don't really need that charge. If there's a problem or the charger isn't working or anything like that you should still have enough charge left to get back home.

The one thing left to discuss charging, which ironically isn't fast at all. The vast majority of chargers in the UK are the slow devices that you'll find in public car parts or at the side of the road. They're different design, but generally they're relatively small, especially when compared with the bigger DC chargers, and they don't have their own cables. You will have received a cable with your EV when you bought it

And this cable is used to do this sort of charging. Now the other general rule is that these smaller, slower chargers don't usually have credit card readers on them. And this is when things such as Zap Pay and Octopus Electroverse come in handy because you can use them to start and stop the charge. The process for using these is very similar to DC rapid charging. Find the charger, provide a payment method, hook your cable to the charger and your car, start the charge, and when finished,

Stop the charge in the same way you do with the bigger chargers. Use the same payment method, stop the charge, remove the cable and go. Make sure to take your cable with you. They're not cheap to replace.

The key difference between the big expensive units that have their own cables attached and the smaller units where you need to connect your own cable is speed. If you're doing a long journey and you need to get a charge while you're having a coffee and a pee break, the big units with their own cables are the ones you need to use.

If you're parking your car up for several hours, because say you're in a meeting all day, the smaller units without their own cables are ideal. If you're staying overnight at a hotel or an Airbnb, the slower units work. If you're in a cinema for a couple of hours, the smaller units are ideal. Also, as a rule, the smaller, slower units are cheaper than the larger ones. Companies like Chargy offer overnight charging on their network at 39p per kWh.

compared with rapid charging prices of 75p to 89p kWh. So that's charging and driving long distance in your car. And with that, our EV 101 series comes to an end. In episode one, we went through all the steps you need to do to get an EV, decide whether they'll work for you at the moment, decide what sort of finance you'll get, new or used, test driving, taking delivery. And then we went on to episode two, where we went through

Day one with your EV. How to drive it, regenerative braking, the instant power, home charging, one pedal driving. And in this episode, we looked at the apps you should be looking at, driving long distances with your EV, and using the public charging network. Now, there are a huge amount of other things that could be included here, but these things are your absolute basics. If you're considering getting an EV, or even if you're not considering them at all, but are curious about the whole

E.B. Sphere, then I hope you learned something from these episodes.

lic charge point regulations,: 2023

It's time for a cool EV or renewable thing to share with you listeners. The eight giant cooling towers at the Cotton Coal Power Station in Nottinghamshire were demolished in seconds recently using explosives. The blast actually set a Guinness World Record and it was a major decommissioning milestone after the plant closed last year. The cooling towers were a landmark in the region for over half a century and plant owner EDF is now exploring new uses for the site.

to support UK energy needs. I'd love to see old fossil fuel tech being replaced with new renewable tech. It's a great video too.

I hope you enjoyed listening to today's show.

If you have any thoughts, comments, criticisms or other general messages to pass on to me, I can be reached at info at evmusings.com. On the socials, I'm on bluesky at evmusings.bsky.social. I'm also on Instagram at evmusings where I post short videos and podcast extract regularly. Why not follow me there? Thanks to everyone who supports me through Patreon on a monthly basis and through coffee.com on an ad hoc one.

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And thanks as always to my co-founder Simone. Silent Simone, as I now call him. Thanks for listening. Bye.