Driver case study: It’s a breeze charging in the Lake District

For Simon Brace, a 400-mile round trip in an electric vehicle isn’t anything to work up a sweat about.

As the founder of Cumbria’s first and only general delivery service via electric van (Lakes Electric Delivery Service), clocking up more than 100 miles a day in an EV is just a typical day’s work.

Here, he talks about why he thinks range anxiety is a thing of the past and why he’s discovering some great new coffee spots thanks to InstaVolt….

“It’s not unusual for me to do a couple of hundred miles in a day. I went to Lincoln last week which was a 400-mile round trip. Perhaps 12 months ago I wouldn’t have tried it but now there are so many more chargers it’s absolutely fine. It’s becoming easier and easier.

“Today I’m in the Lake District which involves a 140-mile round trip. It’s a breeze to charge around here because InstaVolt has loads of chargers at Booths sites. What’s good is you can pretty much guarantee being able to turn up and charge straight away because there are up to four chargers at each site. That’s quite important in somewhere like the Lake District, especially in the summer, when you see more and more electric cars on the roads.

“The partnership with Booths has upped my caffeine intake though! I tend to grab a coffee inside Booths while I charge up so it’s not just the car that’s full of energy by the time I leave!

“I do like the contactless approach that InstaVolt’s taken. It’s so much easier than fiddling about with apps and trying to get signal. I know I’ll get a quick charge too. My van is up to 50kW capable and I tend to get 47.5kW most of the time. It doesn’t taper off too much at the end either like on other networks. InstaVolt seems the fastest.

“My advice to anyone thinking about switching to an electric car is to do your research, ignore the falsehoods and go for it. I think what’s put people off is the misinformation. People don’t realise how quick the technology advances and what might have been true five years ago is just rubbish now. Like when people say: ‘Oh you can’t find chargers and you have to have an app and you have to have signal,’. That’s not true now, not since InstaVolt’s come along.

“The host of models of EV coming out next year is amazing. There are loads. They’re still not cheap by any means but it’s inevitable that they will become more affordable as time goes on.

“The thing to remember about range is it’s not about how far you can go; it’s just about how often you stop to charge. Now that’s getting faster and more convenient I hope more people will be convinced to go electric.”

Find out more about Simon’s company, Lakes Electric Delivery Service, here.

https://instavolt.co.uk/find-electric-vehicle-charge-point-map/