Laura's first month as a Paua Ranger!

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I like many people are sceptical of change, from the minor to the major. We as humans are not made for change, so why have so many made the change from diesel/petrol cars to an electric car?
Personally, I couldn’t see the appeal, but it was decided that it was my time to make the change to find out for myself. Armed with the Jaguar I-pace and the Paua card I set out for the month.

Before I give my opinions on how the past month has been, I would like to explain that I don’t have any capability for home charging, also although I like cars, I am not a “petrol head” and I live in a place that can only be described as the Sahara Desert with EV Charging infrastructure… The North Yorkshire Dales. After a little bit of research, I found there to be extremely limited choices of chargers so the “range anxiety” had already started, even before getting the car. I have also never driven an EV car nor charged before.

I had heard many comments, from personal friends to social media posts on how electric cars “aren’t built for long distances” and you’ll be “stuck for hours charging” therefore to see for myself, the first hurdle was a 220 mile journey from London back to the Yorkshire Dales. Was I nervous? Completely! I started to fully understand the concept of range anxiety. I even stopped at the services to double check which charger I was going to and that I definitely had enough miles to go; (I can confirm I did!).

I made it to the MFG In Leicester for my first time charging by myself, it was complicated yet easy at the same time. Cable out, cable in, swipe the Paua card and wait for the lights to confirm it was working. I found the cable to be much harder than I thought, for some reason I thought they would be light weight and easily manoeuvred, I was mistaken. I can completely understand how some chargers aren’t accessible for disabled users.

One coffee, a phone call home and some quick admin tasks 45 minutes had gone by, and I had enough charge to get me home.

Now my month with the Paua car is complete I thought best to start with the downsides I found; with the car and electric charging.

I did have one incident on Christmas Eve, at a chargepoint (not on the Paua network) plug the cable in and then their app wouldn’t work. I couldn’t claim the charge and because the app kept breaking I wasn’t able to unplug the car. It was an hour and a half until the phone was answered and they were able to help me. The advisor on the phone was really helpful restarting the charger and helping me out. I wasn’t the only one in that area having the same issue. I think because it was Christmas Eve there were less staff manning the phones which caused the delay. I didn’t mind too much, it got me out of Christmas shopping but we did then have to wait to charge the car so the convenience aspect was gone.

Secondly, pre-planning long distance trips. I previously said I don’t have a home charge set-up so this wouldn’t be a problem to someone who does. I decided very last minute to go down to Kent to visit some friends before handing the car over because I didn’t pre-plan this, the car only had 50 miles of charge left. In my usual diesel car that wouldn’t be an issue, I would have just filled up at a fuel station and be on my way. Instead, I had to do an additional charge at a service station, this meant what should have been a 5 hour journey did become 7 hours due to 2 x 1 hour charges. The Jaguar does have a range of roughly 250 miles but as my friends didn’t have home charging either, I needed to ensure I had enough range to go to a charge point near their home.

Lastly on the downsides would have to be the lack of EV infrastructure in the Yorkshire Dales, it seems that major cities and towns are covered by a multitude of networks but there is a widening gap of availability. I understand it might be harder for networks to contend with other issues such as National Park Authorities, weather (flooding & snow) and locations but if we are wanting more people to adapt the electric car, then we need people to feel they can go on holiday in the UK and still be able to charge. Soon we could be seeing people not wanting to visit certain areas because of this exact issue. You can see the sparsity of chargers on the Paua app and others like ZapMap.

I could probably type a lot more on the upsides of my experience because in all honesty the positives far out weight the negatives. Let me start with the Jaguar I-pace, the car that has blown my mind. The power when you press the accelerator will push you back in your seat. It handles amazingly on tough winding roads and motorways with no issue. For me, the car absolutely stole the show and has, in some part, made me start to enjoy driving again.

Yes, the deceleration when you take your foot off the accelerator does take some getting used too, I got used to this within a matter of days and now, back in my own car get surprised when my own doesn’t.

My second upside must be the Paua card. Having this card in my back pocket meant I wasn’t worried about how different chargers bill me, as I noticed that some take pre-authorisation payments. My worry was that if something went wrong with the connection, the pre-authorisation would need to be taken multiple times I witnessed this first-hand with a different driver at a charge point whose car wouldn’t connect and had his pre-authorisation taken 5 times. I also didn’t need to download multiple different apps just to use a simple charger this honestly helped with the range anxiety.

To try and sum up with month, personally I think I have been converted to being an electric car enthusiast. My biggest takeaway from this would be that if I were to get myself an electric car, I would need either the capability of home charging or a type of on-street charging near me. This would just be for my own peace of mind to know the car was fully charged if I were to make some last minute plans.

I did not think I would be a convert, although I was excited to try, I fully believed I would be explaining how much of a failure it was and why, yet now, I’m already looking for my own EV car.

Turns out, some change is good and should be embraced.
A whole new meaning to Paua to the people.

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