Menomublation; Or Rumination on Road Tripping

I have mentioned or hinted that some urgency came upon the recent trip northward. The attentive will recall that the Hawick aunty, a venerable lady in her 90s, passed away just as I set out on that part of my trip. There was a slight quandary as timetabling had to be finagled to fit in all that had been prior arranged and still be back to the Borders for her farewell.

The trip north was somewhat hurried and a tad too "main road" for my liking, but it was managed well and served its purpose. It was nothing, however, to what had to be worked for the southward journey.

I awoke early on Saturday following the night at the aquarium, bathed, dressed, had brekky, and was on the road by nine. For me and The Grey, this was to be something of a marathon drive. He'd had a full sup of power the evening before, but having had to boost both in-house batteries and used some power for cooking my evening meal, he was down to a little over the 90% - estimated at around 145 miles range. I wasn't driving the full 240(ish) miles to Melrose Crematorium in one go, but I did want to get the bulk of the journey out of the way on Saturday so that less had to be covered on Sunday and minimum on Monday morning when the funeral was slated for eleven a.m.

You've read it before, but here it is again: I rarely do more than 50 or 60 miles in a day, most often less than 40 miles, and rarely go below 60% battery. This was going to be an interesting test!

Google Maps is very helpful in this sort of planning. Combined with my app for finding chargers, I decided we would head to Newport-on-Tay. It is on the Fife side of the Tay Bridge and, therefore, in the most cost-effective charging county. According to Maps, it would be 120 miles. Excellent. We should have 25 left on the dash. Errrmmmm...

When the needle dropped below the quarter mark—with that 25 miles on the clock—a loud buzzing made me jump, and a big orange warning message flashed on the info window.

...then dropped away into the little orange battery with an up arrow. This was good news insofar as now I know that Grey will let me know when he's hungry and provide ample mileage to locate a charger. Which would have been helpful had I not been prepared and known we were within ten miles of our first destination. 

The point there, though, is that difference of ten miles. The twenty-five was supposed to show when we arrived, not ten miles out. I was, in fact, prepared for this too. You see, just as ICE vehicles drink more juice, BEVs eat more power when motorway driving. Anything above 50mph bites heavily into the reserves. The first part of this long journey was held at 40-50mph, mainly on rural roads. We were going fine. Once we joined up with the A90, though, it was 65 average and hungry work. When looking at performance for distance in ICE vehicles, you go by miles per gallon (or litre). With BEVs, it's miles per kilowatt hour**. According to Ford's own stats, a good average in the E-Transit would be 1.9m/kWh. Over the year until this journey, I have been averaging 3.2m/kWh. Better than a fifty per cent improvement! One of the reasons for this is that I have yet to use the full payload on The Grey. The load capacity available to me is 990kg. (Yes, nearly a tonne!) I estimate that we have used only about 600kg in the current build state. At the most, another hundred to go, so it will still be light. The other reason for good mileage is that I rarely go over 45/50mph. Roaring down the A90 brought us down to 2.2m/kWh. The journey time was just shy of three hours.

Sticking to the rural roads definitely pays off. What gets me is that even on our 'sheep track' roads, the national speed limit permitted for most vehicles is 60mph. The Grey is a commercial vehicle and, therefore, restricted to 50mph on these roads. While most drivers who come up behind me at 65mph (because the limit is seen as a minimum, not a maximum...😬) are polite and wait for appropriate spaces to overtake, a few just don't get it. I need to get some of those decals that show the limitation.

Anyhoo. Two hours at the Newport charger brought us back up to 60%, enough to get us to our overnight spot - Cowdenbeath Leisure Centre, some 38 miles further. The place I'd stopped on the way north and got the free charge. No such luck this time, but still in Fife and therefore, the full 100% charge from what was again 25% cost less than a tenner. Slept there and up early again on Sunday to make the sixty miles to Galashiels. Another power top-up, more like our usual 40%, and we slept under the Galafoot bridge, right beside the River Tweed.

This enabled a slower, more relaxed morning on Monday to bathe and dress in my bright yellow pantsuit and orange shawl. The instruction had come that everyone was to dress brightly for Aunty Jenny's funeral. It was a beautiful farewell and became a proper family gathering, just as she would have loved it. I met cousins I never knew I had and reacquainted with those I did - even if I didn't recognise most of them.

After the buffet (I didn't eat - there was nothing vegetarian!), I followed Uncle Andrew home to Shielhope...

...another post!

** For the geeks among you, my iron has a 1000w rating. To run it for one hour, it would use one kilowatt of electricity. Now imagine that iron giving its one hour of power to The Grey - he could run for about three miles (at our usual speeds) from it. That's not bad for an elephant. Even the Ford agent was impressed when I told him. The total trip above was close to 240 miles in total, for a cost of £23.96 - according to the RAC calculator, an ICE vehicle running at 45m/gall with a price of £1.45/litre, making this journey would cost £33, so the BEV is definitely more cost-effective - as long as one can access the chargers offering the best rates...