MINI Cooper SE / Electric: 500 MILE Weekend Plymouth Road Trip in a Short-Range ELECTRIC CAR

hello it's Martin and it's the middle of Easter holidays here in England I booked a trip to Plymouth but I clearly didn't plan this properly because I completely forgot about that fact but it's my weekend off and I wanted to get away from London so I thought I would take you along just to show you what it's like to run an electric car on a longer trip using the public charging Network when basically all of the families are out and about so this is a very unscripted video but stick around to see how I get on it's a very late start but remember this is all about the journey not the destination contrary to popular belief I was able to plug in overnight even though I do not off street parking because I live in a flat which means that I'm starting over with a lovely 100% charge so let's fire up the car air conditioning is running and it's showing 98 mil of range that's not bad let's look at the route my number one stop will be motor ring westbound I want to try out the V4 Tesla super Chargers I need to do some emails there anyways and yeah it's looking like it's taking me directly through the center of London so I will give you a nice little tour of all the sides reset the trip computer so we can track all the stats and that's it off I go I can comfortably drop the car into green mode that will give me a few miles of extra range but as I said I'm not very concerned full charge warm outside at 18 and 1 12° cels I can actually take take my hat off but it's quite windy so we will see how that will impact efficiency of course based on my previous tests it doesn't really matter that much I can leave those linked in the top right and corner of the video if you want to check those out and another out the rron charging there from the lamp post you see it's quite reasonable also if it's not obvious by now this video should serve a massive warning to all of you who are possibly going to be doing a road Tri with me that yeah I never leave on time and we will probably get to Plymouth long after the sun has set but yeah it's all about the journey not the destination and all the EV charging stuff in between at the roundabout take the second exit onto newent Road in an attempt to avoid all the traffic across the river on the iconic Tower Bridge with the Tower of London being to my right I'm afraid rest of the journey through elephant and Castle is anything but exciting so I just listen to some music before getting back onto the north side of temps through voxo Bridge continuing on West until I finally make it out of town more sing of London to follow towards the end of the video just got on the M4 and still with over 90% left so less than 10% to cover about 17 mil the efficiency so far has been 6 m per Kow hour but now I am sitting comfortably at 70 I will put the cruise control on 72 on the speedo is 70 GPS uh so yeah I will watch the efficiency tank but but still should be quite reasonable this is a very good start ah forgot that we are entering a 60 zone so cruise control can and down to 50 great and actually the mini has recognized the speed limit even though that was an electronic sign some car struggle with that well done approaching the services with way too much charge in the battery still over 60% but I want to stop anyways because as I said I need to do some admin and I want to show you the charging situation here because it's a bit peculiar but good for the customer good signage for the git surf Chargers and I will follow those because the Teslas are basically right next to them in fact there are multiple options here so as you see grid serve medium power ones are on this end of the car park there a kind of Legacy ones you don't want to use but if you continue going past the car park to the very end this is where the high power units are which have been only recently installed and look at this so much better and lots of Tesla super Chargers as well and I honestly don't quite understand why anyone charges on the grit serf ones unless you have like a contract with them as part of your lease because these Tesla ones are just as easy to use now with contactless payment and you see off peak which is right now only 47 P per kilow hour so let's plug in and that's charging whereas this grit serve ones are 79 P per Kow hour definitely massive difference plus I don't know how well it comes across on camera but on this small screen it still shows you all the crucial information you would need to know like charging speed and how much energy has been delivered so what I'm trying to say is don't get scammed by grit Surf use the cheaper yet as easy to use Tesla superchargers easy peasy at least at this side good to go again to the next stop which is Bristol specifically Molly's Diner I always wanted to go to Molly but never had a chance so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to grab blunch and give the car a top up as well so I will start the navigation there it's lovely outside it literally feels like summer but yes still quite windy what I will do instead of going out immediately I will show you the other charging options here at Moto ring this is the westbound Services the eastbound I believe is slightly different but very similar just by the main entrance to the services you have got these old what used to be ecotricity Chargers and nice you see they are you know so that's a good backup but they charge very slowly because they basically split power so if you have someone next to you you are charging at about 2030 KW trust me it's not rapid charging by modern standards at all but that's not all of your options because if you're really desperate you can also pull into the BP petrol station and if you go past the kind of fuel for cord right there you have got these very similar looking high power chargers as well so that's your last option but BP is quite expensive not very reliable in my experience and obviously they would much rather sell you petrol than electricity so the interests just aren't in the right place in my eye so I would much rather use Tesla or gritzer or any of the other charging Point operators which are focused solely on providing EV energy with that mini tour over I'm back on the M4 cruise control set to 72 I will probably enjoy some music and yeah luckily the traffic seems to be quite good so far haven't really been stuck anywhere other than obviously London so yeah just sitting back relaxing and enjoying the sun hopefully the weather stays this good further down south in terms of the EV Logistics it's about a 75 M leg and because I took so long doing my other stuff the car got basically to 100% so I've got plenty of margin it's currently reporting 99 Mi on the charge remaining which is [Music] [Applause] [Music] 93% it's busy in here just took the last [Music] spot okay there just a little bit of panic because the payment terminal wasn't working but uh git serve managed to get that rebooted remotely and it's all good now so plugged in with 30% already up to 33 getting the maximum charging speed because it's nice and warm outside and there is availability for others to come in as well so there's one more spot these Chargers are the Dual headed ones and there's also a single slow AC unit here so now officially time for food there is an unforeseen problem I had to get a couple of shots of the site Etc got my food but by the time I actually received the food the car was already above 90% And now if I look at CCS 2 I'm at 99% pulling 1 Kow so it's definitely time to go since then I've been joined by a few ID3 and a cpra born very VW group heavy setup here but yeah time to jump to the next stop the one takeway message I would like to point out from this charger stop is that if Chargers work and it's only the payment terminal which seems to be not responding it's definitely worth giving the operator a call and they can usually reset it because I think that's in fact the main reason why there was quite a bit of chaos around the Chargers people were trying to shuffle Chargers to move away from the on which wasn't working but in fact it was completely fine and instead of reporting the problem and getting it addressed it just kind of keeps getting pushed along down the routs and I believe these payment terminals they don't report false the same way like the charger itself would so if the charging kind of fails then GD surve gets a message on the back end but that's not the same case for the terminals I believe I'm sure someone who is in the industry will correct me in the comments if I'm wrong but yeah anyways now I'm back on the M5 and we'll continue down south towards exitor [Music] look at this lots of Tesla Chargers model 3 Highlands but these are not open to non Tesla so I will use the grit serve ones it was a very clear Motorway around so the efficiency has settled at 3.8 m per kilowatt hour as expected that's what I usually get from this minute between 3.5 and 4 m per Kow hour on a longer trip 22% in the battery let's plug in went into the services used the bathroom got my shot of coffee and I'm pretty much ready to go but just look at this side 32 Tesla V3 superchargers so they can provide up to 250 KW and if you don't drive a Tesla you've got these grit serve units 24 of them in total each one providing up to 350 KW most of them fitted with ccs only some of them ccs and Sho for the Legacy cars as well most importantly do you see cues and panic around here no EV drivers are just getting over with their lives what a shocker as usual I was stalking for way too long and doing my videos so I'm already at 92% only taking 11 Kow so that's it time to stop the charge and resume the trip 45 M to my hotel in Plymouth 97 mi in the battery which the car is estimating based on 92% nice and simple it's also showing it's 22° is outside but I can assure you it's not it definitely feels a lot more fresh than that but that's no problem which way do I go out now exit left let's go this is the last leg of the journey rejoining the M5 and if it all works out well traffic-wise I should get to Plymouth before the sunset and have a chance to enjoy some of the city and the views even though the sun isn't really out to be fair lots of gray [Music] [Applause] [Music] clouds I've just arrived to Plymouth so let's look at the data 49% still in the battery so I've got plenty for tomorrow and the overall efficiency has settled at 3.8 mil per kilow hour that ladies and gentlemen that's somewhere that's the Sun and I have been welcomed with this fantastic rainy weather so yeah I will see what I get to do the weather miraculously clears up so I explore the area get some food and take in the stunning Sunset all followed by The Not So Glamorous side of making YouTube videos you often don't see before calling you T night I'm already on the road in basically back fast I'm at the strawberry field site where there is a lot of osprey charges I will have a dedicated video explaining everything thing you need to know about how these C power chargers work and why they are absolutely fantastic so I spent a lot of time doing that the car fully charged got here still with plenty of charge left and importantly the sun has come out so it's time for a hike [Music] yeah this was exactly what I needed some time in nature it has however highlighted that I'm very out of shape for that one person interested it was the hembre woods circular it's on all trails in the app very easy to find only about 6 and a half kilometers but in my defense the terrain was quite challenging at certain times I honestly thought I straight off the path into some stream because one moment You're On Solid Ground and next step you take you are Uncle deep in mud just look at the aftermath absolute mess so let me change much better and these dirty ones can go in the Frank oh wait no it's an electric car but there's an engine under the Bonnet great I suppose the foot 12 will have to do also if I had to guess I would say some of that mud was probably animal excrement so I'm sure a lovely Aroma is going to develop in this cabin in the next moments but nevertheless let me actually go through the checklist I had for this trip I wanted to see the sunset in Plymouth done I wanted to get a local vegan fish and chips done I wanted to show you around the Osprey site powered by cow Chargers done and lastly I wanted to go on a hike and luckily given the wed improved that's off the list as well so it's time to start heading home what an off-road capable vehicle mini needs to Rebrand this but before I properly get onto the road there is one important thing to do cake for breakfast at 300 p.m. I hope my mother is is not watching this but if she is well I deserve it okay now ready to go after I left the farm shop my initial idea was to stop for a top up at an MFG station on the edge of tolton right of the M5 but it was becoming very apparent that the mini was a lot more efficient than initially expected which would mean stopping with still about half of the battery full hence I look up using voice control how far it this to moles again and it looked like I could just about make it the further 45 miles so I adjust my strategy slightly by dropping the cruise control speed to 70 mph with an aim to get to the grid Sur of chargers with a comfortable buffer I'm at Molly's Diner now and the plan worked beautifully so if you look at the trip computer you can see that the efficiency has improved to 3.9 m per kilow hour and I looked at the total distance figure and based on the numbers I've noted down it turns out I've covered 102 miles since the last charg keep in mind there're still 19% about 20 m in the battery that means 120 real world mway miles for the mini with a quite small battery pack I know you will say your diesel does 6700 well this is a small battery electric car I think that's quite impressive actually at 14° Celsius outside with the HVAC set to a comfortable temperature inside so let's plug in much less busy than last time let's see is the contactless payment reader working ccs2 start all working well so food time just like last time the car was pretty much ready to go long before the food arrived so I departed with 98% in the battery I'm now down to 95% in the computer is still showing 114 miles remaining so it should be a pretty uneventful Journey back I've also discovered the reason for the very fantastic consumption today and that's because there has been about a 20 mph nailwind all the way up towards Bristol so yeah even though the mini obviously can be very efficient it doesn't break the rules of physics I'm afraid for the last leg of the journey I stopped reading eastbound Services before I pull off the motorway I managed to spot a rivan r1t the first time I actually saw one in the UK on UK plates as well in my opinion really interesting electric trucks the idea is to just do a short topup here if I hyper wild I could just about make it home but given I don't have off street parking SL charging I don't want to have to worry about range in the coming days either unlike the westbound services this side unfortunately doesn't feature open Tesla superchargers but I won't decline the expensive electricity from grit serve on this occasion I'm happy with 90% so now for the promised tour of London as I take the route directly through the city center on my right is hers a very push department store I continue by Green Park and truffle Garf Square reaching the embankment with the iconic London Eye just across the river heading east I go through the city of London and finally rejoin the so-called Highway getting me back home into the aisle of dogs now that I'm back let's run through the final stats I covered exactly 504 mil in total with an average speed of just over 47 mph and an efficiency of 4 m per kwatt and still had 53% left in the battery on arrival I looked at all the numbers in detail and yes the return Journey was a lot more efficient at 4.2 m per Kow hour versus only 3.8 on the way down the traffic situation was very similar so I would attribute all of the down just to the weather conditions what you probably care about is the charging I had seven charging sessions in total including the first one which was done the night before departure to get me up to 100% which totaled to just over 98 obviously this isn't quite Fair because it doesn't account for the fact that I had left over charge when arrived and I also didn't start exactly from zero during the first top up so if we adjust for all of those numbers the total comes out to 9565 so obviously not ideal and very similar to a petrol or a diesel vehicle but that is what it is in terms of public charging if you can charge the home you can bring the price right down to cover the same amount of miles so I think that's where I'm going to leave it it's only up to you to draw your own conclusions from from this experience obviously what I would highlight is that the infrastructure in the UK has really improved a lot especially in the last few months so if you are in the market for an Eevee or are considering what car to get next I would say that if you're doing a similar type of Journey to what I have done only a couple of times a year to visit friends relatives family anything like that you do not need to fix it to get a big battery long range electric vehicle just to cover the occasional Journey you can easily get away with something like the mini which is primarily designed for Daily City use and it will handle the occasional longer trip without any problems as long as you are happy to stop a couple of times to top up likewise if you look at the total energy used you will see that some of those longer range EES like for example the Teslas the PO stars and so on those would have covered the entire Journey from London to Plymouth on a single charge without having to stop at all and still having plenty of battery left over so if you lie on the other end of the spectrum and you need to do similar Journeys very frequently for business and you do not want to hang about then there are definitely Eevees on the market which can hit those points yeah I think that's about it so thank you very much for watching make sure to subscribe if you want to see more EV content because there are still more videos coming on the mini and yeah check out the full mini playlist in the top right hand corner if you want to learn more about that particular car thank you very much for watching again see you in the next one

Channel: Martin Karel

Views: 8,006

Keywords: MINI, Electric, F56, Cooper SE, electric car, EV, road trip, Devon, charging, infrastructure, cost, test, vlog, review, Plymouth

Id: W0ri8MKZ378

Length: 21min 1sec (1261 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024