381 A letter to Caroline Dinenage – My MP

My wife and I have been saying for quite a while now that either our next car or the one after must be an E-Vehicle. Then we we received a letter from Nissan, suggesting a special offer. We’d had our car for four years, and thought we would go and have a look at what was on offer. But, we were definitely NOT going to buy a new car! Hah!

Of course, we walked out of the showroom having put a deposit down on a brand new Nissan Leaf. OOh My, what a journey we were about to embark upon. We had given no thought to this at all, Naive isn’t the word for it.

The first thing is getting our own charging point. Now, there is a story there, but I want to leave that until later I wish to focus on another matter – infrastructure.

We have now undertaken the three long journeys that over the course of a year we would expect to do to visit family and friends, and and I have to say that the Leaf has performed beyond my expectations. You may have heard of the term “Range Anxiety”. This comes from worries about the availability of charging points along our journey, and then there is “Petrol Envy” – there’s not a lot the government can do about that as it is really down to battery technology, and that is the ability to recharge a battery in the same time as it takes to fill a tank with petrol (I have no idea if that is even achievable) but I have a suggestion for that, which I will talk about later,

Since acquiring our electric car, I have been disappointed to learn about the issues with charging points. Particularly disappointing is the frequency with which they are out of service. Has the Government stipulated a minimum service requirement? What is the recovery time for returning a charging point back in to service?

Government involvement; I know there is a strategy paper, I have read it (I need to read it again) and it does say a lot of good things, such charging points in lamp posts. There really does need to be a lot more charging points, lay-bys. What would be Nice is, trains with carriages, holding car charging points, I put my car on the train from Portsmouth to Newcastle and get off at the other end fully charged and ready to go. No stressful driving, similar to the euro tunnel trains. There really does need to be a lot more done. OK. I know this is a bit rushed, and I haven’t really finished it, but I may continue tomorrow. Love Bill.