Driving to Cornwall from Surrey

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bluecoffee

Member
Joined
Feb 11, 2020
Messages
7
Hi,
I'm soon going to attempt to drive to Cornwall from Surrey. I'm planning to use ABRP for route planning and recharging stops. I'm in a 2015 Nissan Leaf. It has 12 bars on the battery health, and the guessometer says 82 miles when fully charged. The car will be pretty full. Any tips? How good is ABRP? Anything I should consider beforehand? Many thanks!
 
That's a 240 mile trip. It will not be very enjoyable with a 2015 leaf. If you are driving at 60-65mph, you will stop to charge every 60 miles at most which means 4 charging stops if you charge to full each time. I would consider renting a car instead, unless you are trying to do this for the experience/fun/proving something.
 
With 4 DCFCs his charge rate may drop due to heat which may stretch out the trip more. If you are adventurous (my wife is) and have time to burn go for it but otherwise I'd rent. the new LEAF Plus would only need one DCFC for that trip no problem at all if you want to buy a new LEAF ;) If you drove slow and efficiently enough a Plus may not even need to be charged at all but I wouldn't suggest risking that.

I am pleased with a Better Route Planner, it is a great planning tool. You will also want to check plugshare BEFORE you leave so you know if the chargers you need are healthy based on checkins. In a better route planner make note of max speed, the faster you drive the less range you have. Air conditioning also can lower it a little. If you are really paranoid like I was when going hundreds of miles for a little while I got power cruise control, that is like a better route planner but uses an OBD II and gives you real time feedback on if you will make it based on how you are using energy. I am amused by it but most of the time A Better Route Planner is actually just fine as long as you pay attention.

I just want to mention again check plugshare as well to see if the chargers most recent checkins look good.
 
I totally don't recommend you to do it, once i try some type of trips and it was really close to bad and so just rent a car, or if you have enough money you should think about buying a new car :)
 
You will absolutely overheat. I did a 2200 mile drive last summer in 50 degree weather and the car overheated within 3 charging stops.
 
by the way, if you need to relocate your leaf its better to some carrier to ship it, cos as said upper it will be horrible trip, and if you need some help with it just ask and i'll do my best for you (cos i work in this business ;) )
 
Thanks so much for all the replies. Journey was pretty good!

In the end, we planned carefully and included 6 stops using ABRP. I checked each stop in Plugshare, and built the route in Google Maps. Weather was perfect- mostly dry but cool, no air-con needed. Each stop was about 20 minutes. With two kids in the back we arrived feeling better than we would have if we’d bombed it down the whole way in a petrol car. ABRP and PlugShare worked well. Biggest issues: too many electric cars trying to charge! At Route 303 cafe (amazing views) and Exeter RaceCourse (four EVs appeared for one charger). It’s also not always obvious how many cars can charge from a single charger point. Some places it’s one, others its two. They need a universal symbol for this I think.

The way back ABRP said 5 charges only, which worked fine. A couple of them needed slower speeds (52mph and 61mph), but this was fine as they were on fairly slow roads anyway.

Luckily the weather wasn’t too hot on either trip, so we didn’t desperately need air-con. I would recommend anyone who wants to do a trip like this to give it a go if they’re not under time pressure. It was a lot more straightforward than I expected.

Stats in case useful to anyone else considering this kind of trip:
My Nissan guessometer usually says 82 miles when fully charged. I set ABRP to an extra 30kg weight (it was much more than this in reality), 90% SoC at start, reference consumption 3.03 MI/KWH. Used ChaDeMo chargers throughout, 15% charger arrival SoC, Max SoC = 100%, 5min charging overhead, and allowed it to adjust speeds

I'd be interested if anyone has used ZapMap and compared it to ABRP for a journey like this. Looks like a nicer interface, but less detailed calculations?
 
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