I’ve been lucky enough to test endless electric cars over the past few years and they are all brilliant, apart from one thing. Charging them up is an utter nightmare. Public refilling stations can be overly complicated, mind-numbingly slow and ludicrously expensive to use. Pull up at a motorway service station and you may face a bill of almost £100 to go from flat to full. It makes recommending an EV pretty tough but there is one manufacturer that continues to buck the charging trend.
I recently took delivery of a new Tesla Model Y and put it through its paces on a 250-mile journey from London to Bristol. It’s no secret that Tesla has a market-leading – and pretty unique – own-brand charging system but when you actually use it for the first time you realise just how good it is.
Punch your destination into the giant 15-inch tablet-style screen and the car instantly knows if it has enough range to get you there. If it thinks the juice will run flat before you arrive, it shows you where all of Tesla’s powerful Superchargers are along the way and even gets the battery preconditioned ready for faster refilling.
When it was time for a quick boost on the M4 I rolled into the services at Leigh Delamere, popped the plug in at the dedicated charging station and dashed for a coffee.
With the battery in a prime state for a refill, I instantly got speeds of over 125KW which was able to add over 100 miles of range in just 20 minutes.
Because the car is linked to your account and you are using a Tesla charger there’s no need to start downloading apps or trying to tap to make a contactless payment.
Non-Tesla chargers can be a massive pain with some not allowing refilling unless you start handing over email addresses or personal details. Others I’ve tried in the past also take a pre-authorisation fee off of your card which can be as much as £30 each time you charge. It is added back to your account but the refund can take days to be applied and is highly annoying.
Along with being ludicrously easy to use, another bonus of Tesla’s Superchargers is the price. We were topping up at times for less than 50p/kWh (prices do vary depending on area and time of day) – that’s almost half the price of rival chargers which can cost 80p/kWh.
Once you are finished, you simply tell the car to stop refilling and unplug the cable, you’ll see how much you’ve spent via an update on the Tesla app.
It’s super simple and there’s an added bonus right now. Tesla is currently offering totally free charging at its stations when buying the Model Y – this lasts for two years or 15,000 miles.
Of course, even Tesla’s have their issues and there’s still no hiding the fact that going electric isn’t as straightforward as pure petrol power. We did stop at one Tesla area on the A303 where we found a broken plug although luckily there were plenty more that were all online.
During our tests, we were only getting around 220 miles of range on a single charge which means you’ll never do a long journey without needing to stop.
Even with superfast refilling, you are still going to need to plan ahead and have some patience and it’s nowhere near as quick as splash and dash at the pumps.
The Model Y’s very minimalistic interior won’t excite everyone, all the controls are tucked behind menus on the screen and the silence of the battery definitely can’t match the roar of an engine. Tesla’s are also pretty expensive with the Model Y starting from around £44,000.
That said, these are some of the best EVs when it comes to refilling and if you want hassle-free electric motoring there’s currently nothing that comes close to matching the battery-boosting tech of Tesla.