On Friday 24th of January David Peilow and TV comedian Robert Llewellyn set out from London in a Nissan Leaf Electric car driving to Edinburgh.
Aston Hotel near Aycliffe has a rapid charger and was one of the stops. Members of staff were there to welcome the drivers and while the car was being charged they had refreshments.
There is now a rapid charge network all the way to Scotland. The route taken is approximately 391 miles and they expected to do it in under 10 hours. Robert Llewellyn has 111,000 followers on Twitter. He also has his own TV channel on YouTube dedicated to electric vehicles and his journey will be featured.
“If you drove the same journey in a modern, fuel efficient petrol car and didn’t stop once, even for a wee, you could do it in 6 or 7 hours but I would suggest your bladder would explode before you got to Newcastle. Not only that, you would spend a minimum of £70 on petrol whereas our journey will cost nothing” said Robert.
At the moment the companies who install the Ecotricity Chargers, do not charge for the electricity. They are installing them because they are getting into the market first as it it attracts customers (hotels, restaurants, diners, motorway services are all installing them) They are also supporting the change to hydrocarbon free driving
Electric cars don’t actually use that much electricity. Ecotricity generates plenty of electricity from wind and the actual amount of kilowatt hours consumed by the few 1,000 electric cars on the road today is relatively small.
elec charge