EV Road Trippin' | UK: Land's End to John O'Groats
Posted by David: Mar 30, 2023 • 2 min read
Can you get from one end of Great Britain to the other in an electric car? We’re going to find out (but the answer is yes!).
Despite advances in battery technology and electric vehicle (EV) range, lots of drivers still seem anxious about how far they can travel in one go.
The fact is, the average range of an electric car, based on all models currently available in the UK, is ~200 miles give or take, with some leeway depending on environmental factors like the weather.
This is more than plenty to get most electric car drivers where they want to go. And for those that frequently do longer trips, the UK’s public charging infrastructure has grown exponentially since the early EV days. Ours alone has grown to over 8,200 charging bays (as of 31st December 2022) across the UK!
We’ve previously tackled range anxiety by talking about our top tips to optimise the range of an EV, as well as how to properly plan a long road trip in one. We’ve also covered some of the UK’s best road trips in detail in previous blog posts including:
But for those that still need more convincing, we thought we’d try something different this time.
Land’s End to John O’Groats in an electric car. Yes, really!
Perhaps the most famous driving route in Great Britain is journeying from Land’s End (the extreme western point of mainland England) to John O’Groats (the extreme northern point of mainland Scotland).
A quick check on Google shows the route covers roughly 840 miles and, depending on the traffic, can be done in around 14 hours and 40 minutes (excluding the time needed to stop and refuel, of course).
We’ve already covered London to Land’s End, which in itself was a long drive, but this is the ultimate long-distance trip. So surely, if it’s possible to do the whole thing in an EV, then it’s possible to do any trip in GB - right?
To find out, we plotted a route starting at Land’s End and ending in John O’Groats, complete with all the stops needed to ensure your EV can make it.
Also, to show how it’s doable even when using just one provider’s network, we’ve only included our public chargers.
Additionally, all calculations were made with the Vauxhall Corsa-e. It has a usable range of ~178 miles, which is at the middle to low end of the average EV range.
Without further ado, let’s check out the route!
As you can see, it’s perfectly doable using either just rapid chargers, for those who want to complete the route as quickly as possible, and non-rapids, for those who’re happy to take their time and do some sight-seeing on the way. Or, you could use a mixture of the two.
And if you still want to do more after reaching John O’Groats, you could go even further north by taking the ferry from Scrabster over to Orkney and getting a charge at Lidl or Tesco in Kirkwall!
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