Flying high

Another shot taken during our short comfort break off the I-65 in Indiana.  I was going to title this 'Mine's bigger than yours' as it's not often the golden arches are outdone, but decided on 'Flying high' instead.

We didn't eat at a McDonalds, but we did a late breakfast stop at an IHOP diner in Lafayette as we stopped to charge up the brother's electric SUV.  The menu ran to about 20 pages with every conceivable option but I eventually settled for a mushroom and spinach omelette which arrived in super-quick time.  It was rather good I have to admit, but was smothered in a little too much cheese - unnecessary, and not terribly healthy.

The fast chargers were outside a Walmart (where else?).  It was my first time being in an electric vehicle and I was impressed - very smooth, very quiet and very fast.  Charging was fairly straightforward - check the App for the closest available chargers, navigate to the location and then drive round the car park for 10 minutes until you spot them.  There were four chargers in this particular location and they were pretty popular, though this was Memorial Weekend so a lot of people were on the move.  Although each charger had two outlets strangely only one worked at any one time (we found this out when another guy showed up and selected the other outlet on our pump...which promptly disconnected us.  He was most apologetic).  We went from 30% charge to about 70% in about 15 minutes but then the rate slowed dramatically.  To get from 70% to 90% took almost as long.  That was more than enough for the 2-hour trip home.  I guess a longer trip would take a bit more planning.  But if there's to be a lot more electric vehicles in the future (as seems to be the case) there's going to need to be a heck of a lot more chargers.  

Back home I see a lot more electric vehicles on our roads.  I think we probably have a near perfect environment for them, as for most people here, a 120-mile round trip to Belfast would be probably be the longest drive most people would make on a semi-regular basis - and generally speaking 95% of journeys are likely to be a lot shorter.  So I think most people with electric vehicles here rarely have to worry about charging up away from their own house.