This wedding, though. It turned out that I had accidentally concocted a truly brilliant test of an electric family SUV. The venue was about 150 miles away, for a start, meaning the return journey was theoretically right on the cusp of the Ariya’s claimed 300-mile range.
And the route involved A-roads, B-roads, motorways, a town centre and parking in a multi-storey, with multiple variables, suitcases, people and a surprise golf-bag entry.
First, let me address the issue of range. This particular Ariya’s WLTP figure is 329 miles, but I’m not – and I truly don’t believe anyone is – getting that. Especially if you want to use motorways and the air-con.
I sat in the car ready to embark, and it proudly displayed 272 miles of range at 100% charge. I’d been doing a fair amount of short driving, so I figured this was a bit ambitious.
After 10 miles on the M11, I’d already lost 20 miles of that theoretical range. Slight gulp. Still, I figured I was always going to need to charge at my destination anyway.
An hour later, I noticed I was still very comfortable. The Ariya has a natural motorway gait, only slightly put off by its big wheels and heavy weight. The smaller-battery version that I previously ran was much better for motorway comfort but also more annoying, because it had a shorter range (250 miles officially).
This wedding was one of those weekend affairs with multiple venues and acts. The Friday evening was close to Cirencester, so I went to have a look around Gloucester and charge the car.
Zap-Map helpfully pointed me to a multi-storey and I arrived to find a suite of unused 22kW chargers. Huzzah. Same hardware as the reliable street ones I use at home.
However, these types of chargers are run by smaller companies, all with their own apps, and this app was crap. I was charged the £55 connection fee twice and it failed to charge twice. The app said the car wasn’t charging but the display on the charger itself said it was.
