Road to Zero: the UFODRIVE EV Experience to COP26

David Yu guest blog for the Aidan McClean Blog

I’ve been a seasoned motoring journalist, car enthusiast and self-confessed petrolhead for over 30 years now.

I drove the first version of the Tesla Roadster (the one built on a Lotus Elise chassis) over 10 years ago and was pretty unimpressed, as the extra weight of the batteries destroyed the handling purity of the Elise without adding much acceleration, gave it a slower top speed and of course added range anxiety.

Years later I drove a Model S at one of the motoring industry SMMT test days and was pleasantly surprised by the combination of speed, refinement, and most of all, the maturity of the ride and handling set up, considering how young the company still was at that point.

However, what I had not done until last week was any sort of long distance journey in an EV.

My other role is co-director of YUnique Marketing Ltd and one of our clients, UFODRIVE, needed to get a couple of their Tesla Model 3s to Glasgow for COP26, so I volunteered.

I was genuinely intrigued to experience the state of long-distance motoring in an EV in the UK in 2021.

A lot of my motoring journo colleagues have written and posted a load of articles about their EV experiences and a common thread was the patchiness of the charging infrastructure in the UK, with many chargers being either out of order, incompatible with their particular charging app or payment system, or just simply fully occupied.

So it was with some trepidation that I downloaded the UFODRIVE app to make my booking.

UFODRIVE pride themselves on being the first all-electric, all-digital car rental company and the all-digital part refers to no offices, no forms, no paperwork, it’s all done on the app.

However this does mean you need to make a few minutes available to get yourself set up for the first time as they still need to verify your identity, address and driving licence status, but following the helpful instructions onscreen on your phone makes it a relatively hassle-free exercise, especially compared to a conventional car rental experience where you have to queue up with all your paperwork and get the compulsory lengthy sales pitch trying to upgrade your insurance or car class.

I selected a standard Tesla Model 3 and arrived at one of UFODRIVE’s Central London locations (or UFOBAYs as they’re known) in a smart modern and clean car park in Cavendish Square off Oxford Street.

It was then a simple task to locate the car with the app, inspect it, take a selfie to prove it was me renting the car, digitally sign the contract then unlock it with the app.

The car was of course fully valeted and charged, so after a quick familiarisation video on my phone (accessed by a QR code on the dashboard), I silently set off on my first long distance EV journey.

The Tesla Model 3 is deservedly the best-selling EV in the world so far. A lot has been written about the ballistic Performance model and Dual Motor Long Range version, but even the base version Model 3 is a very fine car.

Smooth, silent performance with lots of immediate low down torque for instantly accessible acceleration is almost taken for granted.

But quick accurate steering, very stable handling (despite only the one motor and rear wheel drive) and a decent ride are a pleasant surprise, as is the intuitiveness of the “single pedal” driving offered by the regenerative braking, which with sufficient driver awareness means you rarely need to use the actual brake pedal to slow you down.

The seats were comfortable and fully electrically adjustable and the cabin was spacious and airy under the standard full length panoramic glass roof and I quickly settled in to a comfortable pace up the M1 in convoy with the other UFODRIVE Tesla.

The car showed 248 miles of range when collected and we cruised smoothly all the way to Keele Services on the M6 in 2 hours 20 minutes, having covered 165 miles and used 60% charge.

I was astonished to find that 7 out of the 8 Tesla Supercharger bays were unoccupied. Even more astounding was that (once I had figured out how to unlock the charging port via the touch screen control in the car) the only step involved with charging was to plug it in! None of the histrionics of downloading an app, pre-paying a card or trying to get the charger to communicate with the car that I’d seen in reports about other models.

By the time we’d availed ourselves of the facilities and bought some supplies at the services, we came back to find the car charged back to 90% in just 25 minutes.

The next leg was made more tedious by endless 50mph speed limits imposed to protect non-existent workforces, but it was still a relatively relaxing drive in the quiet Model 3.

We made our second stop at Gretna Green services where all 4 of the Superchargers were occupied, uh oh!
But the thing is, Superchargers, with their 150kW capacity, do not take that long to charge, so immediately one friendly Tesla owner popped out of their car to say they were only 5 minutes away from being ready to go, and before they were even done, another Tesla exited their bay, so we were soon plugged in.

We then had a quick refresh and lunch and after 35 minutes had way more than enough to reach Glasgow.

We arrived at the car park that would host the Glasgow UFOBAY at 3:30pm with 99 miles of range still remaining, having left London at 8:30am.

This contrasts with a Sky News piece I watched on Sunday morning that showed one of their journalists had taken well over 14 hours in another make of EV that could not use the Supercharger network, albeit they probably made a couple of filming stops etc.

So my conclusion is that long journeys in EVs are very nearly as fast as those in ICE cars, a whole lot cheaper (although charging is free with UFODRIVE, it would have cost around £30 compared to around £70/£80 in an ICE car), relaxing and hassle free. However right now, that is only true if you’re driving a Tesla, using the Tesla Supercharger network. Over to you, competitors…