More and more National Trust properties are putting in EV charging stations. These are mainly fast chargers, which means they are the slower 11kWh chargers, which are in fact ideal when visiting a property.
I recently visited Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire. The directions for the EV chargers wasn’t very clear, but I eventually found them in car park A. I plugged the car in and set it charging by using Apple Pay on my iPhone. Unlike many other chargers which use contactless they only take a £15 hold on your card.
I had quite a low charge on the car, and in the end I added 35kW to the car. That took just over three hours which was more than enough time to explore the ruins of the abbey and have a nice walk in the gardens. I even stopped for a scone and a pot of tea.
I did think (initially) that the 50p kWH was reasonable, but this doesn’t include 20% VAT, I had misread the screen. So the actual cost is 60p kWh, which is still okay, but I do think it could be cheaper.
I was lucky in that there were plenty of chargers free, however I went on a weekday in April. I can imagine at weekends, during school holidays, and in the summer, it must be much busier and I would be cautious about arriving and relying on the EV chargers being available. The very fact that they are 11kWh chargers does mean that this isn’t a super rapid charge, but the type of charger where you are going to leave your car for a fair number of hours, even the whole day. The problem with rapid chargers can be, was was apparent at Stourhead is that the attached cables are prone to being cut off and stolen, and most National Trust properties are in rural locations. Hopefully something could be sorted to avoid cable theft so that rapid chargers can be used.