It started in November 2022 completely by accident. I was buying cars from auction houses all over England and the cost of delivery doubled overnight. So, I signed up to a couple of agencies that move vehicles around the country so I could get paid for a journey “up country” then pick up a car I had bought and bring it back to Cornwall. A perfect solution and far more profitable all round and that’s how it started.
Dealing with the cheaper end of the second-hand market I had yet to come across any “milk floats” at this point. I refer to all Electric Vehicles as Milk Floats as they were the only electric vehicle on the roads when I was a kid. Except the real milk floats were fit for purpose and did the job they were made for really well. Which is more than can be said for the new versions!
I took a job from Plymouth to Corby in Northamptonshire. At the time I didn’t even look to see what car it was as it didn’t really matter. But on my way, there I checked and to my delight it was a Peugeot 208 E. My first ever milk float. I was so excited to get in and try this new technology and bounded up to the house it was parked outside and knocked on the door with great enthusiasm. Little did I know but that was the best it was going to get all day! The owner of the car opened the door to be greeted by my beaming smile which disappeared as he uttered his greeting. “Thank God you’re taking that pile of crap back, I can’t wait to get rid of it” was his opening statement as he thrust the keys in my hand. To be fair to him he had left it fully charged for me and as I fired the 208 up I noticed I had 135 miles range. I was going from Plymouth to Corby in Northamptonshire, a journey of about 240 miles so I would only need to charge up once. I pressed the D button and left with an almost silent whirr. But it didn’t last long.
It turns out the ‘range’ displayed on most milk floats has been designed using the same philosophy as a bloke saying “I’m going for a couple pints”. This could mean anywhere from 2 to 12 depending on the mood, how busy the pub is, who’s there, what’s on the telly etc. And that’s the perfect analogy for range on a milk float. Because that 135-mile range is based on utterly perfect conditions. That’s driving at 55mph for the entire distance in 20-degree warmth, no wind or rain, no need for air conditioning or blowers, and nothing else that will affect the batteries in anyway whatsoever. Even putting the lights on could knock a mile or two off. And so it unfolded that after a whole 65 miles I had 20 miles of range left and slid into Bridgwater to charge up. Not the services though. They are the worst services in Britain bar none.
But that’s another story for another day. I came off at the next junction and went to the McDonalds where the milk float app told me there was a fast charger. And there it was nestled in the corner of the car park, and no one was using it. I spent the next ten minutes trying to work out where the charging flap was, then how to open it and then how to plug it in. Once I had hurdled those barriers I just had to tap my card and the charging would start. Things whirred and beeped and lit up and the screen said vehicle charging. So, I went off to McDonalds and got some breakfast. When I returned it wasn’t charging at all. There had been a fault and it had stopped after 30 seconds. I had to do the whole thing again. That’s 15 minutes wasted. This time it worked, and I sat in a car park watching a car charge for 43 minutes. This is progress apparently.
It's worth saying at this point that charging on the road is like this more than its not. Chargers not working when you get there require a phone call to a helpdesk to reset them which all takes time. Then they can randomly stop for no reason. The worst one was Fleet Services (Westbound is right up there with the best, Eastbound is down there with Bridgwater) where I plugged in blissfully unaware that the charger had stopped, enjoyed a Pizza Express and came out to a flat useless milk float that hadn’t charged at all and that took 90 minutes in total meaning a 5-hour journey ended up taking over 10 hours.
Of course, the charging network is woefully inadequate all over the kingdom, and there a good chance you will have to queue for a charger at most services, particularly in the holidays. This can result in the most British of behaviours as everyone stands around watching the charging happen and silently wondering how much longer they’ve got left whilst making sure they maintain queue position in an utterly polite way. It’s no wonder the middle classes love a milk float. It’s like they were born for this moment in history. Once at Gloucester Services (Top 3 in the country, banging sausage rolls and proper food at the same price as Burger King) in August I had 35 miles left but they only had 4 chargers at the time and 2 of them were slow chargers which take 24 hours to reach full charge! There, surrounding them, was a beautiful ensemble of home counties suburbia working out how long they would be there for whilst an elderly lady arrived to ask how long the queue was as her husband and her had only popped out to buy organic vegetables. I promise this is true!
I couldn’t cope with this so plugged into the slow charger and after 41 minutes had added a whole 12 miles of range meaning I could get all the way to Gordano Services (terrible access and parking, fair facilities, mid table) which I did with 10 miles left. This is called range anxiety for milk floaters. It becomes an obsession and all you think about when you could be concentrating on other things like the road ahead. And upon arrival at Gordano’s there were 4 chargers, 2 were out of order and the other 2 being used with 2 people waiting. I sat for an hour for the privilege of being able to charge up and move on. Progress is a funny thing.
Anyway, back to Bridgwater. I finally charged up and had a whole 135 miles of range again which I know is only actually 75 – 80 miles. I had spent the last 40 minutes pondering which services I would stop at next (Hopwood was the dream, Strensham was the reality) and was miserable enough then I looked at the screen and saw the total cost for charging. £42! That’s FORTY-TWO POUNDS. Petrol and Diesel Drivers accept that they will pay more at Motorway Services for fuel but about 15% more. Milk Floaters boast of paying 4p per kilowatt at home. They don’t boast quite so much about paying 79p for the same kilowatt on the motorways. Just the 20 times more or like paying £26 a litre for petrol. Now bearing in mind that my actual range is about 80 miles that’s costing me 50p for every mile I drive. Put £42 of diesel in a VW Passat and you will go about 320 miles or 8p a mile. And you can do that in one. No stopping, no charging, no anxiety, no wasting hours of your life, and all in something that already exists!! And if someone mentions climate change simply tell them China built 137 coal fired power stations last year and it ends up in the same sky as your pathetically small emissions from your car.
Since that fateful day I have driven 50 different makes and models of milk float from the bottom end Renault Zoe and Nissan Leaf to the £130000 Porsche Taycan. And nothing I got out of at the end of the journey filled me with anything but resentment and anger. Except the Volvo XC40 Recharge. That thing was brilliant. Loved it. But it’s still a milk float and I still wouldn’t touch one with a barge pole, unless it was to push my barge down the canal which would get me wherever I wanted to go quicker, easier and cheaper. Milk Floats aren’t a solution. They are a deliberate and calculated attempt to make people move less, travel shorter distances and be continuously monitored for every mile they do. But that’s another column for another day (if I get to write another one!) and don’t get me started on Electric Vans.
Finally, that day was the day I first uttered what was to become my catchphrase as I finished my first ever milk float video with the sentence “EV’s are the future? Future my arse!!
Tony Goodman is host of YouTube channel: Electric Car-Nage https://www.youtube.com/@Evcarnage