EV Road Trip: Driving From London To The Lake District In The BMW iX1

The prospect of a road trip – or any long journey – in an EV might fill you with dread. Would charging be difficult? What about the cost? Tessa Dunthorne test-drove the BMW iX1 EV on a road trip from London to the Lake District to answer all your questions. 

Review: EV Road Trip To The Lake District In The BMW iX1

I had a couple of fears before embarking on a road trip to the Lake District in the BMW iX1. Firstly, I had never driven an EV – and while this was a top of the range model, I wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of how it handled. The second was that I’d also never driven an automatic car before, and was convinced that I’d constantly reach for the missing clutch or the ghost of the gearstick. The third and final one – which I decided to not mention to their team when they made the offer – was that I’d not driven in two years. 

My classic Londoner’s lack of driving aside, recent research by Auto trader revealed that there’s a significant gender gap when it comes to the purchase of electric vehicles. Women hold 48 percent of all driving licenses, so have the same need as men for a vehicle, and yet they’re 30 percent less likely to buy an EV than their male counterparts. The reasons for this are manifold but mostly boil down to a level of charging anxiety: what happens if I run out of juice (or current?) and I’m not in a safe place to charge? 

There’s also anxiety surrounding the price of running an EV. A quarter of all women perceive electric vehicles as more expensive to run than petrol or diesel cars – when it in fact (again according to Auto trader) works out as £86 cheaper on average per 1,000 miles. 

Armed with the knowledge that my fears were not unusual – and a naive sense that I should do my bit in sticking it to the patriarchy, if only from the soft comfort of a luxury car – I embarked on a 300mile road trip from west London to Keswick, the Lake District. 

The Trip

The Car

The spec: 

• The model: BMW iX1 xDrive30 M Sport
• The price: range starts at £46,825, I test the £61,254.99 model
• Power: 308 hp
• Top speed: 112mph
• 0-60mph: 5.6swcs

My first impressions are that the car itself is big. I’m about 5ft3 and it’s a bit of a leap into its door – it’s obvious to state, but if you’re used to driving nippy little things that make parallel parking on a busy curb an easy dream, this car is jarring the first time you drive it. 

However, as soon as the power turns on, it’s a breeze to drive. The iX1 softly wakes up – like most EVs, it’s a very quiet journeymaker – and it begins by heating up the steering wheel and driver’s seat. The car is well-equipped with features designed to assuage nervous drivers like myself: from the parking assistant and lane assist (which nudges you back in lane as soon as you get too close to other cars on the motorway), to its cruise control and easy-to-use digital driver’s display for directions.

I preface now: my partner came along as the auxiliary driver – from a passenger’s perspective, the car is a treat because you can simply recline the seat, and zone out for a few hours. The speakers are exceptionally good (and the bluetooth impressive: when you restart the car after exiting for any period of time, it leaps straight back into your Spotify). 

Charging the EV

In theory, the fully electric BMW iX1 has a range of around 260-270 miles on a single charge; not enough to make it to the 300 mile destination in one go. In practice, on the motorway where driving faster drains the battery quicker, this seems to be closer to 190-220 miles. So this meant we were going to need to stop for at least one charge over the entire journey – and probably more, if we wanted to heat up the steering wheel and play with massage settings on the seats. 

In terms of chargepoint-planning, you could spend a couple of minutes pulled over to the side on Zapmap, a handy app for EV drivers which is particularly good for spotting available chargers in real time – but in the iX1’s case, it’s much more efficient to just leave the navigation to figure it out for you. The iX1’s map will plot your route including any charging sessions it deems necessary, and then account for charging time in your ETA. 

Our first charge is at the service station in Leicester around two hours into the drive up, when, at 40 percent power, we decide to ‘test’ a chargepoint before we reach any critical juncture. For £22.41, we recover another 40 percent of our battery in only 25 minutes, which are spent enjoying a coffee at leisure and stretching limbs. I think back to petrol roadtrips and how I might simply push through a four hour drive without stop, in the name of efficiency; I’d emerge with bodily aches and having seen my roadskills slowly deteriorate over such time. I have a strong suspicion that we might lower the number of accidents on the road were people required to stop for a period of 25 minutes in the pursuit of refueling their vehicle. 

We do no longer charges over the journey, in attempts to keep stop time down. From a cost perspective, rapid charging is about £16 more on average (at £36.96 to bring a car to 80 percent battery from zero, when compared to domestic charging), but there are not many opportunities to do a slow charge in such a road trip as we were undertaking. 

Across the entire journey – there and back – I only encountered a wait for a charge point once, at the M1 service station, and this is due to one of four EV charging points being out of order.

In terms of availability of charging points in the Lake District itself, this might be a worry for some drivers. However, there are plenty of charging points (see Zapmap below – although note that this includes slower chargers in addition to rapid chargers, which are in pink); and where there are gaps BMW themselves are collaborating with the national parks to ensure at least three key locations (Windemere, Hawkshead and Coniston) are kitted out. 

EV chargers at the Lake District, correct at time of writing

In addition to the public charging stations, a number of hotels and stays include charging points for guests. The Borrowdale Gates Hotel, Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa, Cedar Manor are among a handful of nice stays with car-juice. However, we stay (on our second night, after an obligatory pop-in to grandparents in Keswick) in the Brimstone Hotel, which, alongside a very impressive (and sprawling) spa, sports several EV charge points in the covered carpark sat in its bowels – allowing you to kick up your feet by a log-fire overnight and gain some energy as your car does too. 

Tessa borrowed the iX1 EV from BMW, and was a guest in Brimstone Hotel as part of its partnership with the car brand. BMW are partnered with the National Parks for the ‘Recharge in Nature’ project, an initiative to promote EV infrastructure, sustainable tourism and biodiversity across the 15 national parks. Find out more: discover.bmw.co.uk/article/bmw-and-national-parks-partnership.