THE PROCLAIMER
Would 500 miles from Brighton to Glasgow on a winter’s day be beyond the electric Kia EV6? Matt Saunders lines it up next to the petrol-engined Kia Proceed and throws himself at the mercy of the UK’s rapid-charging net work to find out
PHOTOGR APHY MAX EDLESTON
10.15AM MADEIRA DRIVE, BRIGHTON
It’s a balmy Monday morning on Brighton’s pebbly seafront. The walkers, cyclists and desperadoelectric scooterists are out in force, soaking up some unexpected February vitamin D. The cafe proprietors are sweeping f loors, laying tables and getting ready for a brisk lunchtime trade. The weather is ideal – except if you were hoping for the sort of cold, wet, foreboding environment to set a tough challenge for an electric car on a long drive.
Thankfully, where we’re heading, we’re almost guaranteed some wintry smirr. It’s somewhere between 450 and 500 miles north from here to Glasgow, depending which way you go – and today we’re going in a Kia EV6, mostly just to find out how long it takes to cover that kind of distance on the UK road network in an EV in 2022.
This will be a bit of a race between tortoise and hare, except I’m very much hoping our hare doesn’t fall asleep under a tree. Photographer Max Edleston will be driving the trip in a Kia Proceed GT, which, with its 201bhp 1.6-litre turbo petrol engine and 53-litre tank, should make pretty short work of that kind of touring. And I will be doing the same in a single-motor, rear-wheel-drive, mid-spec EV6, taking my chances on the UK’s public EV charging infrastructure to find out if it really is as sparse and slow-growing as you so often hear.