I’m now at the end of my weeklong EV experience and as I was handing back the keys to the Jaguar I-Pace, I experienced a sadness that I wasn’t expecting.
I am genuinely going to miss this car!
As you may have read in my initial post, my introduction to the charging network got off to a rough start with someone spouting a load of old pish about bylaws and how I can’t stay on a charger for more than 30 minutes, then us getting into a bit of an argument, then calming down and having a bit of a chat about the EV experience. That didn’t really detract from the driving experience of the Jag though.
I don’t think there’s a single thing I didn’t like about this car. This was the top of the range HSE spec, it’s typical Jag which I know well having owned 2 Jag’s with my current car being an XF-RS. It’s well equipped, it’s comfortable, there’s lots of space inside if you have kids, just an all round nice place to spend time travelling. Then there’s the EV driving experience, I was totally blown away by it. It’s quiet, smooth, relaxing, and the instant, constant power is just intoxicating.
It’s feels every bit as fast as my 5.0 V8 XF, if anything it’s way more responsive. In the XF when you put the foot down it needs to decide which gear to drop down to then whoosh of it goes but there’s none of this lag in the I-Pace. It just goes. Of course, when you look at top speeds the XF tops out at 186mph and the I-Pace at 124, I’ll be honest and say I’ve never had the opportunity to go at 186mph so it’s not really that relevant. Of course, the iPace isn’t a “performance” car but its performance is mighty impressive and it handles really well too for being a pretty big car. Shifting it into Dynamic mode sets all the dials to red and it certainly does put the power down a bit more aggressively, fun for a little while but I went back to the normal comfort mode pretty quickly.
During my week with the I-Pace I had to do a trip to Auchtermuchty which is a 120 mile round trip for me, this would be a good test of the Jag’s range. Marketing has the I-Pace at 288 mile range, the car itself reported to me it had 240 mile range, and in reality I probably got about 220 miles from a single charge which isn’t bad and is very usable. Now granted it was my first week with an EV and I did enjoy a good traffic light drag race so driving a bit more sensibly and putting the regen to its highest setting might get me up to the 240 or beyond but I was happy with the range I got in the time I had the car.
So impressed was I with the I-Pace that I started to think, what would I get in a trade in on the XF, yes, I really did think about trading in my 5.0L V8 super saloon for an EV. I went onto Jaguar.co.uk and that’s when I encountered a pretty serious issue with the website. It was telling me that to get into a I-Pace of the spec I would want that it was going to cost me £86,000, EIGHTY SIX GRAND!!!!! What?! That put a bit of a downer on things as it’s a pretty huge entry cost into EV ownership, I know there are other options I could consider and could also go for a lower spec if I had to, but this piece is all about the Jag I’ve been driving for the last week.
So what’s the point here, well on the whole EV driving experience I’m sold, it’s a done deal, I absolutely loved it. With a charge point at home I’d charge maybe at most once a week, that would take care of my daily driving duties and avoid some potential frustration with the current charging network. I’d save on roadtax, petrol and servicing costs but at these prices it would probably take me a long time to breakeven with the cost of buying the car in the first place. I think there will continue to be a huge development surge over the next few years in EV’s and it will be a very interesting segment to watch.
So to conclude my ramblings, I want one, but not yet.
John.
