(And No, It Wasn’t the Car – It Was Everything Else)
In theory, London is a futuristic utopia of clean, green, modern living. A place where electric cars hum down leafy streets, detecting the children and stopping automatically for you, charging seamlessly under lamp posts while their owners sip flat whites in minimalist cafés.
In reality? It’s a chaotic, range-anxiety-ridden urban jungle, and after three months of trying to make EV life work, I waved goodbye to my Tesla with more relief than sentiment.
Let me set the scene: I live in a flat on a busy London road. No driveway. No garage. No magical fairy that comes in the night to plug in my car. So, the whole concept of “just charge it overnight” wasn’t an option. Even the EV charging bays required removal of the car by 8.30 AM so it could become a paid bay again.
Fortunately, my parents live in Kent. There, I was able to charge the Tesla via an ancient three-pin plug, like a phone from 2004. Technically it worked… but to get a full charge took over 24 hours. You could roast a Christmas turkey, run a marathon, and binge every episode of The Crown before the battery hit 100%. However, once I drove back to London, I faced my first big hurdle: range anxiety.
Apparently, you’re only supposed to charge the car to 80% to “protect the battery,” something I’ve never fully understood – surely if I bought the battery, I’m allowed to use the whole thing? Anyway, I returned to the city with 150 miles of range and the kind of creeping stress usually reserved for forgetting your passport at the airport.
But I wasn’t worried – no, I had lamp post chargers on my street! Modern! Sleek! Convenient! Except, they were all run by BP Pulse, which requires a mysterious and elusive access card. I tried to order one. The website informed me they were “not available at this time.” Great. So much for futuristic convenience.
Enter: Westfield White City, a place that claims to have Tesla Superchargers – the holy grail of EV charging, capable of a full top-up in under an hour. I’d read that using them too often isn’t ideal (cue the voices of EV Twitter whispering “battery degradation” into my dreams), but I was desperate.
So, I drove to White City. If you’ve ever been, you’ll know it has approximately 36 million car parks and zero helpful signs. I went on a grand tour of all of them, each lap draining precious battery. I was now down to 12% and genuinely having visions of pushing my Tesla through Westfield in heels.
Eventually, in a mild panic, I gave up looking for the mythical Tesla chargers and plugged into a non-Tesla one. But alas – the app wouldn’t scan the QR code. This was now my third EV charging app I had downloaded of the day, and my patience was draining, just like my battery life. I moved the car to a different charger, one that did match the app, and finally – finally – I was on charge. With a grand total of 6% remaining.
But the story doesn’t end there. No, because it wasn’t a superfast charger. Which meant I had to leave the car overnight, get a taxi home, then a taxi back the next morning – all to retrieve a half-charged vehicle and the haunting sense that I was now spending more time and money charging my car than I ever did filling up with petrol.
Now, let me be fair for a moment – the tech in a Tesla is next-level. The parking cameras alone deserve their own award. You can see everything: front, back, sides, angles you didn’t even know existed. The indicators come with cameras too, so when you signal, a little video feed pops up on the screen to show you your blind spot. It’s basically the car saying, “I’ve got you.”
Then there’s the self-driving and adaptive cruise control – an actual godsend on long road trips, or during those thrilling stretches of “56 miles straight on the M4.” It takes the edge off and makes you feel like you’ve entered some luxurious sci-fi reality, where the car is calmly doing the hard work while you just sit back and sip your coffee – whilst keeping your eyes on the road and your hand on the wheel before it starts aggressively beeping at you.
The drive itself? Dreamy. Smooth, whisper-quiet, gliding over roads like you’re floating on a particularly smug cloud. But if you want drama? Just put your foot down. The acceleration is like nothing I’ve ever experienced in a petrol or diesel car. One second you’re politely cruising, the next you’re gone – a blur on the horizon with your sunglasses slightly askew.
Another brilliant (and slightly addictive) feature is the on-screen detection system – it shows tiny digital figures of people, cars, trucks, motorcycles, even dogs if one walks close enough. It’s borderline creepy, but also utterly fascinating. Every single one of my passengers commented on it, usually with a wide-eyed “Wait, how does it know?” – and honestly, I was just as obsessed. It’s like the Tesla is hyper-aware of its surroundings in a way that makes you feel both deeply impressed and mildly judged.
But then we come to the phone key app. Supposed to be clever. Sleek. Convenient. It was, in fact, none of the above. I found myself constantly checking if the car was actually locked. I’d walk away, then panic, then walk back, then stand there waving my phone around like a confused wizard trying to cast a spell. I never fully trusted it – and when you’re driving around in something worth that much money, that tiny bit of key anxiety gets old fast.
And yes, I do like the idea of an electric car. The eco factor, the environmental perks, the lack of emissions. There’s something genuinely feel-good about knowing you’re not pumping fumes into the lungs of nearby pedestrians. Plus: no road tax, no ULEZ charge, no congestion charge – or at least, there wasn’t. All of that is now slowly changing, with new rules and fees sneaking in like an uninvited guest at a dinner party.
And I’ll admit, I spent less on charging than I ever did on fuel. But that small-ish saving? Honestly, it’s just not worth the mental gymnastics, the app downloads, the mysterious access cards, the half-functioning charge points, the overnight stays in car parks, and the constant feeling that your car owns you – not the other way around.
Here’s the thing: owning a car is supposed to bring convenience to your life. Freedom. Spontaneity. Not a vehicle that tells you where you can go, how long you can drive, when you can leave, and which exact basement of White City you’re allowed to exist in.
And that’s when I knew: I wasn’t cut out for this. Not in London. Not without a driveway. Not with seven apps, two access cards, and a degree in electrical engineering.
So yes, I got rid of my Tesla. I loved the car, truly – but the infrastructure let me down hard. Until the city catches up with the tech, I’ll stick to petrol… or the Tube.
