Three kids, two parents and one electric car embark on a Disneyland Paris road trip adventure!

We are part of an unusual set up in this day and age; we only have one car for our family of five - a Kia Soul EV that does 100 miles approx. on a full charge. Our three ‘bright spark’ kids are aged 11, 10 and eight years old, and we often get asked by bemused people ‘how on earth we cope’. The answer is, it’s easy - in fact, it’s even fun!

When Rob mentioned getting an electric vehicle I must admit, I was a bit apprehensive …we like to go driving places far, far away, so how on earth was that gonna work with an electric car?!?!? In the end, we struck a deal: We would use an electric car for smaller trips but still hire a regular old dinosaur juice car for when we wanted to go further afield. 

The problem with the deal was that the moment I started driving electric, I realised, I LOVED IT! So much so, that the idea of getting into a gas guzzler again became instantly objectionable. (We have unfortunately had to use one once or twice when there was no other option; it was not nice, and I confess, I moaned A LOT.)

In our electric car we often do two-hour journeys up to Worthing from Dorset, and the odd airport trip, but we hadn’t tried anything much more ambitious until the end of last year, when we decided to do a proper ‘big trip’ to Disneyland Paris. 

The first leg of our electric drive took us from Dorset to Folkstone which required two stops. Happily, there is a charger for electric vehicles at the Eurotunnel where you can plug-in and get a coffee, which allowed us to top-up ready for our drive in France.

An unexpected bonus of going in an electric car on the Eurotunnel is that you can actually keep ‘the engine’ running on the train ‘cause there’s no fumes, so you can keep things like iPads and phones on charge. 

In the second stretch of the journey, from Calais to Disneyland Paris, we stopped four times. This was more than you would normally have to stop, because it was winter and we needed the heating on. This meant that instead of getting our usual 80 miles per charge (chargers usually only give you 80% of their projected charge) we were getting about 60 miles! It was a bit annoying, but it bothered me far less than if I’d been driving a clunky old petrol car.

Obviously, it can get a bit squished in the back of any car with three kids. We bought our Kia Soul EV because it’s roomier than other EV models, but as any parents will know, road trips with the kids are all about the art of distraction, regardless of the type of transport! For this trip, we were loaned a device that allowed us to play films in the back of the car for the kids – and it worked brilliantly. It was one of those moments when we went “why the heck haven’t we done this before?!” 

Disneyland Paris was our first holiday experiment to see if taking all the kids on a really long journey in our electric car would work, and I’m delighted to say it did. We managed to get all five of us, plus luggage, to Disneyland Paris in our Kia Soul EV for three nights and four days - in winter - and we didn’t kill each other! In fact, we arrived happy and ready to go. So if you’re thinking about taking the kids on an electric car road trip, hopefully our experiences will help persuade you to take the leap – for us, it was totally worth it, and we can’t wait to get on the road again.