The dog always knows a Yorkshire trip is coming before anyone says so. The overnight bags come down from the loft, the boys start negotiating who sits behind whom, and the dog takes up position by the boot and refuses to move.
We make this run several times a year to see friends who live a little over 200 miles north of us, and after seven years in the Model 3 the charging has settled into a routine. People thinking about a Tesla often ask me which Superchargers we use and what they cost, so I've written our version down, with Tesla's prices as of October 2026. In short, we stop once, usually at Woodall services on the M1, for about 20 minutes, and it costs us around £12 at the daytime price.
Up the Fosse Way and onto the M1
We leave the Cotswolds on the A429, which follows the Fosse Way, the Roman road from Exeter to Lincoln. The Romans built it admirably straight and without a single toilet, which the boys regard as poor planning. From Warwick we take the A46 round Coventry and the M69 to join the M1 at Leicester, and then it's motorway nearly all the way. When the A46 is jammed, the car sends us up the M5 and M42 instead.
Our 2019 Model 3 Long Range was one of the first right-hand-drive Model 3s in the UK. On a warm day it could probably do the whole trip in one go, with very little to spare. In winter it wouldn't, and in any season the boys wouldn't. So we leave with a full battery from the night before and plan one stop somewhere past halfway. The car's trip planner usually agrees.
Our stops on the M1
These are the Superchargers on our route, with stall counts and prices from Tesla's Find Us map (as of 7 October 2026):
Supercharger | Where | Stalls | Off-peak price for Teslas | Open to other EVs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Leicester, Fosse Park | M1 junction 21 | 8 | 24p/kWh, 11pm to 8am | No |
Woodall services | M1 junctions 30 to 31 | 16 | 22p/kWh, 9pm to 8am | No |
Rotherham services | M1 junction 33 | 20 | 24p/kWh, 9pm to 8am | No |
Sheffield, Meadowhall Retail Park | M1 junction 34 | 12 | 27p/kWh, 10pm to 9am | No |
Hopwood Park services, if we go the M5 way | M42 junction 2 | 36 | 22p/kWh, 10pm to 8am | No |
All five are owned by Tesla and charge at up to 250 kW. Teslas pay 48p/kWh at peak times at all of them.
Fosse Park is a retail park named after the same Roman road (Visit Blaby). The boys' first toilet demand of the trip tends to arrive around Leicester, so it's our stop when the car doesn't need much and the passengers do.
Woodall is the regular. Its Superchargers opened in March 2017, two years before our Model 3 arrived, and they're on the southbound side. Heading north, you cross over on the service road. There's a grassy bank beside the chargers that the dog inspects thoroughly every visit. By the time I've bought two coffees and the boys have been to the toilet and come back via the sweets, the car usually has enough to finish the trip.
Rotherham services opened in January 2025 (Sheffield Star) with 20 stalls and an arcade. The boys found the arcade in under a minute.
The cost of a stop
Our usual stop adds around 25 kWh. At 48p that's about £12, and at Woodall's off-peak 22p it's £5.50. The price is set at the moment you plug in and doesn't change during the session (Tesla support). I once sat in the car at Woodall watching the clock tick round to 9pm so I could plug in at the cheaper rate. My partner pointed out that the coffees had cost more than I saved.
At home, our overnight rate on Intelligent Octopus Go is 7.6p/kWh (Octopus Energy, as of October 2026), about a sixth of the Supercharger daytime price. We're moving to EDF in November, but home will still be where the cheap miles come from.
If you drive another make of car, none of our M1 stops will let you in (as of October 2026), though plenty of other sites will. At Gloucester services on the M5, one of the nearest to us that's open to everyone, other EVs pay 75p to 77p/kWh in the daytime, against 48p for a Tesla. A Supercharging Membership in the Tesla app lets other EVs pay the same price as a Tesla. When Tesla last changed the fee, in April 2024, it was £8.99 a month or £90 a year (Fleet World). The current fee is shown in the app.
Woodall on a bank holiday
Tesla's busy-times chart for Woodall shows Sunday lunchtime as the busiest hour of the week, which is exactly when we tend to come home. On a normal Sunday that means a few other cars. On a bank holiday Sunday we've queued, once for about ten minutes, which the boys spent ranking every car in the queue by colour. Woodall's 16 stalls serve both carriageways, so on those days the whole of the M1 is queuing for the same ones.
At busy sites the car may lower its charge limit to 80% automatically. Tesla also charges a congestion fee of up to 50p a minute when a site is busy and you're past 80% or finished and still plugged in, after the first five minutes (Tesla support). Our rule on bank holidays is to check the free stalls on the car's screen before we reach Woodall, and if it's full, carry on to Rotherham.
A bigger network, and V4
Tesla's map lists 233 Supercharger sites in the UK with about 2,500 stalls, and 152 of those sites are open to other EVs (my count from Tesla's Find Us map, 7 October 2026). Going by the opening dates on the map, 41 sites opened in 2025 and 21 so far this year. Zapmap named it the best large rapid charging network of 2026, for the second year in a row (Zapmap).
V4 Superchargers reached the UK in August 2023 at the Tesla Centre in Tottenham, with a longer cable that reaches other makes of car and a contactless card reader (electrive). The bigger change is the V4 cabinet, the power unit behind the posts, which can supply up to 500 kW. Europe's first 500 kW site opened in Norway in June 2026 (Not a Tesla App). On Tesla's UK map, every site still tops out at 250 kW.
For our cars, that changes nothing. Our Model 3 was among the first cars that could take 250 kW when V3 Superchargers arrived (TechCrunch, March 2019), and it only gets near that for a few minutes when the battery is low. From 10% to 80% takes us roughly half an hour. The Model Y Premium we've ordered for February is also limited to 250 kW, and Tesla says it adds up to 160 miles in 15 minutes (Tesla UK, as of October 2026). Electrek reported at the cabinet's launch that Model 3 and Model Y stay at 250 kW on it, but each cabinet runs twice as many stalls. On a bank holiday we're waiting for a free stall, so more stalls would help us far more than faster ones.
What I'd tell a friend doing the run
Charge at home before you go and plan one stop. If you can come home after 9pm, Woodall's off-peak price cuts the cost by more than half. Avoid Sunday lunchtime on a bank holiday weekend, or have Rotherham in mind if Woodall is full. From February the Model Y takes over the Yorkshire trips, and I fully expect the dog to inspect the same grassy bank at Woodall.
If this would be your first Tesla, ordering a new Model 3 or Model Y through our referral link(referral link) gets you 650 free Supercharging miles (as of October 2026). Use the link before you place the order, because Tesla can't add it afterwards. Free miles only work at Superchargers that Tesla owns (Tesla support), and every stop in the table above is one of those. As existing owners we get Tesla's loyalty benefit on our Model Y order instead, which I wrote about in how we're paying for our Model Y. I'll be the one at Woodall watching the clock until 9pm.
