On the East Anglian commute.

Most of what is written about commuting in this country is written about commuting into central London. The M11 corridor — Cambridge to the City and back — gets short shrift, which is a shame, because it is one of the more interesting corporate routes anywhere in the South East.

Run it daily for a year, as we do, and the patterns become unmistakable.

The morning rhythm

The M11 from Cambridge southbound between 7 and 9am is, on a good day, a sixty-five-minute drive. On a bad day — school holidays, light Friday traffic, an incident on the A1 pushing traffic through — it can be ninety. The variability is the operative thing. For corporate travellers heading to early meetings in Holborn or Canary Wharf, the question is rarely “how long will it take” but “how much buffer do I need.”

This is one of the underappreciated advantages of a chauffeur service over the train: the buffer is on us, not the client. Late departure for an unexpected breakfast call? Fine. Unexpectedly running early? Pulled over at a service station for a quiet ten minutes of email. The whole arrangement is more flexible than the alternatives, and the back seat is genuinely a better place to spend ninety minutes than the front of a packed Greater Anglia carriage.

The Cambridge cluster effect

The other thing that distinguishes the East Anglian commute is who else is on the road. The M11 between Junction 9 (Saffron Walden / Hinxton) and the M25 carries a remarkable density of senior life sciences, biomedical, technology and financial professionals — substantially more than any single road outside the M25. The Cambridge cluster is a national centre of gravity, and most of its movements happen along this stretch.

That changes the chauffeur calculus. The same client who would not consider booking a chauffeur for a one-hour drive to a London meeting will book one for a daily Cambridge-to-City run because the time saved (or, more accurately, the time made productive) compounds across a working week.

How an electric vehicle fits in

The M11 has reasonable rapid-charge infrastructure now — Birchanger Green has it, the South Mimms cluster has it, central London has more than enough — and the EQS’s 400+ mile range covers the round trip with substantial margin. We have not had a day where range was the limiting factor.

The cabin experience also fits the journey. Whisper-quiet acceleration up the M11. Smooth at speed. Onboard 5G if the meeting prep needs to happen on the move. Ambient lighting tuned down for the early start, up for the return run. It is, simply, a better way to do that journey than driving yourself or taking the train.

What we’ve learned

The M11 corridor sits at the intersection of two of our most active service areas — Cambridge and the airport-and-London cluster — and is the route on which we have learned the most about what corporate clients actually want. Predictability over speed. Productive cabin time over door-to-door minutes saved. Direct contact over an app. A car that is appropriate to the meeting at the other end.

The London commentators can keep the Northern Line. We’ll take the M11.

— The team at Cavendish