Day 3: Confidence is growing

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We started today on a very nice touristy drive through the beautiful Auvergne. Although there are many hills and valleys, what you pay on the ascent you seem to get back on the descent. There was plenty of charge to get us to our first stop at La Garde. This is a slightly odd location, it is not in the car's sat nav and it looks like it is right next to the services on the autoroute but that has a different name! So before we set off I used the IONITY app to find the chargers, and then it has a “navigate” button that opens Apple/Google maps to navigate you there. We charged no problem, but one of the chargers was out of order so we had to move to the next door one. 

There are also Tesla chargers here.


They are not open to nonTeslas. I have resolved to contact them and find out what the story is.

Then we drove on to to the next service area per the plan, having verified these are located in the service area. The services were very busy, and all the chargers were in use, but we only had to wait 5 minutes until someone was done. 

As an aside, two of the people using these 350kW charges had cars that were not capable of fast charging. It means that they were going to be there for an hour probably, instead of 15/20 minutes. We charged up to 95% in 20 minutes and left whilst these two cars were still charging. There is nothing that can be done, but it makes you realise how totally and utterly inadequate the charging infrastructure is, and even now how nascent EV technology still is. There is a lot to be done between now and 2030 (and I suspect that sadly it won’t get done).

Once on the road it became clear that we would easily be able to get to Village Catalan (the service area just before the Spanish border) without another stop. The trip down the A75 is very picturesque; over the Millau viaduct and down through the mountains. Stunning!

When we got there, there was a Spanish Hyundai Ioniq 5 charging! He had just been to Sweden and was on his way home. We asked him about charging in Spain but he did not know as he charged at home, and Sweden was his first big trip! Sadly he drove off before I could take a photo. Aside from this, nobody else showed up whilst we were there.


Now we are in Figueres, with plenty of charge. We may not need to recharge whilst in Spain, but there are some 50kW chargers near here, so we may give it a try …

Comments

  1. BobMay 30, 2022 at 11:16 PM

    Very interesting to read your blog. My MG EV can only take 50 Kwh charge so I'm one of those blockers you mention! I also hear you need to slow charge periodically to normalise your battery. My best economy was 6.2 miles per Kwh on a 62 mile journey round the M25 averaging 22mph!
    Enjoy the rest of your holiday..

    ReplyDelete

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