The Grand Tour: Chercher le borne de récharge!

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 Today we learned a lesson; the charging station is not always where you think it is - sometimes you have to play the game “find the charging station”!

You can see from the map in the last post that our first stop was to be “Orleans Nord”. The location is right next to the autoroute service area called “Orleans Saran” so we assumed that this meant the chargers were in the service area. But when we got there we could not find them! There were a couple of charging bays, but not the IONITY chargers we wanted, and we did not know how to use them (we did not try too hard). So we consulted the ChargeMyHyundai app, and sure enough the IONITY chargers are actually in a car park off the autoroute at the next exit! The app very nicely has a “navigate” button that opens Google or Apple maps and shows you the way. We grabbed a coffee and a croissant and then set off. It took only 5 minutes to get there, and we started charging. 

Shortly afterwards another Hyundai Ioniq 5 pulled in to charge - exactly the same colour, and from the UK too! I went and said hello and as we charged we chatted. There is a sort of bonhommie between EV drivers such that we have chatted with others at almost every charge stop. Since this time we also had the same car we swapped driving experiences … I won’t bore you with the details. He also thought the chargers would be in the services, but he was following the correct directions and so came to the right place … but missed his coffee!

At about 90% we stopped and left. One other thing the other Hyundai driver told me is that in France, IONITY charge by the minute, rather than by kWh. If true, it means it really pays to quit charging around 80%! I will confirm this in a later post if I can.

Our next stop was the service area at Centre de la France. This time we were sure that the IONITY chargers were in the services, but we could not see them! Slowly, slowly we drove through the services carefully trying to make sure we did not wind up back on the autoroute. This was another variation of chercher le borne! Eventually, right at the exit we found them, and all was good. Interestingly, the app says there are 8 chargers here, but actually 4 are for northbound and 4 for southbound and you cannot cross between them, so really there are only 4 usable each way.

We stopped again after Clermont Ferrand at the Veyre services. Here we found the IONITY chargers easily and charged without too much fuss. Now we have gained confidence that at least IONITY is a reliable option for fast charging in France. 

Tomorrow we are exploring the local area, and driving on to Figueres in Spain. This is the route:


I think we could go all the way to Village Catalan without stopping, but also there is a Tesla charger at Rivesaltes (near Perpignan) that the Tesla app says is available to non-Teslas, so we might give it a try!

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