The Temptation Of EV

Today I got an invoice from ChargeMyHyundai for using the IONITY chargers. It seems that the Hyundai driver I met at Orleans was right - in France the IONITY chargers cost per minute, rather than per kWh; the cost is £0.205 per minute (on the preferential rate I am getting for a year). For the month of May it worked out at an average of £0.24 / kWh. This is very good value … but the best was only £0.15 / kWh when we stopped bang on 80%. Since the charge rate slows dramatically after that, each time we charged over 80% it started costing more per kWh. I think that charging by the minute is actually a good thing, as it encourages people to stop at 80% and free up the charger. Also it is a disincentive for EVs that don’t have fast charging … although if you need the charge, you're gonna take it!

 Just like all good things, the Grand Tour has ended, and so it seems appropriate to summarise. Here is the accumulated info from the dashboard: Even though my friend Paul got his Tesla 4 years ago, it still feels like we are early EV adopters. The charging infrastructure is still being built, and what is there is not reliable enough. However, touring around Europe in an EV is a totally practical proposition, and pretty much stress free, provided you do some planning in advance and take a relatively conservative approach.  Get the apps and cards you need before you travel. The Shell Recharge app and card were the best. Make sure you know where the chargers are (on or off motorway). Not all chargers work how they should.  Keep enough charge in the battery in case things don’t work out. Get a good data roaming plan for your phone in case you need the apps! Overall we got 3.1 m/kWh which is not surprising considering most of the miles were on the highway, and we limited our ...

Tonight we are staying in Saint Quentin, before returning to the UK tomorrow. Now that we are experienced at playing “chercher le borne” we know that on the A26 northbound from here to Calais there are no decent chargers; they are all on the southbound carriageway! On our way here we stopped at Laon to visit its wonderful cathedral, and we saw that there was a 175kW Total EV charger in the town. If we charged to near 100% we could get from there to the IONITY chargers at Folkestone (off junction 11 of the M20) near the channel tunnel without needing to recharge. We arrived at Laon with about 34%. Unfortunately this charger only managed to give us about 75kW, even though it claimed to be 175! Since it was getting late in the afternoon, we decided to take a slightly longer route to Calais and stop at the Baie de Somme IONITY chargers on the A16. So we cut and ran with enough charge to get to St Quentin and then on to the Baie de Somme for a quick charge to get us to Folkestone. The lesso...

 Yesterday we stopped to charge at a motorway services just north-east of Lyon (Mionnay). The car charging there is a Ford Mustang. I had looked at them last year when researching the EV market, but they were a bit too big. It was driven by a Belgian and we started chatting. He waited 6 months to get his car (I waited 8); he got it last year and this was the first big trip he’d been on. He told us he drives at 130 to 135 kph and with the bikes on the back he gets 3km per kWh (less than 2 miles)! So he is stopping quite frequently! He also told us that the charging infrastructure in Belgium is not good, but he mostly charges from home so it does not matter! He was there when we arrived, and we left before him. Given his driving, I guess he wanted every last electron from his charge! Addendum Another day, another IONITY charger. This time a VW id3 pulled in next to me. Although you can get long range models with a 70-odd kWh battery (so the range is similar to my Hyundai) it does not...

 This hotel has a type 2 AC charger. The car is currently hooked up to it. At the last hotel they just had a normal socket which we could not use because we don’t have a heavy duty adapter for the granny charger (see my post about it). This charger is giving me 10.6kW which is not bad. The hotel is charging me a flat fee of €10 to use it, so it means the more I charge the cheaper it is per kWh. Since we spent the day touring around, I reckon I’ll get about 60% charge, meaning about €0.23 per kWh; much cheaper than using the IONITY chargers on the autoroute! The lesson here is that when planning your trip abroad, it always pays to ask the hotels if they have an EV charger, and if so what kind it is. Not only is it cheaper (it would have been free at the last hotel if only we’d had the right adapter), it is also very convenient to charge the car whilst you are otherwise engaged, just like at home!

 This morning we set off to our next destination - St Paul Trois Chateaux. The charging plan was as follows: Try the Tesla chargers at Rivesaltes. These actually show on the Tesla map as available for non-Teslas, and since it is just north of Perpignan we thought we would give it a try. Charge at the IONITY chargers 70km away at the Narbonne Vinassan services on the A9. Now, there was a big question mark as to whether we could actually use these because we were not sure what side of the autoroute they are, and if you can access them from either direction. It really was not clear to either of us from the maps and apps; or maybe we were just being a bit thick! Final charge at the services at Tavel Sud on the A9, about 180km down the road, to give us a good charge for touristy touring tomorrow. There are 20 Tesla charging posts in a centre commercial just before the autoroute at Rivesaltes. We followed the instructions on the Tesla app, plugged in, picked the charger and it seems to s...

 Today we decided to try and use a charger located in Sorede, the village where we used to have a second home. This is the charger: The first thing to notice is that you need your own cable. This is very common with AC charges, especially the low power ones. We found this charger using the Shell Recharge app, but I wanted to see if the KiWhi Pass card would operate it, and it did! After tapping the card, it unlocked the door (just below the green light) and I was able to plug in … and nothing happened! What the very helpful instructions don't tell you is that you must shut the door in order to start the charger … and it locks the door to protect your cable. You can see above that the door has brushes on the bottom to allow it to close. It was Rose that thought to try closing the door, so kudos to her. When you close the door the green light turns blue and the electricity flows! The back is open because I stowed my charging cable under the floor, and I had to empty some baggage in o...

The hotel we are in offered us the ability to charge the car whilst here; I assumed they had a charging station from one of the networks (these are often in hotel car parks), so at least 7kW. But when we arrived we saw that they just have a standard electric socket outside next to two of the parking bays! This means we need to use the granny charger. To recap, the “granny charger” is a charging cable that plugs in to a normal electric socket. The one that comes with the Ioniq 5 can be set to draw 6, 8 or 10 amps, meaning about 1.4kW, 1.8kW or 2.3kW. But of course it has a UK plug. I researched using a travel adapter, and as I suspected it is not recommended. There are two problems: often the earth “hole” in the adapter is not connected to the earth pin in the UK plug (it is not in any of my travel adapters), and second the pins are small and will get hot, and may melt the plastic!  The lesson learned is that if you drive on mainland Europe and you want to use your granny charger, t...