Electric Vehicle route to the alps

A snowHead

Thanks for some great posts all

A snowHead

If you are impressed by the lack of charge rate drop off at higher SoC with an Audi Vs a Jag I invite you to have a go with a Hyundai Ioniq 5 6 or KiaEV6.

They have been much more aggressive in this respect compared to Tesla VW and others, pulling high currents well past 80%. Time will tell if that impacts on degradation.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

As mentioned ZapMap is the pick for finding chargers. Gridserve are significantly ramping up their motorway service station presence for longer trips in the UK.

Slightly off the original topic, but if thinking of a trip to Scotland from south of the border in an EV get a ChargePlace Scotland RFID card in advance. Opens up a huge number of chargers without various potential dramas, particularly as the RFID card will start a charge even if the internet connection is down.

If heading north to Glencoe there’s a bank of 8 newish Osprey chargers about 2 mins off the A82 at the northern end of the dual carriageway from Dumbarton at a pub, with a McDonald’s that’s open 24/7 a few minutes walk away. Contactless and 200kw CCS / 50kw Chademo.

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Just buy a proper car instead of a glorified milk float. No concerns then!

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5p a kilowatt seems very cheap.

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@blahblahblah, I pay 7.5p on Intelligent Octopus, plenty of good EV rates around nowadays. I guess the "Old Man" is showing his true colours, presume his horse and cart are still working fine as opposed to the infernal combustion engine.

After all it is free

@kitenski, thanks for that, I looked at getting a home charger but could not get 7.5p ( which sounds more believable than 5p) also the £1000 for the home charger needed to be factored in at some point.

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I find it amusing that it is somehow a life shattering inconvenience that an EV with no charge doesn’t get you very far. How far does a petrol car go with no fuel? Puzzled

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@jamescollings, sorry but I think Ernie had a horse and cart not one of those new fangled battery devices. That of course was one horse power.

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The fossil fuel lobby loves to select certain EV models that are unpopular and generate their usual hyperbolic propaganda about ‘collapse’ and ‘plummeting’ and ‘falling off a cliff’ etc. Don’t fall for it. Although yes, depreciation is catastrophic on the all those £185K Porsche Taycan S Sport Turismo EVs that everyone is buying.

Just like an EV gets mentioned whenever there’s a big car park fire. Even when the cause turns out to be a diesel Range Rover and not one of the EVs parked there catches fire. But heigh-ho, that didn’t stop a BBC local journo ‘at the scene’ saying on air that the cause of the Luton Airport fire was “possibly an electric vehicle”.

You know it makes sense.

Has the investigation confirmed it was a non hybrid LandRover?

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@blahblahblah, Hybrids are the most likely to catch fire, ICE next, EV a long way down in fires per 100,000 cars.

I'm pretty sure it was a pure ICE.

A snowHead

I know EV pure are the lowest, just pointing out in the absence of facts we don't know. Reporter says one thing fire brigade says another, would be nice if someone who knows about these things set it straight. I don't care what it was but be good to know what it was without politics/fandom.

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Someone from the fire service did. That is true.

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@Whitegold, can't argue with facts based on a per number of vehicles.

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Hybrid comes out worse no matter how you cut it.

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Those "facts" compare a £50k, 4yo EV puddle with a £17k, 9yo ICE ocean.

One is a new, expensive, small.

The other is old, cheap, big.

The samples could not be more different if you tried.

The comparison is totally invalidated.

After all it is free

Blah, blah, blah - all the usual fossil fuel propaganda against real facts.

First the Luton Airport fire “could be” caused by a EV. Then it’s probably caused by a PHEV. Then it’s caused by an old ICEV - but no big deal, it’s not representative of the appalling fictional future danger from EVs. So A great consolation to those who lost their cars in the conflagration, then.

ICEVs are 20-60 times more likely to spontaneously combust versus EVs, pro rata. Depending on what statistics you use to make the comparison and which vehicle segment you look at.

Remember all the furore over EVs killing swathes of people because no one could hear them coming? Problem was, it wasn’t happening. So now the fossil fuel lobby has given up on that one and switched to fires. But this is going the same way. The same fortnight of the Luton Airport fire there were four major petrol car fires at service stations and a petrol tanker exploded in Essex and there was a fire at a small oil refinery as well.

A little bit more feedback from my first EV drive to the Tarentaise. The EV chargers in the car park at the Bourg Saint Maurice SuperU have been changed since last winter. The previous chargers seemed unreliable from what I could see, so hopefully the reliability has been improved with the new installation. There are 4 x 22kW charging points run by the Sowatt charging network, which I've not heard of. Apparently it's included in the ChargeMap network. On my two visits to the SuperU over the last week one car was charging the other three points were vacant.

One of the things I was potentially concerned with was driving the Tesla on snow. I've got winter tyres fitted but I wasn't sure whether the regen braking, which is fairly aggressive in the Tesla and can't easily be changed, would cause a problem by kicking in too firmly as I ease off the accelerator. Happily I've not found it to be a problem. I've driven a little bit on roads completed snow-covered, with no problem with regen being too fierce. The other concern was being a little bit trigger happy in an EV with an enormous amount of torque available with a twitch of your big toe. As an experiment this morning I accelerated way faster than was necessary on a section of snow-covered road to see whether excessive wheel spin would be induced, and whether it prompted a bit of sideways movement on the slight camber the road had. Result was no wheelspin at all, and another test of whether the region braking was too fierce. So top marks from me to the car and the tyres. It's not been a particularly stiff test as the roads are generally clear, but I've had a bit of snow to drive on.

For those who like pictures of Superchargers, this is what I've used so far on this trip. Photos taken on Wednesday 13th or Friday 22nd. I was wondering whether I might come across queues at the charging stations...

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Re the Tesla regen, can you effectively control it via the accelerator? We've a Kona that has 4 levels of regen ( including off), and the level essentially controls the position on the accelerator where it's neutral and you get progressively more regen the more you lift off

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Just to add a little bit of info. Have done 4 trips in a Tesla to 3 valleys and Paradiski, heading off again in a few weeks.
We like our final super charger (and possibly the closest to final destination) to be at the Hotel Radiana, Parc Thermal, La Lechere.
You can use the hotel facilities which makes for a very nice relaxing stop.
On our trip in March we left the hotel with 99% charge and arrived in Meribel with 87%.
And for a cheap overnight stop with superchargers we have used the Hotel Kyriad at Dijon
Happy travels EVers

@rob@rar, how much does the battery go up going down the mountain?

You know it makes sense.

@Dippy, good to know you can use the hotel’s facilities at Lechere. I had a look at that Supercharger on Google Streetview and it looked a bit bleak given that I’d probably get there around 9pm.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

A snowHead

@Dippy, thanks, that’s great to know.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

A way off still but just looking at the new yr transfer weekend forecast…….so whats the ev range at 20mph with snow chains on

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We drove down to the Alps yesterday in a diesel van. The queues for fuel were massive but filling tank didn't take long once we got to the pump and meanwhile everyone in the van had been for a pee. Huge queues for Ladies too. I did notice that the banks of charging stations were much less in demand but that could become a problem on busy days once numbers of electric vehicles increase.

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How many fuel stops did you need?
I stopped for fuel once. Biggest queue was for ladies as you say.

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We only stopped for fuel once. I've done that drive loads of times but never on a peak day before. The fuel queues were an eye opener for me. Queueing for chargers could become a thing, presumably.

After all it is free

@pam w, you do get occasional queues over here on peak days, but if you look at the pics rob posted the European tesla charger stations are massive with loads of stalls. And the Teslas built in navigation will tell you if a station is full or not.

I understand a place near me on the a1 has planning for a 200 charger site!! That’s the kind of forward planning that’s great to hear!

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Tesla seem to have vision. That's true. Saw lots yesterday all.

Help!!

Electric Vehicle route to the alps

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