Electric Vehicle route to the alps

A snowHead

@clived, booking.com includes a search option for hotels with charging points. It's not 100% reliable, as some will claim nearby public charging points, but I've found it pretty useful. That said, I've not travelled that much in the last couple of years, so I'm going on a small sample size

A snowHead

@clived, Booking.com very easy. None chains, and tonight’s is lovely in a huge old chateau. We picked a couple of pricey ones as it’s kind of a special trip for us. Many more showed up in searches. I also had a proper French shoku adapter lead made by toughleads for emergency use but never needed it.

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

Doh! I've just figured out how to filter by EV charging point availability on Hotels.com and Booking.com Embarassed

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@endoman, thanks!

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Just returned from Three Valleys - driving Tesla 3.
All very easy and fairly stress free - done a couple of extra laps of the odd roundabout looking for the exact location of Superchargers!
Managed to find a hotel very close to Moutiers with Tesla chargers which worked perfectly for last stop before heading up to resort, leaving plenty of charge to set us on our way home.
I would say overall the trip took at the very most an hour and a half longer than previously done in diesel vehicle - but - at a fraction of the cost!
I do think with a bit more planning the overall time taken could be reduced - our first long journey so a bit of a learning curve.
Would we do it again - most definitely - for comfort and ease of drive.
FYI - Car fully loaded - 3 people + skis/boards luggage etc

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Good to hear @Dippy, as you say: practice will make perfect!

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Thank you for the report, @Dippy. Do you have any planning tips for reducing the overall time? I'm due to make my first long EV journey to the Alps (La Plagne) on Saturday so any pointers would be gratefully received.

After all it is free

@rousehouse, We didn't follow Tesla recommendations to the letter. We opted for the shortest route (A26 / A39 rather than A1 / A6 route).
I dont know if this applies to other EV's but the last 20% of Tesla's charge takes longer then the initial charge up to 80% so sometimes its not worth waiting for that extra 20% unless you are having a lunch stop etc. Although some charges were completed quicker than predicted.
We did google the exact location of chargers as some were 5 minutes or so slightly off route - this gave us the choice to opt for ones that were literally on our route.
We never had to wait for a charger to become free.
If going by tunnel then there are Tesla Superchargers at both Folkestone and Calais so allow a little time to top up there.
I'm sure using auto drive and cruise control helped maintain a steady pace (thankfully roads were incredibly quiet)
Overall it was definitely less stressful than anticipated - no range anxiety at all! And no searching for that parking space at the services either!!

Your post has allayed my biggest fear, @Dippy, which was waiting in line for the supercharger, so I’m really pleased to hear that you didn’t encounter any queues.

I am going via the Eurotunnel so I’ll make sure to use the charger there. I always seem to have time to kill in the waiting area car park so I may as well use it to good effect.

Your last line, ‘definitely less stressful than anticipated’ has given me hope that I can look forward to the skiing rather than worry about the journey there. Thank you!

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We drove out last Friday/Saturday in a Ford Mustang Mach-E, which I've been given to write about. So the main limiter was that we hadn't driven it before we left, so didn't really have any indication as to how it would perform on the road. The official range is 330 miles and while I knew it wouldn't do that, based on our Tesla 3, I was expecting to get around 75% of that (so 250 miles) when driving on the motorway. Turned out that was almost exactly right...when driving at 70 mph. At 80mph to start from Calais we cooked it too quickly and had to add in an extra non-planned stop.

Did all the charging at Ionity fast-chargers. They are relatively expensive, but reliable. Only had to queue once, for about 2 minutes, until a stall came free. The only issue is that one was on a northbound service station, so that added 10 mins to the journey time. Otherwise this worked fine.

I prefered to charge for multiple 15-20 mins stops, enough time for all to get up, stretch legs go to the loo, rather than a single 45 mins stop.

I did do some provisional maths, which suggests it cost £110 in charging (from Brighton to Les 2 Alpes), starting with a 70% charge.

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@iainm, Be very interesting to hear your thoughts on the Mustang compared to Tesla - when/where can we find the write up please?

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@iainm, As a comparison our trip via Eurotunnel from Ashford, Kent to LaTania cost £140.00
We started with 100% charge from home and returned with 20%.
We did an overnight stop on the way out and direct home on return
Thats in a fully loaded Tesla 3

That's surprisingly not great. Is it the cost of fast chargers?
My recent trip to big Sky cost about CA$450-ish in fuel in an F150 fully loaded with 4 of us - quite a bit further too.

You know it makes sense.

Does anyone else have experience of the Ionity network down to the Alps in summer hols? We are heading down in July and given I have a Hyundai charge card that lets me use Ionity for about a third of the normal cost, I'm thinking to take my new Ioniq 5. As there is a bit of a dearth of other high power chargers I wondered if they tend to be busy. We're not rushing, but we're already accepting some inconvenience at our destination as we can't charge at the property, so if I am also likely to have to queue to charge on the way there and back I might just knock the idea on the head and take my Kia PHEV.

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Interesting on costs, viamichelen seems to suggest Brighton to les 2 alpes would be 129 euros fuel charge based on Hatchback
E5 (Unleaded) €1.95. Can’t see what mpg they use.

A snowHead

@kitenski, I was paying €1.70 for E10 on the way back last weekend.

A snowHead

@stuarth, I think the £110 is the charging cost for the journey there and back.

Our diesel Skoda cost £90 from Les Arcs to Calais filling up at a mototway service station. If we used a hypermarket prices that would be a fiver less.

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@dippy - not published yet, but my feeling is that our Tesla 3 is reliable for 180-190 miles (WLRT 220) and with the greater number of Tesla superchargers, we could have been better off in that (if we'd had 2 teens and not 3 as way less space inside and for storage)

@stuarth - Ionity charging €0.79 p Kwh

@SKia_Optima - only had to wait once at Ionity chargers, normally 4-6 of them. Wait was only 10 mins. None out of order (that we selected, anyway)

@johnE - yes £110 is total charging cost to Les 2 Alpes and back from Brighton

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Certainally saw plenty of EV on the road, and there always available charging stations at the stops we made. How many stops did you do the journey in? Every 150 miles roughly?

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

We're just from a trip from York to Austria in a Hyundai Kona. The schedule and stops were:
Outbound
Friday: Left York at 17:30, aiming for 23:50 Eurotunnel and overnight in Calais. One stop at Cambridge services, which now has 4 Ionity chargers, as well as the Grid Serve ones. M20 was shut, so slightly delayed, then big queue for security, so ended up on 01:30 Eurotunnel. Stayed at L'Haut Aile at Coquelles which has chargers. However, they have ~6 Tesla only, and 2 that are just a mains connection (2Kw). Got about 10% charge from the 2KW, partly because the plug had fallen / been knocked out (I had to do some creative parking to avoid being ICEd). So then drove to Ionity at the Holday Inn (a mile away) to charge while we had breakfast

Saturday. Given the late arrival, we left Calais a bit after 10:00 with ~90% charge. Chose route through Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, as slightly shorter, and I reckoned that there'd be more options for charging (being just a little concerned about distance between French service stations, and between autoroute exits). However, this was a route I've never done before, to add to the fun. We stopped at:
1. Thieu services. This had both Ionity and Luminus fast chargers. 3 of 4 Ionity were occupied (but soon available), and the other not working. So used Luminus (2 charge points, both available)
2. Wellin (Ionity). 1 km off motorway, next to petrol station. 4 chargers, all working. Between 1 and 3 others were used while we charged
3. Lidl, Saarwellingen. 1 km off motorway. Free. 1 charging point
4. Kandel (EnBW). 1 km off motorway. 4 charges, all available
5. Dornstadt (EnBW). 4 charges, all available. In hindsight, we didn't need this stop, but could have stayed a few minutes longer at the previous one. When checking back, we'd made a mistake on distance calculations (I think we misspelled Augsburg at some point)
Got to hotel Einsmehr in Augsburg after 10 hours driving and 2 and a bit hours charging. Hotel had 3x 22 KWh chargers that were free if you paid for underground parking, so got recharged to 100% for the next morning.

Sunday. Drive to Scheffau, then Zillertal via a stop in Alpbachtal, and still had 30% charge left

In Austria we stayed in Zillertal, then Otztal. In Zillertal we charged in car park in Kaltenbach whilst skiing. One day we used the free chargers (there are 3 of them, none in use) inside the multi-storey, though they only trickle charged at 2KW. The other day we used the paid fast chargers (there are 6 of them, 1 other in use, just outside the multi-storey) to recharge to 100%. In Otztal we used the TIWAG fast charger in Langenfeld (~300m from where we were staying) twice so we left at 100%

Return
Sunday. Skied in Kuhtai for a couple of hours, leaving the car in the Wiesbahn car park to replenish the charge used driving up to 2000m. Left Kuhtai around 11:00. Then drove to Libramont in Belgium with the following stops:
1. Gruibingen Süd services. 6 Ionity chargers (2 others in use)
2. Zweibrucken shopping outlet. There were a mix of 8(?) chargers (3 others in use). We used the Pfalzwerke 50KW
We also stopped to buy dinner at a fuel station in Schengen, which had 6 rapid chargers, but didn’t need to charge
Overnight at Hotel les Amandiers in Libramont (Belgium), which had 3 paid for fast chargers, and charged to 100% overnight

Monday. 350 km drive to Calais. We didn’t have to recharge, but wanted a stop, so did anyway at Froyennes North services, which was a good choice, because the chargers at Eurotunnel (the only non-Tesla one that was available) wasn’t working
On the way back in the UK we were going to have to stop for a scheduled work call, which constrained the stops, and we ended up doing:
1. Quick charge at M20 J11 (Hythe). 4 Ionity chargers, of which 3 were working. All were available when we got there, but other 2 were soon occupied (probably by others on the same Eurotunnel)
2. Charge at Cornwall Garages, North Weald Bassett. 2 Instavolt chargers, one working, one not
3. Cambridge services. This time one of the chargers wasn’t working, and we used the last one available

The Kona has a 64KWh battery, we drove at ~110 km/h. Outbound we got 3.5 miles / KWh (practical range 224 miles) and return we got 3.9 3.5 miles / KWh (practical range 250 miles). I don’t know why there was such a difference; the temperature was ~8C warmer on return which may have affected efficiency (we were pretty frugal with heating both ways, as we had warm clothes with us). I'm still a bit cautious on the range, so planned on stopping at between 20 and 30%

We used a ChargeMap card for all paid charging (other than Kaltenbach and Instavolt), and it all worked with no issues. We used a combination of the ChargeMap app, Google Maps and the car's SatNav for navigating and working out stops. I did some planning beforehand a printed out around 10 potential stops, which was useful when we briefly lost data access on both our mobile phones as we entered Germany. We'd not used the ChargeMap app before, so a combination of learning that, and it being a new route, made life busier for the navigator than usual

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Thought I'd resurrect this thread to see if anyone has been doing their alpine commute in an EV so far this season and how easy/difficult/cheap/expensive it was.

I've stuck 28,000 miles on my Ioniq 5 since I got it last Feb, but yet to take it to the mountains (other than Scottish ones). Took my petrol/PHEV Kia for my 2 trips to the alps last year, but now find myself having an internal debate about which car to take this year.

Had a family trip to Apeldoorn in the Netherlands before Xmas and took the Ioniq 5 for it's first visit to Europe, but was very disappointed with the charging. We stopped 4 times between Calais and Apeldoorn, using Ionity and FastNed. Never got more than 50kw and most of the time was only 35kw. Seemed to spend forever sat charging and got to our destination far later than planned. A very frustrating journey. The same story on the return, except that we tried the new Ionity chargers at Calais before getting on the tunnel and got 110kw right up to 80%. My experience with Ionity in general is that they are almost always significantly slower than they should be and often very busy, because every car maker these days gives away a card with cheap Ionity charging for the first year or 2.

I've also been looking at the costs and think there is very little in it with electricity prices where they are. If I only used Ionity for my 700 mile (each way) journey, I think it would cost approx £70 each way. But that is paying approx 25p/kwh. If I had to use any other networks, who seem to all be around 70-80p+/kwh then the cost will rise dramatically. In contrast, my Kia will cost approx £128 in petrol each way (or less if I come off the motorway for fuel). I'm struggling to see how the extra 2-3 hours each way (minimum) and the anxiety/stress is really worth it for, at best, £120 saving.

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I am on a petrolhead website and trying to laud the cause of full EV against all the "yeah but no but yeah but" conservatives, but I think in your case I would certainly take the hybrid for peace of mind.
(Only that in my case once I sell my diesel there won't be a hybrid, so it will be EV or nothing!)

After all it is free

I am planning on Leeds to Morzine in my IPace at half term. I am expecting most of the problems i.e. queues to be in the UK TBH. Got a chalet with charging of a 16A plug, which will help so I dont have to worry in resort. Will filter for fastned, tesla and Ionity on the way down and hope for the best!

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You know it makes sense.

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

I'll take a look at EV's in 10 years time once the infrastructure and tech is in place, until then I see little point especially for long journeys to the Alps, i'll stick with current A3 Sportback diesel with Adblue which does 72 mpg on a long drive and 60 mpg urban. Every EV charge place we passed on route to Austria pre-Christmas had huge queues and plenty of irate looking punters.

A snowHead

I could see my next car being a plug-in hybrid. Enough range on electric to get to the shops from home but with a petrol engine to go on ski trips.

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Driving to La Plagne from Calais this weekend in a Tesla MY - will report back.
Drove last March in a Model 3 - very easy, just took approx 1.5 hours longer than an ICE car

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I did Calais to the South of France and back in August, but with a roof box. I reckon the roof box knocks 25-30% off the range, and this is probably equivalent to the cold weather in February (minus the roof box), in a Tesla Model Y. It was painless and stress free. The Tesla network is ace, and well spaced and the internal sat-nav informs you where to stop (and it knows if your current range is affected by such things as roof boxes) and adjusts accordingly.

I am going on Friday before half-term in Feb, leaving Kent and arriving in Thyez for the evening. Given that I would have stopped 3-4 times anyway, I don't think it will add much time to the journey going in an EV.

Tesla drivers also get to use the overheight carriages on Eurotunnel, a bonus in itself.

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@The_Gate, be interested in how the journey goes, also got a Y but got out voted on driving vs flying!!

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I'd be a lot less worried if I had a Tesla. They do seem to have properly thought through how their cars can drive long distances with minimal inconvenience.

After all it is free

May have shared this before, but a Tesla was by far easier of the two trips to the Alps in EVs that I have done

http://youtube.com/v/s8fgtVU3bhI&list=PLnWt0xPp4oTowHJAhZomgDN_DzMWQJAKI&index=7

We did another trip to Austria (Kirchberg) from York in a Hyundai Kona recently, getting about 3.8 mi/KWh at max speed around 70 mph. Total driving distance was ~970 miles and took 17 hours driving time. Details of the charging stops:

Location - Provider - KWh delivered - Cost (EUR) - Comments
A14 Cambridge - Ionity - 27.167 - 25.93 -
Eurotunnel (Folkestone) - Tesla - 14 - 10.45
Veurne - Ionity - 30.688 - 26.82 -
Aalter - Fastned - 30.168 - 28.3 - Charged to 100% (while we had dinner in a restaurant)
Libramont - Mobility+ - 47.226 - 26.83 - Overnight charged to 100% (also scheduled preheat)
Kandel - Pfalzwerke - 39.44 - 29.33 -
A8 Gruibingen Süd - Ionity - 26.157 - 23.33 -
A8 Holzkirchen Süd - Ionity - 24.866 - 21.6 -

Total charging cost was EUR 193. We started at 100% full, and got to Kirchberg at 50% full

All apart from the Tesla stop were done via the ChargeMap RFID card

Most stops were for 30 to 35 minutes - i.e. a non-rushed coffee/toilet/stretch legs. The exceptions were Aalter (restaurant dinner), Libramont (overnight hotel) and Kandel (supermarket shop as well as coffee). We this duration and frequency of stops it has the advantage that (for us) all driving can be done fairly comfortably by one driver

We deliberately always stopped where there were multiple (typically 4 to Cool

charge points and all had several unoccupied, except Cambridge were we took the remaining free Ionity point (though a GridServe one was also available)

The Kona has an official max charging rate of 75KW, though I've seen it exceed that a few times, with max of 82KW. We typically averaged between 50 to 60 KW. For most stops we charged from ~30% full to ~80% full. It looks like the Kona doesn't have a fixed place where it reduces the charge rate; at one point, just before unplugging, it was at 72% and suddenly dropped the charge rate from 75 to 37KW.

If repeating, we'd probably charge a bit longer at Folkestone and skip Veurne (which was just a truck stop, with not particularly enticing dinner options, hence we went on to Aalter). We could also skip the last stop and still get to resort, though we needed to stop anyway to buy a Vignette

The ChargeMap pass makes payment trivial. The route planner on the App is OK, but over-conservative on range, so we had an advance plan of stops and adapted as necessary.

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Key metrics for a road trip like going to the Alps from UK in an EV are

1) Charger speed and availability
2) Car max charging rate
3) Temperature (if no really effective precondition battery heating available)

This assumes you're in a car that has roughly 180-200 miles range at Autoroute speeds (if not I'm not sure I'd even consider it) then more range isn't really a factor as you should take a quick break after 3.5 hours really - if you don't need a wee by then you're probably not drinking enough water!

Temperature is the big one for these winter journey's. Unfortunately I didn't stretch to the preconditioning package on mine so it would be an issue. The thing can charge at 225kw in the summer on the right charger but is crawling at 35-70Kw max in these cold temps. Not an issue this year as 95% of my charging is at home and not driving to the alps. But it would give me pause for thought as that take charging sessions of 10-80% from 20 min to 50 which would be painful though France. From what I've read only Tesla and Porsche have really mastered the preconditioning for max high winter charging rates properly (sw updates will improve the others).

Help!!

Electric Vehicle route to the alps

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