What worked well? What worked poorly? And what can you learn from our experiences if you are going on a long trip in Europe with your electric car?
Just before Easter, the Electric Car Association set out on an electric car trip down Europe.
The goal was to “stress test” how it works to go on a long trip abroad by electric car in 2022.
So: How easy is it to get charged at the charging stations on the continent? Are they close enough and are they many enough? Are they easy to find? Do they work when we find them? Are there toilets and dining facilities nearby? Was it a queue? Was it expensive? And how fast was the battery drained as the speed limits got higher?
We will answer this to the best of our ability in this article.
But if you want to read a more entertaining description of the experiences we had, you can take a look at the travel letters our team wrote along the way while driving around Europe. Here they go into more detail about the experiences they gained and not least the mistakes they made:
Contents
Test of the Charging Club
At the same time, we wanted to test the Electric Car Association’s new blue charging chip, also known as the Charging Club .
With the Charging Club and the blue chip, the charging will work seamlessly all over Europe and thus be able to start charging at most charging stations without the use of countless apps and payment solutions you might otherwise find out along the way.
At the same time, you get an overview of the charging costs continuously in the Charging Club app, and with it you can also start charging if the blue charging chip should not make contact with the charging station.
From Tesla to the smoke
Over the past decade, the European electric car tour has in practice been reserved for Tesla owners, both because of the long range, but also because Tesla’s supercharger network is portioned out so that the Teslas get from one to the next throughout the continent.
Beyond that, proper long trips by electric car have been reserved for the most enthusiastic and / or adventurous electric motorists.
But in recent years, more and more car brands have signed up for electric cars with a long enough range that long trips in unknown terrain no longer seem like an extreme sport.
And not least: in recent years, the lightning and fast charging network down Europe has been expanded so much that it should not actually be a big problem.
At least not if you have an aid that enables charging across the continent. And this is exactly what the Electric Car Association wanted to achieve with the Charging Club and the blue charging chip.
But how did it work in practice?
Planning or happy-go-lucky?
The first thing you should consider is what kind of trip you want.
Are you going on an electric car holiday, or should only the electric car transport you to where you are going on holiday?
Many Norwegians take the car to destinations in southern Europe, and only want to get there as soon as possible.
And this is really what we tested in practice. A long transport leg, where most of the trip took place on the highway.
In fact, it is the exact opposite of what we would recommend if a quiet electric car holiday is the goal of the trip.
Motorways are not the battery’s best friend, the electric car’s consumption increases disproportionately when you drive at over 100 km / h.
Already on some stretches in Sweden the speed limit is 120, in Denmark it is just as it is 130, the same speed limit applies on the motorways in a number of European countries.
And when you are on the autobahn, there is a great stretch of free speed. In other words, if you follow the flow of traffic on the motorways, the charging stops will be more frequent than if you choose smaller roads.
At the same time, charging costs will be higher, as the number of kilowatt hours you consume per mile increases.
But regardless of whether you want to take it easy or gas up, we would recommend that you use the route planner in the Electric Car Association’s app, the Electric Car App.
It gives you an overview of the charging options in the area you are in at any given time. In the app you can plot the car you use, and the app will help you by suggesting where you should charge next time based on the car’s consumption, the route you choose and the charging speed the car handles.
Checklist 1
The good news is that both the Electric Car Association’s team on a trip in Europe and the team that drove around Sweden and Denmark , experienced that the blue charging chip by and large worked excellently.
Thus, we can now quite safely recommend the following checklist for everyone who is going to take the electric car on a trip outside Norway’s borders:
- Are you a member of the Electric Car Association?
- If yes: Did you receive the blue charging chip in the mail?
- If no: Sign up. It costs only 510 kroner a year.
- When you are a member and have received the charging chip: Download the app «Charging Club» where you download apps and register the payment card you want to use. You do that in the app.
- You are now ready to charge all over Europe.
Checklist # 2
Thus we get the following checklist:
- Download the Electric Car App. (You have already downloaded the Charging Club app now, right?)
- Plot the desired itinerary in the Electric Car App.
- Enter the car model you are going to drive in the Electric Car App and fill in the other parameters the app suggests. This will help you find the right charging stations along the way when you need them.
- Have you ordered roadside assistance in your Electric Car Association membership? It costs 400 kroner extra, but is well worth it if you should have problems along the way.
- Start charging with the blue charging chip when you plug the car into the charging stations along the way.
- If charging does not start when you “cover” the blue charging chip, you can try to start charging directly from the Charging Club app when you are connected to the charger.
Starting charging directly from the Charging Club app became our solution at a couple of charging stops in Sweden and Denmark, where two Ionity lightning chargers did not make contact with the charging chip. Should something similar happen to you, you can try to start charging directly from the app before connecting to the car – after you have found the relevant charging point in the app.
