Charging in France - 2022

On the various Irish EV Faceebook groups, theres a steady trickle of trip reports coming through of people going to France this summer too.

e.g. https://www.facebook.com/groups/irishevowners/permalink/5772792856138588/

"Just popping up a post in case anyone is wondering about travelling to France with an EV. We're just back from 2 weeks in our ID4. We thought it would be stressful with 3 kids and a roofbox but it was so easy!!! We drove 400km to Loire and there were so many options to charge. We used the Ionity ones as they have multiple chargers at each station and then our campsite had a free charger too. We stayed at 100km/hr on the motorways, charged once each way so we got a range of approx 420km from a full charge which we were delighted with considering we had aircon on, roofbox and a full car. Total cost of charging was €40 for our trip, can't argue with that!!"

+++ Comments of others with similar experience.

Chargemap and Ionity seems to be the way to go (and SuC obviously)

There are multiple threads on here for this topic. I posted my recent experience on the other one... the short TL;DR, is that its fine. Stick with the hubs and all is well in France.

I'll do a debrief comment, having just gotten back from 5 weeks in France with 2 young kids and an Ioniq 5. :-) Might help some this time next year, if the search function on boards.ie works at all.

Total cost of charging for the trip was ~€160 fwiw.

1. What EV, what loads (people, roof-boxes, wine...) and what distance?

As mentioned above, 4 of us, Ioniq 5 (58kWh battery). Full of kids paraphernalia - 2 buggies, 2 big rear facing car seats etc etc. Also brought home 50 bottles of wine.

Overall we drove about 4000km, with the bulk done driving to a house near Bergerac from the ferry in Cherbourg (~800km one way)

1. What charging providers did you use and were you happy with the cost, speed and functionality, etc?

DC:

Broadly speaking we used Ionity and some other DC chargers (Electra, Allego) while doing road trips. Paid for Ionity via Charge MyHyundai card (acquired by using UK address), the ChargeMyHyundai rates were £0.29/KWh, so nice and cheap. We also got a free charge from Ionity twice, both were partially functioning ("only" 50kW) but we always had plenty of time at our stops so the slower speed was fine if it meant charge was free.

All of the Service stations where Ionity were (we visited 5 or 6 different ones) had coffee shops, small playgrounds etc so 30 minutes was easily spent stretching legs and letting kids burn off some energy. I actually found I had more anxiety about hogging chargers (we generally needed >80% SOC) than range anxiety! On every occasion, the car was ready before we were.

Special mention to Electra, their rates without any sort of subscription are about €0.44/kWh, chargers are 350kW and you can actually prebook chargers. I never needed to, because the one I went to in Bordeaux had about 8 bays which was more than enough with those speeds.

AC:

Used Chargemap to find local AC during our comings and goings around the area. We had the chargemap card which worked well but was quite expensive as a solution for 5 weeks charging. It worked out about €0.62/kWh. Therefore I ended up using paynow.mobive.fr to pay for our AC charging along the Dordogne. It worked out about 40% cheaper (€0.35/kWh) than Chargemap that way. (Still used Chargemap app to locate chargers though!).

In truth it was a bit faffy, the only saving grace was I like running. So I just took the car to a charger every time I went running (about 5 days a week), it would get about 20% charge in an hour while I explored the area on foot. And this was enough to keep the car on the road. I would have loved if we had a DC charger (even 50kW) within 15 minutes, it would have made life easier.

1. What was the availability of chargers like on the French motorways?

See above, generally good. But a defo blackspot near Nantes where you seem to rely a somewhat unreliable Total Energie charger. We routed our North South travel via Poitiers/Tours/Le Mans to avoid this and grab a few Ionity charges instead. The rule seemed to be that a road to Paris was well served.

1. What about around towns and villages?

Very good. Most reasonable sized towns and villages had a 2 x 22kW AC charger unit.

1. Were there any charging options in the accommodation/campsites?

We were in our own house, with antiquated wiring. So I chanced a granny charge off a socket wired directly into the consumer unit a few times. Seemed to work fine (until the kettle was turned on), but still only did this when I really needed the charge for a particular reason.

We also went to an Air Bnb which had an outdoor socket, but when I granny charged, it got a bit hot for my liking even at 6A.

1. Did you opt for charging on the boat (what boat) and how did it work out?

No need, living in Dublin, I got on the boat with 98% charge, and similarly on the way back once I got to Cherbourg with 10% of charge I'd comfortably make it home to my Zappi.

1. Tricks or tips for other EV drivers.

Mentioned already;

Keep an eye on Ionity app for units that are free of charge

And more locally, use ChargeMap for comfort and ease of use but it can be quite easy to get cheaper rates by just following instructions on the charger and paying directly to charger provider with your phone.

Ha yeah, for sure. Car was averaging about 16kWh/100km around the Dordogne area. Managed to keep it to about 20 on motorways by setting cruise control to 115kph. Then as I got closer to destination and realized ABRP had been conservative I would start increasing the speed to just get there quicker!

I reckon my average consumption was in and around 17kWh/100km for the entire 5 weeks. Hard to be precise because I didn't record some of the free charges I got here and there.