Who’s bringing the horse - no - EV to France?

That's where we charged on our way to Carnac this year. It's a perfect stopover because we picked up a load of groceries in the supermarket while the car charger

Wandering off topic, we had an incident years ago on a cruise ship where we'd put the passports and important documents in the room safe (like you're supposed to 😬) and the f**king battery died on the thing on the last day

The room service guy had to call security to unlock it and they were all busy because the ship was in port and 2,500 people were trying to get off and on the ship

The staff were getting a bit pissy because we were still in the room an hour after we were supposed to be out but I then explained to them that nothing short of a giant octopus attacking the ship was getting me out of that room without our passports in hand. That calmed them down a bit

Anyway, got the paperwork eventually so all was good, didn't end up as stowaways 😁

Remind me not to trust you with a set of car keys 😉😂

When I went last summer from Cherbourg to Kiel in Germany (1300km) and back, I only used superchargers and only had to queue at 1.. and it was the very last one before Cherbourg. Only had to queue for about 15 minutes… but we had budgeted plenty of time for such a situation (and to stop by the wine and beer supermarket in cherbourg), so it was grand in the end…

Just always give yourself plenty of time..

So far have stopped to charge 5 times in France. All Superchargers. It’s just easier( plus forgot too get a Chargemap card lol)

plenty of availability at all so far. Most having 14-18 chargers. Have met plenty Irish people at them.

on Ile de Re for a few days so will probably have to use a local one. Will see how it goes.

Yes this works on all the Lidl chargers, DC and AC. Or at least any in Brittany and Normandy that I used

Have a look here. All is not lost!!

https://support.chargemap.com/l/en/article/ato5gbmbk7-i-have-not-received-my-chargemap-pass-yet-will-i-be-able-to-charge-my-car-by-other-means

Great thanks guys. Is there any other apps if Chargemap via app without card activated fails?

Great thanks for the info

Well I'm going to do a bit of thread resurrection since it's that time of year

Off to France in June on the ferry, this is our first time driving in Europe so I'm a tiny bit nervous 😅

The drive isn't too long, 2 hours, we're not quite ready to tackle the long drive to the south of France yet

I can't register for We Charge anymore because they won't take my Revolut card. Wise cards don't seem to work either

I decided to get Plugsurfing and Chargemap cards, since they seem to have lots of chargers in France. Rates aren't brilliant but I've always been of the view that EV costs should be viewed over a year rather than individual journeys

I'll be bringing my Type 2 cable and granny lead. I'll probably order a 16A Schuko to UK adapter as well. The campsite has a bank of chargers, so I don't envisage needing the granny lead, but better safe than stuck

I was reading through the requirements and was amused by the breathalyser law in France. Halfords have single use ones so I'll pick up a pack before going

I'm not quite sure how I'm expected to carry a spare light bulb since my lights are matrix LED headlights. I hope les gendarmes aren't expecting me to carry a full set of headlights around 🤣

I've made sure my insurance covers me and VW roadside assistance covers Europe apparently. I considered paying for AA roadside assistance, but it's €114 for a one week holiday 😱

I've got tyre plugs and stuff so I'm reasonably confident a small puncture won't stop me this time

Other than that I can't really think of anything else I'd need to organise in advance

Anyone got any advice? Did I miss anything?

>The drive isn't too long, 2 hours

thats an understatement. You barely have started and youre finished.

As for the breathalyser, spare bulbs etc, even if your headlights are LED some indicator or other bulbs may not be so check that. I thought the breathalyer requirement was scrapped, or at least so good as to make it redundant.

What youre not mentioning is high vis jackets for all passengers in the car. Also, the emergency triangle and the high vis have to be easily accessable, not under all your boot contents

If you have chargers at the site then youre flying. Some of the sites we visited in Italy over the past few years have almost no chargers and a ban on charging from the mobile home, and no public chargers nearby, which would make a holiday with an Ev, or the usecase for an Ev as your main car, difficult.

Ionity seem to also have filled in the blanks around the Cherbourg peninsula

Handy if you're looking for a charge on the way to the ferry and not sure you'll make the distance

Speaking of Tesla, I was looking at the option to pay via Chargemap pass. I thought it meant you didn't need the Tesla app, but you still need the app and a Tesla account

It just means they'll bill you via Chargemap instead of your card directly, which seems utterly pointless

Maybe with the V4 superchargers having RFID readers it'll be different, but it looks like they'll also have debit card readers so the whole RFID card becomes pointless unless you're on some subscription deal

The granny lead with adaptor would definitely be the last of the last resorts

I think the cabin we rented from Eurocamps has seperate parking anyway, so we wouldn't be able to stealthily charge at night

I'll probably bring it this year just to be safe, the way my luck works is that if I prepare for something going wrong then it'll definitely not happen. The unused snow shovel I bought years ago is evidence of this 😁

Did you rent from one of the EV specific companies? I'd be tempted to rent but my issue with the likes of Hertz is you can book one car but you're at the mercy of what's there on the day

On the flip side the likes of UFO drive are shockingly expensive in comparison

I'd defo bring the granny. Used it twice abroad last year. Once in a shopping centre and also while at our holiday destination where we got the car from 15% back up to 95% allowing us to easily reach a HPC on the return journey. The granny charger is your get out of jail free card.

Interesting, I guess I must have read an outdated website. I think it was Irish Ferries

I brought my granny charger with me, and bought the Schuko adaptor for it when I did my road trip to Lithuania and never used it once…. Waste of space with the benefit of hindsight!! But would I bring it again if doing the same trip? Probably…. It’s a nice last resort option that you hopefully will never need…

from Cherbourg to Kiel and back I only DC charged (superchargers), and in Lithuania I used a mix of Ionity (1st & last days en route to port), and free local DC chargers and paid for AC chargers at the local shopping centre… (the free chargers were always fun so the early bird caught the worm etc….…)

This was about 6am one morning!!

You’re in an ID.4 right?

Just take on a big charge (90+%) at your last fast charging stop before getting to the camp site, and then just take on any opportunistic local charges you can get every few days…. But if you land at a campsite with 80+% that’s going to be good for the guts of 300km right?

Chances are there’s loads of local charging options close by anyway…

ABRP (A better route planner) is very good for planning trips in advance and will set up charging stops for you based on what way you want to charge (lots of short stops, long stops etc.). Also will do stops based on preferred chargers. You can then send the whole thing to Google Maps.

We registered with Chargemap last year and found it great to use. Used both it an ABRP to plan routes and they both threw out the same charging locations and predicted the charge % to within approx 1% of each other.

Bit different this year. Last year we went from Cherbourg to Carnac in an id4 and charged once in Rennes on the way down and at a service station near Mont Saint Michel on the way back, interspersed with one charge on Carnac seafront midway through the trip. This year we're going to La Palmyre so two charges required each way. Still charging in Rennes and then the second charge tbd. Looking forward to it though. It was so easy last year.

Yep, that's the one we used last year. Really good set-up and the shopping centre was class. We could easily have spent the whole day there!