Electric Autoroute du Soleil
How to improve the Route du Soleil in 2020 and beyond
A few weeks ago I sat down with Maarten, chef of the VER. He asked to tell him about the knelpunten (bottlenecks) of a typical route south many Dutchies take on their (summer) holiday. I thought about writing him a long email when I realised I was doing it wrong. I should tell the world about it. Hope Fastned is reading this as well. (Looking at you too Izivia, Ionity and so on).
Visiting a filmfestival by EV
One of my friends visits Cannes every year. Since I love to incorporate driving around Europe with friends in my EV blog(s) I will plan this virtual ride with my friend. Let’s look at it from the perspective where we can borrow an Audi e-tron 50 quattro edition. Will I ever be able to sell this trip to anybody? I doubt it!
Taking the Audi e-tron 50 quattro to Cannes this year?
What can I say? Should I just stop this story right here? No. Let’s start by taking another vehicle. Let’s rent the new Renault ZOE, what happens to our ride? Here it will be getting more interesting quickly! Because where to take which vehicle matters! This is one of the key points of the story. We’re taking the new Z.E. 50 of course.
A ride with the Renault ZOE ZE 50 to Cannes (starting in Utrecht, NL)
So maybe not my most intelligent moment, to compare the big Audi with the much smaller Renault. They both run in ‘alpha’ state on A Better Routeplanner so their consumption is a ‘best guess’ and might get perfected during 2020. It’s just to give you an idea. With the Audi the three Sodetrel stops will take ages. At 40kW maximum if they are working at all, it will be hard to live up to these virtual numbers.
Taking the Renault makes this even more difficult. Right now more than half of the Sodetrel chargers at the French highways have been shut down. So actually doing this trip now would be impossible, sort of. You would need to manually plan around all these and maybe take Germany, Switzerland, Italy as a route. Or just take the train! But I’d like to point out a couple of things, if only because I hope to read this story one day and think, wow. Glad we survived this stage.
Before we dive into the story some more, let’s plan one example I have lots of experience with. Last summer I went to Barcelona with the Hyundai Ioniq. “The old model” with small battery but great fast charging stats and low consumption. Plus it was summer with hot sunny days only.
I’m telling you, the Ioniq of 2018 was already the best EV to France!
The Hyundai Ioniq EV and France: a love story
I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. Even after experiencing the beauty of the Ioniq last summer, it shows off here. Before you rent a Ioniq and head over to France. A couple of warnings. Sure, Ionity, Allego, even the KiWhi charger I have faith in. Let’s so some digging on Chargemap.
It’s the 1st of March, 2020 and a couple of weeks ago Izivia decided to pull the plug on 188 of their just over 200 highway DC chargers.
This means that the third charging stop with the Ioniq, is not available. Thanks ABRP. France and charging never stops exciting anyone: charger number four needs a very specific charging badge. I ordered it a couple of years ago. Especially in smaller French towns it’s super useful and at Auchan supermarkets and so on. It’s a charger suddenly appearing on your long road trip that only accepts the KiWhi card. This might get you into trouble. Prepare yourself well, before heading to France by EV!
If you haven’t already, check the Guide to France by EV that I made. It’s available free of charge.
You already know what would happen if I would go on like this. Unavailable chargers, specific charging cards needed, it’s all in the game in France. My advice to Maarten of the VER in The Netherlands would be to push for more standards. A network of highway chargers in 2020 should not be allowed to have stations outfitted with just one stall. If something happens (and it just did), the whole infrastructure sinks to zero availability. If multiple brands would have been used for one station, there would be at least some redundancy. (Izivia took down the chargers of a specific brand, the DBT chargers around the country are still up and running, mostly).
Redundancy needed along the highways of Europe
Right now, there are still many cases where one could end up stranding because of one faulty machine. It might be only a non functional 4G connection. Which gets me to the point of last year. In June there was a big service disruption over big parts of France (hey is this a recurring theme or what?) And you guessed it, I was on the road when it happened. Lucky for us there were ways to plan around it still. But we also visited several chargers that could’ve been working fine. They just couldn’t ‘phone home’.
Last summer, the town of Moneteau, France.
European rules should be made this year that forces any DC charger to go into free vend when connection troubles arise. Never should you have the risk of stranding because some 4G (or 5G!) connection disruption. This is one of many recommendations.
I think open API’s to connect for international roaming are also important. Right now as soon as you leave your home country by EV, risks come from all directions. Obviously one charging card should be enough to take you from NL to BE to FR. Right now we’re still very far from that world (I know NewMotion and Plugsurfing are on the right track). Imagine crossing a state border in the US and finding out you would need a different credit card.
Speaking of, why aren’t DC chargers outfitted with credit card readers and NFC? Hot potato if you ask me.
Gas stations (at least the bigger ones) should be forced to put up a minimum of five HPC chargers this year just to keep EV’s on the road. This is not future, this is now! Of course there should be incentives towards all supermarket chains and other big stores and companies next to the highway to build out fast charging networks.
Customer support
Hello France. Since I visited by EV on two wheels (Energica) and a lot of four wheeled vehicles, my experiences are diverse. A couple of things have had me ‘almost stranded’ in the past. A topic that doesn’t nearly get as much attention as it should is that of customer service. This is a Fastned & Ionity stronghold. Although I do have to credit Allego too, for at least always answering the phone politely. Fastned & Ionity have their own level though. Ionity supports any language where they offer chargers. Fastned has the most skilled employees that seem to really know the machines very well.
In France, we are playing a whole different field. Customer support that you cannot reach during lunch (12:00 - 14:00). Customer support that is not available after 19:00. Customer support that is not active during the weekend (starting on Friday 18:30 mind you). Does this imply you shouldn’t be driving your EV around France in the weekend? I honestly don’t know what to say. I called a hotline last summer in Paris. Had to wait 10 minutes, pushed the ‘1’ for English support. After waiting ten minutes I was told there was no English support and they almost hung up on me. In my best French I explained the situation and I was told ‘good luck this charger blacked out last night’.
Two weeks later my phone bill came in: 36 euros for a 11 minute unsuccesful support call.
No rant implied
It’s important to stress how serious I am about the topic. Yes I’ve experienced a lot of drama along the French highways. Yet I also cannot wait to ‘hit the road again’, and last week I headed out to Madrid. But it was last year that I ended up in a Dutch queue at the A1 from Paris back to The Netherlands, and I just cannot believe nothing is happening in France. Yes Ionity is trying but with 80 stations (planned for 2020, 40+ are active already) around one of the biggest travel countries in Central Europe, that’s really a drop in the ocean. 80 stations in Germany are already done and they will build many more (Ionity, that is).
Just read about the Paris trip to find out more about the importance of redundant infrastructure. One ‘slowish’ 40kW DC charger in 2020 is just not cutting it.
Imagine doing the roadtrip that I mentioned in the beginning of this blog. But with two electric vehicles… Right now in the France we live (or travel) in. That would actually be close to impossible. With many stations offering nothing but one DC charger at 40kW speeds… Good luck.
Addendum
When I started writing this article it was still February. The ‘Sodetrel/Izivia-situation’ was unclear, anything could still happen. By now we know the Izivia highway network (that was never very reliable to begin with) is now officially off the table. It seems ABRP has done some better syncing, because if I plan an I-Pace roadtrip to Cannes right now this is what happens.
Just plan your way around.
A very realistic view for a summer trip to France. People will go around it when possible. The drive to Spain will still be interesting. More on that soon because I just came back from Madrid! With the electric Mercedes! #blog #incoming
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