“Take the plane!” If you’re going on holiday in an electric car for the first time, you might find this advice worth listening to--if Luxair flew to Brindisi. Because that’s where it is--almost 1,700 kilometres away, with turquoise coves, white sandy beaches, ‘pasta and basta’ and olive groves, in the lovely south of Italy--that you have decided to set course for the great summer break. It’s far from grumpy France, which can’t even agree on the name of a prime minister, far from overheated Spain, which will look on you with pride after its double victory at Wimbledon and the Euro football tournament.
The boot is not full. Neither is the cooler, with this picnic planned as it is every year in the Swiss mountains to avoid traffic jams in the tunnels.
1. Where can I find a map of Europe on the charging points?
ChatGPT suggests PlugShare, Chargemap, Zap-Map, OpenChargeMap, GoogleMaps.
Let’s start with the last one. In a loose adaptation of Gary Lineker's 1990 phrase (”at the end, the Germans always win”), “in technology, hundreds of startups chase a technology, but in the end Google wins…” At the time of testing, a free adaptation because Google Maps constantly replied that its server was not available and to try again later.
2. Who has the best site for finding out where to charge your car?
Let’s put the question to the new modern-day assistant. ChatGPT replied: “Choosing the best site to find out where to charge your electric car may depend on your specific needs, such as the accuracy of the information, geographical coverage and additional features offered.” The bot provided the comparison below.
3. Which to use and why?
Leaving aside the more or less complicated onboarding, there are only two that seem really interesting and free: PlugShare and A Better Routeplanner. And even the second one has a furiously sexy advantage: it’s able to predict when you’ll need to charge your car, how long it might take and whether the place you’re going to stop at is worth stopping at.
At parties for early adopters of electric cars, your uncle’s bad jokes have been replaced by anecdotes about the driver who runs out of electricity when faced with an overbooked, broken or non-existent charging point. In the style of “do you remember two years ago, in the Lubéron, when the fire brigade asked us to speed up to get away from the fire right behind us? At the time, we weren’t being smart, but we laughed. We laughed”
The first step is to configure your car. This can be particularly important if you don’t have a Tesla and years of data to back it up. Because there’s the stated range and the real range, the one that suffers from air conditioning or a heavy foot on the accelerator.
With the car configured, the journey takes 17 hours 58 minutes to cover 1,695km, with seven charges adding 2 hours 36 minutes to the journey time. That’s an average speed of 94km/h.
A trip from Luxembourg’s central train station to Brindisi airport will take almost 18 hours, including a 2.5-hour charge. Srceenshot: A Better Routeplanner
The first stop is scheduled near Haut-Koenigsbourg, home to a castle and eagle aviary. Screenshot: A Better Routeplanner
This is a completely personal opinion, but arriving at Brindisi airport with 10% battery power can also be problematic. So perhaps recharging before arriving at the airport or at your holiday destination could also be worthwhile. Even if the Prosecco with a sea view is waiting for you.
And once again, if the sporty--or unpredictable--side of your driving is likely to stress you out with ‘how far are we from the next stage predicted by A Better Routeplanner?’, it’s also possible to simply ask where the recharging stations are.
PlugShare, for example, advertises 250 stations along the 1,695-kilometre route. To be reassured, it might be useful to limit the stations to those with at least six recharging points, to avoid standing in a queue that will lengthen the recharging time... There are still 108! That’s more than 43%.
The 261 stations where you can charge a car, nearly half of which have at least six spaces, on the way from Luxembourg to southern Italy. Screenshot: PlugShare
Then it’s all a question of customisation. For example, if you wanted to check that there were toilets, the number of stations with six spaces that have toilets drops to 69.
The exercise even reveals that there are ten or so operators listed on your route... and that there are no longer any ‘Tesla only’ stations on that route. That’s something.
4. What about the price?
The car in our scenario leaves fully charged. According to Switch.lu, this can cost from €10 at home to €30 in a public car park or shopping centre, or even €45 on the motorway. And the cost of recharging during the journey is estimated at €241.32 by A Better Routeplanner, even though it does not give the rates for one of the seven stops it proposes (the second on the Gotthard pass in Switzerland), a sign that the range of services is continuing to expand.
In a similar SUV of the same make that still runs on diesel, at €1.50 a litre in Luxembourg, for 60 litres, that would be €90 to start with, and at €1.84 in Italy €110.4, making a total of €200. Or even a third if we stay on these bases with a motor consuming 7 litres per 100 kilometres.
5. How about the arrival?
The sublime Cala dell’Acquaviva in an unretouched photo. Photo: Maison Moderne
All to finally arrive in good conditions. Obviously. What do you mean, a good place to eat by the water? Best spot? Ristorante Lo Scalo di Novaglie. On the sea, at sunset.
The same calculation for the destination of the magnificent Toledo would give a similar result: 1,718 kilometres, 17:58 including 2:43 of charging in seven stages for a similar average hourly charge.
Read the original French version of this story here
