So... I am in Switzerland.
Same route as last year, traveling to Calais, then through Reims and Dijon to Switzerland.
I was expecting an easy journey like I had last year, and was also looking forward to try the new IONIQ 5 which has a larger battery, faster charging, improved suspension, and even better driver aids. But it didn't turn out quite as expected.
The first alarm bell rang the night before our planned departure, when a text message from Le Shuttle warned us that we must ensure that we are on time because they expect to be 'very busy'. Which I thought was odd, because we had the Flexy Plus tickets.
On arrival, we had to drive to the main terminal for the pet passport control (Her Ladyship the dog may be tiny in size but she commands our every move....), and the place was packed. I mean
packed. I've never seen the carpark so full, to the extent that it was difficult to find a parking place.
The train journey itself went fine (yes, the Flexy Plus ticket does work....), and I thought this was the end of it.
Not so. We stopped on the first main Services on the Autoroute, some 125km after leaving Calais. There were 5 Ionity 300kW superchargers there, and last year we were the only EV charging.
But this time, all 5 superchargers were busy, with 3 cars queing. I left home with 100% charge, and so the car didn't really need charging, I was just following the ABRP 'top-up' plan. We were supposed to charge there for 6 minutes.
As we already stopped, we decided to take a break anyway, and I plugged the car into a cheaper 50kW charger which was free. I did notice thar the wait for the supercharger would have been 10-15 minutes. We left, then tried another Setvice some 100km further, and it was the same - all Superchargers busy, 3 cars queing.
This time we just waited, again it was around 15 minutes before we got to the charger.
After moving further away from Calais, we had no more issues with finding a free supercharger at Services along the Autoroutes.
A few things struck me. First and foremost, the idea of very very short 5-10 minutes top-ups does not really work if you have to wait 10-15 minutes every time. It makes more sense to have less stops, and charge a bit longer, when there's a 10-15 minutes wait. It's all down to how I program ABRP, obviously, i.e. I can set it to plan the route with less frequent but longer stops, but the key here is that ABRP cannot know how many cars are queing and therefore cannot know how long they wait will be.
The other is that the charging stations were totally unprepared for overcapacity. There were no spaces or road marking for queing. And so, on arrival, the cars just drove up to the charging station, then stopped randomly wherever they could. We got out of the car and started chatting to the other drivers, in what was an instant and short-lived community
, and agreed between ourselves who's next. While we enjoyed the chat, a marked lane allowing cars to line up at the entrance to the charging area would have been the more sensible approach. Maybe it's just the French, maybe they don't know how to form an orderly queue, in spite of donating the word to us?
Next, I realised that while the onboard satnav showed dozens of fast chargers (100-200kW) within under 10 kilometres from where we where, it still made no sense to leave the Autoroute - you'll need to exit via the toll booths, drive to the fast charger (typically in a local Carrefour car park, or outside a car dealership or a garage, etc), then get back on the Autoroute via the toll booths again, so really no time saved.
Then, I'm told that Saturday 19th was the beginning of the school holiday in the UK and many parts of Europe? Having no school-age kids, we have no idea. But I did notice that driving away from Calais, about a third of the cars on the Autoroute had UK plates (and most had no UK marks on the plate or on the back of the car - how do they get away with it?). As we moved further away, there were fewer UK cars, but still, around half the cars on the Autoroute had non-French plates. The majority of cars had either bikes carried externally or roof boxes or both. Some had trailers, and obviously, there were quite a few motorhones and caravans. In short, it was obviously the height of the tourist season
At the two busy charging stations, there were no French cars at all - the cars were from the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, and a few other European countries.
This raised two questions: the first is why do half of Europe's countries start their school summer holiday on the same Saturday? The second question is, what were all these European cars doing on the Autoroute going from Calais? I.e., they clearly didn't arrive on the Le Shuttle like the UK cars did. What route goes from North Europe to the south of France via Calais?
My other observation is that the locals largely shun the expensive Autoroutes (we paid €55 for the first day of the journey). This also explains why there are few cars on the Autoroute and no cars at all at the charging stations when it's not the tourist season....
The lesson learnt is that as a couple without school-age kids, we should check the European school holiday calendar before travelling to the Continent....
The car, BTW, proved to be brilliant - the New IONIQ 5 is better than its predecessor in every way. The efficiency is better, the range is much much better, the ride is improved, and the driver aids tech has also matured.
