GEthers
New Member
- First Name
- Gary
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2022
- Threads
- 1
- Messages
- 2
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- 2
- Location
- Cambridgeshire
- Vehicles
- Mach-E
- Thread starter
- #1
I thought I would share my experiences of 2 weeks driving around France (mainly) and Belgium.....during the heatwave when AirCon was essential.
My main fear was obviously range, and charger availability. I had one horrible day searching for chargers......but the rest went without much pain, with no big impact on range and chargers readily available if and where you knew where to look. I would summarize my experiences in the key points below;
In 10 days in France, 90% of all cars charging were Belgium or Dutch....almost no French electric cars. They are clearly a couple of years behind both in adopting and roll out of charging stations.
Most chargers in France are low power.....be very careful when planning a trip to check what KW output the chargers were.
Some chargers only work with a key fob, and no amount of APP, credit card or subscription helped at all. This resulted in my panicked first day!
Shell charge card (great advice thankfully received from a Dutch EV driver) was the most widely accepted.....but not everywhere.
Ionity and Allego were the two best fast chargers I found in France.
Almost all car parks in France had a charger (low power) if you had the right app/card to work. Almost none took Credit card, most the Shell Card and some were even free of charge.
Try to avoid the motorway chargers on a Saturday in France.....many a queue to be found!
In Belgium, it was a different story. Lot's of chargers, all readily available with cards and apps. They are a couple of years ahead of UK.
My main fear was obviously range, and charger availability. I had one horrible day searching for chargers......but the rest went without much pain, with no big impact on range and chargers readily available if and where you knew where to look. I would summarize my experiences in the key points below;
In 10 days in France, 90% of all cars charging were Belgium or Dutch....almost no French electric cars. They are clearly a couple of years behind both in adopting and roll out of charging stations.
Most chargers in France are low power.....be very careful when planning a trip to check what KW output the chargers were.
Some chargers only work with a key fob, and no amount of APP, credit card or subscription helped at all. This resulted in my panicked first day!
Shell charge card (great advice thankfully received from a Dutch EV driver) was the most widely accepted.....but not everywhere.
Ionity and Allego were the two best fast chargers I found in France.
Almost all car parks in France had a charger (low power) if you had the right app/card to work. Almost none took Credit card, most the Shell Card and some were even free of charge.
Try to avoid the motorway chargers on a Saturday in France.....many a queue to be found!
In Belgium, it was a different story. Lot's of chargers, all readily available with cards and apps. They are a couple of years ahead of UK.
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