Two months ago, after 17.5 years in consumer electronics, I decided to quit my job and embark on a new adventure. Electric driving has always been a big interest and when the opportunity arose to introduce the Aiways brand in Belgium, it was a step I had to take. As a true early adopter, electric cars have always been high on my list as a potential new professional challenge.
I'm going on holiday with the new Aiways U5, a 100% EV, to the south of France was one of the first things I told friends and colleagues. The most common reaction I got was "you're crazy", it would cause stress, where are you going to charge, it's so time consuming, how are you going to charge at your holiday location, Europe is not ready for this ... Pretty much everyone said it was a very bad idea. Even my own parents suggested I borrow their diesel car for the holidays because I had only been driving an EV for 3 weeks. But I was convinced that going on holiday with an EV is no problem at all. If I want to help put an EV on the market, I have to use it on holiday too.
It obviously all starts with planning and a mindset. The planning part is easy and doesn't take more than 5 minutes. The mindset is perhaps even easier. There is less stress, you don't feel the pressure to drive as fast as possible, as many kilometres as possible. So, from day one, your holiday is pure relaxation. You know from the start that the whole route will take a bit longer, although not even as long as expected, more about that later.
How come planning the route, with charging points, possible traffic jam still only takes 5 minutes? We used the app "A better route planner"; you choose your car brand, charge level at the start, desired battery capacity upon arrival at a charging point, desired battery level upon arrival at destination, your arrival point and you’re ready to go. The app calculates everything for you; where to charge, how long you want to charge and even an estimate of the charging costs. If you want to pay the 40 euros for the premium version, it even checks during your journey if the charging points are occupied and if there are better alternatives.
How does travelling with an EV work? As said, it is easy, relaxing and less stressful. A first charging stop was planned after just over 200 km, just before the border with Luxembourg. Ionity Wellin was our first stop and without any problem our charging badge was accepted. In just 25 minutes – the time it takes to have breakfast - we charged from 30% to 80% and we were ready for the next part of the journey. Ok, we had to leave the highway for a while and the charging point was 3 km off the highway, but what's 6 km extra on a 980 km trip. The next stops were similar to the first, a mix of charging points at supermarket car parks close to the highway or even at highway car parks. We noticed that except for 2 stops we always ended up at the well positioned fast charging network Ionity and there were always at least 2 spots available for immediate charging. So we never had to wait for a free spot, although that turned out to be different on the way back.
We arrived at our hotel with 60% energy left in the battery, so we were not going to need the whole night to recharge, but it was nice to have this possibility anyway we thought. While checking in, we were notified that the hotel's charging station was faulty. With the experiences of that day, this did not cause us any extra stress, we would leave in the morning with 60% and "A better routeplanner" would take us to our destination without any problems. That is exactly what happened, with one extra charging stop and half an hour of traffic jam we arrived at our holiday destination just after noon on the 2nd day.
There was no special charging socket at our holiday home, but we could use the "granny cable", or "bomma cable" in Dutch. Among EV drivers this is the name for the cable you use to charge at the regular socket. Yes, it takes a bit longer, actually much longer, to charge your car to 100%, but hey, it's a holiday. Besides, you never arrive home with 0%. Our holiday planning used to be one day with an activity, one day at the pool and that's what we did this time. After a day at the pool, the car was always 100% charged for the day with an activity. Our holiday destination was in the French Alps, in Le Bourg d'Oisans at the foot of Alpe D'Huez. Driving an EV in the mountains is fun too, you use a bit more energy when driving uphill. But on the way down you gain energy and regenerative motor braking is super easy with an EV, it's automatic. You even get the feeling that there is a parachute behind your car when you let go of the accelerator. Surprisingly, we even ended up with negative energy consumption once. In the end, every km on our location was free, we used the energy of our holiday location and never needed a public charging point on site. In retrospect, that makes sense, doesn't it? Who drives more than 400 km per day on holiday?
After 2 weeks of wonderful holidays, it was time to go home; time for the 980 km trip. This time, again on a black Saturday on the roads in France, we decided to increase the learning curve of driving an EV. We would do the full 980 km in one day, 4 charging stops according to "A better routeplanner". It soon became clear that it was a busy day on the road, at 2 of the planned charging stops we arrived as number 6 in line, a bit longer than on the outward journey, but never more than 30 minutes before we were at the charger. Those fast chargers are really nice and the EV community respects the fact that after 80% the charging slows down. When people reach 80% of the charge, they always leave for the next leg of their journey.
The EV community is a community of people who have decided to change their way of driving, they know how it works and that the charging infrastructure is not yet 100% optimal. That makes it fun, you see the same people every time you travel. People who are charging when you arrive are usually also charging at the next stop. People who arrive while we are charging are also likely to arrive at our next charging stop. This means that after 2 stops, you start to recognise these people and you start to chat about the journey, the destination and holiday plans. At one of the stops, in the car park of a supermarket, where there was a queue, a Dutch couple even bought a box of ice creams and handed them out to the children of the other EV drivers waiting in line. Something I’ve never seen at a charging station on previous trips.
Of course it’s not always positive, the charging infrastructure can be improved a lot. There are still some dead zones on the highways in France. Especially between Dijon and Metz, where there’s a longer drive to the next charging stop, sometimes even with a recommended speed that is lower than the indicated speed on the highway. Usually there are 4 to 6 quick chargers at each location, which is already not enough on very busy days. On the return journey we were number 6 in line at one point. At our second stop, there were11 cars behind us when we started charging. So there’s definitely room for improvement. Ionity, for example, claims to be a high-quality charging network. Regarding charging time and capacity, it certainly is, but when you consider comfort, that’s not the case yet. Often, there are no picnic areas near the charging stations or even an area with some shade to protect you from the burning sun on the highways to and from the south. If it had been raining, we would have been standing there without shelter, which fortunately was not the case with us. You can imagine that if you are number 6 in line, some shade or a place to sit would be nice.
We deliberately only took the one charging card that we had (PlugInvest). PlugInvest claims to cover more than 80% of all charging points in Europe. And that is what we were going to test, in reality we were only refused once at a BP fast charger, all others worked without any problems. The claim that you need several passes to reach your destination was not the case with us. This was our first trip, however; the future will tell if it stays that way.
In general, driving an electric car on a long journey and during holidays is no hassle, it is easy and perfectly doable.
The technology will develop further in the coming years and I’m sure that the driving range will increase even more. The charging locations will also improve dramatically when more people start driving EVs.
For now, I can say without hesitation: "NO", it’s certainly not too early to drive an EV. I would even recommend it, it’s less stressful. Compared to previous years, the journey was only 55 minutes longer than the previous trips with a diesel car. I'm in it for the long haul, I'm now officially an EV driver :)