(Photo : Riccardo – Pexels)
The electric car, nothing better for summer roadtrips, according to many testimonials on social networks.
“You’ll see when you’ll have to stop every hour, wait 3 hours to load, and do Paris – Côte d’Azur in 15 hours this summer, it’s going to be less fun”.
Okay so actually, I think we have some pretty bad news for the birds of doom: overall it went pretty well. We will not dwell on our personal experience (3000 km from Lyon to the Landes via Belgium, Normandy and Vendée) which was absolutely without a hitch and within the times of passing a thermal, less fatigue. And for 3 times cheaper on the energy side.
But observing the reports, all very enthusiastic – even for new adopters – published on social networks, of electromobilists having filed down the asphalt during this summer period, we quickly understand that the trip was more like a pleasure trip. than the nightmare announced by the usual Cassandres. There is also a fairly common feature in all these testimonials: electric holidays are often long roadtrips in France or Europe.
It must be said that the conditions were met for everything to happen in the best conditions.
Ever more efficient infrastructure
It is first of all on the charging infrastructure side that the evolution is most striking. We have already had the opportunity to say it here on several occasions, the network of high-speed charging points in France is now one of the most developed and efficient in Europe. In absolute value, it is even the second behind that of the Netherlands and ahead of Germany. With more than 110,000 charging points (a figure that has doubled in one year), a large number of them on the main axes, and practically all motorway service areas equipped, traveling by electric should no longer even be a question. I also want proof of this from the feedback from a friend who traveled with his two children from the Bassin d’Arcachon, where he lives, to Spa-Francorchamps, to attend the Grand Prix of F1 at the end of July in the middle of the summer rush in a Tesla Model 3. That is a short trek of 2500 km round trip. When I asked him about the recharge, the question was very revealing: “I didn’t care so much that I didn’t even use the planner, I was stopping to reload when the juice ran out just like you take gas with a thermal”. Admittedly, this fluidity is largely favored by the Tesla charging network, but it has also recharged on other terminals, without any problem.
Others say they were often pleasantly surprised to find a free charging station, usually 11 or 22 kW, in the municipal car park of a place they had planned to visit. What to recover between 100 and 200 km the time of a picnic stop and tourist visit of an hour and a half. It quickly passes an hour and a half when you are in discovery mode. Very quickly. And if it’s on a high-speed terminal (between 50 and 250 kW), it’s full assured and the serenity of leaving with several hundred kilometers of autonomy in front of you, depending on the car and the level of charge.
For the rest, the big names in the sector precisely provided fast charging, whether they were called Ionity, Fastned, Electra, Power Dot, Bump, Tesla (of which more than two out of three Superchargers are now open to other brands), or other. . The only downside is TotalEnergies, whose network reliability still seems catastrophic, if we are to believe the vast majority of testimonies.
Better and better informed electromobilists
Even if some of the electromobilists were probably making their first big migration this summer, a good knowledge of the subject and its specificities will probably have helped make the experience as smooth as possible. On the side of those who have already been driving electric for a long time, experience now speaks, and there are few setbacks and unpleasant surprises in this case. When you already have a few thousand electric kilometers on the clock, you know how it works, the good practices, the good reflexes to adopt and the pitfalls to avoid (if there are still any). As far as newcomers are concerned, an effort to document themselves before setting off with a flower in the gun has certainly helped to avoid bad plans. In the end, there are hardly more than a few journalists from major mainstream media who struggle at the wheel of electric cars. It’s fun and it provides an opportunity for others to break out the proverbial popcorn.
An ideal weather
The temperate, even gloomy climate which reigned over a large part of the country from the beginning of July to mid-August, apart from a few heat waves of limited duration and limited to a few regions, may also have been favorable to major electrical routes. We know that the ideal battery operating temperatures for optimal autonomy are between 20 and 25 degrees, which was the case in many tourist regions, especially in the west, from the Basque coast to Brittany.
All the conditions therefore seem to have been met to promote electric journeys and to see very enthusiastic testimonials multiply on the web. Here is to finish an anthology of what we were able to collect here and there over the course of our observations.
On X (formerly Twitter)
Just to debunk received ideas and get to the bottom of it. So we left aboard a #Tesla 3 LR for a trip of more than 2000 km to the East. Car loaded. Two passengers and a dog. No special preparation. Arrival points without thinking about having a… pic.twitter.com/hFio35mMf2
— Emmanuel Torregano (@ZaraA) August 21, 2023
I invite you to read the comment thread of this post (which I cannot reproduce here because of the X integration system), containing many other testimonials of very positive experiences, and also some refractory ones, to the arguments always as … fun.
This other testimony in response to a staggering post of stupidity and ignorance
I’m coming back from a road trip in Italy with an electric car.
Well listen, that went VERY well!
Stops to load were not binding, we did not have the impression of wasting time. And it was relaxing to drive without the noise of the engine! pic.twitter.com/vgjW0iuEQR— Puce (@Jumps_de_Puce) August 22, 2023
And a little trip to Norway
Going on vacation in an electric car? It’s tempting!
This summer heading to Norway, and as much to say that it was a real pleasure.
For the landscapes of course, but also the way to discover them, without any constraint.On balance, 10,000 km in complete peace of mind.
1/5 pic.twitter.com/zS1nrV9mBb
— DahuLyonnais (@RomeTheCruz) August 23, 2023
Another 3000 km in electric
As many before me have done, I will share with you my roadtrip in an electric car over more than 3000km. I’ll walk you through each step, and give you a tip for charging for free. For context, I made this trip aboard a Tesla Model 3 Grande… pic.twitter.com/8gb0UfJv4V
— Thanh – SparkGuy (@GetSparkPass) August 22, 2023
On Linkedin
Endgame for critics of electric
What should we conclude from this? That the issue of large electric migrations is being settled, and that long journeys are no longer a problem in the vast majority of cases. Of course, everything is not yet ideal, and there are still many points to improve, including the reliability and availability of terminals, and also the education and good citizenship of users, and motorists in general.
But the subject is becoming commonplace, and you should see fewer and fewer articles about the difficulties of electric travel. Mainstream media and EV-bashing specialists will have to find other bones to gnaw.
It will be a vacation for us.
