and I have spent the festive period at our friend's place in France. When we were invited we didn't know we would have the I-Pace but since acquiring the car I was determined that we were going to road-trip the EV.
As this was our first time driving down to them in France and our first time doing a long distance in the Jag' I spent some considerable time planning the journey.
Before we set off, I thought I'd over planned but perhaps in hindsight, I did just enough.
We would be travelling from our home in West Yorkshire to Portsmouth, catching an overnight ferry to Caen and then driving down through northern France to their place about an hour south of the Loire Valley.
With a couple of very short local trips, while we were there, the return journey was the same in reverse.
In summary:
A total distance of 956 miles
18hr 31mins driving time
415 kWh consumed
at a cost of £47.06* or £0.05 per mile
As part of the planning, I had built in Plans A, B and C for charging on each leg
On the outbound leg, we had two timed arrivals to hit. The first at the very nice Miller and Carter steak restaurant in Southampton (they have a BP Chargemaster rapid charger), they were busy on the run-up to Christmas so we had a table reservation time to hit. The second one, obviously to check-in for the Ferry. On the French side, we had only to arrive before 1pm local time in order to join them for a scrummy traditional lunch at a local eatery.
I armed myself with My trusty Polar Plus RFID card, NewMotion (now Shell recharge) RFID card and probably the most useful for France, a Chargemap RFID card. I also had the Ionity app and account setup. I also took a 15metre, 13Amp extension lead to allow us to charge up French granny-style when we got to our destination.
I also fitted GB plates and read the vehicle instruction manual for little known settings like headlight driving side and disabling alarm sensors.
We left home a little later than planned but thankfully traffic was kind, it was a Sunday afternoon. It did mean that we would be time-limited at our first planned stop, the now-familiar Milton Keynes Coach Station. We had planned to use the Ionity there but there was no option for us to use RFID card and we had the familiar problem of the car timing out before charge started when trying to use the app for direct payment. As we still had around 25% SoC (State of Charge) and didn't 'need' the Ultra-Fast charger, I moved to the BP ChargeMaster posts at the same location. This worked as expected*
We timed our exit from there to get us to Southampton in time for our reservation and arrived there on time and with 10% SoC. Over a lovely meal, we fully utilised the allowed 90 minutes of charge and when we left we had a fairly healthy 92% SoC and drove on to Portsmouth with plenty of time to spare. I had planned in an optional top-up charge at the Morrisons near the port if time allowed but on arrival, the notices told us the car park would be closing soon, additionally, the Engenie unit wasn't responding on the touch screen. Not to worry, we still had plan-c over the water.....
Still, at this point, we had failed to get Ionity to work. We had failed to test the Chargemap card and we only just had enough charge to get us to our first planned stop in France. Tension was medium.
After a fairly choppy crossing to France, we exited the port, drove on the right and set the sat-nav to my optional charger just outside Caen. I wanted to gain confidence in the Chargemap card and add some contingency charge in the battery as the weather was pretty shocking. When I first viewed this charger on Google maps it looked like a scenic rest stop. However, it was a final resting stop as the charger is at the car park of a cemetery. It was also, dead! The AC side reported as unavailable and the DC as Occupied. Bugger.
So we set off to the next planned stop, quick mental maths worked out what KwH/100 mile I needed to achieve.
Tension was high.
The first leg of the journey was on the standard dual carriageway, 110 km/h (68 mph). All was OK, I was on target. We then hit the autoroute and turned South West, into the wind. At 110 km/h I was OK but I couldn't make use of the 130 km/h (80 mph) limit as that increased consumption to squeaky bum range estimates.
At this point, I should point out that the car had, before we left, had 3 software updates. One for the motor/battery management (known as H264) which increased range by up to 8% in ECO mode on a motorway cruise, just what we were doing. We'd also installed a new map update and a new version of the infotainment software (19c). As far as I could tell, the biggest impact H264 was having on us, was a massively inaccurate range in the GOM and in the sat-nav estimates for range at the destination. More on this in a future post but any benefit of longer range, to me, has been outweighed by the inaccuracy of the sat-nav. A feature that was only recently introduced in 19b and had been reasonably useful prior to H264.
Anyway, we made it to our planned charge point, a new Ionity array on the autoroute south of Le Mans with 9% remaining. The Chargemap card worked, the Ionity whined up to a high pitch (signifying a high rate of charge), all was well with the world. Time for a celebratory Caffè latte and Pain au chocolat over a game of checkers. 49 Minutes later we were leaving, having added 60kWh of lovely French electrons (and for only £7.41). The average charge rate of 73kW also being one of the fastest I've seen and meant we comfortably met our lunch appointment.
While we were in rural France I didn't use any of the village chargers. They look to be in a very poor state of repair, having been installed a few years ago and then left, mostly unused. They're also strangely expensive as most are slow AC chargers charged per minute. The charger in our friend's village might work but the upward facing LCD screen was completely burnt out. Not a good choice of design for a sunny climate. We did however, modify our UK extension lead to French standard and plugged into their outside socket with no issues. It also being quite cheap as their flat rate of electricity works out at just £0.08 per kWh. We filled up to 100% (adding 62kWh) for the return leg.
The return leg was much easier. we used the Northbound Ionity chargers on the Autoroute which, at time of writing, we haven't been charged for. Again, a high rate of charge and speed meant we were early for check-in at the ferry port. We cruised consistently at 130 km/h where allowed and as we approached Caen the trip computer was showing a very healthy 69mph average (53.1kWh/100miles). Incidentally, that rate of consumption would give an estimated range for the I-Pace of just 158 miles. Not far off the Real Range quoted by
for Highway - Cold Weather (165 mi) but a long way from the advertised WLTP range of 292 Miles!
Back in the UK we skipped breakfast on the boat and grabbed a Costa Brekkie to eat in the car while using the previously used Rapid Charger at Miller and Carter. The lack of rapid chargers in this area really leaving this as our only option at 8am on a Sunday morning. From there we went back to MK and got the Ionity to work by patting my head and rubbing my stomach in the right order, essentially, timing the locking and unlocking of the car in time to the payment and charge ramp-up process of the charger. There to home was event free, apart from the realisation we were back on the M1 and an average speed of just 48 mph.
Overall a successful trip but not without its challenges from the charging infrastructure. The car performed faultlessly and apart from Lane Keep Assist having an aversion to narrow French country roads it was an absolute pleasure to spend time in and do almost 1000 miles.
*footnote: The total cost is artificially low. As stated above, we haven't, as yet, been charged for the Northbound Ionity charge in France. Also, despite contacting BP Chargemaster, the Southbound charge at MK isn't showing up on my invoice. If this charge does not show up then the overall costs will reduce by another £6 and take the cost per mile to closer to £0.04!
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