[Parkwood]

I'm planning a trip next year to Deauville in France. Charging is fine. The journey from Le Shuttle in Calais to my destination is well within my car's range.

Does anyone have experience of using the toll roads on this journey? Any tips or things to avoid? Thanks.

Straightforward trip and much of the route is free assume you are going down A29 and via Pont de Normandie? Really is an easy route. Note the bridge has its own toll. The A13 is now free flow so no peage booths so you will need to pay on line.

https://www.sanef.com/index-en.html

I have had a tag for years from Sanef and would really recommend getting one they work with the new flux libre systems as well as old tolls and just make life easier. Sanef used to run the Dart Tag and are set up for UK customers but others are available.


If you are interested in art the Museum of Modern Art in Le Havre is worth the detour as is Le Havre itself which is a UNESCO world heritage site due to the rebuilt town after the war the church in particular is quite beautiful though brutal on the exterior.

Saint Joseph's Church of Le Havre - Le Havre Etretat Normandie Tourisme

An undeniable symbol of the Renaissance of Le Havre, Saint-Joseph Church is an extraordinary building.

www.lehavre-etretat-tourisme.com

Depending on timing coming off at Honfleur and taking the coast route is pleasant but that might be a day trip you take.
the public library in Deauville is well worth a visit for the wonderful conversion they have made of an old convent they have expos too but entry into the library which has a cafe is free. Just reminds me how good life is here with the investment into public services.

https://en.normandie-tourisme.fr/unmissable-sites/deauville/les-franciscaines-deauville

Enjoy your trip I used to do this run though to Rouen and down the A28 every 2 to 3 weeks for a year so know it well mind you that was 18yrs ago now how time flies!

/

 

[Laforêt]

Just for information, SANEF list all the aires and service stations along all their autoroutes, together with facilities (including EV charge points) here. This is where I got the waypoints from for the baseline data table.

They also have a real-time traffic app called ‘Sanef et Vous’.

Re an earlier point about my plan having too many stops I'd just reiterate that this is what you get if you opt for the 'backup' option of always being able to skip the next planned autoroute charging waypoint and go on to the next+1 with a comfortable margin.

The other option is to have more risk/effort appetite and wait until you're at a low point like 20% charge and then recharge. But this may mean coming off the autoroute and some effort in finding a charging site. For those of us without modern EV-integrated satnavs this could be quite time-consuming and relies on being able to effectively drive more than one EV mobile phone route planning app while roaming.

So on the whole, for a smaller-battery car like ours, with a prehistoric satnav, on our first long journey, with plenty of time to spare, an extra stop over and above what we'd have for a bio-break anyway, seems a reasonable strategy.

I know that the first stop after Calais is only 64kms further on, and seems counterintuitive. But if you crunch the numbers, topping up the 23% used to get there and leaving the Aire de Rely with 80% maximises all the options for the next segments of the route.

 

[Parkwood]

Yes as pointed out above all the operators ie Sanef, Vinci etc produce the same info of the services on their motorways😉

this link is useful

https://www.autoroutes.fr/en/routes.htm

 

[Jon99]

Straightforward trip and much of the route is free assume you are going down A29 and via Pont de Normandie? Really is an easy route. Note the bridge has its own toll. The A13 is now free flow so no peage booths so you will need to pay on line.

https://www.sanef.com/index-en.html

I have had a tag for years from Sanef and would really recommend getting one they work with the new flux libre systems as well as old tolls and just make life easier. Sanef used to run the Dart Tag and are set up for UK customers but others are available.


If you are interested in art the Museum of Modern Art in Le Havre is worth the detour as is Le Havre itself which is a UNESCO world heritage site due to the rebuilt town after the war the church in particular is quite beautiful though brutal on the exterior.

Saint Joseph's Church of Le Havre - Le Havre Etretat Normandie Tourisme

An undeniable symbol of the Renaissance of Le Havre, Saint-Joseph Church is an extraordinary building.

www.lehavre-etretat-tourisme.com

Depending on timing coming off at Honfleur and taking the coast route is pleasant but that might be a day trip you take.
the public library in Deauville is well worth a visit for the wonderful conversion they have made of an old convent they have expos too but entry into the library which has a cafe is free. Just reminds me how good life is here with the investment into public services.

https://en.normandie-tourisme.fr/unmissable-sites/deauville/les-franciscaines-deauville

Enjoy your trip I used to do this run though to Rouen and down the A28 every 2 to 3 weeks for a year so know it well mind you that was 18yrs ago now how time flies!

/

Thanks for the info. Yes will be using A29, not looking for shortcuts, just want to get there easily.

Is the tag worth it for a one-off trip? I'm not sure if it'll get much or any use after this trip.

I'll have a look at your recommendations on museums etc., that will definitely be on the agenda. Many years ago we spent a pleasant few hours in the big art gallery in Rouen. And a visit to where Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake if memory serves.

 

[Parkwood]

You do only pay a fee for the months you use the tags but yes if you are not a regular visitor here it is debatable it has any value for you.

 

[msej449]

The Emovis tag is transferable and not car-specific. So if you have relatives or friends who also travel in France then you can share the account and tag. You can also have multiple tags per account. I share my account with my brother and for some time also shared a single tag with him. I have also used my tag on rental cars.

 

[mikerivers1]

New to the forum here but travelling in France is of particular interest as we’re doing a road trip Aug/Sep for 4 weeks starting in Bilbao and travelling up the west coast of France. I thought I’d share what I’ve done to prepare and what strategies I use. My car is the Abarth 500e so frequent stops will be necessary with a range of 150 max.

RFID Cards
Firstly, I’ve armed myself with an array of RFID cards. Obviously Electroverse for the convenience but I’m aware that there’ll be a currency exchange at some point b4 I see the transaction on my Electroverse account. With this in mind I’ve sent for a Zunder card for Spain, followed by Chargemap, ChargePoint, Fastned, Freshmile & Izivia cards for France. I am a geek, no apologies. Each of these cards is linked to my Revolut Card and thus any charging is paid for in native currency.

I’m especially interested in the best value options and came across Izivia charges which feature at most McD’s in France. (A partnership like Instavolt/McD’s in the UK). Fast charging is charged at €0.35 per kWh with a ‘happy hour’ before 11:00 am and 3:00-6:00 pm where the charge drops to €0.30 per kWh. The IZIVIA chargers are fast and robust.

PRE-PLANNING
There’s an App called Pinbox which lets you populate a map with your favourite charging stations (you can populate the map with anything you want) and you can colour code the pins by charger type. You can do some research beforehand at home where you can identify charging stations along the route and ‘map’ them accordingly.

I’m aware of ABRP and agree with earlier comments about deviating off route to find a remote charger which is out of action! I prefer navigating with Google Maps but have this running behind the scenes.

For best value chargers other than McD’s I’d be looking at Lidl/Aldi and Hotels you may be staying at along your journey. A recent stop at ibis Budget Mers Les Bains revealed the on-site charger was free! So worth checking when booking hotels.

A mention about Fastned which identifies your car on connection and allows you to confirm charging via app. This is as close as it gets to plug and go.

FORUM COMMENTS
I’d really appreciate other members input since shared best practices and info help us all. What are the best value experiences you’ve had and have you come across any Free chargers?

 

[chapmandu2]

FORUM COMMENTS
I’d really appreciate other members input since shared best practices and info help us all. What are the best value experiences you’ve had and have you come across any Free chargers?

Welcome! If value for money is a focus then I do think a Tesla subscription is a good option, generally the price is €0.30 with a subscription and the vast majority of newer, large Tesla sites are open to all. So you get the benefit of good availability and good price. Izivia are fine but often only 2 or 4 bays per site and require a detour off the autoroute, so unless you're a real Big Mac fan I'm not sure I see the benefit. I've used one before and it was fine, just got a bit of a slow charge because I messed up battery pre-conditioning in the days before the Tesla nav software pre-conditioned for any charger in google maps.

Ionity is obviously a good option and the pricing is good with Ionity Passport, and they're usually at Aires so you get good facilities, but the installations are often smaller and busy so you may have to queue if you're travelling at a busy time.

Electra are a great French CPO but perhaps more on the premium end pricing wise. You can use my referral code if you want though, it's SARAH-5BA1A7 and this gives you 50% off your first charge. Or if you are travelling with other people you can all set up accounts and refer eachother, then you'll get multiple 50% off discounts!

Ultimately it all comes down to personal preference about what you want most from your stops (cost, convenience, availability) and your particular route as to what will work best.

 

[Laforêt]

It will be interesting to see how much ascending the mountain to our destination affects the Kms/1% figure. We will climb about 1,000 metres over 13 Kms (an 8% gradient).

The route planners say that our autoroute 2.8Kms/1% goes down to 900m/1% i.e. the last 13Kms uses about 14.5%, which would otherwise take us 40.5Kms on the autoroute.

Conversely, it will be interesting to see how much regeneration helps on the drive back down into the valley.

 

[HandyAndy]

It will be interesting to see how much ascending the mountain to our destination affects the Kms/1% figure. We will climb about 1,000 metres over 13 Kms (an 8% gradient).

The route planners say that our autoroute 2.8Kms/1% goes down to 900m/1% i.e. the last 13Kms uses about 14.5%, which would otherwise take us 40.5Kms on the autoroute.

Conversely, it will be interesting to see how much regeneration helps on the drive back down into the valley.

Trying to calc the Km/kWh with height-gain added in is asking for v hard mental arith! And for the same height gain, it's hugely dependent on the Kms travelled. If you drove up a vertical cliff face you'ld expect about 0.2 miles/kWh!

You can look at this question another way. Split it into a conventional horizontal trip of known distance, plus add on a pure climb of whatever height's involved to get additional kWh needed to do the lifting. If there's a descent after the max-height climb, as a 3rd stage you can estimate how many kWh you might regen back after the climb.

1) Work out how many kWh you need to drive that distance if the trip was entirely flat, using your expected average speed for the hilly trip (slow climbs reduce windage losses, & try to regen as much as poss on descent & don't be tempted to freewheel to high speed, as again windage losses increase rapidly with speed!

2) Then work out the additional kWh required to get you lifted up vertically whatever max height you expect to do. It's an easy back-of-an-envelope estimation, here's how.

(If Physics isn't your favourite subject, skip to line in Bold.)

Assume EV weighs 1800 Kg.
Energy needed to lift this 1m up is Mass * Gravity_acceleration * Height
= 1800 * 9.81 * 1 = 17,658 Nm per metre of heigh-gain.

How much energy is in 1 kWh?
= 1 kWh = 1000 N/sec * 60 * 60 secs = 3600,000 Nm
So 1 kWh raises this EV by 3600/17.658 = 204m.

Electric motors are around 95& efficient, so call this near-enough
200m raised takes an extra 1 kWh from your battery for a 1800 Kg EV.

You're climbing 1000m, so allow an extra demand of 5 kWh to get you to the top.

3) Optionally allow for regen going down any descent. I guess 75% efficient, but don't really know.

4) Optionally allow for the car not weighing 1800 Kg. ev-database.org says your e-208 weighs 1530 Kg.
Not sure if that's unladen? Let's assume so. Add 4 passengers 75Kg each, your should be around 1830 Kg, near enough you don't need to adjust.

If it has come to say 2200 Kg, i.e. 20% more, just add 20% to the extra kWh needed for lifting, so you'ld allow 5.5 kWh instead. The difference isn't huge to be honest.

This "extra" kWh should only concern you if your end-point of the trip is high up, i.e. you expect to end the trip at a low SOC. If there's another 15 to go after the high point and you descend 1000m, the regenned energy should be about enough to travel say
4 miles/kWh * 5kWh * 75%regen_efficiency = 15 miles.

I've guessed the regen efficiency based on motor efficiency 95% so assume the same as a generator, allow 10% efficiency loss charging the battery like a domestic 7 kW charger, then add another 10% efficiency loss for other stuff I don't know about (Sod's law).

Will be interesting if you can work out how regen you get - we don't really have a good figure for regen efficiency yet! EVs make amazingly accurate height-measuring devices - I do a regular 160 mile trip with a 200m max height rise. I find the miles/kWh matches perfectly with this rough-estimate calc above! Good mental arith exercise if you have youngsters in the car !

 

[Laforêt]

OK so here is my latest contribution to over-engineered route planning. I realised all that's really key is just the distances between waypoints. The chart below is for the northbound autoroute from Magnant to Calais, mainly the Autoroute des Anglais, operated by SANEF.

which are the blue data points. The rest of the spreadsheet is just arithmetic, adding-up the distance between any two waypoints. My spreadsheet allows me to put in a Kms/1% value (2.7Kms/1%battery) , and it populates a second equivalent chart for my particular vehicle, showing battery % consumed:

So for example, if I'm at the Aire de Sommesous, then I can see that the next Aire de Reims Champagne is 17% away, while the E.Leclerc at Champfleury is 26% away, or skip the Aire de Champ-Roland (38%) and the Auchan at St.Quentin Nord is 65% away. And so on.

Of course, if you have an advanced, integrated satnav this is probably redundant. But as I said, many of us don't.

All the chart needs are the blue distances between each potential stop. Once they're in it calculates the rest for you. And with a Kms/1% figure, you can generate it for any vehicle. In my case, 2.75Kms/1% is conservative and the quoted figure is closer to 2.9Kms. Of course what this doesn't do is take account of terrain, so in the mountains, you might well just have to ask ABRP or similar to give you the % figures for the data points.

 

[Parkwood]

One thing we have found is that the integrated sat nav in the EQE is less accurate on remaining SOC at arrival than the EQC was, that nearly always ended a 1 or 2% higher on arrival than anticipated the EQE the reverse. Also bad weather makes a huge difference on the motorways in our behemoth …….rain with wind and consumption shoots up but at least the car does keep updating itself and will route to charge as needed.
So if you km per 1% goes down a lot will that not throw the chart out or will you be able to change that figure on the fly?
chapeau for what you have done way above my pay grade!

 

[njm106]

We've just come back from France after a little trip to Brittany and Normandy in our Combo +Campal boot jump camper, honestly charging is not a problem, I used ABRP in Yorkshire mode (No tolls and cheapest chargers please) and then manually replaced a few of the odd charging points once I'd looked at the Octopus Electroverse app. Went down as low as 15% might have been less to be honest but at no time was I worried not until driving home through Lincolnshire but that was just because its Lincolnshire!!

Think we drove nearly 800 miles in France and it cost almost the same as our 230ish home, cheapest I got was 0.24c/kWh on an ultra rapid! On the way home I noticed some ultra rapids are over £1/kWh now 😭

 

[Parkwood]

We've just come back from France after a little trip to Brittany and Normandy in our Combo +Campal boot jump camper, honestly charging is not a problem, I used ABRP in Yorkshire mode (No tolls and cheapest chargers please) and then manually replaced a few of the odd charging points once I'd looked at the Octopus Electroverse app. Went down as low as 15% might have been less to be honest but at no time was I worried not until driving home through Lincolnshire but that was just because its Lincolnshire!!

Think we drove nearly 800 miles in France and it cost almost the same as our 230ish home, cheapest I got was 0.24c/kWh on an ultra rapid! On the way home I noticed some ultra rapids are over £1/kWh now 😭

Hope you had a good time😉

 

[njm106]

Hope you had a good time😉

It was lovely thank you, we explored Dinan, St Malo and the Dunes d'Hatainville, a very nice part of the world. We also enjoyed driving through the countryside, the towns, and villages rather than blasting it down a motorway it takes longer but it's more relaxing and you see so much more.

 

[Parkwood]

It was lovely thank you, we explored Dinan, St Malo and the Dunes d'Hatainville, a very nice part of the world. We also enjoyed driving through the countryside, the towns, and villages rather than blasting it down a motorway it takes longer but it's more relaxing and you see so much more.

We went to our local county town today and our normal Route is actually quite rural but it is August so that was closed for roadworks as was the alternative so we certainly went a slow but interesting route there and back🤣…glad you had a good time

 

[Laforêt]

And for completeness (if anyone is interested, which they probably aren't) this is the equivalent southbound from Calais to Magnant in Kms:

 

[SueH]

Very comprehensive! Such is the density of the network that my recent more basic list with a similar outline was more to do with exploiting the cheaper chargers. Tesla at Reims was useful as a wander round Leclerc and a coffee gave us an over 80% charge, although finding the right slip road on the way out was fun and exploited the handling and acceleration of the MG 4..

You couldn't now do an equivalent from Dieppe or Le Havre to Chamonix, could you? ;-) I need to research and buy snow tyres and completely replan for winter range!

 

[msej449]

I suppose that the key product from this exercise is really the tables - as an Excel template I could use it for any set of waypoints?

 

[Laforêt]

Yes, I’m just doing the next leg of the journey, which is the southbound route from Troyes/Magnant to Verbier via Besançon, Pontarlier and Lausanne. And the reverse.

All I need to do is to copy the spreadsheet, then choose the main waypoints and determine the distance between each. I’ll then populate the blue cells in the distance table and Excel calculates all the rest, both in Kms and charge%.

Choosing the waypoints for this cross-country leg turned out to be easier than I expected. Perhaps because the route has the larger charging sites spaced out optimally to minimise stops. Basically that’s Besançon and Jougne just before the Swiss border. I’d expected cross-country routes to be more of a mixed bag in terms of the distance between charges, but in reality I had more choice than on the autoroute.

The trouble with autoroutes is that the gaps between major charging sites can vary a lot. For a medium-range car like ours, this means you have to choose between arriving with more charge than you need at the target waypoint, or an uncomfortably low charge at the next+1. Cross-country this didn’t turn out to be the case, although of course, it might just be a lucky coincidence.

An example is the return leg to Calais. The last three aires before Calais have surprisingly few fast charge points at each (4). So the last big site on the A26 Autoroute des Anglais northbound is the Auchan at St.Quentin Nord (Tesla x20). For our car, that’s 65% charge consumption to Calais. Even if we charge to 80% at St.Quentin, I’m just a bit uncomfortable budgeting to arrive with 15%. What the tables tell me is that it’s probably worth the extra time charging to 90% there, if I want to do the rest of the journey in one go, and have a comfortable contingency.

I’m not averse to having to search for a charge site if circumstances change. But when I’m driving to a fixed destination arrival time such as a ferry or train, then I want to avoid having to search for charge sites in ‘real time’, if possible.