[andyswarbs]

So, we have started our summer hols in our Kona 64k. This is three weeks in Northern Spain followed by two weeks in France. There's a week back in the UK inbetween - don't ask!!!

Our strategy for charging is that every B&B/Hotel we have booked has a charging point, and because we're not travelling more than say 150 mile in a day then it should be a stress free holiday. Recharging our car should always be arrive, plugin, enjoy sleep, unplug and go. We don't (we think) need to charge at any public chargers en-route. Though I would like to try some. I'm hoping to do a log of much of the charging experience of Spain as we go, and hopefully France as well.

Right now we're on day 3. Driving from Oxford to Portsmouth to catch the ferry to Bilbao we had a very smooth two-night crossing arriving in Bilbao yesterday first thing. As far as we could see there was only one other EV on the ferry - a Tesla.

So our first stop yesterday was the Guggenheim museum, featuring lots and lots of the very best cars from around the world. One was from around 1900 was - electric! Perhaps I will post a picture of it soon. Right now we are staying north of Bilbao in a rural B&B which has two tesla destination chargers in its car park. The owner kindly ensured we were plugged in and charging up last night. So we added about 40% to get us to full. Today, our last night at our first B&B, we're topping up the 14% we used driving on fabulous coastal roads to get ready for our longest journey tomorrow.

What was disappointing about the Guggenheim is that all it's EV chargers were in use. This was free destination charging and we couldn't use it! So disappointing.

 

[Todor]

Amazing! Enjoy Spain!

 

[Duncan]

Don't forget you can now use some Tesla superchargers in both Spain and France.

 

[SueH]

Not if you are not resident in certain EU countries, and not including the UK. I know people have managed to get round this, but when I tried to register via the Tesla app I got myself in all sorts of problems, and don't think I'm properly registered, so although I might investigate given the opportunity, I won't be relying on them for any French route planning. The default of ABRP is to use them though..

 

[SueH]

Whoops, I've just seen the latest news..

 

[prabhu]

Perhaps subscribe to ionity?

 

[gladini]

Given my relationship with Mr & Mrs Karma, I would be arriving at the charming B&B 10mins after you ....

Out of interest did you use the Instas at Portsmouth Cont Ferry port before boarding ?
(Or the Morrisons' GenieP a mile further in to town ? )

 

[Marli]

"Given my relationship with Mr & Mrs Karma, I would be arriving at the charming B&B 10mins after you ...."
Easily solved with inteligent throttling and more charge ports.

" two tesla destination chargers in its car park............ So we added about 40% to get us to full. "
2x 7.2 chargers over 8hrs is 104kwh
you would expect no more than 50kwh over 8 hrs max. so adding a 3rd charge port and throttling the charge rate would fill 3 cars.

even 4 would be quite good, 26kwh(117miles) assuming everyone had more than 26kwh to charge.

 

[andyswarbs]

Given my relationship with Mr & Mrs Karma, I would be arriving at the charming B&B 10mins after you ....

Out of interest did you use the Instas at Portsmouth Cont Ferry port before boarding ?
(Or the Morrisons' GenieP a mile further in to town ? )

We visited friends in Fareham first so charged at tesco hyperspace first - nice 50kw charger, but nothing to do there.

Shame we weren't there at same time!

 

[CicloByron]

So, we have started our summer hols in our Kona 64k. This is three weeks in Northern Spain followed by two weeks in France. There's a week back in the UK inbetween - don't ask!!!

Our strategy for charging is that every B&B/Hotel we have booked has a charging point, and because we're not travelling more than say 150 mile in a day then it should be a stress free holiday. Recharging our car should always be arrive, plugin, enjoy sleep, unplug and go. We don't (we think) need to charge at any public chargers en-route. Though I would like to try some. I'm hoping to do a log of much of the charging experience of Spain as we go, and hopefully France as well.

Right now we're on day 3. Driving from Oxford to Portsmouth to catch the ferry to Bilbao we had a very smooth two-night crossing arriving in Bilbao yesterday first thing. As far as we could see there was only one other EV on the ferry - a Tesla.

So our first stop yesterday was the Guggenheim museum, featuring lots and lots of the very best cars from around the world. One was from around 1900 was - electric! Perhaps I will post a picture of it soon. Right now we are staying north of Bilbao in a rural B&B which has two tesla destination chargers in its car park. The owner kindly ensured we were plugged in and charging up last night. So we added about 40% to get us to full. Today, our last night at our first B&B, we're topping up the 14% we used driving on fabulous coastal roads to get ready for our longest journey tomorrow.

What was disappointing about the Guggenheim is that all it's EV chargers were in use. This was free destination charging and we couldn't use it! So disappointing.

View attachment 161995

I’ve started asking Hotels if I can reserve the charger after an unpleasant experience with another EV driver in France (thanks to a Tesla driver using the non Tesla charger, actually worse than that, plugged in but doing nothing), those that don’t respond or reply negatively get pushed down the list. Iberdrola is a cheap way of charging in Spain, get the Electromaps app too, that will show you where everything is located.

 

[andyswarbs]

We drove 150km west along the coast today, mostly using the largely free motorway, shy of santander. Our second bnb has allowed us to park in their garage and granny charge at 2kw. Fortunately I bought a toughleads adapter to give best chance of a good solid charge. By 4am we should be fully charged ready for our climb into the Picos De Europa starting at 9 tomorrow.

 

[andyswarbs]

With a full charge to start with, yet another day of travelling west and I am beginning to understand how big Spain is (compared to the UK)!

We followed the coast road (as walked by many doing the camino de santiago) rather than the motorway. Just before Oveido we headed inland to a very remote village Tierra Del Agua. It has two type-2 chargers.

Initially neither were working, and I put it down to flaky power supply. But after some head scratching it turned out the power wasn't switched on. Once connected - and switched on at the switch in the bar, 7kw starts to trickle through.

They're not charging for this but it could charge 9 euros. Personally I don't mind paying 9 euros for a nearly full charge!!!!

 

[andyswarbs]

We're having a relaxing day. Tomorrow could be a full tour of roman bridges and mountain passes. Given the distance of the circuit I will want a top up charge at an imbredola station. Noone wants to run out of battery close to the top!

 

[CicloByron]

We're having a relaxing day. Tomorrow could be a full tour of roman bridges and mountain passes. Given the distance of the circuit I will want a top up charge at an imbredola station. Noone wants to run out of battery close to the top!

Did you get the Iberdrola app setup already?

 

[CR123]

I atached the current spanish fares down to 50kW , the most reliable and cheapest network is Zunder

 

[andyswarbs]

Did you get the Iberdrola app setup already?

I installed it but gave up trying to register. It wanted Spanish address & passport stuff. It said I could continue without registering. However in the end I didn't need a charge so never even bothered!

Perhaps when I was looking at it when I was far too tired (2am ish), perhaps it's the warmer weather, partly it is the slower driving. We left our base camp (Tierra Del Aqua) with a full charge. The route went north to Cangas to Onis for it's famous roman bridge and then south through Oseja de Sajambre and then back to TDA - 100 miles/177km and about 4 hours of driving.

Leaving the only way out the dashboard kept say "cannot recharge - the battery is full." Seeing this go on for several kilometers is a bit disconcerting, but a full battery is a full, end of. About an hour later on one descent we saw the most amazing thing - recharging rate just climbing and climbing. Normally in the UK my kona hovers around 4 (down to 3.3 in winter and up to 4.5 in summer. When I saw it go up to 16m/kwh I thought this was ridiculous. And then...

We drove through two summit passes - one at 900m and another at 1100m. A number of motorbikes - some from the UK. But mostly we saw nothing except the fabulous scenery.

We arrived back with 64% still remaining. Didn't cost us anything, because no-one has charged us to charge our car. Back home friends are trying to work out how to offset their increasing diesel costs and as I speak driving much of the North of Spain with zero electricicty costs seems almost doable. (Yes I know there are a couple of B&B's ahead that charge 12euros a night, big deal!)

 

[CicloByron]

I installed it but gave up trying to register. It wanted Spanish address & passport stuff. It said I could continue without registering. However in the end I didn't need a charge so never even bothered!

just in case you do need to use them, this might help:
It wouldn’t let me use my address when I lived in France, or now Portugal, their support said just use Iberdrola’s head office address “Avenida San Adrián number 48 48003 Bilbao Bizkaia”. For ID I used 1111111111, that worked even when my passport number didn’t! You will need to assign a credit card number too, not a single one of my other many cards would work with their chargers, so keep that in mind.

 

[andyswarbs]

Okay I've installed a height above sea level app, and that helps explain the tour in the picos de Europa. Our accommodation at Tierra del Agua start point was 800m above sea level, so the overall climb to our first pass was only 100m more and the second only 200m more, or so. This circuit thus was never about going from a low base to some high pass, since we were already high. Rather it was more about the super efficiency of EVs in general and the Kona specifically as an ultimate example in such an environment.

 

[andyswarbs]

Today we came back down from the mountains and have headed further west on the E8 again-another 150 miles or so to another very remote B&B, like a mile or so up a dirt track. Met by two tesla destination chargers and so tomorrow we'll have yet again a full charge for no cost.

En route we dropped into a jaw dropping seaside port called cudillero that made us think we were in Greece. We took as many photographs there as we have possibly taken on the rest of our holiday put together. A fabulous place for our lunch break.

Tomorrow we've got a relatively short hop to our westernmost destination, Lugo. That will be a change because we'll be in the old quarters of the city centre. And I believe they will charge 12 euros for our top up. We'll need that because the coming days will be our longest journeys.

One final thought for tonight. At our b&b we've been chatting with a couple of nice Americans from Atlanta. They've spent most of their touring holiday in Portugal and commented on the incessant toll booths they drive through. None of that in Spain, here is just like the UK, get on the high quality autovias and go as far as you want.

On final final thought. Some of our accommodation costs aren't cheap. But to help offset these treats we don't eat out, rather pick up fruit and veg from supermarkets and have a coolbox permanently plugged into the 12v socket. Before we left home I made 9 pots of hummus and today I finished off the last one.

 

[Xinix]

[...] on the incessant toll booths they drive through. None of that in Spain, here is just like the UK, get on the high quality autovias and go as far as you want.

Hmmm.. quite some motorways have toll already and the Spanish government is planning on making ALL of them toll roads.

As to the quality: come to Andalucia, We have some nice stretches of A7, A44 or A92 for you to rumble through. Bring your kidney belts.