electricfelix updates - Issue #17

2022, ready to GO!

But, wait a second. A very swift roll-up of last year incoming........ Oh, you just came here for the €60 free fast charging, scroll down to the very end!

The Beginning. (End of November, 2021)

When I heard Fastned would do a festive opening in Belgium, it was the right time for Honda-E action!

Located "exactly" in the middle between Gent & Brugge, Aalter is fast charging perfection. A stroll around town, a friendly hotel with restaurant just beside the parking lot.

Opening ceremony on video! Mayor was there, disco ball, the full monty!

Naturally, the Honda E was "not the ideal vehicle" for a long journey to Belgium. Winter, small battery, less than optimal fast charging. As always, you can check the full travel log on Polarsteps.

When the vehicle had to return to Belgium, I used the opportunity for a 160 km winter #hypermile ride, from Amsterdam to Antwerp. At Fastned Hazeldonk (Belgian border) I was really hesitating, but I pulled through. How did this work out? I put the Hypermiling video for your viewing pleasure on YouTube.

A Berlin flash (Peugeot e-2008)

Berlin, Hamburg, and back to Amsterdam. With a 45kWh usable battery in the cold & windy season. A great excuse to check out some infrastructure I hadn't been able to visit for a while.

Click the photo for the Polarsteps log!

Now let me take you on a very quick version of this journey:

Amsterdam to Berlin/Hamburg because I didn't write a blog about it. First stop, the highway exit is finally open at Salzbergen again, HELLO IONITY!

We'll get into ICE'ing (ICE=Internal Combustion Engine) another day, what I'm more interested in is the "white light" all the way on the right: charger number one.

I love these lights, because they are supposed to give you an impression of what's going on. Unfortunately, Charger Number One was broken. Why the screen can only tell me this, after I've parked, when the light can't: it's not great service!

?

The 2nd stop was supercool, a brand-new location I had never stopped before!

Automobilwerk.eu in Kirchlengern (DE)

Not in the picture, but behind me from where I took the photo is a great bakery with a terrace! Cheap & tasty. Recommended!

Cheapest Fast Charger of Hannover

Located perfectly for Amsterdam <> Berlin rides at Bar Celona, outskirts of Hannover, this Enercon (charger brand) hub.

Enercon HPC hub Hannover, at Bar Celona

Strangely enough, this hub doesn't show on ChargeFinder for example. The cool thing is you don't need to bring a charging card here, swipe your bank card/credit card for the amazing tariff of €0,29/kWh - and the food and drinks next door (and big summer garden) aren't bad either.

I love the fact that it's not directly along the motorway, but this is personal. Plenty of options if you don't want to leave the fast route.

Allego, Peugeot & alpitronic

Life can not always be a party. I had read some warning signs on Twitter already but forgot about them. Rumours about alpitronic operated by Allego and PSA (Peugeot, Citroën, Opel) vehicles and CCS charging compatibility issues.

I don't remember when I was this happy about a backup 50kW charger on the side..!

Phew.

Allego fixed the issues in the meantime. But I also encountered these issues on a later ride at a Pfalzwerke station. Which proves another thing in electric mobility life: updates!

OTA (Over The Air) or not, who approves them (it took Allego weeks, apparently due to, of course, eichrecht).

EnBW and Fastned and ARAL and perhaps others were all much quicker to respond/fix these issues. (I could charge the Peugeot without any trouble at all of their locations, including all alpitronic machines).

Berlin offline

Finding a working charger in Berlin, (I have several "regulars"), was not that easy. More usage than in other years, and even more broken chargers than last time I visited.

If you then think about the fact that on the one hand Berlin is full of Lidl where you can charge for nothing, and then Allego is operating all these 22kW chargers that are not cheap (41ct/kWh using Smoov app). Then it all ends up in time-consuming driving around the neighborhood and not such a great experience.

Another Berlin blog incoming this year!

IONITY Heiligengrabe

Fully charged up in the morning:

On to Hamburg, then! Very windy and cold morning (beautifully sunny though) to this IONITY station, where nobody thought about the charger layout: the red light of the broken charger is hidden from view when you drive into the station...(video on my Polarsteps)

We don't know why these chargers are located in this field, "nearby" a gas station. But the conditions were very icy and slippery and the walk to the gas station feels unsafe, because German infrastructure doesn't seem to like people outside of cars, walking.....

Hamburg

A lot of petrol stations offer fast charging options, but why wouldn't you show the price then?! Believe in your product, please!

Here the touch screen wasn't working, so a "newbie" would want to click on "start" as the machine asks, I just plugged in and showed my badge, and it worked, but who would try that tactics if you just "listen" to the machine?

So, when will we see kWh price here? Where's the "level playing field?"

A Fastned lesson

On my way home I charged up at Fastned (as always) and I learned something new. It was one of many stops during this journey where within minutes a whole station fills up with vehicles, it's just a completely different experience compared to a year or so earlier.

On the left, you see an ENYAQ pulling a trailer. He spotted the vehicle connected to the "far away" Alpitronic (dark) charger and thought he had to use the white charger you can see in front.

But that's only 50kW and the alpitronic in the back can actually serve vehicles on both sides! I went to him, and he immediately switched for double the speed!

Signage could be better, Fastned! Not everybody knows which machines offer several plugs and so on.

Talking about Fastned (FRANCE!)

The ride to Berlin was actually just a bonus, thanks to some time off in December, yeah! 

The real goal was to visit Fastned, for the very first time..... in FRANCE! 

There's a secret video, just for you as newsletter reader, apologies for the audio. This station has been opened a mere 48 hours before this newsletter was sent out!

Day two in France was completely amazing, visiting three brand-new stations and testing them all.

Found one payment terminal stuttering, other than that, a smooth sensation at all locations.

Highlight was Aire d'Ecot.

Summer is Coming!

The full video below covers a drive around the Dijon region from one Fastned to the next!

#1: Aire Gevrey-Chambertin #2: Aire de Pont Chêne d'Argent &

#3: Aire d'Écot is my latest YouTube upload!

Sweden, the ë-C4 luxury life

Thanks to Citroën, I have been taking the ë-C4 on a Nordic Adventure.

All the way to Stockholm and Göteborg. Winter tires, helped us survive fresh snow & ice several times. They also brought consumption to about 240Wh/km all included, full heating, heated seats, steering wheel, massage seats!

Yes, everything! Travel blog linked below.

Taking the Citroën ë-C4 for a Nordic Adventure, all the way from Amsterdam

to Stockholm. 3500 km, every (fast) charging session logged. Enjoy the

ride! Testing IONITY, Aral, Allego, Fastned, Circle K, EOn and many others.

I had a great time discovering all local (fast) charging infra. Why do I use that word?

Because discovery is a very big deal in the e-mobility world. Far bigger than the attention (it's not getting).

Countless locations had (brand-new & great) charging infrastructure with really no indication whatsoever of where it was located. Normally I use Chargemap for discovery, but it's just not up-to-date over there.

I tried Plugshare and many others, but I haven't found the app that has them all. (If you know that app, or you're trying to build it, get in touch!)

This hurts everyone, and creates a very big crowd at even the newest and biggest stations, thanks ALLEGO! Video below.

There are really countless Swedish stories to tell, from the crazy roundabouts with a 50kW at every exit (all in use!) to walkability issues considering the snow and purely made for car infrastructure everywhere.

All the Tesla's I've spotted at IONITY, to this day I'm wondering why they were not at the local Supercharger.

If you want to see it all for yourself, I recommend clicking around the Polarsteps logbook of all my charging stops.

Follow electricfelix's ë-C4 Nordic Adventure trip

The Dutch and their travels to The Alps

Many, many Dutchies headed out for snow themed rides early January, straight into The French Charging Desert.

Four 350kW chargers, essentially doing 50kW most of the time, with people filling up way above 90% SoC.

I will never understand why nobody called in The Porsche Charging Truck for weekends like these.

2022 a new decisive year

People in our scene might think going electric is "in the bag", the hard work is done, blablabla.

It's just beginning.

In every country around The Netherlands, EVs have seen their biggest growth rate yet. Infrastructure isn't even keeping the pace if you would cut EV growth in two. I watched this German video, and I recommend you do the same. It's staggering, really.

Compare Tesla to Rest of World.

I'll use some screenshots, but I absolutely recommend the full video.

This is about the amount of Ladeparks, as the Germans call it. Europe-wide. IONITY for example grew with about 70 locations over the year of 2021. Looking around "the Europe industry as a whole", figures went from 1700 to 3300.

Now, we'll dive into plugs. Blue is 1st of January 2021, Orange is 1st of January 2022.

Even though HighPowerCharging CCS plugs in Europe have more than doubled, just look at that performance and compare it to the closed network of Tesla only. It hurts my eyes.

Look at the "growth" of IONITY, when focusing on amount of plugs.

The maker of the video will take out IONITY in next year's video, because it's no use anymore focusing on them. In pretty much any country (except France, and perhaps Sweden) local players have surpassed them.

So much to say about this, but I just wanted to share the numbers, really.

We will feel this, on the road, this year... In 2022 what we need is: #MOREPLUGS!

The end, with a *BANG*

Yes, some great news. As always, very dependent on where you live, move or travel (to). This week, Fully Charged interviewed the people behind BONNET, a brand-new charging app from the UK.

Their welcome offer is so great, it deserves a mention in this newsletter. Bonnet wants to ease the charging experience in the UK, where "roaming" is not as common as we're used to in say, Germany, NL, or France.

The focus, is on the UK with Osprey and ESB and Shell Recharge & so on

But as you can see, Ladenetz, Fastned & Allego are also there. Now this, is where it gets interesting "for us, on the main land".

Your mileage will vary (wildly) but filtering on CCS this is how the map looks around here.

In short, you want to try Fastned/Allego on the cheap: here is your chance!

Start by downloading the Bonnet charging app. You can use my referral code for a first 15 pounds discount: RD4BD

It gets better

They made it to Fully Charged last week, I had been following them on Twitter for a while already.

Thanks to Fully Charged, you can use these codes:

FIRSTCHARGE

and

FULLYCHARGED

for a free first session (code #1) and your first Refill at no cost: the idea of Bonnet is that you can prepay monthly, with 50 pounds as the max, and that way you get 200 kWh to use (at 25p/kWh!)

So these codes get you over 50 pounds (nearly sixty euros right now) of pure discount on your (fast) charging needs. Enjoy the ride!

The latest blog about BONNET, linked below.

Fast charging pricing, the first 2022 update! Welcome to Bonnet, a

brand-new charging app from the UK, about to offer you the very best kWh

price available at Allego and Fastned and more!

The app is still quite new, zooming in on Allego locations didn't work perfectly for me. Also, Allego in Denmark and Sweden are nowhere to be found in the app, but France is there(!)

Shell Recharge doesn't show all their chargers, this has probably got to do with several commissioning systems, both Allego and NewMotion are participating and only Allego is to be found in Bonnet (at least it looks like that to me).

Anyway, it's going to be a fun month, I'll show you many more beautiful apps and charging spectacles around Europe this year, that's a promise!

This week, I'm headed for PARIS!

As electricfelix I like to keep on discovering, if you want to know where

I'm headed next, or where I just went. It's all here. Future and past

electricfelix electric roadtrips.

Podcast

Before I forget, you can listen to me (in Dutch) about #EVRoadToCOP (Glasgow), Fast Charging around Europe, electric motorcycles, free fast charging in Spain and much more.

On Max' Autocast! Link below or directly in Spotify, or Apple podcasts.

Elektrische auto’s worden steeds gangbaarder. Toch is er voor veel mensen nog een beperkende factor: de actieradius op lange afstanden. […]

See you at a fast charger soon!

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