Winter is coming, hope you ordered a heat pump because you're gonna need it when driving an EV this season! Warm up your battery before you leave!

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The trip that I couldn't stop talking about (click for my video). If you rather read the whole story about the ride to Berlin in the Tesla Model 3 Long Range, find it right here. One last thank you to UFODRIVE for supplying the vehicle! If you want 30€ off on your first rental, please contact me with your phone number, I will send you a personal referral link!

Munich with the Pappies

Arjé and Levi, father and son Pappie. They invited me to their lair: Jacques Noir.

Some insight on our ride, nowadays this is what ABRP (my favourite EV roadtrip planner) looks like when on the road!

When I plan the ride now on my laptop, it skips Nahetal. I recommend you (especially with the Jaguar I-Pace) to squeeze in as many stops as you can handle, since charging to around 50% SoC is way faster than staying longer. As it turned out, the only real influence on our trip was traffic. Eventually Waze helped us to leave the highway and skip a huge traffic jam, but combined with rain and cold it didn't help much.

Our ride home to Amsterdam on Sunday was surprisingly smooth, Germany on a Sunday can be a real breeze! We used the recommended tactics of a 'long slow start', and it wasn't that long/slow really, we drove through a beautiful morning with mist first and sun later. Click to look at the ABRP plan.

If you want to look at some photos I took during the trip, check out our Polarsteps photo book! Link below. 17 'steps' and nearly 100 photos shared! 1783 kilometers Friday to Sunday.

Father and son Pappie to Munich by electric felix - Polarsteps — www.polarsteps.com

Follow electric's Father and son Pappie to Munich trip

More than cars

Hopefully you noticed my blog is never just about cars. I like to try everything electric! This month I will help my dad move some stuff from the summer holiday place. This means I'm looking for a big vehicle! Preferably Renault Master (electric) or the VW e-Crafter. I'm contacting some dealerships and rental agencies myself, but if you know somebody who could help me out, please let me know!

Pricing

Maybe you've seen a tweet or facebook post, it's time to update you on the new Get Charge (Telekom) pricing scheme. When traveling around Germany this is still a welcome ladekarte. But if you're headed elsewhere, please never use their charging card anymore. If only to show them the uselessness of it.

There are a lot of negative points to take in, for example the fact that these tariffs get shared to the clients less than a week before they became protocol. And in fact Get Charge is swinging it positive, because now you can use their charging card all over Europe. But who would!! Diesel seems cheap if you look at this. For me it just proves we are still sharing a 'state of experiment'. Nobody knows when Ionity will start charging kWh prices. It might be at the start of 2020(?). But will they announce this during Christmas?

Plugging

Chargeprice - Der Ladetarifrechner für dein Elektroauto — www.chargeprice.app

Der Ladetarifrechner für dein Elektroauto. Ladedauer eingeben, Ladestation auswählen und den günstigsten Tarif finden.

Laadpas Top 10 | 100% onafhankelijk | Tot 900% goedkoper

Dé enige actuele plek voor álle laadpassen en laadpas aanbieders informatie, 100% onafhankelijk, volledig op jouw situatie afgestemd. Ook voor je laadpas op vakantie!

Personal advice

If you're ordering or receiving your (first) EV soon and are wondering what tactics you will use to charge up daily and when traveling, you can always get in touch so we can discuss your usecase. Email me at [email protected] or reach out on facebook.

If you wish to receive a PDF I made for France, UK, Germany or Spain on local charging cards, apps and so on, link below.

Request advice — electricfelix — www.electricfelix.com

Leave your trip details and I'll return my recommendations and PDF's!

HPC's in Europe

Ever expanding, especially Ionity with a 'finished' network in Austria (that unfortunately still shows some gaps). I keep a personal record on Gmaps updated. Germany is heading towards a 100 Ionity stations quite quickly. Even though France is a nice runner up, it could use many many more still. 2020 has a lot of work ahead.

Felix Hamer's "350kW charging" List — www.google.nl

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

Coup

Berlin, I love you! Sad news from one of my favourite places though. The beautiful Gogoro scooters will leave, after 3 years of happiness especially during my summer visits. What's weird is that the website is still running like normal when I type this. Find more info on their Twitter account. All cities combined, they had 3500 scooters around Europe. Paris and Madrid also seem to be shutting down. What does this mean for competitors? I wonder.

Berlin will still have Emmy. Paris has Cityscoot. Madrid has Acciona (80km/h!)

Felyx (and NIU)

Talking about competitors. It's an interesting period indeed. The local traffic rules in Amsterdam changed over the summer. This made the fleet owned by Felyx a bit less useful: they had Govecs 25km/h devices on the streets. Last week they switched the 100+ machines over to the NIU N1.

This means a big speed upgrade from 28km/h to 45km/h (or a bit faster, I didn't test them yet!) New regulations moved the scooters to the road, in between cars it makes much more sense to ride these vehicles compared to the older slower ones. Design wise I also think it's an upgrade from the Govecs. Painful to notice: several machines already lost one or more foot rests for the second passenger to use. As shown in this picture too, I just noticed it looking at it again now! Of course I will be watching this issue going forward. What I love about the introduction of NIU by Felyx is that while the city already had many NIU devices in the streets, the average electric scooter you will meet actually moving around town has a much bigger chance of being electric. Also it's the best NIU commercial one can think of, congratulations!

I-Pace one year anniversary

Today, one year ago, I took my first I-Pace for a spin. It was a two week adventure with me myself and I (and The Cat) to never forget. A friend made a movie about my first ride to Berlin.

A newspaper wrote about my second trip to Berlin. (Dutch).

Naar Berlijn en terug voor een tientje, in een supersnelle e-bak | Trouw — www.trouw.nl

Felix en Hugo hebben een hobby: ze huren de allernieuwste elektrische auto’s en kijken hoe je snel en goedkoop zo ver mogelijk kunt komen. Freelanc...

And the endless meeting of passengers surprised by the capabilities (or the lack of audio, haha). Back when I did most of these trips my website was not yet online. There might be a story about my first 40.000km I-Pace travels some day. Recently Allego interviewed me, click below to read.

Electric driving nearly for free? Get inspired by Felix! - Allego — www.allego.eu

A short introduction to electricfelix!

That's all for now. Unless there is breaking news this is the last newsletter of 2019. Please like electricfelix on facebook. Follow electricfelix on Twitter. Follow electricfelix on Instagram!

Donate

Yes, it’s possible to donate to keep electricfelix on the road! I wish to do many more discoveries and share them. Some I will encounter online but others will be out there in the real world! Follow the link to help me out, so I can write more charging guides for Europe, do more videos and push out newsletters with crazy pricing updates that will hopefully keep this EV world going fast!

Sponsors

Even though I love to rely on myself and myself alone, driving the Jaguar (or any other EV vehicle) around Europe will never be completely free. If you are looking forward to more guides, more blogs, more updates in the form of this newsletter, I am always open to donations. Just one Ionity charge is already getting me another 250km! Also I’m always open to talk about sponsorships, a banner, a blog about your shop/vehicle/website - if it’s useful to the EV drivers and interested people out there, we can talk! Find me on twitter.com/electricfelix or just sent me an email at [email protected]

Feedback

I would love to hear what you think, about the website, the blog, this newsletter, the PDF guides, how can I help you drive further, faster, and cheaper! Let me know what you think, a reply on this newsletter is also possible of course. See you on the road!

SONO!

Yes, you've made it to the most important part this month. Sono.

Please consider supporting this project, I really hope we will see the Sion on the roads in 2022! If you don't know Sono already, this is a great moment to watch the Fully Charged Show!

There are many things to love about the Sono Sion. The built in sharing capabilities. The fact that it's always gathering energy, without being connected to a charger! The one size fits all model, no options, everybody(!) gets the full package. No colours! They will build just one kind, and produce it for everybody that wants it. Talking to investors they learned some more about the car business. Since the goal of Sono is not to get rich but to build something sustainable for the future, it's hard to find investors. You would think Germany has a Triodos or ASN bank but it might not? Crowdfunding 50 million(!) euros this month is the goal. I won't be taking any donations this December, if you do use my button, I will forward the money to Sono. You can help them out right here. Next to a donation you can also just order a Sion directly and you have the option to invest.

See you in 2020!