I do one or two trips to France for my Nissan Leaf to have small vacations. In this podcast I cover trips I made to Les Angles in the French Pyrenees and also the trip to Arles. We went to Arles to see a Van Gogh exhibition in a quarry. It was a special light and sound, audiovisual extravaganza. It was like being inside the mind and the pictures of our favourite crazy artist.

Mostly I talk about the journey with the Nissan Leaf. On the way there I ran into difficulties with charges and the same sort of thing on the way back. There were chargers which didn't work when there was supposed to. There were rapid chargers which were present in the PlugShare app, but entirely missing in the street.

The one really good thing is that the travel was for the most part free. I only had to pay to charge the car to 100% at home before we left. Also had to bring the car back to 100% following the vacation when we returned home. It was a trip of 800 km and really the biggest cost was the price of going through the toll gates at the motorway.

It's clear that the infrastructure for electric vehicles is not ready yet. There needs to be a lot more destination chargers at hotels and places for entertainment. Having just one rapid charger in a town is not good enough. There needs to be more charging hubs where more people can charge at the same time. These triple headed charges where only one car can charge had DC rates and maybe sometimes it allows another card to use the AC charger, are not good enough.

 Stupid GPS tried to squeeze me through narrow streets

Maybe I was just stupid to believe what the GPS was telling me. As soon as I made the turn it looked a little bit narrow. It said turn right and then turn right again – Then there was nowhere else to go. I had to reverse back and then I saw another possibility to go forwards and took it. I should have reversed back further and ignored the instructions of the GPS completely. After squeezing through a very narrow alleyway I ended up in a pretty little French village square. I was able to ask for help from someone sitting at a table at a bar. My French is really bad but he was able to help me and tell me I had to return down the narrow street I had just come through.

Blog post for this Podcast

At the end of my small detour I was surprised I managed to survive. I was breathing hard and sweating rather a lot. A huge moment of relief when I made it back to the main road. I was then able to continue round to the car park I was looking for in the Ceret. My bad luck continued with finding the Museum of Modern Art was closed until next month. I won't be able to return until October because my day off is changing to a Monday. Museums tend to be closed on Mondays! So I didn't stay in Ceret very long even though it's this nice small town. Very pretty and very French.

For the next part of the journey I went to another nearby town. I had used the charger in this town previously but I haven't bothered to check the charging speed. This time I wanted to see how many kilowatts were going into the car. The charger in Ceret only puts out 3 kW and I was happy to find that the charger in this other place was giving out 6 kW. The cost of using either of the charges was based upon time. It would cost much more to use the slow charger unless you are staying overnight.

It was picnic time while the car was charging. I added about 6% into the battery. I would have liked to have stayed for longer but was short on time. This shortness of available time also stopped me from using a rapid charger on the way back home. When I finally got back into the house I had a 3% left in the battery. Rosie, my Nissan leaf 2018 was talking to me telling me to go and find a charger as soon as possible. I could have pressed the button on the dash screen. This would have given me options for finding the nearest chargers. I didn't need to do that as I was very nearly home.

On account of not being able to use a rapid charger on the way back home and being short of energy in the battery I wasn't able to use the car in the evening as planned. I had to be a passenger in my wife's fossil fuel burning car. It would have been so much nicer if my wife also had an electric vehicle. Her next car will have to be electric. Mind you, she might never ever buy another vehicle because the last one she kept for 26 years.

 In this episode having a little think about the future of electric vehicles. I am a little bit disappointed with the slow uptake and the patchiness of the charging infrastructure. In Barcelona there is plenty of charging places. When I go north into France I find charging points even in the smallest of villages. This is in contrast to when I went south to Sevilla and for such a large city it only had to rapid chargers. Both of these rapid chargers were provided by the dealerships. One of them was Renault and the other one was from Nissan. There is a possibility that they would have been closed for part of the day. I have already been to a few Nissan dealers were the electric charge is behind a fence or a door. It's only available during the working hours of the dealer.

EV20Q Blog post for this podcast.

 It was lovely to get out and have a drive in my 2018 Nissan Leaf. I went to St Pol De Mar which is just north of Barcelona and I checked out the charging points within the town. There were three of them and in all of the places only the granny charging speeds were available. I could plug into Shuko sockets and get 3.3 kW but it wouldn’t do me any good plug-in into the type II sockets as the Menneke’s sockets weren’t working.

It was a good day out and finally I got to come Calella de Mar and I found a Type II socket which worked. I plugged in and had a wander around the town while the car was doing some charging up. I put about 12% into the battery and I was happy with that. I was able to get back home with 61% in the battery and so it was a good cheap day out driving my 2018 Nissan Leaf.

Check the Web post which also has a Video.

Had to change my plans due the chargers in the shopping centre not working. Plugged in and it looked like it was charging and when I got back to the car it was un-charged. Very disappointing indeed.

Driving electric car in France – Adding charge points to the PlugShare app

After a week in the house not really going anywhere I needed to get out for a drive my car. My Nissan Leaf electric car had been sitting in the garage going nowhere and she needed some exercise. So we set out towards France to find some Révéo electric vehicle charge points and add them to the PlugShare application. I was easily able to visit five of these EV chargers just across the border in a cluster just south of Perpignan. There were some good views in the French countryside and some pretty little villages. I could see the Pyrenees nearby and it was a good day out.

I use one of the chargers in a town near to the coast and was disappointed with the speed of the charging. He came in at a paltry 3 kW and in the 48 minutes I was there added virtually nothing to my battery. So instead of driving all the way to Girona to give one final top up before getting home I pulled into Figueres Nissan dealer. I stayed there until I had sent out present in the battery and then I drove home. The cost of the driving for the day was about €2.50 and it was good to get out in my Nissan Leaf car.

I heard about the new 2019 Nissan Leaf when I arrived back home from a trip to Birmingham. The new car is a bit of an upgrade to the old 2018 car - Bigger battery and faster charging. Not much else apart from a slightly larger screen in the dash. Have a look at EV20Q Website for more details.

Headed for FIgueres for a top up charge while taking a break. Next took the coastal road through Portbou on to Cerberes in France. Used the Révéo  charger while eating pizza and taking advantage of free parking.

Came back home via Girona and didn't plug in at the shopping centre because I didn't want to wait in a long queue to get in the parking where the chargers are situated.

Full post on EV20Q

I went to Ireland and hired a car. It was a petrol car and was like I have gone back in time to the olden days. Had to do so many things manually which the Leaf does for me automatically. Burning fossils, changing gears, switching on headlights and I even had to dip the headlights for myself.

The Gen 2 Nissan Leaf Facebook group is full is helpful users willing to assist new drivers and those who come to look in and kick the tyres. 

Or go to the EV20Q Website and see all the blog posts about electric cars.