What I learnt driving an electric car 1,500 miles across Europe

A two-week European road trip isn’t everyone’s idea of a fun family holiday, but I somehow persuaded my wife and kids it would beat our usual beach holiday on the west coast of France. The catch? We’d be ditching our trusty petrol-powered car for an electric car.

Our plan was to take a Changan Deepal S05 (you'll be able to read my first-drive review of this electric SUV next month) on a round trip from the UK, passing through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. 

Endless miles spent navigating everything from high-speed autobahns to winding alpine passes is challenging enough, but we now had the added task of adjusting to living with an EV. And as the sole driver, it was on me to ensure we didn’t find ourselves out of battery power in some remote part of Austria.

I’ll admit to a few butterflies when an EV-owning neighbour raised a concerned eyebrow at my trip, but after reminding myself of the sheer number of charge points on the route, I quickly brushed aside his misgivings.

However, despite endless research and route-planning, it wasn’t all plain sailing. Here are my top tips for anyone considering taking an EV abroad.

1. Get a charge point subscription

Without doubt, my top tip is to reduce (and potentially slash) your charging costs by getting a charge point subscription, which typically offers big discounts for a monthly fee. This tip applies to anyone who does a lot of public charging in the UK, but especially so to those driving abroad because you'll likely have to use public chargers exclusively.

There are various options (Shell Recharge, BP Pulse and more), so it’s a case of seeing what’s on offer and matching it with whichever brand appears most on your chosen route.

For my trip, Ionity chargers were the most prevalent, so I went for its top-tier Ionity Power plan, which costs £10.50 per month and can be cancelled at any time. In return, you get rapid charging from 47p/kWh in the UK (Ionity’s standard rate is 79p/kWh when paid for via its app), with similar discounts in Europe.

It took me just two discounted charge sessions for the subscription to pay for itself.

However, you need to be realistic about how much you’ll use it. Whether by choice or necessity, road trips rarely go entirely to plan, and sure enough my strategy to charge almost exclusively using Ionity was soon scuppered.

In the end, just 7 of my 19 charging sessions were with Ionity, but the subscription still saved me around £50. Depending on the brand of chargers on your route, signing up for subscriptions with two providers would allow for more flexibility and, potentially, greater savings.

You can see my full list of charging stops in the table below.

*Prices calculated on final GBP amount debited from UK bank account and includes any transaction and connection fees.

2. Consider an EV charge card (but be aware of drawbacks)

Charge points in mainland Europe accept payment via multiple methods. Most let you pay simply by tapping a debit or credit card, but this often means you’ll have to jump through hoops to get a receipt (including filling out online forms) and can result in pre-authorisation fees that take days to clear.

For ultimate convenience, consider getting an EV charge card, which lets you use a single card to initiate and pay for charging sessions across numerous brands of charger. Various options are available and they’re usually free – you just need to register and set up a payment method.

I already had an Octopus Electroverse card and, to my amazement, it worked seamlessly on every single charger. I simply had to tap the card on the reader and the charging session began. Better still, by paying for my Ionity subscription via Electroverse, the discounted rate was automatically applied when using Ionity charge points.

Seconds after completing each charge, I got a notification showing precisely the total cost, amount of electricity supplied, time, date, location and more. My entire charging history is also stored neatly in the app.

However, I discovered this convenience occasionally comes at a cost. Some charge points (such as Shell Recharge) reward you with a discounted rate if you use their app, so the convenience of my Electroverse card meant I paid around 25% more.

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3. Check charge points status and treat 20% battery as empty

Just as in the UK, EV chargers can suffer faults, so do what you can to verify the next top-up session you've planned won’t be scuppered by an out-of-service charger.

Services such as Google Maps, Electroverse and Zapmap give you an idea of charger status, but be aware things can change rapidly; a charger flagged as working might develop a fault by the time you reach it.

After I came up against a bank of out-of-service chargers at my very first UK stop on the way to the Channel Tunnel terminal in Folkestone, I made a promise to identify backup chargers for each planned stop and treat 20% remaining charge as empty, giving me plenty of wiggle room if things went badly wrong. 

Having a backup charger (and enough range to get there) is also useful if you're simply not keen on your chosen charge stop when you arrive. One of our few late-night stops was located in a completely deserted, closed and poorly lit petrol station in Merklingen, Germany. While we never really felt unsafe, it was a little unnerving being the only car there.

I also learnt not to fully trust Google Maps to identify charge points. On my travels, it occasionally failed to spot nearby rapid chargers, hiding some that it incorrectly deemed as being incompatible with my car.

Google Maps even directed me to a charger at what appeared to be an exclusive German golf club. I didn't get close enough to verify, but I suspected it was intended for patrons only and my suggestion to squeeze in a round of golf was swiftly vetoed.

Instead, we headed for my backup charger, which turned out to be the most bizarre of the entire trip: four 400kW chargers located down a remote track surrounded by farm machinery. I’ll admit to a big sigh of relief when I spotted the chargers in the undergrowth.

4. Don't expect clear pricing info

EV charging in mainland Europe might typically be cheaper than equivalent UK chargers (around 10p/kWh cheaper, in my experience), but be prepared that sometimes the cost of a specific charger might not be clear until the money leaves your account.

As you’ll see in my charging table above, the most expensive charger was also the slowest – a 22kW charger (that struggled to deliver more than 6kW) in a typically tight underground car park of a hotel in Saarbrücken, Germany. The front desk had no idea what the cost was and there was no pricing info next to the charger.

The only way I found it out was by using my Electroverse card to start a short session, then checking how much it cost.

Despite it being painfully slow and expensive, we'd arrived much later than planned, and having my car fully charged while I slept proved too much to resist. However, I avoided repeating this and stuck to cheaper rapid chargers from then on.

5. Use estimated remaining range with care

As our lab tests frequently highlight, EVs become much less efficient when being driven at speed, especially with the aircon at full blast in an effort to combat the heatwave temperatures. 

The Changan Deepal S05 actually managed to fairly accurately estimate the remaining range when driving in urban areas (often underestimating range, if anything). However, when heading from Freiburg to Calais along the German autobahns and French autoroutes, I was alarmed to see the remaining range dropping much faster than the actual distance to my destination. 

At one point, I had less than 30km range when I reached my charge point, when I’d expected at least 60km. Had that charge point not been working, I might still be in France to this day.

This isn’t a problem unique to the Deepal S05 I was driving (and you'll be able to read more about it in my first-drive review of the car next month), but it’s a reminder to keep an eye on how fast your remaining range is dropping and adjust your charge sessions accordingly.

6. Prepare for more stops

EVs rarely match the range offered by petrol, diesel and hybrid cars, so be prepared for frequent charging sessions. Over the course of my trip, I made a total of 19 charging stops (a few were for very short top-ups while we grabbed a drink). Had I been driving my petrol-powered car, it would have been around 4 stops.

How long your stops take ultimately depends on the maximum charge speed of your car (mine was 200 kW) and what the charger is capable of (almost all I used were over 150 kW). Excluding my sole overnight charge, the longest was 49 minutes, with most taking around 15-25 minutes. And when you’re putting in the miles, that’s a welcome – and indeed, sensible – break.

If you’re so inclined, you’ll likely find fellow EV owners keen to share their experiences, such as the couple from Stuttgart I spoke to who were totally besotted by their Skoda Enyaq, and equally intrigued by the Changan Deepal S05 I was driving. 

You also get to charge at some incredibly picturesque charge points.

7. Forget free charging

A few years ago, it wasn't uncommon to find free EV chargers at supermarkets and tourist attractions in the UK. Sadly, they've all but disappeared, and free chargers in mainland Europe seem to have suffered the same fate. 

Despite hearing about free options at hotels, shopping centres and the like, I didn’t spot a single free charger on my trip.

In fact, some of these 'destination' chargers turned out to be the most expensive. I’m not saying there aren’t any free chargers at all (Zapmap suggests a few exist), but you’d be very lucky to find one on your route, and even luckier for it to be available when you arrive.

Would I do it again?

You can't hide from the fact that taking an EV abroad requires more planning and stops compared to petrol, diesel and hybrid cars.

You also have to be realistic and expect a couple of failed charging attempts (either due to out-of-service chargers or them all being in use when you arrive).

However, I suspect my next car will be an EV and, based on my two-week road trip, I'd have no hesitation in taking it abroad.

Whether in cities, towns, the autobahn or the Alps, charging options (often of the rapid variety) are plentiful. I didn't even mind having to stop more often – in fact, I enjoyed the regular breaks.

Some charging stations were also mind-bogglingly big, such as the one pictured below in Merklingen, Germany, where I counted well over 50 rapid chargers.

Bear in mind that unless you almost exclusively use charge points for which you have a subscription that provides a decent discount, it’s unlikely you’ll save money compared to fuelling a petrol, diesel or hybrid car. My European charging totalled just over £285 – a Nissan Qashqai e-Power full hybrid, averaging 50mpg, would have cost around £200.

So while I wouldn't get an EV in the hope of cheaper European travel, I certainly wouldn't avoid driving one abroad.

And finally, don’t rely on your sat nav

It’s not specific to EVs, but my bonus tip is to not rely solely on your sat nav. Always plan and map out your route prior to long journeys.

Driven by a sense of nostalgia, I purchased numerous paper maps with which to plan my routes, but I'm ashamed to say I barely used them. Instead, I defaulted to relying on directions via Google Maps, and things took a turn for the worse (quite literally) in Austria.

Following a long, dusty and claustrophobia-inducing mountain tunnel earlier in the trip, I was told in no uncertain terms to avoid the 14km Arlberg Tunnel.

I therefore instructed Google Maps to route us through the centre of Arlberg, which would instead see us winding through mountains via the Arlberg Pass (the lesser of two evils, as far as some of my passengers were concerned). 

Unfortunately, Google Maps didn’t register us as passing the centre of Arlberg. So after navigating the winding roads of the mountain pass, we found ourselves being directed back to Arlberg, through the very tunnel we’d tried to avoid.

After emerging unscathed (aside from the €13.00 toll), I then had to prepare my passengers for a second go at the mountain pass.