Focus wrote up a fine piece this morning over a German couple (from Freiburg...SW Germany), who'd gone and bought a brand new battery-powered VW. They'd done the research and were going to do a trip over into France.
I should note this....for at least five years....the German government and the public news media have blasted away to the public about how E-cars are coming, their great service, and how things are improving month by month to service/charge-up the E-cars.
So the couple took their ID.3 VW and crossed the border. At the conclusion, they sent a 'report' of the trip results to the German Transportation Ministry, which Focus has a copy of the report.
First, the car is advertised to give you around 550 km on one single charge. They left home, and had gotten roughly 178 km, with the 'tank' nearing low. The charge-station they arrived at (on the database)? Broke. Reviewing options and getting advice from a French mechanic....it was best to backtrack a bit, to find the next available operational charge-up site.
Then after getting a partial recharge....they continue on with the route....only to discover that the end-point that they desired for the first day....there was not a charge-station there.
Second, the couple had the VW 'We Charge' card, and access to the various points advertised across Europe for recharging E-cars. Well....along this route, they discovered that the VW card is not widely accepted for charge-up stations in France.
The route that should have gotten the couple to the hotel after ten-odd hours? Well...it took 26 when you consider all of the short-stops and problems encountered.
So what you ought to take out of this business with the E-cars? Maybe across Germany, it's at a marginal point where it can work....if you spend time planning, and hopefully have good maintenance of the charge-up stations.
The day when all of Europe might be ready for E-cars? It won't be 2021, or 2025, or even 2030. If you were to draw a circle of 25 km around you with 150 charging stations possible....the question is....how many are actually operational? 99-percent? 75-percent? 40-percent? Even if one is reported at 10 PM last night as broke....when will the maintenance guy arrive? At 7 AM, the next day....or four days away? Even if you have three different 'Charge-It' cards (from VW, x-company, and y-company).....will that be enough to handle all of the 40,000 charge-it stations in France or Spain?
It's stories like this that keep bringing Germans back to reality....that a E-car mandate could leave you in some French village....with a dead battery, and six charge-it stations nearby.....which all seem to be broke at the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment