[JW_77]

Hi all,

Planning a family holiday at the end of August into Germany using the Eurotunnel and driving the whole way.

Start will be south of England to the Eurotunnel where I think I will need to charge on the other side. Then onto Bonn for the first day (hope to fill up overnight at the hotel).
Day 2 will be down to the south of Germany near the Blackforest. Then after a week we will make our way back via a stop over in Luxembourg.

Basically does anyone have any tips on where/how to plan charging stops? I have ABRP which I was planning on using. Are there any accounts that are useful to setup for a one off trip or just pay as you go with CC? For example, can we leave the car in a charging bay for the whole day while we explore a nearby city or are there limits to how long you can stay?

Thanks all.

[GDEvans]

If you are doing a motorway trip before you go, it may be worth calibrating ABRP to your style of driving. I did this on a 100 mile trip by noting the battery % on departure and arrival. I then created the exact journey on ABRP with the same departure %. Then, under settings, if you turn off "Automatic Settings" you can adjust the "Reference consumption @ 65 mph". I changed this, and recalculated the journey, until the arrival battery % matched the actual % in the vehicle. For my driving I found this to be 3.02 mi/kWh.

[GDEvans]

I used a Tesla supercharger recently. Worked perfectly, and significantly cheaper than the other ultra fast chargers. I suspect they are cheaper on the continent too. When you are registered as a non-Tesla owner, the map only shows the superchargers that are available to you.

Probably worth downloading the Tesla app and registering before you go. I think their monthly subscription is £8.99, and that gives you even cheaper prices. It can be cancelled at any time, so you could cancel it on your return.

One thing to be aware of is the older Superchargers have short cables. You have to use the cable from the bay to the right of your vehicle (when reversed in), so you effectively take up two bays.

Also, despite having my credit card details, Tesla did not automatically take payment for my charge. When I went into the app a couple of days later I noticed there was an invoice waiting for me. I don't know what the grace period is for non payment before they stop you charging again.

As a backup, I would make sure you are registered with Ionity - you should be able to use your BMW charging card without the need for a monthly subscription. They have a good network across Europe and are very reliable. But they significantly more expensive than Tesla.

[JW_77]

Good tips.

I don't think I will bother too much with calibrating ABRP, unless you mean it was really inaccurate out the box? I hope we won't be going too close to 'empty' before finding the next charge point.

I will look into the Tesla app though, get that downloaded and account setup. I also have Ionity/BMW charge card so will make sure those are working too.

[GDEvans]

Originally Posted by JW_77

Good tips.

I don't think I will bother too much with calibrating ABRP, unless you mean it was really inaccurate out the box? I hope we won't be going too close to 'empty' before finding the next charge point.

ABRP was out by 10% on my remaining charge. For a 125 mile journey it was reporting that I should be on 27% battery remaining. After completing the journey, I had 37% remaining. So it was underestimating my total range by about 25 miles. And calibrating it only took 5 minutes.

[handymanuk]

I did a 2000 mile round trip to Munich from Bristol in Sept last year, in my iX3. It took quite a bit of forward planning. I think in the end, we made about 20 charging stops over the week but these were quick ones, 15-20mins max. I found that to be the most efficient way to travel. I had my charging card from BMW and therefore was able to make use of discounted Ionity chargers, again, this took some planning! Some of the chargers were located in strange areas, such as an industrial estate, but most were at service stations. Be aware that some of these are only available when heading one direction, not both sides of the autobahn, even if there are services both sides.

The car will easily get up to top speed on the Autobahn but just be aware that this will really drain your battery at a much faster rate than normal. More of the autonomous driving functions are available in Germany than in the UK, such as traffic light recognition and emergency lane creation.

A tip I would give, never plan to go below 10% before needing to charge and always plan a suitable back up charging location if your first choice is busy/broken.

It was more hassle than doing the trip in an ICE car for sure, but we planned stops around lunch/snack time and it turned out to be all part of the fun to be honest!

[adam.b]

Set up in app when planning routes to use only yours desire charging operators.
Works fine for me currently as we are in Spain, set up ionity and tesla as only chargers.
Two years ago been to Croatia, needed to use ionity app to plan or abrb app as bmw app wasn't planing charging stops.
Check if you require sticker to enter city centres in germany, something similar to citair in france, but gernamy each city requires seperate if I'm not wrong.
Any extra fees for overstaing plug in or serton period normaly clearly stated on chargers.
On fully charged ix3 doing top speed (117mil/h) all the way will last you for about ~180miles / 290km 😁

[Goaty]

Hi, two years ago (when I had a Skoda Enyaq 80) I pretty much exclusively used Ionity chargers around Europe; I had a special rate through Skoda’s PowerPass app which cost me £120 / year if I remember correctly but it did give me a massively reduced rate at Ionity’s fast chargers (roughly equivalent to 30 pence per kW/h) - which were generally plentiful, well spaced (ie at least one every two hundred miles on main routes) and usually pretty empty :-) I don’t know if BMW offer any reduced rates at Ionity chargers; I won’t get my iX3 until the end of the year (as far as I know).

[GDEvans]

Originally Posted by Goaty

Hi, two years ago (when I had a Skoda Enyaq 80) I pretty much exclusively used Ionity chargers around Europe; I had a special rate through Skoda’s PowerPass app which cost me £120 / year if I remember correctly but it did give me a massively reduced rate at Ionity’s fast chargers (roughly equivalent to 30 pence per kW/h) - which were generally plentiful, well spaced (ie at least one every two hundred miles on main routes) and usually pretty empty :-) I don’t know if BMW offer any reduced rates at Ionity chargers; I won’t get my iX3 until the end of the year (as far as I know).

BMW used to offer preferential rates for Ionity. But the current deal is more expensive than taking out an Ionity subscription directly! The best prices in the UK currently are the Tesla SuperChargers. I assume they are also cheaper across Europe.

[sahajesh]

Sign up for Tesla and Ionity.

I have used ABRP a few times for Euro trips and navigation, now I just manually plan for Tesla (first) and Ionity (second choice) using Google Maps.

Manual planning lets me see what’s nearby eg Tesla at Dunkirk is in a shopping mall with an Auchan so can charge and do some shopping.

If I am going somewhere where they are I’m short supply very close to my destination (Nurburgring), I will use ABRP for last-mile charging tips.

Yeah going at top speed in the car will kill the range, but it’s worth it

[JW_77]

Thanks all. The trip was pretty painless actually and we covered about 1800km in a week. I used ABRP to find charging stops along the way, but in truth they were plenty and evenly spaced out. I used Ionity once but just paid directly at any chargers I found. The only place that was a pain was in Luxembourg where there was a charger in the car park opposite the hotel we used - the charger required downloading their app specifically which then wouldn't install on my UK mobile! (region locked) We came right by speaking to the adjacent hotel (our hotel was useless) who could charge the car for us and then we paid them directly.

Driving long distance on electric only is not too bad in Europe.

(Incidentally we also did a UK camping trip at the beginning of August, driving 230 miles into Wales with a trailer and roof box, 4 people in the car. One stop along the route and sticking to 60mph on the motorway and no issues there either)

[sahajesh]

I used ABRP for the first of 3 Euro trips this year, got bored of it very quickly.

In the end I did basic planning beforehand for the next 2 trips using a mix of Ionity and Tesla and picked places near shops, places to eat etc.

Easy enough to do and much more reliable than ABRP - you could use it as a backup maybe in case your chosen charge stop is full with a long wait or has some broken chargers.

[GDEvans]

Originally Posted by sahajesh

In the end I did basic planning beforehand for the next 2 trips using a mix of Ionity and Tesla and picked places near shops, places to eat etc.

The only problem I have experienced using the Tesla Superchargers at Cribbs Causeway in Bristol is that, due to the speed of charging, it is often difficult to get much further than John Lewis before needing to return to the car!!