My first e-car experience ??

Do you know the situation where you have booked a rental car and then find out at the station that it is neither a petrol nor a diesel, but an electric car ?? Basically, no big deal - after all, I'm all in for new technologies. However, I didn't realize that the journey would turn into an adventure when I picked it up ??

But let's start from the beginning. I was in a hurry to drive from Nuremberg to Offenburg last week. When I picked up the @Renault Zoe, I quickly realized that the electric car was 81% charged, which corresponded to a range of 175 km. I had already expressed concerns from the outset that I didn't have time for longer charging times and that I hadn't yet dealt with the special features of charging ??. But I was assured that the charging network had expanded significantly in recent years and that the waiting times were also different. So it wouldn't be an issue to drive off with the 81% ?? ?? ??.

Full driving pleasure

Well... since there was nothing else available in the rented vehicle class, I had to accept the situation. In fact, the car was great to drive and what can I say - the acceleration was incredible ??????! Especially as a small car, I've struggled with acceleration on the highway in the past - so I found the electric car to be a welcome change!

?

Searching for the charging station

?At around 30%, we started the first Google search. And again, I was surprised - under "Charging station for electric vehicles" the various charging stations are displayed in a similar way to petrol stations. My problem:

• Where do I see the prices per kW/h? ???
• And how much charging power is available at the individual charging stations?
• And what do the designations CHAdeMO, CCS, Type 1, Type 2 mean? ??

Yes, we were shown many charging stations - but in fact we didn't know which was the best option for our vehicle ??. In the end, we chose a charging station near the highway. "Let's go to a fast-charging station! It won't take so much time to charge!" - Yes, exactly ??????

What I learned that night was that the speed of charging a battery at a charging station actually depends on two major factors:

? The charging power of the e-car

? ?The maximum charging power of the charging point, in this case the charging station

What I also learned during the evening: A Renault Zoe has a charging capacity of 50kW. Even if the charging point provides 300kW, it can still be charged with a maximum of 50kW. In fact, the average charging power is only 40.9kW. (Source: https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/elektromobilitaet/tests/schnellladen-langstrecke-ladekurven/)

?And so we waited almost an hour at the nearby petrol station until the battery was at least 90% charged. How much did the charging process cost? EUR 22.55 - which I only found out a few days later because EUR 40 was simply blocked on my credit card. I didn't know how much money had been charged, at least during the charging process. But who knows... maybe I had overlooked it at the charging station. However, at -4 degrees °C I didn't have too much time to look up the figures and data ??

?Freshly charged, it was time to continue – 92% with a range of 223 km. Good thing my target was 225 km. In the end, this meant that another fill-up was unavoidable ??. I tried to reduce fuel consumption by switching to ECO mode and driving at a maximum speed of 100km/h. Driving pleasure really does look different on the highway ??????.

?

App hopping through the various providers

?We wanted to carry out the second charging process in Karlsruhe. We ended up at an EnBW charging station. However, when I scanned the QR code and downloaded the mobility+ app, I was only shown various subscriptions and let's be honest - that makes sense if you basically have an electric car, but for a rental car? Since simply paying with a credit card at this station without registering in the app didn't work, I came up with the glorious idea "It should work with Tesla Energy !". No sooner said than done... off I went to the Superchargers (which, as we now know, wouldn't have done much good, but never mind). There I discovered that there was no other payment option apart from the Tesla app and that registering was associated with some organizational effort ?? . So we went to the next charging station - right next to Tesla’s one. This was the first time I came across a 西门子 charging station. "Great, that should work!" but even in this case, the charging process didn't start despite the correct connection and, as was finally explained to me on the hotline ??, this was a private charging station from a provider that I would need an RFID card to use. So Siemens was the end product here and not my service provider ??. I was told that there were other charging stations in the area and that I should download the Virta app. I was actually on the verge of a nervous breakdown at that moment. How many more apps? ??????

?

The cost situation

?In the end, we drove to another station and - who would have thought it - we had problems again. Fortunately, there was an experienced rental car owner in the parking lot and he gave us directions to the EnBW store without hours of registration. We were delighted! But there was a shortcoming here too! Without an app and subscription, you pay higher prices. The gentleman paid 49ct/kWh, while we simply paid 97ct/kWh ??.

?By now I really didn't care about the prices at all and I was delighted that we had reached our final destination with this charge.

?

The cold as final apponent ??

?When we finally arrived at our destination, we still had 15%. We should easily make it to the next town to recharge the next day. As one does these days, the plan was to go shopping in the meantime. But unfortunately, we had to change our plans... It was -4 degrees at night and it was also below zero during the day. When I switched the car on the next day, there was actually only 6% of the 15% left ??????. That corresponded to a range of 17 km. And since the first station was installed in a private parking facility - despite the orientation app - we ultimately had to drive to a charging station at 壳牌 . And here too - despite calling the hotline ??and asking at the petrol station - the charging station didn't want to charge and, as at the previous petrol station, we found that petrol station staff were generally not instructed in the electronic charging processes and were therefore unfortunately of no help whatsoever.

At this point, special thanks go to the friendly petrol station employee with whom we were finally able to leave our car overnight right in front of the charging station, as we simply couldn't charge and another station was no longer within reach. ??

?What was the end of the story? There was actually another branch of the car rental company directly opposite Shell - who also offered me a diesel in exchange without flinching the next day.

?

Long story short: In my opinion, small electric cars offer neither the range nor the charging power to make long-distance journeys reasonably pleasant ??♀?. A small electric car is great if you're staying within a radius - but be careful when choosing one for longer distances ??. If you want to gain experience with electric cars or are considering buying one, you should definitely gain experience with a wide variety of models. After all, a Tesla and a Renault Zoe are worlds apart ??