Just driven from Welwyn Garden to Bruges then to Lille and back , Xmas markets in Brugge and Lille are really nice.
What a journey!!!!!
DO NOT drive to Ashford tunnel in hope that you will be able to charge there!!!
At the terminal there are 6 Tesla charges that do not work with ZS EV (despite having CSS plug) and 2 standard chargers (one of them is broken) for the remaining one - there was a stupid queue. So, use the charges just before the turning for chunnel tunnel.
I have attempted to use the Tesla charger but it would not work ( have tried two differest Tesla chargers ) - gave me an extra of grey hair – car did get stuck in Parking or Neutral mode for a few minutes, even when I had unplugged the charger. After dancing around the car in the rain, plugging and praying, swearing a lot, pressing buttons in the car and on remote (actually, did help in the end) locked the car and unlocked again, it realised that it is no longer connected and let me drive off, but with all that stupidity I have lost about 7% of charge in the battery and gaine quite a few extra gray hairs.
There are IONITY chargers 5 minutes from the tunnel on the other side (0.69 euro). They can give 150 Kw but I have seen highest 80KW on my ZS EV, loaded to 85%. That was more than enough to get to Bruges. But they were not the first chargers I have attempted to use ABRP has advised to use Elecra charges, well, DON'T bother, they do not accept a direct payment, requiring you to register ad receive special card (what sort of business would refuse to accept money for the service they provide!!!!!!!! unless you regiester and you can only reside in france!!!!).
Situation with chargers on the continent is the pain in the arse. There are tons of them, even the powerful ones up to 350kw, but every single provider insists on sending in you a charging card and most of them only deal with either France or Belgium only, most won’t let you charge even if you wanted to pay with your debit/credit card . So planning is crucial. I would suggest also to use Bonnet app if not for paying then for Identifying charges that would allow direct payments, also another app – “smoov” is good for identifying those.
So yeah, infrastructure in UK is by far more rubbish (slow chargers) and way more expensive fast ones that in Europe, main grudge is that if charger is broken it is unlikely will be repaired any time soon.
I think I will be buying a VW Tuareg for a long journeys and keep ZS EV for day to day drives. Infrastructure is just not there to support on demand charging for EVs especially on the drives to remote places like lake district or Cornwall.