Travels ...

[JohnInFrance]

We're currently in Lagos in SW Portugal having driven down via the Pyranees, across to the east coast of Spain and a lap of Gibralter in the ZS EV - to be honest, it wasn't our first choice of car for this trip, but our Merc decided to eat itself about 60km south of Bordeaux, so we limped it home and jumped into the ZS for a 'real adventure'.

It's been interesting so far; charging through France and Spain has been pretty simple and painless, Gibralter has two charge points, both Tesla destination chargers and both only available to the guests of the hotels they are located in anyhow, so as we were not stayin on the rock but in Spain, we couldn't use them even if we did have a Tesla. I'm certain we were the only (modern) MG in Gibralter and likely as not the only fully electric car.

Portugal appears to be a bit of a barren wasteland when it comes to chargers and the ones that are around are almost all slow (22kW max) and exepnsive. We did find a 43kW DC charger at a Galp station on the autoroute north of Faro, that was rudely expensive! Charging and running an EV here is certainly not an easy thing to do, but we're still going and not run out of electrons yet!

This is our track so far, heading home on Monday via the western route, so wish us luck!

 

[Tiny Tim]

We're currently in Lagos in SW Portugal having driven down via the Pyranees, across to the east coast of Spain and a lap of Gibralter in the ZS EV - to be honest, it wasn't our first choice of car for this trip, but our Merc decided to eat itself about 60km south of Bordeaux, so we limped it home and jumped into the ZS for a 'real adventure'.

It's been interesting so far; charging through France and Spain has been pretty simple and painless, Gibralter has two charge points, both Tesla destination chargers and both only available to the guests of the hotels they are located in anyhow, so as we were not stayin on the rock but in Spain, we couldn't use them even if we did have a Tesla. I'm certain we were the only (modern) MG in Gibralter and likely as not the only fully electric car.

View attachment 11826

Portugal appears to be a bit of a barren wasteland when it comes to chargers and the ones that are around are almost all slow (22kW max) and exepnsive. We did find a 43kW DC charger at a Galp station on the autoroute north of Faro, that was rudely expensive! Charging and running an EV here is certainly not an easy thing to do, but we're still going and not run out of electrons yet!

This is our track so far, heading home on Monday via the western route, so wish us luck!

View attachment 11827

Though I'm still to get my car here in Portugal, I think you'll fair better at motorway services/ some supermarkets/fast food outlets and larger cities. If I tell you they are building a brand new BP petrol station in a nearby town, then that probably gives you an idea (I don't yet know if there will be a charger there...).

Allegedly, per head of population, Portugal is good for chargers - but it's a country with just a little more than the population of London spread over an area around 60 times bigger than London - finance is a numbers game in the end and there just isn't the numbers to make it work.

To be fair, when I get the car I will likely only charge a handful of times a year away from home on motorway journeys, so I'm not going to help the cause when I do get one.

 

[Coulomb]

wish us luck!

Yes, good luck and thanks for the report so far.

 

[JohnInFrance]

Well, we finished the trip and got back in one piece. The only problems we had were charging in Portugal, to say it's a bit of a mission is an understatement, however we did prevail.

18 days, just over 4100kms and the car worked just fine (apart from the usual steering clunk over every bump and corner).

However, the icing on the cake was a call today as we were passing San Sebastian from our dealer saying that after 7 months our replacement steering column has finally arrived and they will collect the car on the 31st to fit it - yay!

To be fair, I really didn't have high hopes that we would make it all the way around, and we did have a couple of minor problems, but nothing we couldn't fix ourselves and the car basically acquitted itself really well.