Visiting France

[OriginalBigAl]

Was that Yorkshire, North Yorkshire , West Yorkshire or the Peoples Republic of South Yorkshire other Yorkshires may be available, they can be a bit picky don,t you know!

 

[Rolfe]

West Yorkshire. The good town of Halifax, as it happens.

 

[Nibloprice]

Hi All, I’m new to EV and lovin’ it. We’re taking a trip to Centre Parcs (west of Paris) and have signed up to Chargemap. In their guide booklet they say to charge at 22kw stations I need a Type 3c cable to connect to French charging points. Is this correct?? (I have a 3phase type 2 male to type 2 female cable)
Cheers

Hi
we took our Mk 1 MG to the Centre Parcs near Laon last summer. Relatively easy to charge up. But centre parcs do not have deidcated charge points. They did however allow us to use granny charger at the reception parkign area. It was quite popular over the week so we had to keep looking to see if it was free. get a good quality 3 pin adapter too as our adapter got v hot!

have fun
nick

 

[DB Go Rex]

Hi
we took our Mk 1 MG to the Centre Parcs near Laon last summer. Relatively easy to charge up. But centre parcs do not have deidcated charge points. They did however allow us to use granny charger at the reception parkign area. It was quite popular over the week so we had to keep looking to see if it was free. get a good quality 3 pin adapter too as our adapter got v hot!

have fun
nick

I'm surprised they allow EV charging from standard outlets for the reasons you gave!

 

[WonkoTheSaneUK]

I'm surprised they allow EV charging from standard outlets for the reasons you gave!

The site likely didn't know how hot a granny plug can get, or they wouldn't have allowed it.

 

[erac]

Just driven ~650 miles on a beach/camping holiday to France. the Electroverse card worked well on the autoroute but failed miserably at a Freemile/Ivizia charger which was shown in the Electroverse app as compatible. I ended up using the URL on a sticker on the charger to set up charging via their web-page. An honourable mention to "Aire de Repos La Dentelle d'Alençon" where staff managed a queuing system for the limited number of chargers on a very busy weekend.

Off topic but I switched from miles to kilometres in France (a 2024 MG4 SE LR so no GPS hence the car couldn't detect it was in France). While I think the Traffic Sign Recognition is abysmal at the best of times, it just wouldn't recognise any speed limit above 70 (kph). Is it just a coincidence that that is the highest speed limit in the UK (70mph)?

 

[Paul Mason]

Last year I took my MG5 SR to France and used Electroverse almost exclusively. I now have an MG5 Trophy and this year, I have obtained a Bornes Lib RFID card from their website. It's another aggregation card like Electroverse, but on most sites, a little cheaper. For example, at Isvizia at McDonald's Barentin, it is 35c per kWh on Electroverse, 35c on the Isvizia app (30c during 'happy hour') but 29c on Borne Lib.

 

[DB Go Rex]

Last year I took my MG5 SR to France and used Electroverse almost exclusively. I now have an MG5 Trophy and this year, I have obtained a Bornes Lib RFID card from their website. It's another aggregation card like Electroverse, but on most sites, a little cheaper. For example, at Isvizia at McDonald's Barentin, it is 35c per kWh on Electroverse, 35c on the Isvizia app (30c during 'happy hour') but 29c on Borne Lib.

Chargemap card is also another option in France.

 

[Thebiglad]

I have found that the Chargemap card works well all over France. Now including the Tesla Supercharger network.

 

[Rookery]

On my journey to Lincolnshire Friday I tried the new Gridserve app for the first time on my MG5 LR 2021 (pre facelift) the app wouldn't get past initiating charge so I moved to a different charger but the app kept showing initiating charge so I couldn't charge as the app wouldn't let me because the app was still linked to the first charger. Two days later after uninstalling the app twice plus other things it is still locked on the charger and I an an hour away from that charger now. My only option was to open a new account under a different email address. It now shows ready to charge but I have no Gridserve near me to test it. Has anyone else had this problem?
PS I managed to charge on Gridserve using my credit card but at full price

 

[fnegroni]

I’ll most likely need to use it in the next few days will let you know how it goes. Incidentally the other day I was contemplating whether to charge at a slightly less convenient GRIDSERVE using the discount or at what I would consider a more reliable but more expensive Sainsbury’s en-route to my destination. Fortunately I didn’t have to charge at all (I saw 5.9 miles per kWh on my way to central London from the office at some point ? and that was with the HVAC on) and instead charged yesterday near home at a Tesla which was both cheaper and more reliable, from 26% to 90% (35.8kWh) in just under 47 minutes. And Tesla as usual gave me the last .8 kWh free.

 

[fnegroni]

I’m now charging at a GRIDSERVE using their app.
Although it wasn’t as guided as I thought it could be for a first time use of the app, I just kind of winged it and once I selected the charger on the app, while choosing Apple Pay as payment method and letting the app process that, in the meanwhile I just plugged the charger into the charging port and the app at that point was saying initialising… as the charger screen was also saying.
I didn’t bother to shut down the car first because I had forgotten too, and it seemed to be taking a few more seconds than I had liked to initialise so while that was going on I just locked the car using the fob and as I started to walk away both the app and the charger showed ‘charging’ and the charging rate.
Should have taken a video admittedly will do next time when I’m less tired…

I was also a good citizen and chose a 50kW bay as I was stopping for about half an hour and didn’t need to charge to full from about 40% and I was averaging 4.5 miles per kWh on mostly motorway from east London down to Bognor Regis.

The app shows the charging curve which in my case is only mathematically as such… although the mg4 se sr can charge at way above 50kW at 42% charge (Tesla achieves 70kW) , this charger was maxed out at 30kW and there was no one next to me.