Hi, the company I will work for in Switzerland provide free chargers for the employees EV's.
One of my goals working on ch is to travel and visit cities nearby, let's say 3~4h (~350km) driving on the weekends or taking the Friday for example.
And one/two long trips at the year on my vacations (900km max).
Talking about money, today I use around 15~20000km/y, that means around CHF 2300~3000 in gas/diesel I think, plus CHF 500 of federal tax that doesn't need to pay.
I really don't know if it's better to go gas/diesel, PHEV or full electric.
Today I have a Jeep Compass, I would like to buy a car with similar trunk size, not too small like a VW Golf for example.
What's your toughs about the electric system and travels?
There is some app to plan travels and see the charging station locations?
I did a simulation with Tesla model 3 and Audi E-tron, Tesla with supercharger can save two stops and 1h in a route from Bruchs, SG → Firenze → Siena → Arezzo → Buchs.
And from Buchs to Blois/Tours in France the travel with Tesla has 8 stops total.
It’s not impossible, now I need to see if I can save money going electric or if it’s not the time yet.
I don’t know how can you deal with the fact that the route plan consider only 10% of battery left, hehehe
You need to hope that the charger will be working, otherwise you will have troubles.
I have been doing some checks locally and with some friends with Tesla/Audi full electric and the main challenge is using fast electric chargers on the road. There are only a minory of fast chargers available (=max 30min for full recharge) and they are normally super busy during vacation times.
This is still a mjor limitation if you are not doing point to point known routes..
The other comment I am gettting is that "travel-mode" is different and it should not be taken on a hurry for long distances...
The big problem is charging your car. Most people when they arrive at a service station or rest area put their car on charge, even if not needed, but to ensure they have as much power as possible. If busy that means you have to wait till one becomes free.
Took a friend of my son twice as long to get to Holland from Milan as did my son in his petrol car. Not once did he not have to wait for a charging station to be free and it took him about 2 hours to fully charge. It also meant he had to stay overnight in Germany - an extra expense.
So factor in the extra time and is it still worth running an electric car? For in town use and short journeys from home, yes, but for long distances I'd say no!
I was looking the prices, T-cross 1.5 TSI almost 40k, Id.4 52.4k.
Considering I can save 10k on gas (charging at work), and tax (4 year free), will be probably even or a little advantage to electric. But not as good as I wish. Id.3 is cheaper 47.9k, but I don't know the ID cars, to know which one is more like the T-cross for example.
Tesla chargers usually have more stalls available - but they might be located a bit off the autobahn.
So, it's a trade-off.
I would only buy an ICE car as of today, if I needed to tow a big trailer regularly over long distances - or if my budget did not allow for a decent EV with reasonable range and charge-speed.
Many people don't want or simply can't spend on 60k on a car.
Also, if you only allow charging with 3kW, it's not that bad. And they may limit the charging-time (or simply the amount of energy, e.g. only allow 16kWh per day per car).
That again, would make choosing an economic car a no-brainer....
Don't think so, it's a company that develops electronic components for automotive market, including the chargers they offer to employees. And all the energy of the building is already provided by solar panel.
I drive a Polestar 2 and I have around 18000 km during the last 8 months on it. I didn't yet go abroad with it so cannot comment on that. But inside Switzerland, I really didn't have a problem with charging in terms of availability or waiting. Except maybe once last December in an Ionity station in Chur: I was planning on it but when I arrived it was busy. So I had to move to the next station around 20km away. It was still on my way so in the end didn't really make a big difference.
The point is that the public, fast chargers are in fact in good shape here. I commute between Lausanne and Zurich quite often and there are so many fast chargers in that route.
On a daily basis, I charge at home so the car is always near full range (90% state of charge) when I get of the door. It means unless I'm traveling, I really don't care for the public chargers.
One final thing to keep in mind for the longer travels is that fully charging an EV, from a few percents to 100% is something you don't typically do. Due to the way the charging curves work, you most probably want to have more stops but making them shorter by going e.g. from 10% to 60% (the exact numbers depends on the car). This way you save more time than having fewer stop by going above 80% or even reaching 100%.
Yes, I'm concluding that EV is better for daily use of 20~50km for sure.
In my case living 1~2km from work I will not gain compared to PHEV car.
And for travels 300~400km total I have doubts if PHEV will be worth compared to gas/diesel without recharge the battery at destination, considering to that only at work on fridays.
Most of my driving is within Switzerland. In October 2019 I drove to the UK (and back obviously) the Tesla Supercharger network is superb and there were absolutely no queues - in fact I was usually the only car charging - even at the channel tunnel. LR with acceleration boost.
This September I will be driving to the Atlantic coast of France...