2500 km to Finland (and back)

[or1]

I appreciate the long and detailed travel reports that members write. It’s hard to compete with them, but a short summary of my trip may interest some.

Over 12 days I have covered 2500 km (some 1600 miles) in Norway, Sweden and Finland. The point furthest away from home was in Jyväskylä, where the photo was taken. More precisely, it is from Säynätsalo where the Town Hall designed by Alvar Aalto lies. A remarkable piece of architecture.

Driving on good roads and bad, in nice weather and rain, has been great. The car (GTS ST) has behaved excellently, with just a very few glitches, but none surprising. The PCM has crashed a handful of times, and the door locking automatics have locked the doors twice when opening them would have been the proper action.

Charging has gone well, with one exception. I use Ionity whenever I can, and for most of my route the coverage was adequate and capacity sufficient - no queues this time. Three sites in Finland and four in Sweden I now know personally.

But in Jyväskylä there is no Ionity yet, and the MyPorsche app showed a group of charge points that should suit. But I could not find them in real life at all. A Lidl 50 kW charger not far away rescued me. No disaster, then, but it makes me wonder about the quality checks for the charge maps, as the same has happened to me before.

In all, a nice trip. Recommended (with a note of caution when going outside Ionity coverage).

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[tigerbalm]

I appreciate the long and detailed travel reports that members write. It’s hard to compete with them, but a short summary of my trip may interest some.

Don't look at me

No disaster, then, but it makes me wonder about the quality checks for the charge maps, as the same has happened to me before.

It is definitely of questionable quality – and I think – at least in the initial years of Taycan – there was a rush to get to a big "marketable number" of over 100,000 charing points in to the Porsche Charging Service – regardless of the quality.

I think this could be fixed by allowing us to filter by network and to be able to tell route planning to only consider chargers from a set of networks that the user trusts, like: IONITY, FastNed, Tesla, etc.

That feature alone – would go a long way to fixing a number of problems.

Porsche stubbornly continues to think a end-user driver shouldn't have to care – but they do – cause otherwise some suggested charging plans are risky or make no sense.

I am glad you found a working charger in this location!

 

[tigerbalm]

I remember charing in ‎⁨Kilpisjärvi⁩ – a fairly remote location in Lapland, Finland – and they did have this excellent 300 kW charger. But if it didn't work – we would have been in a tricky situation.

 

[TurboInCold]

It is very interesting to read these roadtrip stories and I was very surprised to see the end destination since I happen to live in Jyväskylä.

There are actually plenty of >150kW chargers within radius of 7km from the city center, altogether 50 of them on 10 different sites. Unfortunate that you were not able to find them, atleast most of them seem to be visible for me in porsche app. Some chargers are in middle of large parking lots of grocery stores and the chargers are slim Kempower ones, so perhaps it is easy to miss them?

If you plan to travel in Finland with an EV, I recommend to use https://latauskartta.fi/ to find chargers : it is crowdsourced service which has all DC chargers there are listed. You can even filter with ”only 800V” to max Taycan’s charging.

 

[Scandinavian]

But in Jyväskylä there is no Ionity yet, and the MyPorsche app showed a group of charge points that should suit. But I could not find them in real life at all. A Lidl 50 kW charger not far away rescued me. No disaster, then, but it makes me wonder about the quality checks for the charge maps, as the same has happened to me before.

Very surprised to hear that the navigator could not get directions to the chargers? There are quite a few around according to Chargefinder. I always recommend people to use that app when taking EV on road trips. There is even a Tesla open for all close by, so not necessarily needing many different cards or dongles.
Here are two screenshots, one from ChargeFinder and the other from the MyPorsche app.

 

[or1]

Don't look at me



It is definitely of questionable quality – and I think – at least in the initial years of Taycan – there was a rush to get to a big "marketable number" of over 100,000 charing points in to the Porsche Charging Service – regardless of the quality.

I think this could be fixed by allowing us to filter by network and to be able to tell route planning to only consider chargers from a set of networks that the user trusts, like: IONITY, FastNed, Tesla, etc.

That feature alone – would go a long way to fixing a number of problems.

Porsche stubbornly continues to think a end-user driver shouldn't have to care – but they do – cause otherwise some suggested charging plans are risky or make no sense.

I am glad you found a working charger in this location!

I am indeed looking at you, your reports are among the highlights on this forum.

And I wholeheartedly agree about that thought about filtering charge sites in PCM and app. That would make it go from barely usable to nice when deciding where to charge. Reliability and other features of chargers matter, and they are to some extent connected to provider.

Also, we may drive expensive cars, but the electricity pricing is not unimportant I think. A well functioning market requires that prices may be seen and considered easily.

 

[or1]

It is very interesting to read these roadtrip stories and I was very surprised to see the end destination since I happen to live in Jyväskylä.

There are actually plenty of >150kW chargers within radius of 7km from the city center, altogether 50 of them on 10 different sites. Unfortunate that you were not able to find them, atleast most of them seem to be visible for me in porsche app. Some chargers are in middle of large parking lots of grocery stores and the chargers are slim Kempower ones, so perhaps it is easy to miss them?

If you plan to travel in Finland with an EV, I recommend to use https://latauskartta.fi/ to find chargers : it is crowdsourced service which has all DC chargers there are listed. You can even filter with ”only 800V” to max Taycan’s charging.

Thanks, excellent tip.

Yes, there was/is no lack of chargers. What bothered me a bit was that the HPC I had decided on by using the MyPorsche app map, was «invisible» as far as I could see when driving around for it.

Ionity’s map says they will be in Jyväskylä soon, from my perspective that will be great. Ionity rocks I think.

 

[or1]

Very surprised to hear that the navigator could not get directions to the chargers? There are quite a few around according to Chargefinder. I always recommend people to use that app when taking EV on road trips. There is even a Tesla open for all close by, so not necessarily needing many different cards or dongles.
Here are two screenshots, one from ChargeFinder and the other from the MyPorsche app.

As I wrote in another comment, there is/was no lack of chargers shown on the MyPorsche map. But the one I chose, and set up navigation to, was invisible to me when I got there. But I did not step out of the car to really search for it…

 

[tigerbalm]

I am indeed looking at you, your reports are among the highlights on this forum.

You are very kind in your comments.

And I wholeheartedly agree about that thought about filtering charge sites in PCM and app. That would make it go from barely usable to nice when deciding where to charge. Reliability and other features of chargers matter, and they are to some extent connected to provider.

Additionally, number of charging stalls does not appear to influence routing decisions enough. A 6 stall 150 kW Kempower station should be preferred over a single 300 kW charging location. You are much more likely to not face a queue, handle a broken charger, etc, with the station with many stalls.

But PCM will lean towards the higher rated charging location – even if its riskier. I understand – computationally – why this is a tricky problem. Which is why – as the PCM routing matures – I think Porsche needs to start offering options to users to influence charging location choice.

And they have rolled out one new filter since initial Taycan launch: kW of charging locations – so they just need to continue to roll out additional ones.

 

[Poshfpg]

I think this could be fixed by allowing us to filter by network and to be able to tell route planning to only consider chargers from a set of networks that the user trusts, like: IONITY, FastNed, Tesla, etc.

Forgive me if I’m wrong and I’m not in the car to check but I’m almost certain there’s a tick box for IONITY only in the PCM on top of the only choose 270kw + chargers option.

My experience of long drives in France has shown so many new and different providers of 300kw chargers that the 270+ is the best option there.

Tesla, while brilliant, are a fallback for me where other fast chargers aren’t available.

 

[Scandinavian]

My experience of long drives in France has shown so many new and different providers of 300kw chargers that the 270+ is the best option there.

Tesla, while brilliant, are a fallback for me where other fast chargers aren’t available.

There are HPC nearly every 30 km driving from Nice to Reims! Not all in the Porsche Charging Service though, but still very decent.

Tesla Superchargers are my go to at weekends in high traffic tourist times, like the summer. The Tesla stations are a bit slower, 150 kW in the car, but there are plenty of stalls. No queuing that I have experienced along that route.

 

[Granola]

If you plan to travel in Finland with an EV, I recommend to use https://latauskartta.fi/ to find chargers : it is crowdsourced service which has all DC chargers there are listed. You can even filter with ”only 800V” to max Taycan’s charging.

I'd recommend using Elton app when traveling in the Nordics. It has all the chargers except Tesla.

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