Lupin
Member
- First Name
- David
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2020
- Threads
- 1
- Messages
- 21
- Reaction score
- 42
- Location
- Oxfordshire, UK
- Vehicles
- Taycan 4S
- Thread starter
- #1
I have been waiting to try a long distance trip in the Taycan for a while, so after after a fair amount of route planning my wife and I headed off this week, We left Oxford at 6 am for our Journey, via the channel tunnel to Lake Como in Italy.
Our first stop was at Maidstone services after 120 miles. This wasn’t really necessary for charging but I wanted to get a bit of reserve in the battery before leaving the country. Unfortunately all four Ionity chargers were completely dead. A call to Ionity service line yielded only a suggestion that I use Zap Map to find an alternative. This was particularly disappointing as I would be depending on the usually reliable Ionity network for the whole European road trip
We went to the next Ionity site at the Channel Gateway services hoping this would work. However, as soon as we turned off the motorway, it was clear the Ionity site was gridlocked by traffic queueing for petrol. We eventually got access to the charging station with the assistance of a helpful marshal and entering through the exit road. We got a small charge whilst we sat watching a zombie apocalypse played out in front of the adjacent petrol pumps. Unfortunately we only had time for 13 minutes of charging because we had to go to a scheduled Covid test (needed for entrance into Italy)
After the test we drove to the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone. I thought we would use the time waiting to load on the Shuttle train to get a bit of charge. Sadly both the two ageing general chargers at the Eurotunnel were broken. Adjacent there were six new Tesla Superchargers standing smug and unused.
The Taycan loaded onto the train fine, despite low ground clearance. The smart lift function recorded the location of the bump at the threshold of the train. I did briefly wonder how the nav system would record a speed bump on a moving shuttle train.
So far on this trip, two out of three charging locations had all their machines out of order, and the the third was almost inaccessible due to the UK petrol crisis. Not a good start. Let us hope we have more luck in France.
More to come..
Our first stop was at Maidstone services after 120 miles. This wasn’t really necessary for charging but I wanted to get a bit of reserve in the battery before leaving the country. Unfortunately all four Ionity chargers were completely dead. A call to Ionity service line yielded only a suggestion that I use Zap Map to find an alternative. This was particularly disappointing as I would be depending on the usually reliable Ionity network for the whole European road trip
We went to the next Ionity site at the Channel Gateway services hoping this would work. However, as soon as we turned off the motorway, it was clear the Ionity site was gridlocked by traffic queueing for petrol. We eventually got access to the charging station with the assistance of a helpful marshal and entering through the exit road. We got a small charge whilst we sat watching a zombie apocalypse played out in front of the adjacent petrol pumps. Unfortunately we only had time for 13 minutes of charging because we had to go to a scheduled Covid test (needed for entrance into Italy)
After the test we drove to the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone. I thought we would use the time waiting to load on the Shuttle train to get a bit of charge. Sadly both the two ageing general chargers at the Eurotunnel were broken. Adjacent there were six new Tesla Superchargers standing smug and unused.
The Taycan loaded onto the train fine, despite low ground clearance. The smart lift function recorded the location of the bump at the threshold of the train. I did briefly wonder how the nav system would record a speed bump on a moving shuttle train.
So far on this trip, two out of three charging locations had all their machines out of order, and the the third was almost inaccessible due to the UK petrol crisis. Not a good start. Let us hope we have more luck in France.
More to come..
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