Public charging in france

[Binary]

I am heading out to Le Mans in June and am already getting nervous about charging, I can seem to do ionity as far as baie de Somme but thereafter I am being offered fastned and total to complete the journey, I believe both of these are in the Porsche charging service network.
we are staying in Mansigne and driving into the circuit daily and the choices then seem to be limited to Chargepoint, and Freshmile .
My question is does anyone have experience of trying to use these charging networks with the Porsche charging card should they work reliably and should I take another charge card as a backup and if so which one is best for France?

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[allroadusa]

Chargepoint certainly is compatible with the Porsche Charging Service (I do have Chargepoint in my charging history). Not sure about freshmile though. For bullet proof charging I double the Porsche card with Chargemap. I never been defeated.

 

[tigerbalm]

You won't go wrong with Fastned from a reliability perspective.

 

[kurand]

Just got back from a week near Cognac. Exclusively used Ionity on the outbound journey which resulted in a very poor route involving lorry packed D roads between Rouen and Le Mans. On the return journey, I used the FastNed at Aire de Bosgouet Sud. This was the best charging session of the trip with plug ‘n charge working perfectly and a good 250Kw of power. This charge station is on the south (!) side of the road so good for the return journey, but requires a loop on the outbound. Busy too ?

The service area is currently being rebuilt.

 

[MrB]

I can’t speak to your specific route but I went to Marseille and back in September and, whilst I almost exclusively used Ionity, I had the odd charge on various other networks both in and out of the Porsche charge network. My experience was uniformly positive. My take in France was that there are a lot of chargers and not an awful lot of EVs in comparison to over here. The ratio worked brilliantly. Almost every stop on the Autoroutes had multiple fast chargers available and working at the advertised speeds. Having done over 42k miles in my car, those 2 and a bit K I did in France were the easiest I’ve ever done. Also, the Taycan is a total weapon on smooth French autoroutes. Enjoy!

 

[Scandinavian]

I would echo what others have said, you will NOT have any problems with charging in France. In general terms.

I am not sure how things are once there is racing activity in Le Mans. There are a lot of chargers around and many hotels and eateries also have 22 kW chargers normally. But I have no idea how this is at the race days. For your route there, check the MyPorsche app or the navigator in the car. You will find plenty of stations to charge at. Ionity, Fastned, Allego, Chargepoint, Total (most of them have worked) and many more.

Below is a screenshot for Porsche Charging Service, with Le Mans in the lower left corner.

 

[allroadusa]

And btw, I'll be at Le Mans this year too, with my Taycan. I'm not stressed.

From my experience (I'm french I must admit it), all fast speed chargers on highways work with Porsche Charging Service and almost all rest areas with fuel pumps have high speed chargers too (one very 40 kms on average).
Fastned, TotalEnergies, Chargepoint, Fuely, Ionity, ...they all work and they're all 150KW+. I identified only one network that doesn't work with Porsche Charging service yet: Engie. All of them are reliable enough I don't even bother about planification if the battery temp if high enough.

 

[Gru]

always good to have another card/account.
Chargemap works well with Engie (and other networks)

 

[kurand]

On my recent trip, most charge stations in France were empty. I did have some problems with connexion failures at some individual Ionity chargers, but moving to a different charger always resulted in success.

 

[anonymouse]

I am heading out to Le Mans in June and am already getting nervous about charging,

no need for that. Charging in France is a breeze.

You can probably get all the way on Ionity. Fastned is a fabulous alternative - but there are plenty of others.

look at Plugshare, filtered for >150kW. Or run up a plan on A Better Route Planner. Here is an example:

take a look at A Better Route Planner for options. Here is a sample plan:

 

[kurand]

That more easterly route on the ABRP map (that only uses Ionity) was the route I mentioned earlier that was very slow and busy. The central route on the map was the much quicker route I used on the return journey that uses the FastNed charger near Rouen.

 

[Kev946]

I live in France. Fast charging is easy.

 

[JP_21]

Agree with all the positive comments. Did London to Bordeaux last August in MY2023 4S. Found the French charging infrastructure to be excellent. The only issue we had was attempting to charge at lunchtimes. The service stations get really busy so you often have to wait, but it was August so I think most of the country was on holiday.
Also worth downloading the Tesla app. We used a few Tesla chargers (I have the 150kw option). They tend to be off the main road in retail parks/near hotels. Often the nearby food options are much better than the service stations on the main highways.

Make sure you get the wide/single decker berth compartment on Le Shuttle. Impossible not to scratch the alloys on the double decker section.

 

[kurand]

Single deck LeShuttle seems to be the default for Taycans these days. I travelled on Good Friday which was a LeShuttle peak day. It was total chaos with long wait times to board. Somehow I ended up on a double deck narrow carriage, and it was much more difficult to load...

 

[Jasper4S]

I used Freshmile, Fastned, Ionity and TotalEnergies is France. Only ones not working were the 50kw chargers located at supermarkets.

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