Mac Madsen
Member
- First Name
- Henrik
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2020
- Threads
- 4
- Messages
- 10
- Reaction score
- 48
- Location
- Denmark
- Vehicles
- Taycan 4S
- Thread starter
- #1
Just came back from a trip to Malaga in southern Spain.
I got our new Taycan 4S in November 2020 and this summer my wife and I decided to drive down to our house in Malaga to spend autumn and return before X-mass.
I knew the Ionity charging network was not fully build out in Spain and it would be challenging.
The week before the trip I had some issues with the Porsche Connect App's navigation not being able to get charger info. The local Porsche Center said there had been som down time issues.
Therefor I decided to plot all Ionity chargers on our route into my iPhone. So on the way I just chosed the next Ionity charger within the next 300-350 km and used Apple Maps on CarPlay. What a joy!
For those who don't want to read the hole reports here's the highlights and our take aways:
Trip legs:
The trip to Spain:
We headed out fully charged on 17th September 2021 early morning to avoid traffic jams around Copenhagen, boarded the ferry from Denmark to Germany and charged the first time just after Lübeck. Only 2nd time we charged on a HPC so my wife needed to document for SoMe
The Ionity chargers, except for a couple, just worked flawless and the car was a dream to drive.
First overnight stop was in Baden-Banden and the first leg of the trip was 1008 km in 11 1/2 hours avg speed 87 km/h. Not impressing, but Germany this time a year has a lot of roadwork going on on Autobahn and there's so many trucks!
After a good German wienerschnitzel and a good nights sleep it was time to hit the road on a clear sky Saturday morning. Not much traffic so asked my wife to take a video of the speed. The car is just accelerating so fast and keeps on doing it. She was a bit slow to get the camera on and didn't realize the speed until after a few seconds. She turned it off and stated shouting so I needed to stop accelerating but the car had so much power left....
We entered France and next overnight stop was at Costa Brava in Northern Spain. Again all Ionity chargers just worked and in average we spend approx 30 minutes at each charging which gave us time to go to the restrooms, feed and walk the dog. Not really slowing us down compared to the usual stops for gasoline.
After 11 hours and 1140 km drive avg 102 km/h incl. driving in terrible rain the last couple of hours in France we came to a beautiful hotel at Girola. The nice owner had arranged a table in a local restaurant in the old city and drove us (I was tired after driving two hours in heavy rain.
After a good nights sleep and breakfast we headed towards Barcelona to the last Ionity charger for the next 700 Km.
Therefor we decided to split the last leg in two and booked a hotel in Alicante with a destination charger.
Since there was no Ionity chargers on this route I decided to use the built in Porsche navigation to get us to a charging point or two we would need to get us to Alicante. It turned out to be a bad idea.
The Porsche Navigation routed us to a charging point in Valencia. When we came to the address there where no charger. It had routed us to an High Tech office park. After a drive round the block and still no charger in sight it said "I found a charger in 5 km".
Now we know what range anxiety really feels like! So of we took (30 km of charge left). When the Porsche navigation said "Here's the charger destination" we where driving on what I would call a high way next to the airport with no charger in sight and no where you could exit the road.
With 25 km left we made a stop and called Porsche Road Assistance, but that was no help. So after a couple of calls to them I took out the Plugsurfing app and found a charger 10 km away. The charger was slow but after an hour we got enough charge to take os to Alicante.
After that experience I'll never ever use the Porsche Navigation again. It really sucks! The idea is great but it just doesn't work when you need it abroad. The look and feel and not to mention voice and not least the map details is no where near Apple Maps.
After 7 1/2 hours and 662 km we arrived at the hotel.
After a great stay in the center of Alicante (I had some work that needed to be done next morning so we left after lunch) and fully charged by the Tesla destination charger we headed down to Malaga.
First charging point was just south of Murcia. We charged to 95% since the trip down to the next charger north of Malaga was over 300 km and we needed to pass a mountain area near Granada. The consumption going up hill was of cause higher (so I didn't drive more than speed limits), but going down hill you consume less so you really don't have to worry about it if you have enough reach when you head out. We just didn't know that and it was a beautiful but very remote area without other chargers, so we didn't want to run dry.
We arrived with 5% at the last Ionity charger just north of Malaga, and after 4h 20 min and 444 km we arrived at our house.
Home, sweet Home
Aircon broke!
After a couple of weeks in Malaga (and not much driving) the Aircon stopped working. I drove to the local Porsche Center in Malaga who agreed to take a look at it.
Even though they had sold some Taycan's they had not any experience with that particular error. After some trial an error for one week new parts where needed. It turned out to be a known error and three pressure valves needed to be replaced. It took a couple of weeks to get the parts from Germany! I got the car back - petrol rentals doesn't feel nice when you have decided to go electric - then rather drive in my HOT Taycan.
The parts finally arrive so I took the car to Porsche and after a couple of days we finally could drive around southern Spain with aircon in our Taycan.
To be honest - It's a joke it takes so long to repair a new car this price range, which shouldn't have an aircon breakdown in the first place! During the repair and after a couple of totally ridiculously replacement offers from Porsches rental partner in Spain,Sixt (Q5 Diesel - X2 Diesel - Seriously?) - after a lot of talks with the danish branch of Porsche Assistance it got swapped to a Volvo XC90 Hybrid - not exactly a sporty car, but less CO2 I'm driving an Electric Porsche!!!. During this hole repair and rental circus I seriously considered to sell the Taycan and buy BMW again after I saw a review of the new i4.
The trip home
All things must come to and end so end of November we left sunny and warm Spain and startet our trip home to the cold and now dark Denmark.
Because of Corona restrictions we needed a negative test in the morning and get all the way into France before 24 hours. So we decided to drive to Biarittz for the first night. I had discovered that Ionity had just opened a new charger north of Burgos that had up till now been "planed" on their web, but in the iPhone app was now in operation. After a call to Ionity they confirmed it was in operation. The call agent said it had been charging for 200 minutes the day before. Of we went.
It was a beautiful drive through Spain. From summer through first phase of autumn.
On one of the charging stations we met a truck with wings from one of the danish windmill manufactures. These wings are huge!
When we came to the charger north of Burgos we found out why a car had been charging for 200 minutes - there was not enough power to get more than max 50Kw. But better than nothing and we could charge enough to get us up to Biarittz and a great newly opened hotel called "The Garage" just by the sea were we had booked a destination charger. These a so nice, but all hotels needs to have a lot of them in the near future!
We spend 11 hours driving the 1056 km.
Next stop was Paris. Why not! My wife said - do you really want to drive your brand new Taycan into the center of Paris? Sure I said. And it wasn't that stressfull after all. The hotel said we might could get space in their private parking and that they had destination charging, but there were no charger when we got there, but we got private parking and cold take a night in Paris.
The trip was only 600 km and took 5h 20 min.
We drove out of Paris with not so much charge to get to the next Ionity charger. It's annoying when you can not charge your car at the hotel, because you're then spending time on charging next morning when you just want to hit the road and the next HPC are not where you need it to be!
We drove through Belgium but because of the Ionity charging points location we ended up zig-zagging some through the beautiful Belgium landscape and another episode of autumn.
Next stop was in a small town called Wallenhorst between Dortmund and Bremen. No destination charger but great snitzel, wine, beds, parking outside and just 3 km from Autobahn and the next Ionity charger in 10 km.
We drove 706 km in 7h 30 min.
After a Ionity charge Sunday morning it was just about getting safe and as fast as possible home to Copenhagen.
It’s such a joy to drive on open road with not to much traffic in Germany (and not that many speed limits
We decided to drive up through Jutland and crossing the bridges to Sealand instead of the ferry.
Since we drove fast in Germany we needed to charge in Denmark. We went for the Aabenraa Ionity but only 4 out 6 chargers was in service and all were occupied, so we drove on.
If we don’t get more chargers and more and more people get electric cars, that could be the future of driving electric - long queues at the chargers = long waits = delayed travel time.
At the next charging point at Fredericia 4 of 4 was occupied but 1 was release in 5 minutes so not to bad, but the cars that came after us had to wait between 10 -15 minutes too charge!
Denmark has quite a lot of electric cars because they’re not taxed af heavy as ICE cars and thus we can buy them cheaper! But the down side is we run out of chargers faster if we don’t build out the charging infrastructure to meet demand.
On the hole trip we didn’t arrive to a charging point where all chargers were occupied and we only saw two other Taycan’s at the charging points.
In our danish neighborhood I see 5 - 10 Taycan’s and maybe +100 Teslas’s an other electric cars on my daily 10 km bike commute to Copenhagen. In Paris I only saw an electric bus and no electric cars in 24 hours!
On the last day we drove 700 km in 7 hours.
Finally at home, but now we long for the sun and the light in Spain and look forward to our next roadtrip to Malaga.
PS: After the trip home the idea of selling the Taycan vanished. The Taycan is just such a great car to drive
I got our new Taycan 4S in November 2020 and this summer my wife and I decided to drive down to our house in Malaga to spend autumn and return before X-mass.
I knew the Ionity charging network was not fully build out in Spain and it would be challenging.
The week before the trip I had some issues with the Porsche Connect App's navigation not being able to get charger info. The local Porsche Center said there had been som down time issues.
Therefor I decided to plot all Ionity chargers on our route into my iPhone. So on the way I just chosed the next Ionity charger within the next 300-350 km and used Apple Maps on CarPlay. What a joy!
For those who don't want to read the hole reports here's the highlights and our take aways:
Trip legs:
- Copenhagen -> Baden-Baden (Germany) - Girola (Northern Spain) - Alicante - Malaga, 3.300 km
- Malaga -> Biarittz (France) -> Paris -> Wallenhorst (Germany) -> Copenhagen, 3.200 km
- The car is just so nice to drive.
- Silent, super fast, feels secure because it handles so great.
- The seats (14-way) are so great.
- And not the least - we where not as tired after the trip as when we made the trip 3 years ago in the old BMW 540 V8.
- The Ionity charging experience doesn’t really feels much slower than the conventional fuelling experience including visiting restrooms etc.
- Porsche Navigation couldn’t find charging points when we needed them
- There’s not enough Ionity charging points (or other HPC’s) in Spain.
- You tend to drive more slow since the charging points in Spain and to some extend France and Belgium are too far.
- The aircon broke down when we arrive to Malaga and took +3 weeks to get fixed!
- We’ll do it again in a year or two. A roadtrip in this car is a great experience and road trips is still a great way to see new places along your way you would else never have seen!
- For two persons and a small dog the car has plenty of room for luggage. We could have done it with two kids and no dog, but not with three kids as we have done many times when we were younger - if you have three kids you need a bigger car!
- If you want to drive like a normal car not thinking about running dry of electrons then stay in Germany.
- The Ionity charges in Belgium, France and Spain are to far apart so you constantly need to think (sometimes worry a lot and hense slow down a lot) about reach and if you can make it to the next charger - but a road trip to Spain in Porsche’s first electric car is not for people who normally not takes risks
- On the way out we charged 10 times, got 620 kHw and paid 205 € + 1 destination charger at 30 €
- On the way home we charged 13 times, got 718 kWh and paid 230 € + 1 destination charger at 35 Euro incl parking
- On both legs we left fully charged (95%).
- Total consumption incl full charge at start 1.600 kHw / 6.500 Km = 4 km/kHw which makes sense.
The trip to Spain:
We headed out fully charged on 17th September 2021 early morning to avoid traffic jams around Copenhagen, boarded the ferry from Denmark to Germany and charged the first time just after Lübeck. Only 2nd time we charged on a HPC so my wife needed to document for SoMe
The Ionity chargers, except for a couple, just worked flawless and the car was a dream to drive.
First overnight stop was in Baden-Banden and the first leg of the trip was 1008 km in 11 1/2 hours avg speed 87 km/h. Not impressing, but Germany this time a year has a lot of roadwork going on on Autobahn and there's so many trucks!
After a good German wienerschnitzel and a good nights sleep it was time to hit the road on a clear sky Saturday morning. Not much traffic so asked my wife to take a video of the speed. The car is just accelerating so fast and keeps on doing it. She was a bit slow to get the camera on and didn't realize the speed until after a few seconds. She turned it off and stated shouting so I needed to stop accelerating but the car had so much power left....
We entered France and next overnight stop was at Costa Brava in Northern Spain. Again all Ionity chargers just worked and in average we spend approx 30 minutes at each charging which gave us time to go to the restrooms, feed and walk the dog. Not really slowing us down compared to the usual stops for gasoline.
After 11 hours and 1140 km drive avg 102 km/h incl. driving in terrible rain the last couple of hours in France we came to a beautiful hotel at Girola. The nice owner had arranged a table in a local restaurant in the old city and drove us (I was tired after driving two hours in heavy rain.
After a good nights sleep and breakfast we headed towards Barcelona to the last Ionity charger for the next 700 Km.
Therefor we decided to split the last leg in two and booked a hotel in Alicante with a destination charger.
Since there was no Ionity chargers on this route I decided to use the built in Porsche navigation to get us to a charging point or two we would need to get us to Alicante. It turned out to be a bad idea.
The Porsche Navigation routed us to a charging point in Valencia. When we came to the address there where no charger. It had routed us to an High Tech office park. After a drive round the block and still no charger in sight it said "I found a charger in 5 km".
Now we know what range anxiety really feels like! So of we took (30 km of charge left). When the Porsche navigation said "Here's the charger destination" we where driving on what I would call a high way next to the airport with no charger in sight and no where you could exit the road.
With 25 km left we made a stop and called Porsche Road Assistance, but that was no help. So after a couple of calls to them I took out the Plugsurfing app and found a charger 10 km away. The charger was slow but after an hour we got enough charge to take os to Alicante.
After that experience I'll never ever use the Porsche Navigation again. It really sucks! The idea is great but it just doesn't work when you need it abroad. The look and feel and not to mention voice and not least the map details is no where near Apple Maps.
After 7 1/2 hours and 662 km we arrived at the hotel.
After a great stay in the center of Alicante (I had some work that needed to be done next morning so we left after lunch) and fully charged by the Tesla destination charger we headed down to Malaga.
First charging point was just south of Murcia. We charged to 95% since the trip down to the next charger north of Malaga was over 300 km and we needed to pass a mountain area near Granada. The consumption going up hill was of cause higher (so I didn't drive more than speed limits), but going down hill you consume less so you really don't have to worry about it if you have enough reach when you head out. We just didn't know that and it was a beautiful but very remote area without other chargers, so we didn't want to run dry.
We arrived with 5% at the last Ionity charger just north of Malaga, and after 4h 20 min and 444 km we arrived at our house.
Home, sweet Home
Aircon broke!
After a couple of weeks in Malaga (and not much driving) the Aircon stopped working. I drove to the local Porsche Center in Malaga who agreed to take a look at it.
Even though they had sold some Taycan's they had not any experience with that particular error. After some trial an error for one week new parts where needed. It turned out to be a known error and three pressure valves needed to be replaced. It took a couple of weeks to get the parts from Germany! I got the car back - petrol rentals doesn't feel nice when you have decided to go electric - then rather drive in my HOT Taycan.
The parts finally arrive so I took the car to Porsche and after a couple of days we finally could drive around southern Spain with aircon in our Taycan.
To be honest - It's a joke it takes so long to repair a new car this price range, which shouldn't have an aircon breakdown in the first place! During the repair and after a couple of totally ridiculously replacement offers from Porsches rental partner in Spain,Sixt (Q5 Diesel - X2 Diesel - Seriously?) - after a lot of talks with the danish branch of Porsche Assistance it got swapped to a Volvo XC90 Hybrid - not exactly a sporty car, but less CO2 I'm driving an Electric Porsche!!!. During this hole repair and rental circus I seriously considered to sell the Taycan and buy BMW again after I saw a review of the new i4.
The trip home
All things must come to and end so end of November we left sunny and warm Spain and startet our trip home to the cold and now dark Denmark.
Because of Corona restrictions we needed a negative test in the morning and get all the way into France before 24 hours. So we decided to drive to Biarittz for the first night. I had discovered that Ionity had just opened a new charger north of Burgos that had up till now been "planed" on their web, but in the iPhone app was now in operation. After a call to Ionity they confirmed it was in operation. The call agent said it had been charging for 200 minutes the day before. Of we went.
It was a beautiful drive through Spain. From summer through first phase of autumn.
On one of the charging stations we met a truck with wings from one of the danish windmill manufactures. These wings are huge!
When we came to the charger north of Burgos we found out why a car had been charging for 200 minutes - there was not enough power to get more than max 50Kw. But better than nothing and we could charge enough to get us up to Biarittz and a great newly opened hotel called "The Garage" just by the sea were we had booked a destination charger. These a so nice, but all hotels needs to have a lot of them in the near future!
We spend 11 hours driving the 1056 km.
Next stop was Paris. Why not! My wife said - do you really want to drive your brand new Taycan into the center of Paris? Sure I said. And it wasn't that stressfull after all. The hotel said we might could get space in their private parking and that they had destination charging, but there were no charger when we got there, but we got private parking and cold take a night in Paris.
The trip was only 600 km and took 5h 20 min.
We drove out of Paris with not so much charge to get to the next Ionity charger. It's annoying when you can not charge your car at the hotel, because you're then spending time on charging next morning when you just want to hit the road and the next HPC are not where you need it to be!
We drove through Belgium but because of the Ionity charging points location we ended up zig-zagging some through the beautiful Belgium landscape and another episode of autumn.
Next stop was in a small town called Wallenhorst between Dortmund and Bremen. No destination charger but great snitzel, wine, beds, parking outside and just 3 km from Autobahn and the next Ionity charger in 10 km.
We drove 706 km in 7h 30 min.
After a Ionity charge Sunday morning it was just about getting safe and as fast as possible home to Copenhagen.
It’s such a joy to drive on open road with not to much traffic in Germany (and not that many speed limits
We decided to drive up through Jutland and crossing the bridges to Sealand instead of the ferry.
Since we drove fast in Germany we needed to charge in Denmark. We went for the Aabenraa Ionity but only 4 out 6 chargers was in service and all were occupied, so we drove on.
If we don’t get more chargers and more and more people get electric cars, that could be the future of driving electric - long queues at the chargers = long waits = delayed travel time.
At the next charging point at Fredericia 4 of 4 was occupied but 1 was release in 5 minutes so not to bad, but the cars that came after us had to wait between 10 -15 minutes too charge!
Denmark has quite a lot of electric cars because they’re not taxed af heavy as ICE cars and thus we can buy them cheaper! But the down side is we run out of chargers faster if we don’t build out the charging infrastructure to meet demand.
On the hole trip we didn’t arrive to a charging point where all chargers were occupied and we only saw two other Taycan’s at the charging points.
In our danish neighborhood I see 5 - 10 Taycan’s and maybe +100 Teslas’s an other electric cars on my daily 10 km bike commute to Copenhagen. In Paris I only saw an electric bus and no electric cars in 24 hours!
On the last day we drove 700 km in 7 hours.
Finally at home, but now we long for the sun and the light in Spain and look forward to our next roadtrip to Malaga.
PS: After the trip home the idea of selling the Taycan vanished. The Taycan is just such a great car to drive
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