Scandinavian
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Peter
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2019
- Threads
- 47
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- 3,049
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- 2,640
- Location
- France
- Vehicles
- Taycan T, Tesla M3P, Aston Martin DB9, Porsche 996 C4 Cab
- Thread starter
- #1
After reading about some new owners trouble with charging planning on a long road trip I have become very aware of the difficulties encountered when driving with an EV. And the extra planning efforts that you need to put in to make a trip enjoyable. Not much required, but still way too complicated with all the technology at our hands. With an ICE car you just get in the car, set the destination in the navigator and start driving. Fuel stations will be along the route and clearly advertised with pricing etc. And you fill up when the tank gets low, pay quickly and without any fuss with your credit card. And the same procedure at all brands of fuel stations, BP, Avia, Shell, ARAL, TOTAL etc etc.
Not so simple with an EV as we all know. And Porsche seem to have managed to complicate this even more!
Background and Challenge
Discussing with a few friends about long distance driving using an EV, I tried to convince them that it clearly was no problems at all in Western Europe ( I have no experience from the more Eastern European parts). Both of them are a quite sceptical about EV’s ease of use and practicality, not against EV’s in general though. But not ready to join the EV drivers community. A lot of negative reports on You Tube videos, articles about the state of charging networks, availability etc, have not helped the situation.
.
So I set out to try to convince them and show how easy it is with the Taycan. And to share the many positive trip reports from the forum and my own experiences. As an exercise, I choose a trip to Trysil, Norway. We are all going to meet up for a reunion there later in the year so that seemed a good target destination. Trysil is a well known ski resort and a very popular destination, but would it work with an EV?? It is in Norway where chargers are very common though.
The plan was to plot a route from Nice Airport, France, to Trysil Ski Center, Norway, using the My Porsche app. And /or the Charging Planner in the car. Sounds easy to do, but it became a complete mess of a plan.
Here is how I tried to do it.
The map section of the My Porsche I app was set to only consider chargers above 250 kW and use Ionity only! I know that the route has plenty of Ionity stations available from my own experience.
I let the app plan the route as normal. To my big surprise I noted that only one (1!!) Ionity station had been included in the overall plan. One station out of 12 charging stops. The charger is highlighted in the picture below
Plus that I knew from experience that the car would not even reach the first stop and in reality, would replan and send me to a 50 kW charger once starting to drive! And that lone charger is mostly off line or occupied. Have done that exercise already!
The plan skipped the Ionity chargers at the bottom of the picture as well as the charger south of Milano?
The apps plan would mean stopovers at some stations where there was 1 (one ) or 2 (Two) charge plugs listed. With two plugs and 300 kW indicated. It would most likely be a shared power arrangement. Chargers with two cables at one station like the Alpitronic ( which is a very good and mostly reliable charger btw). Each cable then gives only 150 kW which I have experienced at some of those. Still powerful for the Taycan, but they do not always deliver that rate, which means a longer stop. And secondly all the chargers chosen in the apps plan, would have a much higher kWh price PLUS a per minute charge than Ionity. The result would be more than double the cost for charging on this trip!
The network names, in some cases, looked like belonging to some very local organisations. I think it is great that more local communities are trying to make it easier for EV owner in general. However they do not always seem to be connected, so difficult to check if they are free. Would they even work with the Porsche Charging services by app or card? Or work at all?? How is maintenance provided for them?? We have seen the difference between European experiences and US Electrify America experiences.
I very much doubt that the apps plan would have worked at all.
This is normally a very good and reliable charger, but many stations have shared connections like in the picture. And then the power is limited.
And only having two connectors is a high risk strategy. It can be off line or occupied.
The plan would also use a lot of chargers that would have a more expensive kWh pricing plus in all cases and additional per minute charge. That easily doubles the price compared to the Ionity rates.
Alternative plans
To check the plan I then tried two other charging planners. ABRP and Chargemap, to see how they would plan the route. The actual route was exactly the same by all three planners. And both ABRP as well as Chargemap included nearly exclusively Ionity stations as requested. The costs would be considerably higher using the Chargemap card, than the Ionity pricing for Porsche. Chargemap charge between 0.96 Euro to 1.14 Euro per kWH at Ionity stations. They do not have the preferential rate that Porsche owners get. The Porsche Charging Service costs about 0.35 Euro per kWh.
With ABRP you can also get a summary of the costs for the trip, which was missing in Chargemap and also in the Porsche Charging Planner unfortunately. Both these planners showed a much more realistic plan, even if the Chargemap planner would plan for some stretches up to 340 km between stops. And that is not going to be realistic in winter driving in my car. Maybe not even in summer time?
ABRP plan
Chargemap plan
Ionity as Favourites in app and car
I have set up the Charging Planner in the app and the car to include the Ionity stations for the route as favourites! They will the all be shown as a star in both the app and the PCM. This is very useful to have, when driving on a trip as you are likely to receive multiple map updates, with the result that the trip will be replannned.
Picture of app display
As can be seen there are many stars on route and each star represents an Ionity station.
Plan in the car
After sending the route from the app to the car, I set the car to only use HPC above 250 kW and wanted the car to plan the route to the destination. The Planner took some time but did present the route after a while together with charging stops.
Unacceptable result of the Porsche Charging Planner!
However it seems to be programmed to AVOID all the Ionity stations on route. It choose some obscure stations with 1 or 2 chargers shown in some cases. Networks that I never have seen or heard about again. And this occurred with Ionity stations in close proximity to such a Charging Planner stop!
The flags in the photos show the planned stops at charging stations, while the white stars show location of nearby Ionity stations
CONCLUSION
So in summary both the My Porsche app and the Charging Planner in the car leaves a lot to be desired. I certainly would not follow any of the plans that are produced automatically. I use the Charging Planner for the benefit of preheating the battery for each stop but will always check that it is an Ionity charger. If it isn’t, I will replan a stopover at the Ionity station and charge there.
So, did I manage to convince my friends about how easily you can make a trip in an EV through Europe?
NO, I have to give that a FAIL!!
They were quite amused with the complexity and need for different charge cards or dongles? They simply did not understand why you could not just use a normal Credit Card as you do at a fuel station.
I have to admit I did not convince any of them to join the EV community in the near future even if they absolutely enjoyed the short trips in the Taycan. But it wasn’t for them.
Missed opportunity!
I just can not understand how Porsche, who are Board members at Ionity, plus are a major owner, can ignore up to 90% of Ionity stations on such a trip. Why make plans that would be costing twice the price for a long trip?? It can not be difficult to program and optimise the costs of a road trip in the Charge Planner.
Why have Porsche missed the opportunity to make the ownership of the Taycan a joy, by including a decent Charge Planner? I personally think Porsche have massively missed a trick here. It is an achievement in it self to make such lousy Charging plans in 2023. With all the software, communications, networks and route planners available.
The Taycan is an expensive car and surely deserves to have such a feature. It can not be difficult to add some filters in the settings to prioritise 350 kW Ionity chargers where available. The VW group have a stake in Ionity, why not use the network in the planning? To plan for one Charger out of twelve on a 2700 km drive is a complete disaster in my mind!
It would make life very easy as an owner and give all new EV owners a very positive first experience if the planning was frictionless. What a very positive feeling and message that would send to prospective EV owners. And there are so many new charging stations being planned and built in Europe now, not only Ionity.
Any comments about this. It became a much longer post than I thought when I set out.
Not so simple with an EV as we all know. And Porsche seem to have managed to complicate this even more!
Background and Challenge
Discussing with a few friends about long distance driving using an EV, I tried to convince them that it clearly was no problems at all in Western Europe ( I have no experience from the more Eastern European parts). Both of them are a quite sceptical about EV’s ease of use and practicality, not against EV’s in general though. But not ready to join the EV drivers community. A lot of negative reports on You Tube videos, articles about the state of charging networks, availability etc, have not helped the situation.
.
So I set out to try to convince them and show how easy it is with the Taycan. And to share the many positive trip reports from the forum and my own experiences. As an exercise, I choose a trip to Trysil, Norway. We are all going to meet up for a reunion there later in the year so that seemed a good target destination. Trysil is a well known ski resort and a very popular destination, but would it work with an EV?? It is in Norway where chargers are very common though.
The plan was to plot a route from Nice Airport, France, to Trysil Ski Center, Norway, using the My Porsche app. And /or the Charging Planner in the car. Sounds easy to do, but it became a complete mess of a plan.
Here is how I tried to do it.
The map section of the My Porsche I app was set to only consider chargers above 250 kW and use Ionity only! I know that the route has plenty of Ionity stations available from my own experience.
I let the app plan the route as normal. To my big surprise I noted that only one (1!!) Ionity station had been included in the overall plan. One station out of 12 charging stops. The charger is highlighted in the picture below
Plus that I knew from experience that the car would not even reach the first stop and in reality, would replan and send me to a 50 kW charger once starting to drive! And that lone charger is mostly off line or occupied. Have done that exercise already!
The plan skipped the Ionity chargers at the bottom of the picture as well as the charger south of Milano?
The apps plan would mean stopovers at some stations where there was 1 (one ) or 2 (Two) charge plugs listed. With two plugs and 300 kW indicated. It would most likely be a shared power arrangement. Chargers with two cables at one station like the Alpitronic ( which is a very good and mostly reliable charger btw). Each cable then gives only 150 kW which I have experienced at some of those. Still powerful for the Taycan, but they do not always deliver that rate, which means a longer stop. And secondly all the chargers chosen in the apps plan, would have a much higher kWh price PLUS a per minute charge than Ionity. The result would be more than double the cost for charging on this trip!
The network names, in some cases, looked like belonging to some very local organisations. I think it is great that more local communities are trying to make it easier for EV owner in general. However they do not always seem to be connected, so difficult to check if they are free. Would they even work with the Porsche Charging services by app or card? Or work at all?? How is maintenance provided for them?? We have seen the difference between European experiences and US Electrify America experiences.
I very much doubt that the apps plan would have worked at all.
This is normally a very good and reliable charger, but many stations have shared connections like in the picture. And then the power is limited.
And only having two connectors is a high risk strategy. It can be off line or occupied.
The plan would also use a lot of chargers that would have a more expensive kWh pricing plus in all cases and additional per minute charge. That easily doubles the price compared to the Ionity rates.
Alternative plans
To check the plan I then tried two other charging planners. ABRP and Chargemap, to see how they would plan the route. The actual route was exactly the same by all three planners. And both ABRP as well as Chargemap included nearly exclusively Ionity stations as requested. The costs would be considerably higher using the Chargemap card, than the Ionity pricing for Porsche. Chargemap charge between 0.96 Euro to 1.14 Euro per kWH at Ionity stations. They do not have the preferential rate that Porsche owners get. The Porsche Charging Service costs about 0.35 Euro per kWh.
With ABRP you can also get a summary of the costs for the trip, which was missing in Chargemap and also in the Porsche Charging Planner unfortunately. Both these planners showed a much more realistic plan, even if the Chargemap planner would plan for some stretches up to 340 km between stops. And that is not going to be realistic in winter driving in my car. Maybe not even in summer time?
ABRP plan
Chargemap plan
Ionity as Favourites in app and car
I have set up the Charging Planner in the app and the car to include the Ionity stations for the route as favourites! They will the all be shown as a star in both the app and the PCM. This is very useful to have, when driving on a trip as you are likely to receive multiple map updates, with the result that the trip will be replannned.
Picture of app display
As can be seen there are many stars on route and each star represents an Ionity station.
Plan in the car
After sending the route from the app to the car, I set the car to only use HPC above 250 kW and wanted the car to plan the route to the destination. The Planner took some time but did present the route after a while together with charging stops.
Unacceptable result of the Porsche Charging Planner!
However it seems to be programmed to AVOID all the Ionity stations on route. It choose some obscure stations with 1 or 2 chargers shown in some cases. Networks that I never have seen or heard about again. And this occurred with Ionity stations in close proximity to such a Charging Planner stop!
The flags in the photos show the planned stops at charging stations, while the white stars show location of nearby Ionity stations
CONCLUSION
So in summary both the My Porsche app and the Charging Planner in the car leaves a lot to be desired. I certainly would not follow any of the plans that are produced automatically. I use the Charging Planner for the benefit of preheating the battery for each stop but will always check that it is an Ionity charger. If it isn’t, I will replan a stopover at the Ionity station and charge there.
So, did I manage to convince my friends about how easily you can make a trip in an EV through Europe?
NO, I have to give that a FAIL!!
They were quite amused with the complexity and need for different charge cards or dongles? They simply did not understand why you could not just use a normal Credit Card as you do at a fuel station.
I have to admit I did not convince any of them to join the EV community in the near future even if they absolutely enjoyed the short trips in the Taycan. But it wasn’t for them.
Missed opportunity!
I just can not understand how Porsche, who are Board members at Ionity, plus are a major owner, can ignore up to 90% of Ionity stations on such a trip. Why make plans that would be costing twice the price for a long trip?? It can not be difficult to program and optimise the costs of a road trip in the Charge Planner.
Why have Porsche missed the opportunity to make the ownership of the Taycan a joy, by including a decent Charge Planner? I personally think Porsche have massively missed a trick here. It is an achievement in it self to make such lousy Charging plans in 2023. With all the software, communications, networks and route planners available.
The Taycan is an expensive car and surely deserves to have such a feature. It can not be difficult to add some filters in the settings to prioritise 350 kW Ionity chargers where available. The VW group have a stake in Ionity, why not use the network in the planning? To plan for one Charger out of twelve on a 2700 km drive is a complete disaster in my mind!
It would make life very easy as an owner and give all new EV owners a very positive first experience if the planning was frictionless. What a very positive feeling and message that would send to prospective EV owners. And there are so many new charging stations being planned and built in Europe now, not only Ionity.
Any comments about this. It became a much longer post than I thought when I set out.