love the charging list - thanks for doing this.Day 2: Cherbourg (France) -> Köln (Germany)
After a mostly smooth crossing we pull into Cherbourg, France on time at 11:30 and make our way down to the vehicle deck to our fully charged car – switching our headlights over to the "other" side of the road in the PCM.
After clearing border control, we drive down the Cotentin Peninsula before heading east for our overnight stop at Köln nearly 850 km away.
Today is all about trying to make as much distance as quick as possible. One thing that helps with this is the PCM Navigation very accurately predicts what the battery state-of-charge (SOC) will be at all the stops. While charging the PCM will let you know when you can continue your journey and due to its accuracy – it can be trusted.
This allows you to optimise your charging strategy for quickest progress – something that is very important any day you have planned three or more high-speed charging sessions.
It was a beautiful dry and sunny day – with puffy clouds but no rain – perfect road-trip conditions.
Our first stop at IONITY Bolleville went well without any issues, with the charger starting quickly on tapping our Porsche Charging Service card on the RFID reader on the charging pedestal.
I was a little concerned – because the annual subscription to the service was ticking over to its second year today – a consequence of the car's one year birthday – but all went well.
We left the charger when the car said it was okay to continue our trip. At our next stop – Baie de Somme – we grabbed some pizza slices – sitting outside in the winter sun. IONITY stops charge our car faster than we're ready to get going again!
Shortly afterwards, the PCM routed us through a few sleepy towns, rather than the more direct motorway – perhaps it was helping us avoid some closures/traffic.
We had a thankfully uneventful journey, stopping at three more charging stops as we made our way across Northern France, into Belgium and finally onto Germany as darkness fell.
The only complaint we'd raise is that it can be difficult to locate the bank of IONITY chargers once darkness falls. The service stops are a maze of one-way roads and there was no signage to the chargers in either Belgium or Germany.
With the level of investment that IONITY make in this infrastructure, you'd think they'd be a little easier to locate!
We eventually pull into the Radisson Blu, Köln – our hotel for the night – park in the hotels garage and plug in for our destination charge.
We're closer to Norway which was the goal of today's drive.
The days charging stats:
Location Start SOC % End SOC % kWh added Cost Duration Ambient Temp Battery Temp Charger Type Network IONITY Bolleville East 23% 82% 49.3 €16.27 0h 23m 8.5 31 DC 350kW IONITY IONITY Baie de Somme 32% 94% 51.37 €16.95 0h 32m 8.5 37 DC 350kW IONITY IONITY Le Roeulx 16% 84% 57.86 €19.09 0h 23m 4.5 42 DC 350kW IONITY IONITY Aachener Land South 25% 81% 47.8 €15.77 0h 26m -0.5 33 DC 350kW IONITY Radisson Blu Koln 60% 100% 33.5 €0.00 4h 45m 2 30 AC 7kW Destination Charger
Today we did 882 km over 10:53 hours, with an average speed of 82 km/h, consuming 25.1 kWh/100km.
awesome - a frunk worthy of my North American EV road warrior kit!!What is in our frunk?
- Portable 22kW Juice Booster EVSE/Charger
- Regional adaptors for Juice Booster
- 5m Juice Booster extension cable for harder to reach outlets
- Type 2 Public AC Charging Cable
- Porsche Taycan Snow Chains
- Screenwash (winter rated)
- Small foldable snow shovel
- Snow/Ice scrapers and brush
- Emergency Foil Blankets (x10)
- Emergency wool blankets (x2)
- 4000 kg Tow Rope
- Insulated drink mugs
MER is supposedly a part of Porsche charging network. However, when trying it here in Sweden, they don't accept the Porsche RFID card. According to MER customer service, they don't have any partnership with Porsche. Have raised the matter with my dealer and after roughly a month still no feedback from Porsche Sweden. They can't even provide an updated complete list of partners. Weird.......
Rough estimates: in Europe a Taycan would be cheaper vs gas. Gas is close to 2 eur per 1 litre, circa 2,3 usd, so a gallon here would be some 8,7 usd. if you charge at Ionity, Taycan pays 0,30 eur per kwh (varies by country, nordics may be lower). Other fast stations range 0,5-0,8 eur per kwh. Back of envelope: at 10 celsius a Taycan Turbo s could do 360-380 km (eco mode, heat pump, 20", mix of town, other roads, highway, like 30%-40%-40% etc.), with 83 kwh right (100% SOC)? So that is 4,6 km per kwh or between 7-17 eur per 100km.
| Location | Start SOC % | End SOC % | kWh added | Cost | Duration | Ambient Temp | Battery Temp | Charger Type | Network |
| Steinkjer, Norway | 67% | 78% | 9.50 | €3.32 | 0h 29m | -1.0 | 21 | AC 22 kW | MER |
| Namsskogan, Norway | 38% | 83% | 37.10 | €19.77 | 0h 47m | -5.5 | 31 | DC 50 kW | MER |
| Mosjøen, Norway | 33% | 81% | 41.87 | €20.91 | 0h 25m | -5.5 | 34 | DC 150 kW | Kopal |
| Mo i Rana, Norway | 53% | 100% | 39.30 | €9.79 | 2h 30m | -3.0 | 23 | AC 22 kW | Hotel |
Thank you. FWIW, most of todays images are from either an IPhone Pro 12 or 13. Due to a poor manual focus setting on our Leica that went unnoticed.
You just follow the road until you reach the location where the convoy starts off. The road will be physically blocked by some kind of obstacle or a veichle. You will not miss it...Convoy driving
There is a chance we may have to engage in convoy driving across the Saltfjellet tomorrow. Certainly it was in place today, though forecasts for tomorrow are better.
I've read the government page on it at https://www.vegvesen.no/en/traffic-information/trafikksikkerhet/how-to-drive-in-a-convoy/.
But would appreciate any Norwegian local advice – especially around the realities of it.
For example, how do they form? I'm guessing the road is closed – by a barrier or a person and you just join the queue. Is this how it happens in reality ?
Does the convey stop/finish as soon as conditions allow or do you have to follow it for a long time ?
Thank you!
