EV Charging around Signy and Nyon

Yesterday morning I plugged the car in to charge at Signy Centre while shopping and for the price of a coffee I charged the car by ten percent. I then went to the lakeside of Nyon to test the Service Industriel de Nyon (SIN) chargers and failed.

They were out of service so I drove towards Chavannes Centre because I thought of using their chargers until I realised that by the time the car is charged I would be driving through rush hour traffic. Instead I drove back to Signy Centre.

I charged the car from 40 percent to 100 percent in about two hours and fourty minutes at about 10.4kw/h. While waiting I played games on the mobile phone but I also went for a walk. In the process I noticed that the Avia garage has chargers, which I knew about, that Bottone has chargers which I knew about, that Signy Centre itself has several chargers, and finally that Shell has a new charger and this is a 300kw charger. In one industrial area you have four charging solutions, and if you include Nyon then the one by the Pisciculture place was out of action but the one by the Aviron was working.

You can tell chargers are working because they’re busy. In Nyon if no one is parked at a charging station there is a good chance that the chargers are out of order.

What would be nice is for every town and village to have a public charging point. At the moment we can either shell out and get charging for home, but then if you live in an apartment you need permission to install it, and if you live in a house you get a little more freedom.

If we knew that every village we drove to had public charging points then we could head to these, park, and then go for a bike ride or hike, and get back to a car that was fully charged and ready for the trip home.

And Finally

I was thinking, if only I had people to meet in Nyon for an hour or two, while waiting for the car to charge, but if I had set a meeting point and time, and the chargers were not functional then I would have missed an opportunity to charge. Luckily I had flexibility so I went to Signy Centre and the charge time was not too long. If I was in a rush I could use the 300kw charger but this wears down the battery sooner so it’s interesting for road trips, rather than daily use.