I know of two chargers that I can use when shopping. One of these costs 2 CHF just to connect, and then the cost of the charge. At the second shopping centre I can plug in for five minutes, or two and a half hours and I will only pay for the charge. Not having a connection fee makes the cheaper option more attractive.
If people want to charge quickly they have four fast chargers outdoors, by McDonald’s but if people want to charge slowly then they have the cheaper indoor parking chargers.
Yesterday I drove an EV from Nyon to Boudry and back. The journey took about 40 percent charge for each direction for a total of 80 percent charge. Keep in mind that this is a fiat 500 with a small battery rather than a large one.
I routed the journey from Nyon to a 150w charging station and within 14 minutes I had gone from 56 percent or so to 86 percent.
Today I got to experience something new, to me, and exciting. I got to charge an EV in the rain. In theory you should avoid doing this because you don’t want moisture to get into the connectors of the car, as well as the rubber plugs. You also don’t want to get moisture into the plug of the EV station adaptor. I was not electrocuted, and from what I saw everything remained dry.
Yesterday I tried to use a slow charger to recharge the car. After 49 minutes I had charged 8.95 watts for 5.13 CHF. I got to about 63 percent. I stopped charging. I drove somewhere and by the time I got back I was down to 30 percent. I looked to my left as I was approaching McDonald’s and saw that the GoFast chargers were free so I stopped to charge.
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.
Every single time I go from driving an EV to driving a petrol car I am struck by old fashioned and smelly old cars are compared to new ones. In this context an old car is any car that has a petrol engine rather than an electric motor.
I had to play musical cars just now, and put the winter tires into the petrol car, to get them swapped so that I can drive in winter safely.
After some trial and error I finally managed to get an electric car to charge at public charging points. The first success was at an evpass charging station where I was able to charge 13.1kW/h in an hour and 14 minutes using the app on my phone and a credit card for 8.48 CHF. The second time was with the TCS eCharge RFID tag that I ordered from the Touring Club Suisse for free.
It’s easy to drive a petrol car. You fill up, and 500-600 kilometres later you fill up. With Electric vehicles it is the same in theory. In practice it isn’t that simple. The EV charging market is fragmented and each company has a different app and possibly RFID tag. The result is that you can either be loyal and use just one app or you can have two or more apps on your phone.
I know that driving to the house where I charge the electric vehicle will take about 20 percent. I also know that driving to the shops will take less than one percent per drive. This means that if I had an electric car, and I had a plug at home, rather than a climb up the Jura, I would need to charge every week or two, rather than almost every time I drive the car.