I arrived in England at the end of April without a plan. My brother there had taken critically ill, I simply had to see him, and words he had said to me on the phone “it’s time to start living” rang in my head.

My wife and I, though retired, had been putting off a much desired journey to the UK and Europe, for several reasons, but now my brother’s illness had us suddenly there.

Having committed 6 tonnes of CO2 to the sky for us to fly to the UK, we decided to stay for some months and do much of the touring we had been dreaming of.

I had the idea to hire an electric car and try to power it with renewable energy to at least minimise that part of our touring footprint.

Apart from a few prestige hire car companies, it was impossible to locate an EV we could hire. I was offered a fantastic Tesla model S at £100 ($A180) per day, but that would have proven just a tad expensive for the 3+ months we were considering.

More affordable EV’s – the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe and even the BMW i3 – had become quite popular in the UK, but none were available for hire and the waiting time for delivery of a new one was more that six months, even if that option were financially realistic.

So I searched the 2nd hand market, and found quite a few options. One of the advertisers I found was a company called “Drive Green” who specialised in used EVs, and by chance were located only 30 minutes drive away. I paid them a visit.

Richard, one of the partners of the small firm, was an amazing help to us. He gave a great summary of the EV market in the UK, and recommended for our purpose a BMW i3 with Range Extender and Rapid Charge options (neither of which can be retro fitted).

Drive Green did not have one of these in stock at the time but managed to source a 2 year old one within 2 weeks and sell it to us at quite a reasonable price (compared with others I could find for sale on the internet).

I also gained a commitment from Drive Green to buy the car back from us when we no longer needed it. The deal we struck meant that the overall cost of the car for us (including full insurance and road service) was less than £2,000 ($A3,600) for as much as 5 months.

We ended up keeping it for 4 months (8,000 miles) so overall it cost us about £17 ($A30) per day. This for a sporty, spacious and very likeable small car, was perfect for our needs.

The most important charging stations for us were the places we stayed! Most people we met seemed to worry that we would have trouble finding somewhere to charge, but forget that 240v AC power is available anywhere.

Just a standard power point would fully charge our i3 battery from flat in just 10 hours. It wasn’t difficult to arrange with the B&B’s, ATC members and family we stayed with, to plug in overnight, so every morning we would start with a full charge for the day.

Of course the i3 only has a range of about 80 miles (130 km) so to go further we needed to use charging stations along the way. A standard UK power point is limited to 13 amps of current or 3 kW of power. The i3’s home charging cable limits you to about 10 amps (2.4 kW) (that’s the limit for standard Australian power points).

However the fast charge stations enable you to dump as much as 50 kW into the i3. So when you are travelling during the day you can charge as much as 20 times quicker. In theory a full charge takes only half an hour.

In practice the last few percent of the batteries capacity takes longer as the battery management system has to slow down the charge to protect the battery.

My friend at Drive Green had given me a few clues on using fast charge stations, but had no previous experience with foreigners buying and driving in the UK with which to prepare us.

The UK is blessed with heaps of charging places for electric vehicles, and there are several different companies providing them. They each differ somewhat in how you register and use their stations (none of which are attended of course) but for the most part “you can register and start charging using your smart phone when you arrive at the station” I learned.

I later learned that it can be a little more difficult if you don’t have a local bank account, and in hindsight I can recommend getting an EV charge card from some of the vendors before you start, well from those who will accept your credit card anyway.

Richard pointed me to the Zap Map App which was great for locating all brands of charging stations across the UK and suggested I at least register with Ecotricity who have a lot of stations along the motorways. If you want to see just how many charging stations there are in the UK have a look at zap-map.com. Australia’s equivalent is of course plugshare.com.au

I’d had the car for only a few days before needing to drive 100 miles to Heathrow to collect my wife who was flying in to join me, on a 5:30am arrival. A 210 mile (330km) round trip would need at least two recharges along the way.

The day before I’d tried out my first fast charge at one of the charging places near Frome where I was staying. I found two Instavolt machines in the back corner of a small carpark at a country manor hotel. They were bright and new. I followed the instructions written on the small screen, tapped my credit card on the sensor, plugged in the car and away it went.

A perfect charge session finished with a friendly message saying the cost would have been around £3 (it wasn’t a full charge) but that as an introductory offer it was free of charge. It couldn’t have been simpler, and the price would have been less than the tea and cake I had at the hotel.

So when I pulled off the motorway at 4am, halfway to Heathrow the following morning, I wasn’t really ready for what I found. Driving round a poorly lit hotel carpark, after a little searching, I found the Polar charge station with the instruction of “tap your card here”.

I did this but the message said “card invalid”, as it did for my other credit and debit cards. It wanted a Polar charge card and it appeared to me at the time that nothing else would do.

I made my way to the next charging station I could find with Zap Map. It was another Polar machine which of course refused my cards in the same way. (Note that it would have been possible to use just my smart phone for a Polar station, but I didn’t know that at the time, and no instruction on this was provided on the machine)

I got back on the motorway to locate my next option at one of the motorway service centres. The Ecotricity machine I found at a small carpark after the other services, lifted my spirits.

I had registered on-line with Ecotricity and just had to use the Electric Highway app on my phone to start a charge – I thought. I had registered my credit card on their website the day before, so when I identified the station and chose this credit card to use for the charge I was somewhat underwhelmed when it told me the credit card was declined. I tried to register my other credit card and then my international debit card, but with no luck.

In retrospect, what I should have done at this point (or earlier) is to ring the help line whose number was on the side of the box. (It didn’t occur to me at the time that there would be someone there to help at 5am in the morning, but there would have been.

On the whole the operators I ended up speaking to many times in the next few months were all very helpful, patient and a lot of the time could solve the problem, somehow.)

So I ended up getting to Heathrow using the i3’s Range Extender (a petrol generator hidden in the rear of the car, that cuts in automatically when the battery is nearly flat). It was lucky – I got to the arrivals hall only a few minutes after Evelyn and we found each other quite quickly. Evelyn had had a good sleep and was I think fresher than I at this stage.

After going around in circles on the roads near Heathrow for a while, we made it to a Shell petrol station that was shown on Zap Map as having a Smoov charging point. After politely asking the chauffeur cleaning his limo if we could park our car in the EV parking space he was occupying, I commenced reading the instructions on what was needed here. “ Just download the Smoov app, register a credit card and ….” But I couldn’t find the Smoov app in the app store – lots of things with similar names but nothing for charging cars.

Further searching indicated that the Smoov app was not available on the Australian App Store. I tried to find a way of switching my phone to the Netherlands App Store that was apparently the one I needed, but at the time was unable to do this. I then went into the service station and asked the manager there if he could help me.

His limited English and complete lack of knowledge about the EV charging point were soon established. Finally, I decided to ring the help line number displayed on the box. The operator I spoke to sympathetically lent his ear to my mornings story, no doubt my tact at this stage may have been starting to slip. He suggested getting the service station operator to use his “emergency card” to start the charger. I put the two of them in touch with each other, then had to negotiate a price I would pay the service station manager when I was finished.

So eventually he found his emergency card and we got a charge started. I had to look him out again about half an hour later to use the same card to turn it off again. Paid him £4 – what I’d worked out the retail price of a full charge (20kwh) would be at a private residence, and got a receipt for a car wash.

We didn’t really have to stop again on the way back to my uncle’s home in Somerset, we could have used the range extender again and made it easily, but we did need a break and I managed to locate an Instavolt charge station at a good spot along the way. And just like the previous day, the Instavolt station worked perfectly and gave us a free charge. It was also near a friendly little cafe and helped enormously in restoring our confidence for the weeks ahead….

Our first trips away from my uncle’s home were south to Dorset and west to Devon and Cornwall. Each day’s drive generally needed no recharge away from the homes and B&B’s we were staying at. Only when we were moving between accommodation did we need recharge stations, and then generally only one charge halfway along the way.

There were several brands of charging stations we came across, and we managed to get a successful charge from most. Contrary to our initial findings, Instavolt wasn’t the only brand we could use for a charge. Ecotricity, Polar and Geniepoint all eventually worked ok using just the smart phone to kick them off, though access to the support phone lines sometimes proved handy.

The price for a charge did vary a little. They ranged from free-of-charge to 30p/kwh to £10/half hour (or part thereof). I must admit I wasn’t impressed by the later charging regime having charged for around 35 minutes our first time around and being socked £20 ($A36), when the retail cost of electricity in the UK works out to be about £4 for the 20kwh our battery was capable of storing. £4 per overnight charge was what we normally gave to our hosts for their electricity if they would take it. (Most didn’t want any payment 🙂

Parking in the UK has become quite an issue. It seems most places you go, they now charge for parking. Especially the tourist locations. So when we arrived at England’s south-western extremity – Lands End – we were pleasantly surprised to find that electric vehicles were given 2 hours of free parking at the Ecotricity charging station close to the main attractions. It was a shame to find that the charging station was not working. It had been out for a few days it seems, but we were pleased to save £6 on the parking 🙂

Port Isaac (or Port Wenn for Doc Martin fans) had a few big parking areas to cater for its popularity but no place anywhere near walking distance, to charge the car. We found that the smart phone option for the pay-and-display machine would not work with our Aussie credit card, then had trouble raising the necessary number of coins we needed for the ticket. The last £3 came from the umpteenth other visitor we approached. They were overly generous though, insisting we take the coins without accepting the 5 Pound note we offered in return, because they “didn’t have the change” !!

A few weeks later..  we arrived in Dublin on the ferry from Holyhead and headed to a charging point out in the direction of our B&B accommodation. Being in another country of course, I was doing all I could to get mobile data sorted so we could start our first charge in Ireland.

Next to us in the shopping centre car park was a fellow already using the solitary machine to charge his Nissan Leaf. While Evelyn checked out the shopping centre for a cafe, I spent 20 minutes desperately trying to get internet access so I could register for the ESB Ecars charging station. The Leaf driver then appeared and pointed out that the power was free and you could start the machine with nearly any card. And that’s what we did – simple.

It seems that in Ireland, most public chargers are run by the ESB (Electricity Supply Board) and that the power, was provided free of charge. However, as we found out later, it is not always wise to use just any card to start the chargers. If you don’t have an EV charging card, then you should ring the Ecars help line (number on the box) and they will start the charger for you.

So thanks to the generosity of the government, we got a lot of free electricity in Ireland, however we did have a few challenges with charging stations. Often they were out of action, especially those in remote locations, and frequently just because the ESB support team could not establish connection to the stations via the mobile data network used for their communications.

It was very frustrating to be at a perfectly capable charging machine, the only one for miles around, and not be able to charge just because the mobile data network was not performing.

A trap for the unwary traveler in Ireland appears to be the naming of the counties. Maybe we were unusual in not realising that Counties often had the very same name as the major city they contained. We were very slow to learn this…

In our planning we had booked a B&B in Cork, on the southern coast of Ireland. We had of course searched specifically for a B&B in Cork and the address we had written down for it in our notes finished with “West Cork” which we took to be a suburb of that city.

I should point out at this stage, that when planning your drive for the day in a limited range ev, that charging station locations figure high on the list of places to visit. Our plan for the trip to Cork from Dublin was a leisurely drive south til we hit the coast at Waterford then west to Cork.

We got a good fast free charge in Waterford (after a little delay finding the location), which we thought would do us for the day. Then in mid-afternoon, when heading for the Cobh Titanic museum as we neared Cork, we plugged our B&B address into the cars GPS to be ready for the final short leg of our journey.

You can imagine our surprise when the GPS told us we had over 100km (distances are measured in kilometres in Ireland) left to go. It turned out that “West Cork” was referring to the westernmost part of County Cork, and not at all where we expected to stay the next few nights.

Luckily, we had no desperate need to stay in the city, indeed some people we’d met along the way had suggested it was “just another city”, so we weren’t too concerned that we’d be a little out of town. The only concern was that we would not only have another hour or two of driving, but also we’d need another charge along the way. And although technically we only needed half an hour for a charge, we knew from bitter experience that finding the chosen station and initiating a charge could sometimes take somewhat longer.

In fact, the speed of the exercise always seemed the inverse of the spare time you had to achieve it.

Of the three fast charge stations in Cork, one was listed as out of order, another didn’t have our required CCS option and the third was a little out of the way and needed us to go through the city, but at least it worked fine and overall we made good time to “Atlantic House” in Castletownsend.

It was well worth the extra kms. A beautiful spot with ocean view from our room and a great staging post for scenic tours such as the trip we made to Ireland’s answer to “Lands End”, its southernmost tip, Mizen Head, in perfect weather.

Several days later we were running late when we left with a full charge from Limerick on our last leg of our day’s journey from Kilarney to Galway. We had found our morning scenic detour via Inch Beach and the Dingle Peninsular far too spectacular and were not quite on schedule.

We rang the B&B to ask if it would matter if we were a little late arriving, so we had time to stop for some dinner first. Only after this did we plug the address of the B&B into the navigator. Yes – we’d done it again. Our Galway address was in County Galway, not the city. We were heading for Clifden some 80kms on the other side of Galway city.

Some quick sums told us we would not have time to recharge if we wanted to arrive at any reasonable hour and the petrol driven range-extender in the car may have to come to our rescue. We had been avoiding it’s use so we could say we’d done Ireland on electric only, but alas had to give in at this point.

Evelyn was driving while I navigated, as we do. It was late in the afternoon and we were on a new motorway about 20kms short of Galway (city) when the GPS started telling us things like “turn around at the next intersection”, then “turn ” when there was no intersection.

The strange instructions continued, and we soon realised that the young lady giving us directions was totally unaware of the existence of the motorway we were now on. I’d have turned her off, but we had our final destination programmed in and it was reasonable to expect the motorway wouldn’t last forever, so we let her continue and tuned out from listening to her strange tales.

It was late afternoon as I say, and motorway driving being what it is, the human navigator nodded off, leaving the driver on her own busily ignoring the directions of the satnav. I awoke refreshed after about 20 minutes and was surprised to see we were still heading north on the motorway.

A quick check of Google maps confirmed my fear. The motorway had neatly bypassed the city of Galway and we were now 15km north of where we needed to turn left. Drats – yes we would be even later getting there now.

The battery had run out by this time of course and we were into range-extender territory. The fuel gauge for the range extender (like that of the battery) measured the remaining fuel in terms of the distance you could go. It told us we had 105km of range left, while the sat-nav told us we needed 86km to get to Sky Road, Clifden. With 19km of spare range, we thought we should be fine.

It was an interesting evening’s drive. We dined on sandwiches we’d picked up along the way, and enjoyed driving towards something we rarely saw here. Sunsets usually happened after we’d settled for the night. This one was a beauty, right in front of us, and the road quite scenic.

Our sat-nav dutifully delivered us to Sky Road, Clifden about 11pm and in the dark, and we started along Sky Road looking for signs of “Ocean Villa”. Some way up the road we found a sign saying “Ocean Villa 15 kilometres”. The car suggested we had 16 km of juice left in the tank. We were starting to suffer range anxiety. I assumed that there would be a little in reserve, but of course we didn’t know for sure and had never run it this low before.

Sky Road turned into a single lane road with passing points (quite common in country areas), winding around the side of a hill, and true to it’s name the road became more and more elevated. It was dark and the view limited, but at one point it felt like we were flying as we could see nothing but several lit houses way down below. And of course when you are climbing hills you use more fuel!

The guage was reading empty well before we reached the B&B. We had visions of sleeping in the car for the night. Luckily our hosts were very forgiving when we finally arrived, and it wasn’t long before we had the car safely plugged in so we would be ready for driving again the following morning. It occurred to me then, that really the electricity was easier to source than petrol ever was. Any one of the houses we passed along the way, could have lent us some had we asked.

The morning brought a reward we didn’t expect. We woke with a view of cattle grazing just outside our bedroom window and found we were located right next to a very pretty undeveloped ocean inlet. Different to where we planned to be staying in the city of Galway, this area was surrounded by some spectacular scenery. Our luck had delivered us to a far more interesting place to stay, and our hosts were fantastic.

ChargePlace Scotland is the national charging network for Scotland and appears to manage most of the charging stations there. Certainly, all the fast charge stations we found in remote areas seem to belong, though the machines were of various types and often seemed to be hand-me-downs from an earlier initiative.

We rang the help line at our first Scottish charging station in Girvan Harbour after arriving at Cairnryan on the morning ferry from Belfast. We explained that we had managed to register with the Charge Car app as instructed on the machine, but were unable to link our credit details because it required a UK bank account for direct debit. So even though this charging place was identified as “free tariff” we could not start the charge with the app. The help desk were apologetic and took up reviewing the issue, meanwhile they resolved to start a charge for us remotely.

After a few attempts we got the charging happening then had some lunch in a nearby cafe. On returning to the car we found the charge had successfully added some energy, but had stopped prematurely (though some days later I learned it may have been stopped by us unlocking the car – thats not supposed to happen). But we had enough to get to our next scheduled stop in Ayr (where my good wife grew up), so we headed off.

We rang ChargePlace from the fast charge station at Burns Statue Square in Ayr – having used the UK post code system to successfully locate it. Alas the story was that both machines there were out of action. ChargePlace suggested a (not so fast) charging place at the University only a mile or so away.

They gave us the postcode and explained the location and we headed off. Unfortunately that postcode (which was the same one listed in the app) led us some miles past the actual location and it took us half an hour to finally get to the desired spot within the University. It didn’t help that some of the university roads were closed off during the weekend.

For the 22Kv Type 2 charge we used the cable we carried with us (as suggested and kindly provided by Drive Green. It proved an invaluable accessory when 50Kw CCS rapid chargers were not available). From there we had a longish but enjoyable walk to and through the city, revisiting Evelyn’s old stomping ground. Arriving back at the car 2 hours later hoping for a fully charged car, we found instead that it had stopped charging just after we left!

I did another check on Zap Map for other local chargers and found an InstaVolt one at a health club on the outskirts of Ayr. We headed off there and had our faith restored by an easy fast charge before driving off to our destination, Carstairs, just a little later than was planned.

ChargePlace were as good as their word in finding a solution to us not having the UK bank account their system needed. They apparently had a German couple traveling in Scotland at the same time, who had experienced the same problem.

The workaround was that we just needed to call the good people at ChargePlace each time we needed a charge, and they would start it for us remotely. They would give us the power for free at every station despite there normally being a fee at some of the ChargePlace locations.

This was a generous offer and we did end up recharging at a great many ChargePlace locations across Scotland. But there were a few drawbacks we found over the coming weeks. The ChargePlace hot line (a call centre with 15 or so staff based near London) had a prerecorded message to sit through each time, then often a little delay before it was answered.

If not answered within about 3 minutes, the line would drop out and we would have to rejoin the queue by calling again. Generally it was not a long wait but I did get to the third call on at least 2 occasions.

Of course we often got a different person on the line and had to explain our situation each time before they would start us up. They were always friendly and helpful but starting free charges wasn’t generally the go. Then of course we had to call again to switch a charge off.

While a 90+% charge was possible in 30 minutes the last few % could take another hour if you wanted to leave it plugged in that long. The car would not let go of the plug until a disconnect was initiated from the charging machine. The only elegant way of finishing a charge in a reasonable time was for us to ring ChargePlace again.

Another option did exist we found – hitting the emergency stop button on the machine, then resetting it – which as you can imagine was rather frowned upon, since it could impact other users as well as possibly upset their computer records. If you ever do use the emergency stop button, near the foot of most machines, remember to reset it by pulling the switch back out afterwards, so the next user is not impacted.

ChargePlace was certainly the network we needed to use. It was just about the only option anywhere outside of the main cities in Scotland. However, several of the more remote chargers we came across were out of action and sometimes out for weeks.

It was lucky that there were still sufficient of them between our B&B’s to keep us on the road with electricity. It was very rare we had to dip into the dirty ‘range extender’ power, though it took some perseverance along the way.

I checked with our “Drive Green” EV friend Richard before venturing into Europe. He had little experience to share but suggested I register and get a ‘NewMotion’ card before I set out. I contacted NewMotion on line and arranged a card be sent, but alas my week and a half notice proved insufficient time for the card to arrive before I ventured to the Channel Tunnel and across to the Continent.

We had gotten by, just using the appropriate phone app or credit card in the UK and I assumed I’d be able to do the same on the continent. The NewMotion card promised to enable recharge at thousands of places across north and central Europe, if I could just get one. As I found out later though, even if I had acquired a card I would still not have been able to use it! (read on :).

Evelyn had already headed back to Australia, so I was doing this last part of the tour alone to visit relatives in Belguim, friends in Germany, and to have another look at the wonderful art in Paris.

I must admit I was a little anxious taking on the unknown challenge of foreign language charging stations along with driving on the right, while navigating the journey alone. Thank goodness for the i3’s sat-nav and my smart phone apps, though they had proved far from perfect in the UK.

I had 175 miles to travel in the UK that morning, on the i3’s 80 mile battery range. My charges at Reading and Maidstone went well, using InstaVolt and Polar stations I had learned I could trust. The Channel Tunnel terminus near Folkestone promised free fast charge stations so I thought I’d have a go at getting a full battery ready for arrival at Calais, France.

Having allowed time for possible charging delays, but suffering none, I arrived at the terminus a couple of hours early for my scheduled train but the lady at the entrance kindly booked me on an earlier train at no extra charge, so I didn’t have heaps of time like I expected to get the charge happening. According to the decals, the chargers there were provided by my good friends ChargePlace, though when I phoned them, they couldn’t help me with the problems I found I was having, since their support contract didn’t cover these machines.

I would have to talk to the people at the information desk in the nearby terminal building. I had trouble getting any of the chargers to ‘stick’. I was able to kick off a charge ok but within a few seconds of starting up, the charge would fail and cut out. I tried several times. I moved the car and tried a different machine. I tried using the slower Type 2 cable instead of the CCS one. Nothing helped so I went for a walk to the information desk at the terminal building. They didn’t know a lot about the machines but did know ‘the people were out fixing them yesterday’. They offered me an access card to try using (in exchange for my drivers licence or passport) which I took and headed back to the car. I don’t think the access card made any difference.

The machine didn’t seem to work any differently when I used it, but after 3 attempts I finally managed to get the charger to stay on. I tentatively locked the car and returned to the office to retrieve my drivers licence. I half expected the charger to have stopped again by the time I got back to the car, but my luck was in. The car charged nicely and I was able to stop the charge elegantly and make it to the train just in time, with enough charge to get me to my first stop on the Continent – Menen, Belgium, where some new ATC friends were more than helpful with an overnight charge. I had bought a UK-European plug converter before leaving England and used this with the regular i3 home charging cable.

My next charge was at a newish Eklo budget hotel in Lille, when I spent a night there. Reception provided me with a card to start one of the two Type 2 chargers prominently set up in the carpark. It was a free and easy overnight charge.

My first public charge in Europe was at a Total service station near Brussels. I found this using the OpenChargeMap app (My stalwart, ZapMap, covered only UK and Ireland), where I learned it had my desired CCS option at a “Public – Pay at location” site.

A little research had found me an alternative to the recommended NewMotion card (the card I didn’t yet have), for accessing charging stations across Europe. This was called PlugSurfing and it had the advantage of enabling charges using it’s App as well as its PlugSurfing card. It was easy to register with the app using my Australian credit card and also PayPal as valid payment options.

I used the PlugSurfing app to successfully start the charge here, though had troubles finishing the charge with the app. The PlugSurfing app showed a huge number of charging stations across Europe and looked to be just what I was looking for. It did also offer to quickly send me a card that I could use so I arranged for one to go to the address I would be at in Germany as a backup option. This proved to be a very wise move.

I stayed for a few nights in Leuven, Belgium at a home that had no parking, and though I tried, I was unable to find a parking station in the city that had a working charger (one had a Type 2 charger but it was out of order).

There was promise of on-street parking with a charger near where I was staying in the city centre, but the Council’s web map advertising this wasn’t matched with anything physically present on the street in question (and I took quite a bit of time on foot looking for it :).

Another site was advertised a little further away next to the railway station, but I found, after a little help with translation, that you needed a specific charging card to use this. Neither of these options would have allowed for parking for more than a few hours anyway.

I didn’t need to use the car while in the city of course, so left the recharging for the day I left, at a motorway service station 22km to the west on the E40 near Hoegaarden. This charge proved to be my toughest challenge ever.

Although not in an unfavourable location it took me a few minutes to locate the charger, driving around the service centre. Being an Allego branded machine like I used in Brussels, I thought it would be easy to start using the PlugSurfing app. The app located the charger, showed me that the CCS option was available and gave me a price and a “Start Charging” button.

On pressing this it allowed me to select one of my pre-approved payment options, but then told me it was having trouble starting the charge and to try again later. I tried this several times. I tried the Type 2 charging option, with the same results. There was a help line number listed on the machine starting 0800…. I tried this but got a message on my Australian phone with UK Sim that the number was not valid.

Information on the charging machine suggested downloading the Smoov app. I had come across Smoov before. Ah yes, I’d found that the app wasn’t available on the Australian iPhone Appstore. I’d done a little reading on this issue after the first attempt in London. I located the option (Prominently located at the very bottom of the multi-page terms and conditions relating to the Appstore agreement) and chose a European Appstore to replace my Australian one.

This of course then needed me to to select a new credit card to link with the account. An Australian credit card however wasn’t good enough – it had to be a credit card issued in the country I chose :). So I had no way of getting this free app onto my phone.

I tried a few alternatives for the 0800… help line number, including putting the country code +32 (for Belgium, where I was) in place of the leading zero, but all I got was a message, in English(nice touch), that the number was invalid.

At this stage I thought I might ask the service station people for help, though I knew from previous experience that they probably had little to do with the charging machine other than provide a spot for it. The young lady on the till certainly knew nothing, though I was surprised that she could not even point me to a public phone or even allow me to use her phone to try calling the help line number.

Her english was limited, so she probably didn’t pick up much of my sad tale. I walked next door and asked the lady in the cafe if she could help me. She also had no phone she could offer. After some deliberation and discussion with one of her customers she took me back through to the service station and arranged for me to talk to the manager there. He was understanding and used the phone at the checkout desk to call somebody to help me.

The fellow I spoke to on the phone listened to my story then went off to seek a solution. He came back with the news that he couldn’t help me directly but he gave me the number I could call to get help – the person would be able to start a charge remotely for me – he guaranteed it would work.

I tried it on my phone and it starting ringing so I bade him farewell and walked back to the car while explaining my situation yet again. This fellow was sympathetic but said he was from the firm that installed the machine and was not at all able to help with day to day operations, in fact he could offer no advice at all.

A customer of the cafe who had overheard my conversation earlier was now stood next to my car and asked me how I was fairing. I explained. He was very interested as he was thinking of getting an electric car. He very kindly offered me the use of his phone to try the 0800 help number again. Needless to say it worked ok and was answered by yet another sympathetic soul.

The story I learned after much discussion with this fellow was: The 0800 help number was actually based in the Netherlands so I needed a +31 prefix to access it (despite the charger not actually being in that country). He could not start the charger remotely unless I had a charger card number to give him. He could not accept payment over the phone. He was not allowed to give me a free charge. However, it was possible to get NewMotion to allocate me a number directly, without having a physical card.

He gave me the number to call for NewMotion. This fellow was very friendly and talkative and it was hard to get him off the phone so that I could give the phone back to my new friend who was stood patiently waiting with another onlooker who had now wandered up to check out what was happening.

I rang NewMotion (based in the UK) and took only a few minutes to get to someone who might help. I explained and asked about getting a card number over the phone. He said it was possible but said that – wait for it – I would need a UK or European bank account to be able to activate the card number! Not one to give in, I explained that I had a Travelex Mastercard which had UK Pounds and Euros in direct debit style accounts. Would that work I asked? He thought for a while then said yes it should be OK. He took my details and allocated me a card number.

Woohoo… was I finally getting somewhere – perhaps. I logged onto the NewMotion app to register my new card number and define a payment method. Ooops – no – the Travelex Mastercard was no good either. So the ‘all effective’ NewMotion card everyone had been pointing me to turned out entirely useless for any traveller from outside of Europe! Fun

I got out of the car and resumed the conversation with the kindly phone lender, and his new friend who were still chatting. I explained my latest news. The newcomer didn’t know much English and was looking to leave at this point but I had just learned he had an EV himself, so I asked him if he had a charge card, and yes he did. I asked him if he could start my charge for me if I paid him some cash.

He was dubious because he didn’t know how much it would cost him and of course didn’t want to have to wait until the charge had finished, so I suggested I would pay him more than the maximum it could cost him and would find a way of stopping the charge without the card. We negotiated a price and though a bit expensive, I got the charge I was determined to get. I could have just used petrol, yes, but couldn’t bear to see a perfectly good charge station go unused when I needed it.

My next scheduled charging point that day was further along the motorway. The exit and service centre there was entirely closed, shut down due to roadworks. Luckily

The card from PlugSurfing duely arrived at my German address and proved to be well worth the eight Euros they charged. I found plenty of chargers along the German and French motorways on my way back west, which worked perfectly with the card.

Cost of the charges was significantly more than I was used to. No free-bees here. But I was happy to pay a reasonable price for the power, thats fair. (Except one occasion when they even charged me ten euros for a failed session! Subsequently refunded J).

The moral of this story – perhaps it doesn’t pay to be an early adopter – but you can learn a lot and hopefully help things improve for those who come along in future years.

One thing’s for sure, everyone seems willing to do all they can to help when you need it. But the charging station tools still need a little sharpening, especially for tourists from another planet like Australia, or even England, or for when things don’t quite work as planned.

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