Driving in France & Spain

[Rwaggers]

Doing our first EV European trip from Dieppe to the bottom of Spain soon. For this first run, we'll mainly stick to the motorway networks.

I have a WeCharge card and an Octopus Electric Universe card and the Telsa app on my phone. I'm hoping that most of the EV chargers will accept contactless credit/debit card payments.

Does anyone have experience to the French & Spanish charging networks? Do I need any other apps or RFID cards? Also, any tips and advice would be appreciated.

TIA

[sidehaas]

Ionity takes the wecharge card and it works very well. Quite a few other networks in France including Fastned also take wecharge but I haven't used them. Ionity did for all my needs when I visited. The Octopus Electroverse card does do some providers that wecharge doesn't (eg Total I think?) so with those two you have very good coverage. I don't think so many places take contactless credit cards as in the UK? But you probably won't need them to.

Edit - the chargemap app supposedly shows virtually all the chargers in France, a bit like zapmap in the UK I think. You can also get a chargemap RFID that will presumably pay for a lot of them. However I didn't like the app much and it basically showed me that in northern France the Octopus and wecharge cards together gave me almost universal rapid coverage, so I didn't bother with a chargemap card. There are a lot of type 2s that you will need to download a local app for.

[Jimmybones100]

We drove from Dieppe to Madrid in our Tour pro s.
We used EDP moveon,a Spanish app but it works in France too,wecharge,ionity ,Tesla and iberdrola.
Just have as many apps as you can.

[Deleted User 314]

Drop me a DM, I live in Spain and have driven 50k around it.

There’s a post from me somewhere about it, but happy to talk directly.

[Deleted User 314]

I tried replying to your PM, but it says I have 2 in the outbox, so just in case:

Hi Richard,

I took a screenshot of my apps so you can see the nightmare it is over here. None of these apps require "DNI" to be entered, but as I cannot add screenshots or attach images I'll list them for you:

Chargemap - rarely use it, but is a good location tool
Electromaps - excellent, good filters, plus you can add credit in advance, but check if the chargers are Electromaps compatible before you put credit on (it's a filter)
Zunder - reliable chargers, typically up to 50kw, register in advance with credit card [Also knows as Easycharger]
Wenea - reliable chargers, up to 150kw, register in advance with credit card
EVcharge - seems to be a Catalan service, mostly FREE (yes FREE) chargers, up to 50kw
Iberdrola/RecargaPublica - the Iberdrola service, again, reliable and good
JuicePass - a REAL REAL Pain to get registered and usuall found in car parks with guess what? No signal
Melib - I think just Mallorca - free chargers
Telsa - work in most places
Ionity - obviously

I've not driven in Malaga, but I note that your choices are quite limited with that app, and probably plays to a local monopoloy.

My recommendation would be to register in advance and if any need a DNI let me know and I'll see if I can find a "dummy" one to use as they have check digits so you can't just type random numbers.

Any other questions then please ask away.

On the whole the infrastructure is better in Spain than the UK, but a LOT of apps to download.

Cheers,
Peter

[OB1CCFC]

Doing our first EV European trip from Dieppe to the bottom of Spain soon. For this first run, we'll mainly stick to the motorway networks.

I have a WeCharge card and an Octopus Electric Universe card and the Telsa app on my phone. I'm hoping that most of the EV chargers will accept contactless credit/debit card payments.

Does anyone have experience to the French & Spanish charging networks? Do I need any other apps or RFID cards? Also, any tips and advice would be appreciated.

TIA

I lived in Nerja for 2 years and drove back and forth to the UK 5 or 6 times. I’d recommend stopovers in some of the following: Alencon, Arcachon, Burgos, Toledo.
I would personally stay with Ionity down to Marbella, due to reliability and number of chargers. After that It’s a bit of a free for all but I would look at the JuicePass (enel way).