Charging in France

[ielmokadem]

Hi everyone - I am planning my first trip in the Taycan to France in a couple of weeks. Does anyone have any advice on charging please? I have a Porsche charging card - will that suffice or are there other charging networks I should join? Alternatively, can I just pay at most charging points with a credit card and without registering? Any other advice on apps to use or planning the trip would also be much appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

 

[robert997]

We toured France in our Polestar this summer. It is so much easier than here, chargers in abundance at every service station. And completely free in Monaco if you’re going that far !?
I don’t know who’s included in the Porsche charging card, i would imagine Ionity etc the usual suspects. I took a 1-month subscription to Tesla, for £9.99, it paid for itself in 1 charge as it give approx third discount. We were paying circa €0.20 cents per kWh with that - far cheaper than back home !
Enjoy the trip!

 

[ielmokadem]

We toured France in our Polestar this summer. It is so much easier than here, chargers in abundance at every service station. And completely free in Monaco if you’re going that far !?
I don’t know who’s included in the Porsche charging card, i would imagine Ionity etc the usual suspects. I took a 1-month subscription to Tesla, for £9.99, it paid for itself in 1 charge as it give approx third discount. We were paying circa €0.20 cents per kWh with that - far cheaper than back home !
Enjoy the trip!

Thanks very much for the advice. I have heard in the past that it was sometimes hard to connect the Taycans to the Tesla chargers due to the design of the charging places and length of cables. Did you have any problems?

 

[robert997]

I also have an e-Tron GT - brother of Taycan - and use Tesla all the time here, again price and availability.

Yes there is the odd problem, but i just move to a neighbouring charger ! in France, i found the older-style Tesla charger was faster for me than the newer models - no idea why, but it was consistent. There was normally ample choice. It really is EV utopia compared to the UK !

 

[robert997]

Sorry - yes short cables are a pain, but i have found Tesla often provide some chargers that are installed side-on, in between parking bays rather than at the head of a bay, and this specifically addresses the issue when the charging flap is behind the front wheel!
Obviously this isn’t an issue with ionity etc as they have proper length cables !

 

[ielmokadem]

Many thanks - super helpful.

 

[Scrounger]

As Rob has mentioned, lots of chargers in france with dedicated bays at service stations on the motorways. You'll realise how far behind we are with EV charging when you go into Europe.

Dan

 

[ielmokadem]

Many thanks Dan. Sad the UK has fallen behind on this.

 

[anonymouse]

The Taycan is a fabulous touring car and France is a great place to do it - beautiful motorways (even better if you have ALK/Innodrive to take some of the effort) and an excellent charging network.

We run up a quick plan using A Better Route Planner, set to prefer the networks that are discounted in Porsche Charging Service Plus. ABRP is very good at taking lots of factors into account and proposing an optimal stopping plan.

The Taycan charges so blindingly fast that we now stick to chargers >150kW and there are lots of them. Ionity is best for speed. In my J1.2 Taycan I am regularly seeing speed >300kW at Ionity in France. FastNED is also very good but there are plenty more choices. The PCS subscription covered almost all the charging we needed in France and Spain. And we are only paying €0.39/kWh.

I wouldn’t bother with the Tesla network in France. While many of them are great, there are now faster networks which will better suit your Taycan — and especially if you have a J1 Taycan without the option for 800V/150kW charging (in which case you will crawl at 50kW).

Our only issue has been finding the charging stations in service areas - they have been retrofitted to crowded service areas and often there’s a super complex one way system so you can end up in the truck station or missing entirely and ending up back on the motorway! Watch the map carefully.


(By the way if you want to do some real Porsche driving in France there are some great routes in the expert library of MyRouteApp — we just did some great twisty roads in the Auvergne and the Pyrenees using their routes for example.)

Do you have a French toll tag? They make driving much easier (no more complaints from the passenger that you have pulled up too far from the ticket machine ). We use Bip&Go (requires a bank account that can take a SEPA direct debit - eg Revolut).

Also if you are going into certain French cities you might want a Crit’Air sticker so you can drive into the low-emission zone. These only cost a few euros from the official source and will arrive in the post, perhaps even in time for your trip. (And if you go to Germany, there is an equivalent sticker from Berlin; Spain, online registration in Barcelona; NL, online registration in Antwerp).

 

[ielmokadem]

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences and suggestions. We travel regularly in France so have the tag for the autoroutes however this is the first time we will take an all electric car. It sounds like it will be easier than the UK albeit we also find the one way systems in the service stations can be complicated. We are really grateful for your advice.