Earlier this year I had had enough of the pandemic and life in Lisbon. I needed to escape for a bit so I decided on a whim to take Leila and go on a road trip across Europe. There was no real plan, the idea was to drive and figure things out. What a glorious escape!
It was mid-March so while the weather in Portugal was fairly decent, Northern Europe was still in the throes of a cold winter. Yet, I decided to brave the weather and the challenges of driving an electric car across the continent, and away I went!
I had no real destination in mind, the road was the way. I packed my bags on 9th March, jumped into my Tesla Model 3 Performance and set off with Leila in the back seat wondering what the hell was going on. But of course, she wonders but Leila is always up for an adventure!
My main pain point was that for the last few years I had always wanted to visit the Basque Country and I had never managed to make it. So my first intention was to drive up to Bilbao and eat some pintxos.
On this trip I had TWO major limitations. I needed to charge my car along the way, and I needed to stay in dog friendly places.
I left Lisbon around 2pm, way too late for a winter day. By the time I was crossing from Portugal into Spain the sun was already going down.
A note about charging options
Across Europe there are several different options to charge. Unlike the US, the European Commission decided to standardize car charging ports in Europe. So every car (except the original Tesla Model S) uses the CCS2 standard in Europe. That means that most chargers work with most cars. Tesla of course has the advantage of their own supercharger network. This network is exclusive for Tesla cars except in France and The Netherlands. Other than Tesla’s Supercharger network there are several options you can choose from.
Unfortunately although charging ports are standardized across most of Europe, access to charging networks is not. This is where Tesla’s superchargers stand out. You just drive up to them (and the car tells you where they are) and plug yourself in. Usually there are at least 10 stalls available so you are unlikely to have any wait time to plug in unless for some reason it’s super busy.
For the other charging options, you often need an RFID card that is specific to the country you’re in. So France has different cards, Portugal has different ones, Spain and Germany have different ones. These cards are pretty tough to acquire if you don’t live in those countries so your charging options are limited if you want to go outside the Tesla network.
Ionity’s chargers (all over Europe) allow you to drive up, plug and pay so you can pay around €0,79/kWh for charging your car. The chargers are ultra fast (350kW) so usually you’ll be good to go very soon. To put it into perspective though, Tesla’s chargers cost around €0,45/kWh so they work out a lot cheaper than Ionity. If you have an Ionity subscription however then you can pay around €0,39/kWh but you’ll also be paying a monthly subscription fee. In terms of cost effectiveness it only works out if you’re putting a ton of miles on your car and using Ionity very often.
In Spain you can use the Recarga Publica app by Iberdrola to locate their chargers. They have chargers that go up to 150kW and you can unlock them through the app after validating your credit or debit card in the app. The app is a little clunky but it does work. Later on this trip outside Bilbao I had to top-up the car and there are no superchargers in that area so the Iberdrola app was a life saver.
While traveling in Germany I noticed that some chargers allow you to use your credit/debit card to pay on the spot. I didn’t end up using any of these chargers because they are usually right in front of Tesla Superchargers so I just decided to make Elon a little richer instead.
Charging the car is an interesting way to end up in situations or places you wouldn’t encounter normally.
Crossing into Spain
It was already getting dark by the time I had crossed the mountains near Guarda in Portugal and entered Spain. I needed to charge the car and I was feeling adventurous. So I thought, let’s skip the Tesla supercharger in Guarda. I’ll go and charge the car at this Ionity charger in Spain.
So I rolled up to this gas station in the middle of nowhere which had an Ionity charger. I plugged in the car and paid via Google Pay. The charging wouldn’t start. At this point I had about 10% battery left so I was quite nervous about the situation. After multiple attempts of unplugging, replugging and waiting for the car to start charging I had almost given up. I told Leila we’re going to need to figure something out. She looked pretty neutral about the whole situation.
In the meantime, I spotted a telephone number on the Ionity station so I called it. The guy on the phone said that there was some issue with the charger starting but he would try to remotely start it. He told me to hold the cable against the car firmly so that the communication would be perfect. Boom! The charge started! Hallelujah! He was nice enough to say that since I had trouble with the charging that this one would be on them. Super kind! But I made a mental note to mostly stick to Tesla superchargers after this because I didn’t want to risk being stranded.
That wasn’t the only wonderful thing that happened that day. I was having a bit of a headache so I walked into the shop at the gas station and asked the cashier if he had some paracetamol or aspirin. He said that they don’t sell that but I should try at the pharmacy in the next town. I bought some water and snacks and left.
While the car was charging Leila and I decided to play fetch and enjoy the sunset. It was spectacular!
There’s something about being on the open road with no plan, no destination, no commitments .. it heightens your senses and everything feels like it’s in HD. Every moment has a lingering sweetness to it that’s indescribable.
The car was done charging fairly quickly, I unplugged it and was about to drive away when the cashier from the gas station came running out. He said to me that he had found this little sachet in his backpack. I took a closer look and it was Ibuprofen. He said that I could take it for my headache. I asked him how much I owed him and he said Oh come on, I hope you feel better. And that was it! I thanked him profusely and was honestly super touched at his thoughtfulness.
Back on the road I wasn’t super of how much longer I could drive. Bilbao was still about 5 hours away and I’m not a big fan of driving in the dark. It gets pretty boring and then it’s more about the destination rather than the journey because you can’t see anything around you.
So I did what you shouldn’t do. I put the car on Autopilot and started looking on my phone for hotels or accommodation that were dog friendly. Of course I wouldn’t choose Airbnb because check-in/check-out is a nightmare on short notice. I would have to look for a hotel and I used the Pet Friendly filter on the booking.com app.
It told me that there was a resort type of hotel in a place called Tordesillas around 1.5 hours away. They accepted dogs, the bed looked comfortable, and the price was pretty reasonable. Booked!
I hadn’t realized though until I arrived at the hotel that there was also a Tesla Supercharger right on the premises!
So Leila and I rocked up to the hotel and checked in. I put her in the room and went down to the restaurant to have some dinner. They just had tapas on the menu. So I had some Spanish Tortilla (which is just called Tortilla in Spain, of course…) and some other tapas and called it a night.
The next morning we decided to quickly charge up the car and head on to Bilbao for more adventures.
