Amsterdam to the Alps, the unhurried way

Every few weeks somebody new to the community asks the same question: can you actually do a proper holiday drive in an electric car, or do you spend the whole day charging? Here is one answer, in the form of a trip we did in June with two adults, one nine-year-old and more luggage than any of us would defend.

The route was Amsterdam to a valley in the Alps, the best part of nine hundred kilometres. We left at seven, arrived in the early evening, and stopped three times. That is one more stop than we would have made in a petrol car and roughly forty minutes longer overall. Nobody in the car noticed, because the stops were the ones we would have wanted anyway.

The trick, if it is a trick, is to stop early and often rather than late and long. Charging is fastest when the battery is low-ish and slows down as it fills, so two twenty-minute stops beat one forty-five-minute one nearly every time. Let the car's planner do the arithmetic and then override it for lunch, because the planner does not know where the good bakery is.

Ours was in a small town off the motorway in eastern France, chosen because the charging site had four free bays and a decent review. We ate outside, the car did its thing, and we were moving again before the coffee had properly cooled. That stop is the reason this piece exists: it was the nicest half hour of the drive, and we would not have found it if the car had not made us pause.

Two things worth knowing if you are planning something similar. Mountain roads on the way up will use energy at a rate that looks alarming — and then hand a good chunk of it back on the way down, which is a genuinely delightful thing to watch happen. And the last climb to the accommodation is the bit to plan for, because the charging map thins out once you leave the valley floor. We arrived with plenty, but we arrived with plenty deliberately.

Was it harder than the same drive in a diesel? Slightly, in planning. Was it worse? Not remotely. It was quieter, cheaper, and it made us take the breaks we always pretend we do not need.

If you are doing a long one this summer, post the route in the community before you go. Somebody in this community has almost certainly driven it, and they will tell you which services to skip.