Spain and Portugal on pure electric power
Looking for adventure Tim Chatterton, a data analyst at the RAC Foundation, and his partner took their electric camper van on a road trip around Spain and Portugal.
In the interests of research Tim documented his near two-week trip in An electrifying trip round Iberia. The report assesses how the transition to battery-powered vehicles in Iberia compares to the situation he left behind in the UK.
Having driven his 2021 Nissan e-NV200 Tekna van – privately converted into a camper – for 1,400 miles around the northwest of the peninsula Tim’s conclusion is that Spain and Portugal are “in the second stage of its EV transition in terms of public chargepoints.”
The countries appear to “have moved from the initial stage where simply finding a suitable charger is a challenge and might require a significant detour, to a point where it might now be in the relatively happy place of sufficient chargers to cater for most routes without significant range-anxiety.”
The next phase of EV evolution in this part of Europe will involve increasing “the number of chargers to avoid queuing, particularly at peak times.” Tim argues that this is the point where the UK is now.
In general, “the cost of electricity seemed to be about a third to half of what one might expect to pay for rapid charging in the UK. On average, rapid charging in Spain and Portugal cost us 41p/kWh. On the UK part of our trip it was over 70p/kWh (with the majority of UK chargers we used being over 80p/kWh).”
Over 39 hours of driving, Tim spent £196 on 450 kWh of ‘fuel’. He estimates the cost of making the journey in a conventional “ICE (internal combustion engine) camper would be £230 for petrol, and £145 for diesel.”
One thing lacking was an open access national database of EV chargers to allow clear, coherent and consistent information on chargers between different apps. This is still needed in the UK where it is possible to find oneself using five different apps to determine the probability of a charger being operational.
There is also a need for mandating the option of contactless payment at all rapid chargers for when the preferential options of app or RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) card don’t work out. This, though, is something which is now in place in the UK.
The RAC Foundation has previously published An electrifying trip around Scotland.
