London to North Wales in Taycan

[simonrockman]

Hi, a friend is driving to North Wales in her Taycan. What is the best way to plan the route so that she can charge on the way.

Cost per KW isn't important, Thinking M40/A5. Speed of charge is what matters.

Thanks

Simon

[Jimbo.]

If the car can’t work it out via its navigation system, then the A Better Route Planner app is worth a look.

[essayer]

One stop, Dobbies Shrewsbury. 350kW charging, 2 for 1 on scones, job done.

North wales is terrible for destination charging - hopefully she has options to charge once she arrives.

e: 20% discount on charging through the Gridserve app.

Edited by essayer on Saturday 17th August 12:14

[HoHoHo]

simonrockman said:

Hi, a friend is driving to North Wales in her Taycan. What is the best way to plan the route so that she can charge on the way.

Cost per KW isn't important, Thinking M40/A5. Speed of charge is what matters.

Thanks

Simon

I’ve got a Taycan, input the route into the car and it does the thinking.

Do what it says and your friend will be fine and if they use the free Porsche RDIF card provided from new you pay no more than 30p/kw at most charging stations.

[theboss]

essayer said:

One stop, Dobbies Shrewsbury. 350kW charging, 2 for 1 on scones, job done.

North wales is terrible for destination charging - hopefully she has options to charge once she arrives.

e: 20% discount on charging through the Gridserve app.

Edited by essayer on Saturday 17th August 12:14

That’s my local, I had no idea they had 350kW charging there. Can be a bugger getting out of there on a busy day mind, I tend to avoid.

There’s also the Wolverhampton OPC literally adjacent to M54 J2

[Murph7355]

HoHoHo said:

....

Do what it says and your friend will be fine and if they use the free Porsche RDIF card provided from new you pay no more than 30p/kw at most charging stations.

Really?

I thought this was pretty much Ionity only.

[HoHoHo]

Seems to work on most high powered chargers for me, Everon, IONITY, Total EV, Allegro and looking at my recent bill I’m paying as low as 0.25p/kwh (this happens to be IONITY).

[TheDrownedApe]

We go from Cov to Porthmaddog regularly and can easily make it on a full charge but from London Dobbies is a good shout and used to be mostly "free vend" due to the patchy mobile signal buf fhey updated the charger a while ago. There are only 2 there and can get busy depending on time etc.

After you've climbed either pass and got to Bala (best way to go) your charge left looks painful and there is a great little charger in Bala that is always empty and a quick boost allays any fears.

However it's rarely needed as the home stretch from Bala to the coast is mostly downhill and the range increases a lot over the last 30ish miles

Edited by TheDrownedApe on Monday 19th August 07:17

[HoHoHo]

One quick point that isn’t relevant for this thread however I went to Amsterdam a month or two ago and left my car on charge for three days.

Of course, it charged from 50% to 100% on a 7kw charger in a car park as quickly as they do and I left it on charge (too many chargers to count in the underground car park I was in so I wasn’t worried) whilst I was working for three days.

The standing charge for being connected to the charger cost me 80 Euro for three days and the charge itself was 12 Euro……

Lesson learned!

[Luckypants]

TheDrownedApe said:

We go from Cov to Porthmaddog regularly and can easily make it on a full charge but from London Dobbies is a good shout and used to be mostly "free vend" due to the patchy mobile signal buf fhey updated the charger a while ago. There are only 2 there and can get busy depending on time etc.

After you've climbed either pass and got to Bala (best way to go) your charge left looks painful and there is a great little charger in Bala that is always empty and a quick boost allays any fears.

However it's rarely needed as the home stretch from Bala to the coast is mostly downhill and the range increases a lot over the last 30ish miles

Gridserve have opened 6 350kW chargers at Dobbies Shrewsbury recently, in the overflow car park. If travelling the A5 then there is always the Instavolt hub at Rhug Estate near Corwen. The little 50kW at Bala has mates in Dolgellau and Porthmadog too.

For the OP, Dobbies is now a good stop.

[T_S_M]

Luckypants said:

TheDrownedApe said:

We go from Cov to Porthmaddog regularly and can easily make it on a full charge but from London Dobbies is a good shout and used to be mostly "free vend" due to the patchy mobile signal buf fhey updated the charger a while ago. There are only 2 there and can get busy depending on time etc.

After you've climbed either pass and got to Bala (best way to go) your charge left looks painful and there is a great little charger in Bala that is always empty and a quick boost allays any fears.

However it's rarely needed as the home stretch from Bala to the coast is mostly downhill and the range increases a lot over the last 30ish miles

Gridserve have opened 6 350kW chargers at Dobbies Shrewsbury recently, in the overflow car park. If travelling the A5 then there is always the Instavolt hub at Rhug Estate near Corwen. The little 50kW at Bala has mates in Dolgellau and Porthmadog too.

For the OP, Dobbies is now a good stop.

The Instavolt chargers at the Rhug estate are the last ones before you get to the coast really, so I'd "fill up" there.

Depends where she's going in North Wales but there are also Tesla Superchargers in Aberystwyth which are open to non-Teslas. Just need to set payment up in the app. I charged my Audi at one a few months ago.

[TheDeuce]

Wherever she's going to in north Wales, there's no shortage of chargers in the area now - so even if she fails to make the journey there is the most efficient (from a charging pov) manner and arrives with low charge, it's not as if there's any risk of getting stuck or being majorly inconvenienced.

Even a common as muck 50kw charger will add 100+ miles in the time it takes to stop for lunch... So whilst a 350kw charger is nice/ideal, it's not really something to worry about too much.

[SDK]

Luckypants said:

Gridserve have opened 6 350kW chargers at Dobbies Shrewsbury recently, in the overflow car park. If travelling the A5 then there is always the Instavolt hub at Rhug Estate near Corwen. The little 50kW at Bala has mates in Dolgellau and Porthmadog too.

For the OP, Dobbies is now a good stop.

I spotted those chargers on ZapMap earlier when planning a trip to Coed Y Brenin.
Usually I charge at Welshpool, by Aldi, but good to have some other really good options.

This time of year I can probably do the trip both ways without charging, but driving for 3 hours requires a stop so might as well charge as well. My sons likes Subway & Burger King

[simonrockman]

Thanks everyone. It turned out that her idea of "North" Wales was The Grove of Narberth, so actually South-West. We settled on "Drive to Cardiff and see what's nearby".

[TheDeuce]

simonrockman said:

Thanks everyone. It turned out that her idea of "North" Wales was The Grove of Narberth, so actually South-West. We settled on "Drive to Cardiff and see what's nearby".

Seems like a safe bet. I can't even be bothered to check but I'm somewhat confident that between wherever she starts, and the Cardiff area, there will be no shortage of decent chargers

I honestly would give it a second thought until I was underway and at least down to 50% battery. Rapid chargers are like petrol stations now - if you need one, the chances are someone figured out that you might and has built one.