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An electric car journey to SW France depicted by charging stops.

First was an overnight Ubitricity charge to give me 100% on departure from SW London. The drive was slowed by the contraflow on the M20, but that meant arriving with more charge than predicted.

Next was a quick top up at Folkestone at the Channel Tunnel Terminal. Notable as an Open Access Supercharger even though it’s a slower V2 site. Back up from 60-ish to about 85%

After wafting down the Autororute for a bit, I discovered some interesting quirks with "vision only" Teslas and cruise control/autopilot.
In the UK, Autosteer used to be 90mph but is limited to 85mph now on vision-only cars (ie. no radar).
In France, in kph, Autosteer is now limited to 145kph, used to be 150.
However, if you use just cruise control and not autosteer (one tap down not two), you can still get cruise at 90mph/150kph. Weird!

Anyway, after some spirited driving, we got to Rouen at about 10% charge, which is still a mix of 4x V2 and 4x V3 chargers and for the unaware means powersharing at this busy site.

However, I'm wise to this, so a quick stop on the V3 back to 80% then to Le Mans. A big open access site, with plenty of non-Teslas on charge, with a large solar canopy and the power of V3 to get back to 80%. intersetingly, since I was last here, about 50m down the road is a new 8bay rapid charging hub by a provider I've never heard of but on the side says "the preferred network of Stellantis". It was empty, and those Stellantis cars were using the Tesla site...

Anyway, on to our destination where we arrived with 15% and a wall charger to keep us going all week.

505 miles, 182kWh turned into heat and forward motion, so 358Wh/mile, which is somewhat higher than the lifetime average of the car so far at 280Wh/mile, but that's what French Autoroutes does to you!. Two proper recharging sessions and would have stopped twice anyways as I was the only driver and needed the rest. Eurotunnel was an opportunity to get some extra kWh in as we were waiting anyway.

I noticed on my recent trip up to my folks I was locked out of autosteer at 85mph whereas it used to be 90mph and I'm still driving the same car. Other things I've noticed are not so good with the autopilot recently.

1) Autosteer is more limited now, over a year ago it would go round almost any bend without complaining, now it flashes up autosteer limited if the bend is more than a mild bend.

2) Stop and start in a traffic queue, it used to be really smooth, but now seems to be more jerky, which made me think, is this another downgrade due to the camera only operation I'd read about ?

In short, yes. The vision-only "upgrade" has actually resulted in a downgrade in capability. Also you'll notice the closest follow distance is now "2".

nowty wrote: ↑Tue Aug 08, 2023 5:24 pm

I noticed on my recent trip up to my folks I was locked out of autosteer at 85mph whereas it used to be 90mph and I'm still driving the same car. Other things I've noticed are not so good with the autopilot recently.

1) Autosteer is more limited now, over a year ago it would go round almost any bend without complaining, now it flashes up autosteer limited if the bend is more than a mild bend.

2) Stop and start in a traffic queue, it used to be really smooth, but now seems to be more jerky, which made me think, is this another downgrade due to the camera only operation I'd read about ?

And sorry that the photos are not in order, that's odd!

Nice to see the solar canopy upright struts weren't overblown in size, nice change to what I have seen in recent years for this sort of thing, they are often an architectural pox, that one doesn't seem to take up extra space.

Dan, did you have your Crit'Air vignette or do you not bother / go near the big cities?

(Just shy of 5 euro per vehicle for those not in the know, & yes EV's still require one, for those who are not already aware)

I didn’t get one, must admit it didn’t occur to me that an EV would still need one. But I’m mainly in the rural areas so not too worried.

There was actually a bit in the news today, currently a handful of the bigger cities / congestion points, but with plans to roll it out nationwide, I guess the sound of all that loose change is irresistible to govt as a supplemental tax.

https://certificat-air.gouv.fr/

But if you are venturing through one of the areas the fine would be 70-80 euro on your travel total best spent at a charger!

They are too easy to forget & a good bet for a french gendarme to pull you over if on traffic duty.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/ ... -air-fines

I cannot see it staying as a "one off" tax the temptation to make it annual is surely too much (in the uk they'd cite staff & security, even though it won't actually require much after set up.
See link for the details.

Seems the BBC and RAC are highlighting the issue.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66449514

And here in France.

At present Crit-Air stickers are still rolling out. Mostly for large city areas. Paris, Rouen etc.

However, France being France, there is a lot of hostility about this as another stealth tax. With a lot of my French friends sticking a finger up to the Crit-Air.

Me i have my 3 year old Crit-Air, a green No 2, sticker on my Toyota Avensis diesel (Last Diesel engine Toyota made themselves, supposedly very clean combustion). Only because I drive through Rouen now and then, But I have yet to see any car monitoring equipment on the roads or any signs anywhere. Yes I know all the speed cameras. haha

Going through Rouen on Monday, so will report back here later in the week.