Thursday, July 17, 2014

We made it to Tuscany !



The second part of our journey, from The Netherlands to Tuscany by Tesla Model S, passing via Savoie, is successfully concluded !
The story of the first leg of the trip is here: From NL to Savoie.

The route is not that long, from Valmorel (Savoie) to Siena (Tuscany) it's about 725 km...

...but there are no Tesla Superchargers on the way. 
We have to rely on the newly installed charge points of Eneldrive.
On the net, very few, conflicting reports can be found on the points around Turin, Genoa and Pisa. So many questions are nagging me: will they be there? will they work?
The plan is to charge in Turin and Forte dei Marmi, with back up in Pisa.

So our pioneer's Italian electric tour starts from Valmorel at 8 am, direction the Frejus tunnel. 

215 km later, at 10:45 we get to the Ikea store in Collegno, in the Turin's outskirts, where two charge points are waiting for us, right in front of the entrance.
"Welcome, place the card over the screen"

















A bit anxious, I pose the brand new RFID card from Eneldrive on the pole, plug into the Type 2 outlet..... 
Yes, it flawlessly works !!
We take the chance for some shopping and lunch, for a stop of about 2 hours and half.
We set off with direction Forte dei Marmi, on the Versilia coast of Tuscany, for 310 km. 

We get there at about 16:45. The charge point is right in the town center, on a one way road. There is one Eneldrive pole only, as well as one only parking spot, placed before it, so that a car with a front plug would have no problem (i.e. Zoe and Leaf).... too bad that the Model S has the plug on the rear side, and our cable does not reach the charge point !

The only choice is to park on the spot in front of the pole, that is actually reserved to the Police, with the risk of getting fined or even clamped.... 
I was so much in anguish that I didn't even take a picture :-(

 
This is a picture kindly provided by the pioneer of the Italian electric mobility, Roberto Petetta, and his Zoe, taken on the same spot.
And here it is the message that we pityingly left on the Tesla windscreen, hoping in the Police's mercy:
"On the parking spot reserved to charging, the cable did not reach the plug"
We spent 2 hours on the beach, we had a great time  playing in the sun and in the water, and when we got back.... full of Police all around and no tickets, nor clamps :-)

Last 180 km to go and we reach Siena at 21:00.

This was my dream since we got the Model S last year and it's now reality.... we made it to Tuscany !!!

Overall, 725 km in 13 hours, 5 of which charging (and relaxing on the beach :-)


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Some info on the Eneldrive charging points and the necessary card.
The poles have two outlets, one for Type 2 (Mennekes-like) delivering 22kWh and one for Type 3a, delivering 3kW:


About the card:


This  is the Eneldrive RFID card
You can get the card from an Enel shop, unfortunately it is not possible to get it remotely. Moreover, the card shall be connected to an Italian bank account, no foreign account nor credit card is allowed.
I find this a major shortcoming for a charging network that is actually properly working and fast developing, to finally allow full electric mobility even in Italy.
www.eneldrive.it

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for your blog. I will be travelling to Italy this summer with my new Tesla and have the following questions after reading your blog. Did you open a Italian bankaccount to get the card? And why didn't you drive via France (Urmond, Dyon, Lyon etc.).

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  2. Dear Manu, I am also interested how you obtained your Enel card. Could you please explain? I am from germany and I want to get one.

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    1. Hi Boran, apologies for my delayed reply. I got the Enel Card via some family in Italy.... unfortunately this system only rely on italian bank accounts for the moment.....

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    2. OK thanks, that's what we guessed. Thanks for your note about IKEA. We found IKEA Napoli to work very well. IKEA Rome (Porta Romana) does offer Type-2, but when we connected the voltage and current dropped into the ground.

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    3. You went all the way to Naples, uou, you brave !!!

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