Preparation

Why do I want to prepare?

We were already in Mlini last year. We liked it so much that we regretted only spending a week there. For my first long electric car trip, I only prepared a little last year. In principle, everything went smoothly, except that we took longer and the EWE Go charging card didn’t work. In total, we spent about 2.5 hours charging. However, I didn't keep a log, and it might have been less in pure charging time.

This all doesn’t explain why I want to prepare myself and my family this time. Reason 1: the charging time seems a bit too high for me, and I don’t want to rely solely on the car. Reason 2: the charging costs were significantly higher than if I had driven our diesel (which we no longer have).

We didn’t buy any tariffs and went with the following charging cards: ADAC, EWE Go, and ELEN (for the Croatian charging stations). Since the EWE Go suddenly didn’t work at Ionity, and I couldn't charge at the Tesla Superchargers last year, it became very expensive.

We had about 170 euros in charging costs. The year before, we traveled with our (now sold) Audi A6 Avant S-tronic quattro, which consumed 5.8 l/100km. We would have paid about 100 euros. And since it's said that you save costs with an electric car, I want to try it with a pre-planning.

Charging Tariff Madness

Why does driving an electric car have to be so complicated? You can probably guess, nothing is regulated. You have charging station operators, various electricity providers, and usually no option to pay with a debit card, etc. It is a total disaster. Since I drive a VW, I decided to choose the We Charge Go tariff. With that, I should be able to charge at Ionity for 0.50 euros/kWh. I hope this brings the desired success concerning costs. Purely mathematically, I should pay 120 euros. It’s still not the cost of a diesel, but at least it would be 50 euros less.

Charging Route Planning

All those YouTubers report that route planning at VW should be pretty good. Then nothing can go wrong, with one tariff and the route planning from VW. I’m curious how it will be during the outbound trip.

To not be surprised when starting off and during the drive, I will test the route planning before the trip. For this, the VW navigation offers various options.

Here are some key details: we are driving from Ingolstadt to Mlini. The fastest route goes through Salzburg, 1,161 km. The alternative is via Graz, 1,263 km. Since Salzburg is guaranteed to have a lot of traffic jams, we decide on the route via Graz. This is also important for planning tolls.

In the VW navigation app, there are numerous settings options. I select the one that I will arrive at the destination with 50% battery left. The next setting option is interesting, as it had no influence on the charging route result.

No matter what I selected at this point (I also tried every possible combination), I received the following result:

Oops, interesting. I quickly installed the Tesla app and checked what I would have paid at these charging stations. Tesla apparently offers the option to charge at Tesla Superchargers without a subscription. However, the Tesla app does not show a charging station at the location 'Banija'. Maybe VW knows more than Tesla :-) The charging station in 'Vrgorac' is found by the Tesla app. The costs for paying customers amount to 0.42 euros and for non-members to 0.56 euros. Okay, interesting, but why doesn't VW Navigation select the Ionity fast chargers for me?

Are there alternative route planning options?

This can't be right. Honestly, this is a complete failure. This is unacceptable. What was the point of purchasing a tariff through We Charge for about 6 euros if the charging stations don’t even get displayed?! Should I now use Google to find the Ionity chargers along the route?!

Well, I have heard something about A Better Routeplanner (ABRP). I installed it immediately and experimented a bit. ABRP states that I can also pair the car with the app to receive real-time data from the car within the app. Apparently, ABRP also takes topography into account and adjusts the charging plan accordingly. However, you need a paid account for that. Well, whatever. With the possibly saved 2 times 50 euros in charging costs, I can afford this roughly 5 euros.

I’m curious if it pays off. The installation, configuration, and connection to the car worked on the first try. The app shows me the current charge level of the ID.5 (see the image for the value at SoC at departure). That reassures me a bit, for the moment.

A good review for ABRP is not found in the Google App Store. However, I will give it a try and be curious about what the route planning does. In the app itself, I already receive a reassuring result. This is a picture of the ABRP app in Android Auto (screen in the vehicle). Result: five Ionity fast chargers and a Tesla Supercharger. The lower one is also the location 'Vrgorac'. This is also shown to me in the Tesla app.

Something positive as well. The route planning can also be viewed through a web browser on the computer. It's even clearer since it's on a larger screen. Positively, the vehicle data is also displayed here (e.g., the charge level of the car). Essentially, it shows exactly what is displayed in the app. I’m pleasantly surprised.

It's also worth mentioning the predicted charge state upon reaching the charging station and how long it would need to be charged at a minimum. I will take a picture like this before the trip and continuously compare it with reality. If it fits reasonably well, then ABRP calculates the topography during the trip. It will definitely not be 100% accurate since I specified a payload of 400kg in the app. Whether that’s correct, I have no idea. We will most likely not fall below that with four people barely fitting in.

That’s it for now from the travel planning. Although I am still a bit skeptical whether I should trust more the ABRP or the VW app. I will try the ABRP app and let my common sense help decide during the trip.