Last week we came back from a camping trip to Soulac-sur-Mer. Roughly 1600 km through Germany and France to the Atlantic coast. In an EV camper van. An e-Vanster, to be more specific. We got that car two years ago, and we absolutely love it.

This car is a modified e-Spacetourer with an added pop-up roof, a small electric stove in the back, and electrical equipment to make it possible to use campground power systems via a CEE plug. The range is around 317 km on a charge. It’s basically a brick on wheels, so don’t expect it to be fast (limited to 130 km/h) or super energy efficient. But it gets its job done. On the positive side, it rides absolutely smoothly, and the EV part makes it lovely to merge onto a highway. Unlike a diesel camper van, where you’re constantly worried whether the car will accelerate fast enough for the short on-ramp. The turning radius is also roughly a meter better than the diesel counterpart because it has no huge engine block.

This was the first time we used the relatively new e-Routes app that Stellantis/Citroën offers. Before, we used ABRP with a USB-ODB dongle. While ABRP theoretically has better data because of the direct vehicle access, the e-Routes navigation UI was much nicer. And it got the job done very smoothly. It sadly has one little quirk that needs to be fixed: three times the app decided to re-route us to another charger shortly after we left the highway system. Yes, in theory the next charger would have been better, because we had enough battery range to get to it, but the timing was… not good 😅. We also used the Chargeprice to figure out what was the cheapest way to charge along the way. We booked two cards with monthly fees to get the reduced charging price. Something we don’t need in Berlin because we don’t drive enough. But this trip made them worth it.

The drive itself was rather uneventful. We just followed what the e-Routes app told us to do. It showed how many charging spots were free at the next charging point, and how much battery we’d have left when arriving. Simple, easy, and relaxing. The French highway has a speed limit of 130 km/h, so driving there was less stressful. We had one charger that we couldn’t use because the stop was overcrowded by non-EV people trying to park everywhere. And another charger was broken — so we just used the next one 500 m away. At two charging points, we had to wait less than 10 minutes to be able to use the plug. That’s basically it. No struggles, no nail-biting stories I could tell. It was very uneventful. As it should be. And I love the charging breaks. Usually you go grab some snacks or go to the toilette and the battery is full enough again. And once we lifted the roof so that you could do a quick 15 min power nap while the car was charging. A trick normal EVs cannot do 😁.

Would I do this again? Yes, we already booked the same place for next year. Would I change a thing? Yes, we have some ideas on how to improve our camping equipment a bit and will do that soon. Nothing groundbreaking, but you learn by using the equipment and discovering your needs.

Three little tidbits I found interesting:

• Even the campground shop had better baguette than anything you can get in Berlin
• Bikers in France really want to live dangerously. Driving between two cars at 120–130 km/h on a two-lane highway system to get in front of them? Really?
• French people like to use their left blinker on the highway. A lot. And don’t turn it off…