Out and about – sustainably.
Road trip around Norway in an electric car? Yep! Sort of. A progress report.
15.10.2021
Summer holidays in an electric car. Are they possible? How do you drive when you aren’t exactly sure where the next charging station is? Mobility employee Adrian Boller was brave enough to give it a go in Norway.
Many Swiss people still have fears when it comes to electric cars. The most common worry relates to the current lack of a sufficient country-wide electric vehicle charging network and the associated – but totally unfounded – fear of coming to a standstill en route. Adrian Boller, Senior Product Manager at Mobility, wanted to put electromobility through its paces. So off he went to Norway, where the electric car is king. With electric or hybrid vehicles making up nine tenths of all newly registered vehicles (as of September 2021), nowhere on the planet registers a higher proportion of new non fossil fuel-powered vehicles than the land of fjords. And what could be more beautiful than silently gliding across the now autumnally golden Lofoten Islands in an electric car?
Nature and electromobility: a match made in heaven!
We look forward to receiving our fully charged VW ID.4 at Bodø Airport and taking the ferry to the Lofoten Islands. We are experiencing the first positive surprise: electric vehicles are offering a greatly reduced price for the ferry. Set up, set off, and our heart starts to leap for joy: The quiet driving characteristics of our electric car could not be better suited to the natural, wild and rugged environment between mountains and sea. Every ride out to explore the area is a true pleasure, and our vehicle’s 400-kilometre range means that we can enjoy several exciting days behind the wheel without worry. We rush quietly through the valleys and along the fjord-laden coast until the time comes to make our first pit stop.
Sadly not for everyone
The issue of where we’d be able to charge doesn’t stay unresolved for long; as luck would have it, our first accommodation has a free charging station for guests. Make: Tesla. Our host assures us that it works on other makes of vehicle – sadly, this turns out not to be the case. Nothing happens. At all. So we made do, using a normal outdoor plug socket to charge our vehicle through the night – we got 2kW instead of the normal 11kW. It’s enough to get us to our hiking trails and back, and we even build up a solid charging plus over the next few days.
Fully digital on the go
On long journeys (such as from the Lofoten Islands to Tromsø), charging works flawlessly: The vast majority of charging stations – including the occupancy display – are listed on Google Maps as well as in the vehicle’s navigation system.
Once you have arrived, you have to plug in, scan the QR code, enter your credit card information online and off you go. We don’t need to charge more than 50kW, as we could all use a half-hour break to recharge our own batteries after the next three hours of driving. All charged up, we get back on the road for another two hours. We even get lucky and manage to find the odd charging station where can charge up to 75 or even 100kW. Which, on the other hand, is really tedious: Depending on the provider, there is no way around downloading their app or registering, which feels more like a step backwards than progress for occasional users or for us as tourists.
The further out in the sticks you are, the more difficult it gets
On Senja, an extremely sparsely populated fjord-rich island (5 people/km2; Switzerland 219 people/km2), we enjoy spectacular hikes. But finding public charging points on the island is like walking barefoot along a rocky road. The closest charging point to us is right on top of a foothill to a fjord; a truly beautiful location, but an easy 35 minutes from the cottage we’re staying in. Unfortunately, our host Sven-Erik doesn’t get the hint when I asked him if he knows of a charging station a little closer to home and doesn’t offer us the use of his outdoor plug socket.
Once dinner is over, we cocoon ourselves in warm clothes, make some tea and set off, with this romantic idea of charging the car and “seeking out” the Northern Lights in one place.
True to form, however, the charging station is based at a hotel complex and requires us to sign up for an app, which we can’t do without a Norwegian address. Way to attract the tourists... The man at the other end of the 24-hour support line is kind enough to help us to create some Norwegian data that would let us finally charge the car.
After successfully completing our hunt for the Northern Lights in the wind and cold, we hop back into our VW and head back to base. The bitter realization: Only a third of the expected power has flowed into the battery. As a result, our Charging and Aurora trip became a net-zero excursion in every respect.
We have no choice: We decide to plug the vehicle into the cottage overnight against the will of our landlord. Sven-Erik: We are sorry, but thank you!
Difficult parking manoeuvres, all for a spot of juice
Our holiday is drawing to a close. We pull over at a charging station with an interesting layout as we make our way back to Bodø: the direction of travel, narrow space between the lanes and angled bays all point to us needing to forward park. No sooner said than done. But now the charging cable is too short to reach the charging socket at the back of the car. Under the impatient observation of Norwegian petrol drivers, we manoeuvre until we finally make it. At least we watch other cars that do not solve the problem better than we do. We can’t help but wonder just what imagined car length the engineers had in mind when designing these charging stations, though.
Conclusion: Cool, but …
We get back to Bodø full of wonderful memories of hiking and holidaying after our more than 2,000-kilometre electric-powered journey. How was the car, its gadgets and assistance systems? Sensational. What’s the public charging system like in Norway? OK for the most part, even if the going got slightly tougher at times due to the lack of charging infrastructure in some remote areas, not to mention the various registration requirements. Nevertheless, we are convinced that the future is now, which is why we would do it the same again. Because travelling sustainably makes you feel good inside. What surprises us: Compared to Switzerland, we found on Google Maps that the geographical charging network density in Switzerland is already considerably higher than in northern Norway. This shows that we’re on the right track.
Here’s what Mobility does better than the Norwegians
As a Mobility customer, you have plenty of reasons to look forward to the future of electromobility:
Every one of our round trips starts at a charging station. This is how we ensure that our vehicles always have enough charge in their batteries. And if your journey takes slightly longer than planned, you can recharge at any GOFAST charging point across Switzerland at no extra cost.
You don’t have to think about anything when charging: We’ll take care of the registration and payment for charging on the go for you. We also guarantee that our batteries are charged using 100% green energy.
We offer a wide range of electric models and are continuously expanding our fleet.