About to drive into France - any tips?

[MrMuscles]

Hi all, we are taking our Phev to the Loire Valley region this weekend for a family holiday!

Do you have any Phev related tips for a long drive such as this eg is it worth stopping and charging?

Plus any other French driving related tips (I already know about breathalysers, luminous jackets etc).

Thanks a lot!

 

[Grigou]

I had a trip from Lyon to Birmingham, Liverpool, Wales and Stonehenge 2 weeks ago.
Nice trip !
Didn't charge at all. Used Charge mode a lot on motorways, and EV in towns and traffic jams.
Tips ? Drive carefully, and look at left at each roundabout. I didn't ask for some tips because I knew that UK is not a jungle. Neither France, I can assure you :mrgreen:

Breath analysers are no more required. Changing the laws (and not follow them) are a French speciality...

 

[Lance]

I've just driven 1400 miles in 2 days (Tuesday/Wednesday) from the UK to Albox in Spain.

My advice would be to make sure you've always got around 10 miles of battery. This will allow you to power up the longer hills with a struggle.

I've not put my details onto fuely yet, but the car is reporting 29.8mpg. The car was fully loaded with two adults, two kids and a completely full boot. I started with full battery and made sure, obviously, I used up the last few miles of battery as I approached my destination. Where possible, I sat on cruise control at an indicated 85mph which sat nav gave as a true 130kph. Only when absolutely necessary did I slow (i.e. In Spain for many of the 100kph limits I still sat at a true 130kph, as I did for the regular 120kph limits too).

 

[elm70]

30mpg and 130km/h is not bad at all

I'm getting around 27.5mpg ... but on top of fully loaded car, I have also 3 bicycles on the back of my PHEV , which I guess is quite an aerodynamic brake

I have no charging options in my trip, so I left the charger at home

I like to keep some EV range once at destination since I can use the 10min Remote air con before enter in the car

Also I did find something interesting

Running in Parallel mode is looking way more fuel efficient then running on serial mode .. so everytime I'm driving above 80km/h I always press charge, even if I have some EV range to be used ... below 70km/h only serial mode will kick in .. and despite slow speed I get poor fuel consumption .. so at these speed is better to be in pure EV mode

Which also make sense ... to run EV in a city/village , and outside use the ICE

ps: I'm driving on B0 ... that is more nice with battery and more relaxing for drive the car .. only issue is that it does recharge very slowly the battery and possibly is less fuel efficient, since it may impact the recharge rate when charge is pressed too

 

[jaapv]

I had a trip from Lyon to Birmingham, Liverpool, Wales and Stonehenge 2 weeks ago.
Nice trip !
Didn't charge at all. Used Charge mode a lot on motorways, and EV in towns and traffic jams.
Tips ? Drive carefully, and look at left at each roundabout. I didn't ask for some tips because I knew that UK is not a jungle. Neither France, I can assure you :mrgreen:

Breath analysers are no more required. Changing the laws (and not follow them) are a French speciality...

You need to carry a fire-extinguisher if you drive through Belgium. Radar warning devices - even if switched off or disabled- are illegal throughout continental Europe.

 

[Paule23]

Breath analysers are no more required. Changing the laws (and not follow them) are a French speciality...

The breath analyser issue is a really weird quirk of French law. The law states you are still required to carry one, but the legislation also allows for no penalty if you are found without one. So if you're stopped and found not to have one, the police cannot do anything to punish you (even though technically you are breaking the law).

And I thought this sort of stuff only happened in Britain!

About driving in France, we didn't bother with any charging or worrying about maintaining any SOC. No problems in 2 weeks and 750 miles of driving.

Main advice? Keep right....