Long time reader on here and found a whole host of information so thought I’d share back my experiences for those interested for our road trip to Portugal.
We traveled in our 2021 M3LR
Dover to Calais via ferry
We had already got our Crit’air sticker from the French Government, which is law in certain areas of France. Only cost a few euros, just make sure the photo of the v5 (page 2 only) is around 400kb.
We had also purchased a Bip&Go and set up a direct debit in euros for this. The Bip&Go will allow you to travel through all tolls in France, Spain and Portugal with minimum of fuss. The little device (telepager) will beep and barriers open.
We also had the TesMate mattress for the car for the “Airès” on the French motorways. Which we used a lot and left the car in camping mode. I did use my phone to lock the doors and then turned Bluetooth off to avoid anyone opening my doors.
We had also signed up to Electroverse by octopus energy which allowed access to hundreds of chargers all over Europe and UK via their own contactless card. I used it once at Bidart services in France (last services before Spain) to allow us to get much deeper into Spain than the car had originally planned.
The route we had taken was Calais to Rouen to Le Mans to Niort all on the Tesla Supercharger network. Then Bidart which I used the Electroverse card for. For those wondering, the Tesla Superchargers are not at service stations on the continent, at least not where I went. All were easily accessible but off the motorways and usually at a hotel. Every hotel we stopped at allowed us to use their services and we also purchased coffees etc. On our return journey we stopped at Tours to charge at The Art Hotel. We arrived at 5am and the gates to the hotel were locked however, if you touch the charging point on your sat nav the information that is displayed has an access code to input to open the gates - I was super impressed with this!
From Bidart in France we managed to travel 4 hrs and 17 mins none stop covering 248 miles using 52kWh @ 208 Wh/mi. I found this extremely impressive with how hilly the start of Spain is with so much climbing.
We travelled just south of Coimbra in Portugal to a place called Penela. Here charging is a lot more difficult - I never found a charger that worked with Electroverse despite the app showing them as partnered. So in the end I travelled north of Coimbra to the Tesla superchargers - these were extremely busy but still managed to drive straight on.
We left Shropshire on Wednesday, Dover to Calais was at 17:25 and we were back at Calais on Sunday Evening for the 19:00 ferry back to the UK.
We slept in the car only, never used a hotel for overnight. Used the showers at the “Aires”, these are sometimes only available on the truckers side but easy to walk around to them.
Used mainly toll roads except on the return from Tours to Rouen. Tours to Rouen on the motorway would have needed to go via Le Mans supercharger and arrive on 22% at Rouen. Tours to Rouen avoiding tolls was direct and arrived with 44%.
I was anxious before going, had done the journey previously in a Mercedes c220 coupe diesel. The Tesla was so much more comfortable, efficient and I’d definitely do it again!
We traveled in our 2021 M3LR
Dover to Calais via ferry
We had already got our Crit’air sticker from the French Government, which is law in certain areas of France. Only cost a few euros, just make sure the photo of the v5 (page 2 only) is around 400kb.
We had also purchased a Bip&Go and set up a direct debit in euros for this. The Bip&Go will allow you to travel through all tolls in France, Spain and Portugal with minimum of fuss. The little device (telepager) will beep and barriers open.
We also had the TesMate mattress for the car for the “Airès” on the French motorways. Which we used a lot and left the car in camping mode. I did use my phone to lock the doors and then turned Bluetooth off to avoid anyone opening my doors.
We had also signed up to Electroverse by octopus energy which allowed access to hundreds of chargers all over Europe and UK via their own contactless card. I used it once at Bidart services in France (last services before Spain) to allow us to get much deeper into Spain than the car had originally planned.
The route we had taken was Calais to Rouen to Le Mans to Niort all on the Tesla Supercharger network. Then Bidart which I used the Electroverse card for. For those wondering, the Tesla Superchargers are not at service stations on the continent, at least not where I went. All were easily accessible but off the motorways and usually at a hotel. Every hotel we stopped at allowed us to use their services and we also purchased coffees etc. On our return journey we stopped at Tours to charge at The Art Hotel. We arrived at 5am and the gates to the hotel were locked however, if you touch the charging point on your sat nav the information that is displayed has an access code to input to open the gates - I was super impressed with this!
From Bidart in France we managed to travel 4 hrs and 17 mins none stop covering 248 miles using 52kWh @ 208 Wh/mi. I found this extremely impressive with how hilly the start of Spain is with so much climbing.
We travelled just south of Coimbra in Portugal to a place called Penela. Here charging is a lot more difficult - I never found a charger that worked with Electroverse despite the app showing them as partnered. So in the end I travelled north of Coimbra to the Tesla superchargers - these were extremely busy but still managed to drive straight on.
We left Shropshire on Wednesday, Dover to Calais was at 17:25 and we were back at Calais on Sunday Evening for the 19:00 ferry back to the UK.
We slept in the car only, never used a hotel for overnight. Used the showers at the “Aires”, these are sometimes only available on the truckers side but easy to walk around to them.
Used mainly toll roads except on the return from Tours to Rouen. Tours to Rouen on the motorway would have needed to go via Le Mans supercharger and arrive on 22% at Rouen. Tours to Rouen avoiding tolls was direct and arrived with 44%.
I was anxious before going, had done the journey previously in a Mercedes c220 coupe diesel. The Tesla was so much more comfortable, efficient and I’d definitely do it again!
