I've been wanting to follow up on my Europe trip because I know some people in this thread were curious about how supercharging over there was. I've had a bad cold for like 3 weeks now (starting to think it might be something worse!) so this made my trip a little less enjoyable as I literally came down with the cold on my first day in Europe and couldn't talk whatsoever for 2-3 days and even now my voice isn't back to normal. There's nothing like trying to speak a foreign language in only a whisper to get people to think you are really strange lol.
Anyways, not really sure where to begin, but my overall impression of the supercharger network in Europe is that it is incredibly reliable and efficient. I was driving a nerfed S70 that maxed out at about 82kW, but I was able to consistently get 78-82kW on all but one of my supercharger stops. I maxed out in the 30s with a low SOC at one supercharger, but I didn't really need the charge anyway so I didn't bother trying other stalls. Compared to North America (not only my own experiences but what I read in TMC supercharger threads), this was an amazing level of reliability. It really makes me wonder what exactly prevents the North American supercharger team from making things as reliable. I guess one possible excuse could be the many different public utilities they have to deal with. I'm not sure how the utilities are set up in Europe but I did supercharge in 8 different countries and found no variation among them.
The superchargers were generally well-used, but never too crowded. I didn't have to wait to charge a single time, though I did take the last stall on a couple occasions and a few of them were full at some point during my charge, but I never saw anyone have to wait). I only rarely had to take a paired stall. On average the superchargers were about half full from noon-8pm and less full after 8pm. With few exceptions, I didn't do any supercharging between midnight and noon. Part of this is due to Europe having a more evenly spread out population distribution, but it was refreshing to see well-used but not crowded superchargers as opposed to North America where we tend to have many superchargers getting little use and then some high population areas with long waiting lines and then other bottle necks on long distance routes.
One downside to the European superchargers might be the lack of variety of the host sites. In the Benelux region, Austria, and what little I saw of the French superchargers, almost all of the host properties are moderate to high end hotels. Unlike in the US, there usually aren't any other businesses within walking distance so your only option is to be a customer at the hotel. I will say all of these hotels had nice bathroom facilities that were easy to access and some had nice restaurants that were a decent value. The van der Valk chain in Benelux in particular always had nice bathrooms and restaurants that were open long hours by European standards. We even stayed at a couple of them and they rooms were fairly nice and not too expensive.
In Germany, the superchargers were often at Rasthofs/Autohofs which are fairly similar to service areas that you would find along turnpikes in the Northeastern US, with the one notable exception that they often include a mid-level hotel. These are very efficient superchargers, because you spend little time getting on and off the Autobahn, which is not a toll road despite the service area type setup. They do get old however as you get really tired of McDonald's and Burger King which are usually the fast food places that are present in these locations. One nice thing about McDonald's is reliable WiFi which was a huge help given the limited data allowed on our American phones. There is also sometimes also a very casual sit-down restaurant that offers more typical German fare, and there is usually some type of set up with coffee and pastries that usually has an espresso machine. I will say the bread and pastries offered generally far exceeded anything you would find in an American gas station and often exceeded even what you would find in an American coffee shop, so that was a plus. We did actually stay at one of the Rasthof hotels which turned out to be fine. It is a pretty funny experience though as you actually check-in/check-out at the convenience store.
Even after 25 years since my first visit to Germany, I still cannot wrap my head around paying 50 cents to use the toilet, but that is the system that is in place at these Rasthofs. You put your coin in the machine, take a ticket and then go through a turnstile. It took a few stops to realize, that by presenting the ticket, you get a 50 cent credit towards a purchase in the convenience store or fast food areas. Since we were in less of a hurry than the people with gas cars, we just got in the habit of buying a bottle of water or cough drops to use our 50 cent credit. Still an incredibly aggravating system, but less annoying once you get used to it.
Switzerland was the one country that seemed to offer a better variety of host businesses. There were some hotels, some Rasthofs, some municipal lots, and some totally random businesses. The bowling alley supercharger (pictured previously in this thread) was a hilarious sight, and there was also one at a movie theater that had a food court that was kind of fun and interesting.
One other annoying thing was that many of the hotel superchargers had gated parking lots, often seemingly for no reason whatsoever. I never actually had to pay. Usually the exit gate was up or simply took your ticket and lifted the gate. At some places the first 15 minutes were FREE as is often the case at pay garages in the US. A few of them offered no signage whatsoever, but wanted you to run into the lobby to have someone at the front desk validate the ticket. This was annoying because I actually had cars lined up behind me when I had to go back into the lobby once and another time, the front desk employee was on a break and they just expected me to sit there and wait for 15 minutes for her to get back. This was around 11pm after a long day of driving through the rain and I was already done charging and still had another hour or two to drive to where we were spending the night, so that wasn't any fun.
One other random annoyance that I'll throw in here is that the Marriott that hosted the supercharger in Pratteln, Switzerland demanded that I buy something in the bar in order to get the WiFi password. I get that the expectations of customer service are lower in Europe, but that still surprised me, mostly because it makes no sense to be a dick about something so petty, especially when it's a Tesla owner (I did specifically mention that I was charging my Tesla) who will likely return to your business in the future.
All in all it was an interesting trip. We did manage a few non-supercharger related travel excursions, but of course I got carried away with my supercharger plans and we spent most of the time cramming in as many as possible. My mother probably would have appreciated if I followed the
@JSergeant policy of only 300-400 miles/day but I think we averaged more like 500 miles/day on our 11 days of driving. We did spend 3 days in Freiburg for my reuinion weekend, spent a day driving the northern half of the Romantic Road (Rothenburg ob der Tauber was particularly interesting even despite the throngs of tourists), spent half a day in Northern Hessen driving through the area where I was an exchange student in high school, and lastly we squeezed in a canal tour in Amsterdam before we flew home.
One regret is doing the drive from the Steg-Hohtenn to Quinto superchargers in the dark. I had no idea what I was getting into on that one. We had booked a room at the Quinto supercharger host hotel for convenience. I knew that leg was going to be some slow roads through the mountains but had no idea that it was actually the highest paved road in Switzerland. I'm sure the scenery was amazing but we couldn't really enjoy it after dark. Fortunately the weather was still nice (a couple days later might have been a different story) so the lowest the temp got was 40F and we only experienced some patchy fog near the pass summit. I just looked now and the road is closed, presumably due to snow, so I guess we made the crossing with only a week or two to spare. Here is the wikipedia entry for this road:
Nufenen Pass - Wikipedia
