Simon McIntyre – MD at Iglu Ski – recently contacted us to share his experience of driving in an electric vehicle to Val d’Isère. He recently spoke to Iain in Episode 176 of The Ski Podcast and you can listen to that conversation at ~39 minutes:

EV to Val d’Isère 

He drove to France in the 2023 Easter holidays to take up a last minute family ski trip. He travelled in a Mercedes with an official range of 250 miles.

“The journey was the longest I’ve done for many years and certainly the longest for my children. Our ‘real world range’ is usually 220-230 miles, so we decided to give ourselves plenty of time and stop overnight at Tournus, south of Dijon.”

“I’d researched chargers available en route, but a great feature of the Mercedes is that it can plot the stops required on the way.”

Charging network was excellent

Simon found the charging network to be excellent:

“All the chargers we used were high speed (150kw – 350kw). I was really surprised at how good the charging was on the motorways. They were mostly new and with no queues.”

Day one involved four stops before his overnight stay:

“Pre-trip, the thought of stopping a lot to charge felt like a bit of a pain after a couple of hours of driving, a stop and stretch of the legs is always needed.”

Fuelled by coffee and croissants day two of Simon’s journey only required one charging stop. However, he wanted to play it safe and chose to charge a second time in Albertville:

“I wanted a top up as I was unsure of the impact of the cold and the effect of the climb up the mountain on the battery. As it was the car’s computer had been right and there was no need for the second stop.”

“We will definitely drive electric to the Alps again” 

A week later Simon left Val d’Isère fully charged…and ended up with extra thanks to the journey down:

“The journey down helped the whole journey as the car regenerative feature means that when you’re accelerating it adds to the battery. This meant we didn’t to stop until after Lyon – around 310 miles from Val d’Isère.”

There were three more charging sessions on the return trip, which Simon completed in a single day:

“The overall experience was really positive and we will drive electric to the Alps again.”

Simon calculated that the total cost of charging for both legs of the journey was £149.54.