No it wasn't done in one go.
It meant 700 miles of no range anxiety. It meant almost 700 miles before I needed to start thinking about replenishing a readily available fuel source at service stations dotted along Europe's motorways at regular intervals. It meant not having to worry about having charge points that had people queueing for them. It meant not turning up to refuel and finding broken charge points. It meant not turning up to refuel and find incompatible charge points. It meant not turning up to refuel and finding I needed to download yet another app first on my non-existant smart phone. It meant not having mess around with apps, cables, chargers, etc, etc in the freezing dead of night. It meant not having to sit around for an hour in the freezing dead of night. It meant not having to grapple with charger instructions that may not be in English in the freezing dead of night in a foreign land. It meant the confidence of going for 700 miles day and night without any refuelling worries.
Just cruise for 700 miles, quickly squirt some more motion lotion in the tank and off we go for another 700 miles.
When it comes to "readily available", electricity has petrol and diesel knocked into a cocked hat! Very few buildings don't have electricity in them! Imagine having to drive to a special place to put fuel into your car...
Of course, as JohnD says, the EU is getting it's sh1t together and sorting out its EV recharging infrastructure along major routes at regular intervals. I guess it's a bit like our world-beating vaccine rollout in the pandemic. We get off to a brilliant start, and then the EU just quietly cruised past us and left us trailing behind. The irony, is that it'll be the same grumpy luddites who held us back in the first place, crying into their beer about how this country has gone down the pan...
Of course, nobody has ever turned up at a petrol station and found a broken charge point have they...?
And on the plus side, at least when an ICE driver
does find an "incompatible charge point", recovery organisations are well-practiced in the art of draining his incompatible fuel out and disposing of it, in exchange for money, what with it happening so often...
It may have passed you by, but part of the EU's route-charger rollout, will be a legal requirement for all chargers to accept contactless. We've followed suit in fact, and we now have a law about it in this country, at least for fast chargers, so you won't have to worry about "apps".
Ah... I remember freezing my bits off in the dead of night, on a windswept forecourt, having to stand there like a lemon, holding a diesel pump trigger... In fact, it's windy and rainy toning, while I'm refueling. The only real difference is that I'm warm and dry indoors, because it turns out, you don't have to stand next to an EV, holding the cable while it refuels!
