Travels in Northern Italy with Zoe, our Electric Car

Wow, who would have known what lie ahead of us when we left Domancy, France on Thursday morning? We had just bought our Renault Zoe electric car, and were anxious to try it out on the road. Everyone had told us that the charging stations were still an issue, some in more countries than others, but we had a backup plan—the fact that our Zoe could be plugged into a normal outlet, so we thought we were covered.

Planning a trip with an electric car is quite a bit different than planning with a gas-powered car. With electric cars, you don’t have mileage, you have kilometers available. So you have to know distances to know when you will need to charge your car. And this varies widely, as the Zoe was conceived to work better off-highway than on. On the highways, the Zoe discharges very rapidly. We have both cruise control and a speed limiter, which ensure driving at a consistent speed, thus reducing battery less. However, it doesn’t recharge the battery when cruising downhill, so these features work best on a flat-surfaced highway. We also learned that the faster you go over 100 km/hour, the faster the battery discharges. So we opted to put the car in economy mode, with a maximum speed of 95, stay in the truck lane, and benefit from their draft.

This method however, does not make for enjoying the stunning scenery of Italy. Also, it seems that the GPS system for Renault and TomTom technology has a few bugs to work out. Like not informing us when mountain overpasses are closed; the GPS took us 1.5 hours out of our way, and just barely left us enough space on a very narrow dirt road to turn around. Also, the GPS can’t possibly keep up with all the road construction happening everywhere in Italy. At one point the GPS kept saying “Please turn around, please turn around”, to the point we were yelling for it to stop.

The next issue to be aware of when traveling in Europe, is that even though the 220 voltage is the same everywhere, the plugs are not! In France, you have two small round plugs, but in Italy, you have three, so you need an adapter. Luckily, our AirBNB hostess Paola at Casa Lavanda was very accommodating. She sped us through narrow cobblestone streets to a hardware store on the verge of closing, went running through the parking lot waving her arms and yelling in Italian to keep the store open for us.

So now we had the adapter, we thought, ok, we can sleep well tonight! We ran the battery cord out her front window, leaving the car to charge overnight. Yet, when we woke up the next morning, the car still wasn’t charged! Paola had inadvertently turned off the switch for her lamp, also turning off the power for that switch, so our car didn’t charge.

Now we were at Plan F for recharing the car. Time to try an Italian charging station! Supposedly, an Enel charging station was located only about 10 km away, in Novara. It took the Chargemap app and a lot of yelling to find the actual charging station. Whew—now we just had to download the app, scan it and it open the plug to charge. Easy, right? Yeah sure, except you need an Italian social security number in order to download the app! (Note: you have to sign up as an overseas user, then you don't need this!)

OK, never mind, now it’s time to find a French Renault car dealer in Italy with a charging station! Easy—find one on the GPS—by now it’s almost noon, and the 2.5 hour lunch is in force, without exception. Now our KMs are getting low too, so we carefully coast to the Renault Dealer in Vigevano only to find all the doors open, but nobody in sight. I head over to the Tavola across the street, order a shot of Grappa to calm my nerves and wait for the dealer to open in 30 minutes.

Finally, the dealer reopens and we watch bemused as the Italians try to figure out how to make the plugs work. They pull out several different cords, and finally get the right one plugged in and working. We use hand-signals and broken Ital-English to understand how long it will take for the car to charge—due ore—two hours. OK, time to waste time again!

This time we’re really in an industrial city – Vigevano. We had seen a commercial center about a kilometer away, so we spent the next hour or so wandering an Italian mall. I even bought some Miloeu Bava di Lumaca (snail saliva cream) to remove age spots on my face, so maybe it wasn’t a total loss.

Finally, it was time to leave, the car was charged, and the only cost was a bottle of mediocre Savoie wine, but they appreciated the gesture. We were heading to Ligure Finale, close to the French and Monaco border, next to the Italian Riviera. We found an amazing AirBNB with—Luca, a Milanese, who had bought two apartments, and renovated as only Italians can! So we had a three-bedroom, two bath apartment with full kitchen completely to ourselves! The best part? He had a private garage with an electric plug, so we carefully squeezed Zoe into the garage, and found an adorable Italian Restaurant called Divino literally a stone’s throw away.

The challenges were not yet over, however, as the next morning, according to Pierre’s Renault phone app, the car again wasn’t charged. This time, I went to the garage to verify it was indeed charging—Pierre had turned off his data plan, so his phone app wasn't updating. WHEW—big sigh of relief. Today was the big day for the Monaco ePrix, so we had no time to lose.

Inverso, on the Italian side reminded me a bit of Arcachon, and Vevey, with an Italian twist. However, it was less luxurious, and more affordable than its French cousin, a blue collar Riviera of sorts, with beachfront campgrounds, affordable tavolas and family activities galore.

Immediately after crossing the French border, however, suddenly the cars changed from Peugeots and Citroens to Lamborghinis and Ferraris, Mercedes and Porsches. I could tell I was on the French Riviera with the private beaches and the parasoled lounge chairs and the rocky beaches.

As we headed into Monaco, we could finally appreciate our trip, with curvy hilly seaside roads, watching the battery fluctuate, netting us very little energy consumed. Plus, the scenery was stunning—the terracotta facades, the colorful buildings, yachts of all shapes and sizes completed the scene of a gorgeous Riviera day.