I want to do a roadtrip through France, Switzerland and Austria

HI
We live in Canada and we want to do a road trip next summer. The plan so far is to fly to Paris then drive to Switzerland and Austria. Most of the trip will be exploring Austria. France and Switzerland will mostly be driving through stopping at a few sites. The trip will be 3 weeks.

We choose to fly to Paris as it is a bit cheaper to fly from Toronto to Paris than other major cities further into Europe. Also Paris CDG airport seems to be one of the few places I can find where you can rent and EV. AT Sixt they actually have a sellection of EV's. I am posting on a Nissan forum as I can rent a Leaf at a very reasonable price. Also we are a family of 4 so renting a car is the cheapest form of transportation, and my wife doesnt like the train.

In Canada we have a Tesla that we take on vacation all over eastern North America. I have no worries using the Tesla network, but a tesla is too expensive to rent for our trip.

My question is, generally, how widespead and reliable is the DC charging network in those countries? Can we depend on chargers actually working when we get to them? If there is only 1 charger and it is down that would really suck.

I dont know exactly what model of Leaf is available to rent, and I assume by next summer there will be an even bigger selection of EV's to rent. Even if I dont rent a Leaf, I will get a car with DC charging.

Also one thing I read it that for level two chargers you have to bring the cable? We were planning to stay at several airbnb's so can someone explain what cables will be required for both level 2 and home charging?

Thanks for your input

There are a number of people in Norway which have taken their Leafs on roadtrips through Europe, and from what I have heard from them, it has been relatively straight forward. The problems are that there can be poor coverage of fastchargers at times, and that you can have one fastcharger which can be out of order. Teslas Supercharger-network and Ionitys CCS-network makes life easier for an EV-driver on the go, but these are obviously not possible to use with a Leaf.

I would suggest getting a CCS-equipped car, maybe something like a e-Niro or ID.4. Then you have access to Ionity and useable range. With the exception of Ionity, most fastcharger-providers will have both Chademo and CCS available, but often they have more CCS-chargers than Chademo-chargers.

The coverage of fastchargers varies between the different countries. Some are better, some haven't invested so much in this. Norway have a pretty good coverage for instance, but also a ton of EVs, so often busy at the right times. Payment can also be a hassle as there is a huge range of apps and RFIDs. Check out TeslaBjørn on Youtube, he has a few videos about this.

I would also suggest to use Abetterrouteplanner to plan your trip ahead.

The charging cables for AC-charging are often included with the car. One EVSE with Schuko and one Type 2-cable. But check with the landlord of the place where you are staying if you will be allowed to charge there. Sometimes, the electrical grid aren't quite up to spec, so landlords might prefer you not to charge there. Not all European countries use the Schuko-plug either, so you might need an adapter.

If you do rent a Leaf, I strongly suggest that you get the version with the bigger, 62kwh battery. Not only will it give you substantially more range between charging stations, but you will experience less 'throttling' of the charging speed due to high battery temps. On the same note, if you can choose not to do the trip during the hottest part of Summer, that would be best. Leafs are not the best EVs for doing multiple DC charges in one day.

Man, I do appreciate my 62kWh Leaf. But I would never rent one for a road trip! If it were my only car, I'd be likely to rent an ICE vehicle for road trips so I didn't have to use the Leaf. The Leaf, even the 62kWh Leaf, is one of the least road-trip-capable EV's, due to it's lack of battery cooling. It's fabulously practical for 99% of what I do. But road tripping falls into the other 1%.

And for a road trip in Europe? If I'm paying to fly 4 people to Europe from North America, I'm not renting a car that might cause me to compromise any of my time or skip a desired destination. Forget fast chargers and even Tesla networks! I want a car I can fill with 400 miles worth of "petrol" in 10 minutes, with stations available on every other block of every town I'll visit. I don't care how big an EV fan you are, ICE wins in this scenario. I'll change my mind when charging stations - functional fast charging stations - outnumber gas/petrol stations.

Wow, you came up with a very cool travel plan. It's especially cool that you decided to devote more time to Austria. But I would advise you to visit Prague, because it is incredibly beautiful. There is a cool site free walking tour Prague where you can find a tour to see all the sights of Prague in just one day. And about your experience with electricity, you can not worry. In Europe, everything is fine with this; you can freely charge your devices and not worry about it.