Charging diaries in Yunnan China Part 1
Returning to the Chinese mountains, where I was hiking, biking and horseback riding 21 years ago. That was the spontaneous invitation I received, a Chinese roadtrip, with temporary Chinese drivers license included. Since getting that on your own isn’t exactly the easiest to obtain, the whole package was too good of an invite to pass up on.
Off I went, late September (‘25), trying ZEEKR’s latest “Super PHEV” first, more on that later.
As soon as the test drive event was officially “in the bag”, I set out to find the right rental agency. Visiting some famous players in the vicinity of our hotel, it was a near absurd experience to find a parking lot full of VW ICE (fossil) vehicles. So that’s where some of these new sales must be going, still, in 2025 ;-)
In “the everything apps” (hidden behind the WeChat/Alipay entrance wall) you can find absolutely any (China) BEV you can think of, but, as a foreigner completing a booking in-app seems impossible. Even using the translate functionality comes with added danger: the translated names of the rental agencies are impossible to find on (for example Apple) Maps. So better stick with the Chinese, and then you can actually find physical spaces that seem to have some cool EVs for rent.
A Wuling Bingo was absolutely my goal, but life takes you for a ride sometimes!
More friendly than any European rental desk has ever been!
I knew William (the curly one) “from Twitter”, been following his “Roaming Norway” adventures since the very beginning. Here we finally met in person, at the other side of the planet. Thanks to ZEEKR & Out of Spec!
In contact with another Twitter helpline we started roaming around the darker alleys of Lijiang. The search for a Wuling Bingo (sold out when I asked!) escalated when we ran into a Xiaomi SU7 instead…. how… fitting ;-)
The keys to our own Xiaomi, to roam freely around Yunnan, China. Luckily we could change the interface of the vehicle to English. Tap the Android version in the settings a bunch of times rapidly, and you can change any Xiaomi EV from Chinese to English. Instant Apple CarPlay (wirelessly): consider me surprised!
instant wireless CarPlay experience
Of course I simply wanted to charge it straight away, get to know some of the local infrastructure. That proved amazing in more ways than one, because just picking the hub closest (using built-in navi) to our location ended up being this huge site with tons of coach buses charging up.
downtown Lijiang, late at night on a weekday (coach buses behind me from where I took the photo)
It also taught me something about “roaming in China”, as to say you cannot activate a lot of chargers in China with your European phone number. Most mini apps (scan the QR on any plug/charger with your WeChat app) want a Chinese phone number before you can actually access a charger. Our host helped us out: I photographed the QR and he activated the plug remotely, it differs per operator “how easy” that is..
First mission in the morning: get a local SIM card that can send and receive texts (my last one from April had data only because I thought that’s what I needed).
Check back soon, when I continue this travel blog and our charging adventures around Lijiang and Dali.
A huge thank you to ZEEKR for the travel invitiation and to Out of Spec for taking care of all rentals and so on - William will share more videos as will I.
Cost overview so far:
Xiaomi SU7 base spec rental: just under 200 euros for three days (incl insurance)
Parking the car overnight at the hotel: just under 10 euros
First charging session downtown Lijiang: paid for by our rental host (1RMB/kWh peak pricing, much cheaper after midnight, and it was already crowded at 10PM)
and so, it begins #rentelectric