Getting around The Netherlands with the VW e-Crafter
In my social circles one of my typical roles has been The Driver, a role I’ve always been happy to fulfill. Recently a friend asked me to help him out and the plans included a ride around the country for some second hand furniture and so on. I had already been in touch with Volkswagen in December, they didn’t call me back so I decided to start over and put in a new request: success!
By accident I walked into the VW car dealership where they actually don’t have any vans and I had to bike around the block to get to the right department. I did spot this one at the DC fast charger, not a bad view on a Friday morning.
Just look at these wheels. Better to not look at consumption!
After biking around the block I did end up at the van and truck department.
The day started out pretty sweet, but it was about to get better. I headed out to Apeldoorn, where the new office of laadpastop10.nl is located. An 80km highway drive, the perfect test for this vehicle. I had been recommending a free topup at Ionity Apeldoorn to many people this past week. Obviously I had to connect the e-Crafter to the Ionity DC charger myself! As you can see even the ABB chargers with long cables are risky business using this pretty huge vehicle.
Many (older) chargers out there, where the cable will not be long enough for positioning the van this way.
Probably most of you have noticed from the look of this picture that after connecting a charging cable, one can actually not enter the cabin anymore from this side. Especially when narrow parked at the right side it’s very difficult to still get into the van when charging, which is a bit of a nuisance. One would like to sit comfortable inside in winter.
I had been hiding behind a couple of big trucks all day, so even after more than 80km all highway I arrived with 22% SoC (State of Charge) at the charger. Which made the predicted range at the start of the day (100km) totally realistic. It turned out the wind was optimal, and the 90km/h hiding tactic is ideal when in it for the long haul.
I was invited by Maarten to the opening of the year/office, definitely pay a visit to his highly important laadpastop10.nl (international version will be presented soon I was promised). In the evening I talked (tweet below) about electricfelix.com and my experiences over the past years. Become a member of the electricfelix community here and receive personal EV travel advice.
A couple of mistakes were made today, I talked and talked (stop it!). Almost fully charged I left Ionity. Even though my destination was just a 6km drive away, I didn’t plugin for a short topup at the office to 100%. (Either at Ionity or at Maarten’s I should’ve done a full charge to 100% SoC). Late at night after some pizza and meeting many inspiring people, I still had to go all the way to Amsterdam. Obviously I was facing a freezing headwind and because it was late Friday night, all the trucks had pretty much left the highway. There I was heading 90km/h. Outside temperature dropping slowly to 6 degrees celsius.
Nearly running the e-Crafter down to zero
When still 35km out, I received the 30km range left warning. From 90km/h I adjusted the cruise control to 80km/h. The GOM (Guess-O-Meter) had been dropping rapidly for a while. On the A10 (ringroad of Amsterdam) I received a couple of warnings, the last one read: battery empty, speed limited. Luckily nothing happened to the cruise control. I was only a couple of kilometers away from a friends’ house. I knew a couple of (Allego) fast chargers near the highway but I wanted to make it in one go. With 5km on the GOM and still the battery empty warning, I did make it.
Proof.
Less than six hours for a full charge (from flat). Now those are numbers I like. Obviously thanks to a small battery, but still. Starting everyday with a full battery with these vehicles is (very) important. When I arrived in the morning, a Leaf was just leaving (ha!)
Time to move. Fully charged after just a short night sleep!
It was only a couple of minutes drive to the house that my friend was saying goodbye to. Luckily a lot of people were helping, I think it took only 30 minutes to pack a whole lot of boxes and some other stuff. By the way the GOM was now showing 121km to go for the day.
Packed & ready to go!
We had to cover a very short distance on the highway, a part where traffic is limited to 80km/h. Obviously optimal for our range. Since the houses (old and new) of my friend are separated only by 7 kilometers you can check the consumption of the fully loaded ride.
Highway included I’m impressed by consumption I have to say, a pretty cold (but sunny day).
Getting stuff out was easy, even more help arrived and the new appartment was on the first floor. Parking with this vehicle was a total breeze thanks to ParkPilot (click for video) with backup camera and sensors all around (even in the doors). Driving around without load for a bit afterwards, consumption dropped significantly to 27kWh/100km after 28km. I called up a couple of friends and one was just clearing out a shed at his folks’ place. Too convenient!
Double parked for a minute because my favourite chargers were all taken today!
Time to dump all the old crap at the milieustraat. A fun drive in direction of Sloterdijk. Smooth sailing and then some hail arrived. Seems winter might be coming after all? Glad we’re not biking around (like many others).
Where Amsterdam ends. The milieustraat.
With just my friend Hugo and I in the cabin, we were put on the scale and it told us: 2720kg! Quite impressive. You don’t feel the weight at all because of the lovely power from the electric drivetrain. After driving around Amsterdam since 10AM for a couple of hours and quite some load this gives an impression of the consumption.
After spending hours and hours touring around loading, unloading, still pretty much 50% SoC left! My friend even used heated seats for quite a bit in the past hour.
Late at night I went to pick it up, fully charged and showing 128km on the GOM. A short drive to my place was a lot of fun, driving when empty around a calm city is marvellous. Also you’re not waking up anybody by pushing it a bit when the traffic light hits green and such, gotta love it. I used the dashboard to setup a ‘to occur once’ precondition event, exactly what the eVito was lacking!
The big e-Crafter roadtrip around the country
Adventure was only starting now. More than 300km planned, does this van get advertised with more than 100km range even? I know it supports CCS charging (I already used Ionity on day one). And we will use it, haha! (This picture does not show all our potential charging breaks).
The Big Day. A 300km+ EV roadtrip with the VW e-Crafter!
We were going to pickup furniture and a washing machine, several charging breaks included. I wanted to use the best located fast charger before we would arrive at our first destination. We went out for a test, I never visited Loadl before. We were really surprised to find an open door with an office space, Nespresso packed kitchen, clean toilet and so on waiting for us! I tried connecting with the front facing the charger first, that didn’t work out.
Be aware that the charger will shut down when you reach 80% SoC which for us happened after adding 12,9kWh in 21 minutes to the battery. Just three degrees celsius outside, 100KM on the GOM, and still 25km to go for destination one after we were expected to do 40km from there to the next one. And even though NL has many 50kW chargers this area is a bit underserved. Combined with the weather it will be an uphill battle from here on out!
First stop, Heusden.
Now the challenge was really starting. With 78km on the GOM and still more than 40km to go to Veghel. Picking up a washing machine. With just 4 degrees outside, 10AM in the morning, that sure doesn’t help us much. I’ve really tried to relax, 90km/h on the highway, some local roads with 75km/h and so on. Consumption shows!
Halfway our Grand Tour of The Netherlands!
Second pickup done, my back hurts, that was one heavy washing machine. A meager 33km on the GOM. 21km to the next Fastned. Mainly heading north. Guess where a strong and cold wind is coming from. Since it’s still Sunday morning there was not a single truck on the road to hide behind. We changed tactics and headed north 8okm/h stuck on the highway in the right lane. Some warnings (luckily I’ve had many on Friday night so I knew they were nothing to get anxiety over), but we made it! First warning comes on when the GOM shows 30km left. This warning was next.
First ‘serious’ range warning.
From there it took six minutes for the turtle to arrive. No rest for the wicked.
Say hello turtle mode. Even though it says speed restricted we could continue driving 80km/h without any issues.
So even though GOM predicts 8km to go, the message of the battery being empty while on the highway can be a bit daunting. But thanks to my first experience on Friday night I could handle it fine. I knew we were going to make it to Fastned and yes, here we are!
Fastned to save the day yet again. De Geffense Barrière.
So the hard part is done. From here on out chargers will be anywhere, because we will head back into ‘big city territory’. With the infrastructure as dense as it is already in The Netherlands right now, we have nothing to fear. Actually we can choose between Ionity, Fastned and Allego next to Nieuwegein. And purely based on the lovely weedburger I had at Hajé in November with some friends when driving back all the way from Munich, we connected at Allego. And met up with Danny.
Just half an hour of juicing up at Fastned.
With a GOM predicting 90+ km of free moving range, and the Nieuwegein HPC HQ of The Netherlands just 52km away we are free to go! AND! We found a new favourite hiding spot from wind and all.
Hello Kawasaki Racing Team!
Lunchbreak! Allego is my ideal HPC (High Power Charger) when near Utrecht, because of the Hajé restaurant next door that has a lot of delicious veggie options. Weedburger recommended! Obviously when you prefer Fastned/Ionity you can still walk over to Burger King/La Place, so your options are abundant!
Somebody spotted us arriving at the Allego HPC’s!
Driving down to Allego just minutes before we spotted a white I-Pace on the road. Now to my surprise they just connected to the 50kW triple charger. Which meant we ‘had’ to connect the van to one of the HPC’s (High Power Chargers, delivering more than 150kW). Pretty cool actually. Let’s forget that because of wanting to catch up with Danny who just came here to meet us with the e-Crafter, I forgot to check if charging had really started. The charger made all the right sounds and I didn’t re-check.
So I had to reconnect us after we already had lunch to actally start juicing up. Oops. Classic mistake, luckily we were not in a hurry.
Nieuwegein, aka HPC Capital of NL. Thanks Allego! (Another triple wouldn’t hurt for all those Zoe’s and Leafs out there).
Our last pickup would be near Amersfoort. We juiced up at Allego adding 16,88kWh in less than 26 minutes. With the chairs in the van it was time to head home!
With 282km under the belt and an average consumption of 25kWh/100km I couldn’t be more happy. What a day, blissfully sunny. Mind you, most of the day was way below 5 degrees celsius and we faced some heavy headwind. Hardly any trucks to hide behind. Lovely fast charging till the end.
We just needed a little extra so I could freely roam the city afterwards. Total stats for the drive today were as follows.
Even after several cities and villages to explore with lots of load, we could still keep numbers in the green.
What a day. Over 300 kilometers in fully electric van covering a decent part of The Netherlands. Time for a wonderful meal. And of course #alwaysbecharging
Did you know charging up at P+R Zeeburg (11kW) is free? Yes! And parking is cheap, when using public transport to get into town and back.
I didn’t even mention this van will not go over 95km/h. It’s the best range protection VW can give you. And same as with the eVito, if you’re on a hill you need to keep pushing the brake pedal for it to hold still at the traffic light. Obviously the (fast) charging port is in a very weird spot because how would you get into your cabin when juicing up (at a DC charger that is). There are some quirks but I’d help out anybody in The Netherlands moving their stuff with this van. What a gorgeous machine, did I even mention the lane keep assist? The luxury! Amsterdam better be packed with these soon and the next generation will probably arrive soon enough.
A big thank you to Stefan at A-Point Amsterdam for the ride!
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