Just a short note about driving to Poland in an EV. For work I needed a fairly chunky piece of kit that I'd built to be in Poland for testing. So I drove it there in our Citroen e-dispatch 75kWh van. It was surprisingly painless.
Range/speed issues:
There weren't really any. The van will do about 300km in reasonable conditions at 95km/h which is the speed that lorries tend to drive at on French and German motorways. I drove most of the way in the slow lane with the lorries. Whilst the van will go at 120km/h it feels like it's being pushed pretty hard at that speed and the range drops pretty dramatically (probably closer to 200km). It's also pretty stressful driving at that sort of speed in the autobahn for long distances, so I just chilled out with the big boys in the slow lane. On the way back there was a strong westerly wind almost the whole way which knocked about 30 km off the range. Not a massive issue, but noticeable.
Charging issues:
There weren't really any in France, Belgium, Netherlands or Germany. The UK is a bit sparse on the way from Wales but ok once I get to the M4. Poland was very sparse and had lots of broken/unusable units. It was also quite hard to get good information before getting there. I used a ChargeMap RFID for almost all my charges in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. The one reliable network I found in Poland was GreenWay that I downloaded the app for. Orlen have lots of very shiny looking chargers in Poland, but I didn't manage to get any of them to work despite downloading the app and trying at 5 different places. On the way out it was mainly around 5-10C as I drove a lot at night, and in total I charged 7 times from Aberystwyth to Bydgoszcz. The charging network on the autoroutes/autobahns from Calais to the Polish border is so good that you don't really need to plan much at all. There really are good rapid chargers about every 100km or so. Ionity were top notch, Allego and Fastned also deserve a mention. Most sites have sites that will do >150 kW, and many are 300kW units. The van maxes out at 100kW. On average I was charging from around 15% to around 85% before I got bored of waiting, apart from in Poland where I tended to get up into the 90s to give more of a buffer to allow for broken/unusable chargers.
General van issues:
I like the van. It looks and feels Just like a normal van. The seat is comfy, the visibility is mostly good, apart from merging into motorways on the continent which is a pain in any right hand drive vehicle. It's zippy enough to keep up with traffic and overtake things if needed. It's big enough in the cab for me (5'10) to sleep fairly comfortably across the three seats. Heater is good, radio is good. I'd like a percentage read out of battery capacity rather than the fuel gauge, but I'm slowly getting used to it. Generally it's fine.
Overall thoughts:
1) Germany is big.
2) It's a long drive.
3) It's not like driving a diesel, and you do have to stop more often: I spent around 6 hours charging in each direction (about 1 hour of which I spent sleeping). The trip out took 38 hours door-to-door, including a decent sleep stop (about 7 hours) in Germany. I didn't drive directly back, so not worth comparing.
4) Cost was about 30 euros per charge on average, so probably a bit over 200 euros each way in electricity.
5) Everyone in Poland thought I was insane to do it.
6) It was quite fun, and I will do it again if necessary.
