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Electric charabanc to Chamonix

Andrew Howells
5 min readMar 29, 2024

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Part deux

Google Maps 668 miles, London to Chamonix

Some of you may remember a previous journey to Chamonix in January 2022 which I wrote about here. It was near the beginning of our electric vehicle (EV) experiences and there seemed to be much to share.

Since then, we’ve swapped out our Hyundai EV rental from Onto, now in administration and bought a Tesla, Model Y.

The Onto news occurred towards the end of last year when Legal and General (best known for insurance) decided to pull the plug on any further investment. The administrators point towards residual values of cars falling in their fleet and interest rates rising as the primary causes. I expect customer demand was also softer than a Mr Whippy ice cream as the grip on disposable income tightened.

We tend to top up the Tesla at the Eurotunnel especially if there’s time for a delicious veggie burger from Leon. A typical first French stop south on the A26 is the Aire d’Urvillers service station near Saint Quentin. If you need a supermarket and an alternative food outlet, I’d stop short of saying restaurant, the big shopping centre at Saint Quentin also offers fast Tesla charging, a few miles before the services.

I highlighted the Tesla charge points with envious eyes in my last post. They seemed to be everywhere. Large banks of them, mostly empty, while we scrambled around for…

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Andrew Howells
Andrew Howells

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