Getting out and about in My Nissan leaf

 Free Type 2 or Shuko Plug – Nissan Leaf Charging

It was a bit of a cool day inside the house so I decided I would take a trip down towards Barcelona. I ended up in a town called St Pol de Mar a little bit north of the city. It has a nice beach and you can go and see the traditional boats moored there. Good thing to do while you are waiting for your car to charge.

For some strange reason Waze wasn’t able to guide me to the white part of the parking. This was due to a one-way system and I was only able to get close to it. So I parked the car somewhere else in the parking and walked to the charging points. There was a Nissan Leaf 30 kWh and a Kia Soul both plugged in to the charging post which worked. This was a post with two Shuko sockets. The charge post nearby with the type to Mennekes sockets was out of action. I got talking to the owner of the Nissan Leaf and he told me that the Type II charging might be available in a month or two.

I was just having a trip out to enjoy driving my car and I was not in need of charging at this particular spot. So I continued to the other EV charging post in the town. This other place was about 4 km away, maybe less, further up the hill away from the beach. This charging point had the same arrangement of two charging posts one for Shuko and the other for type II. It was also identical in that the type to charging was unavailable and the Shuko sockets were functioning. Once again I didn’t need any charge and I decide to continue on my way. In any case, there wouldn’t be much point in stopping and plugging into a Shuko socket with a charging of 3.3 kW. Unless I was planning to be there for the whole day. It would have been very slow charging indeed!

The next step of the journey took me to another charging point in the same town. This was 3 or 4 km inland and was on the edge of an industrial estate. It wasn’t a pretty place to stop and it was a single post for charging. On one side there was Type 2 charging and on the other side of the post a Shuko socket. Once again the type to charging was unavailable. I plugged in for a few minutes and had a stretch of my legs while charge the car up by about 2%. It wasn’t really worth putting in but at least the charging was free.

Moving on to another town in the direction of home Calella de Mar. This time I got lucky and I found a charging point which had a Type II socket which was working. I still had enough charging the battery to drive all the way home, but I wanted to have a walk around the town. I plugged in for about 40 minutes and I put about 12% charge into the battery. I was lucky to arrive there during the period where the parking is free. This is something you need to check on the signs when you pull up to any charging place.

As I was about to leave a Renault Zoe driver pulled up next to me. He plugged into the free socket. He was very happy with his Renault Zoe telling me that it charged up fairly quickly. I thought the maximum charge it could take is 22 kW, but he was telling me it could charge faster than that. I’ll need to check up on that. That was my trip out for the day testing out electric charging sockets and making use of the heating in the car. It had started off cool and I was glad of the heat exchanger heating in the Nissan Leaf and also the heated seats. It was well worth spending the extra money to buy the Tekna version of the Nissan Leaf. Not only do you get the heated seats but you also get the heated steering wheel. Even on a cold day you can be warm and toasty!