Day 114 | Wednesday July 6
Last night I charged the car on 10 ampere and this was actually the first time I needed to that. Normally I charge on 16A. I didn’t know exactly how long it will take to fully charge the car and I when I checked the status in the morning I found out the battery was on 85%. This was after 13 hours. I had a long day with multiple pit stops so I decided to start driving.
I thanked my host Asgeir for helping me and left. My end destination today was Alesund. When I wanted to enter the address of tonights host I discovered I didn’t had a place to stay yet! Stupid mistake. A few days ago I planned the coming days, send a request to someone who offered me energy in Alesund and put in in my agenda. However the host didn’t reply yet.
It was a 220km drive to Alesund so I needed to charge a few times. My first stop was in Nordfjordeid. I found a supermarket with free wifi and started contacting the people in Alesund who plugged me in. The 2 options I had there both couldn’t help me because they were away. One of them felt a bit guilty and told me I had to get in touch with him if I couldn’t find a place to stay.
Charging in Nordfjordeid was not so easy, the regular EV station didn’t connect with my car. There were plenty of normal 220V stations but they all required a pass to access and I didn’t have one, normally they can be opened with a key which I do own. One of the non-accessible stations was in front of the city hall so I went in there to see if they could be at help. They couldn’t find they pass but had a normal socket were I could charge. I did so for a few hours and then drove to the next city with charging stations, Volda.
Volda is a beautiful looking town on the end of a fjord. Again I had the same problem with the regular EV stations so I charged on a normal socket, this made my day last long. Still I had no place to stay so I contacted Espen, he answered “Be right back…” A few minutes later I received an SMS from booking.com saying a B&B had been booked for me! Espen wrote me that he had booked this for me on his costs, including breakfast and possibility to charge! What a great guy.
He was at his mothers place, 2.5 hours drive from Alesund but he still wanted to meet me. He made the effort to drive all the way down and pick me up at the ferry. He drives an platinum Tesla Model S with auto pilot, first time I saw that!
We drove to the B&B to start charging the car, it was around 10pm that we arrived there. The B&B is a high school during winter and in the summer they convert it so they can earn some money. I didn’t had lunch today and was pretty hungry so we drove to a Burger King. First time this journey I got some junkfood and it was actually pretty good.
Espen took me for a sightseeing trip in his Tesla and showed me the Autopilot function. The autopilot makes the car drive automatically. I was surprised how well it worked. Espen told me that he doesn’t trust it always as the system looks at the lines on the road and here in Norway they disappear sometimes. If that’s the case next to a cliff it’s better not to use it… Almost autonomous we drove to the top of Alesund with an amazing view over the city. Alesund has almost completely burned down in 1904. German emperor Wilhelm II was a great fan of Norway and send food and emergency supplies to the city. Also he send a couple of Norwegian construction workers and architects. These architects were influenced by the Jugendstill which was a populair style at that time. That’s why Alesund has been reconstructed in this Jugendstill style giving it the nickname ‘Jugend Town of Norway’. It feels like wandering through a German town.
While it’s a great city I found it surprising that they didn’t had any charging stations, for a city with 50.000 citizens and many tourists they should at least have a few.
Around midnight Espen had to take his ferry back to his wife, mother and children and we said goodbye. I am very grateful to him for making the effort to come meet me and helping me survive.
Pictures of today
