The whole party of 14 in four cars then decided to come and watch my progress at a charging station in Radda, 20 km away. Tourists: gormless idiots. But this car park had been built, the charging station stood there and plugging-in was child’s play, literally, followed by applause, pictures and lunch. When we returned, the car wasn’t charged. Insufficient power in the charging station. Some local farmer air-conditioning his chickens, I imagine.
Eighty-ish km left. Not even enough to drive the car back to Florence airport and apologise for accidentally filling it with petrol. (“Oh, the back seat mainly.”) Until now I really hadn’t understood range-anxiety, which is the tension built up about spending the night in your car in a local dogging spot.
I had one shot left: home (20 km), then in the morning drive to Siena (60 km), where it was alleged the car hire company had a charging station and office. Siena, home of the Palio, the violent urban horserace where jockeys whip and punch each other for supremacy, just like London rush-hour.
Three cars set out this time and I calculated that, just to fill up my car with juice, we would have driven 60 km (120km round trip), plus Radda, and all my back-up cars, possibly to fail. When I would walk the rest of the way to the Hertz office and go full gammon, demanding a new car. With 2 km to go, I had 2 km range left, but luckily the Hertz office was in a suburban wasteland, not the city centre. I finally plugged the Polestar into a working charging station and felt ecstatic release. Only an hour to wait in 40C sunshine and I’d be good to go.
So I popped into the office to ask the whereabouts of my domestic charger. It was in the bonnet, they pointed out. “Ah!” I said. “You see, the main charger was in the boot, and I thought the bonnet contained… not the engine, obviously…” EVs don’t have engines. That would be dumb, obviously, not checking the bonnet, because you thought it housed the engine. The domestic charger was in the bonnet. But it didn’t work at our villa anyway because it required an adapter.
When I finally dropped the car off at Florence airport, I complimented the Hertz man on the car (let nobody say gammons never say nice things), and he responded: “Yes, a beautiful car. But no charging stations. Only one in Florence, one in Siena.”
Next year, I may rely on horsepower and perhaps enter the Palio.
