It's great having an EV here, and the charging infrastructure is getting better all the time with new chargers popping up all over the place.salix wrote: ↑Sat Jul 08, 2023 10:39 pm I realise this is off-topic, but what's it like having an EV in Iceland? I gather there's a high percentage of EVs. Is there a good network of charging stations? A quick look on Google looks like it's decent in the north and SW but I can't see any along the East coast?
Charging my e is costing me about Kr. 4-600 (about £3) on average and if I stick to chargers that are operated by my home electricity provider, then I get a 20% discount off my vehicle charging and home electricity every month.
Just checking the figures at Samgöngustofa (the Icelandic version of the DMV or DVLA), BEVs are leading the sales figures substantially now, and have been creeping to the front since 2020.
This is the state of car sales in Iceland this year so far:
In terms of google, their general map updating for Iceland is pretty shit, most people use map.is or ja.is/kort for general maps, as these provide much more up to date and higher res imagery of Iceland.
Iceland is VERY app focused when it comes to getting stuff done, so most of the charging providers just have their own apps. If you can do it on the internet, there's an app for it - banking, pensions, healthcare, pretty much anything you can think of. I can do everything from ordering a pizza to paying my bills, organizing a pension, car insurance, or even buying a car on my phone, without ever needing to speak to someone. For instance, when I bought my e, the only time I physically went to the dealer was to test drive one, then to collect the car. Everything else was done via my phone or with a quick email here and there.
Most of the apps not developed in Iceland such as evnavigation, plugshare and chargemap tend not to be very up to date because of the speed at which chargers are being added here.
All the charging networks here have apps with their own listings in, plus they have regular websites where you can see their charging networks. The two main ones that I use are ON.IS (my home electricity provider) and Isorka.is, who have a pretty good network too. I mainly started using Isorka because they were the provider that was providing free charging at my place of work, however they've now swapped to ON, so I don't use Isorka much these days.
There's four or five main charging networks in Iceland, and the coverage is pretty good. There's one area in the north east of the country between Seyðisfjörður and Akureyri where there's about a 300km stretch of Route 1 (the Icelandic Ring Road) that's got no charging infrastructure, but apparently ON and N1 (the largest and most prominent gas station company in Iceland) are starting to plan out chargers for that area.
There are also a lot of "free" chargers in downtown Reykjavik in pay and display parking garages, where you'll pay to park as normal, and you can charge for free in the EV bays there as part of the parking fee.
The price is the main benefit for me though, my fuel costs have dropped by about 90% since I bought my e.