Road-tripping through France in the electric Nissan Ariya

If there’s one thing you learn after some time spent in an electric car, it’s that everyone – and I mean everyone – has some thoughts to share about them.

Picture the scene: it’s a grey day, in a grey midlands town, and you’re about to plug your – also grey – Nissan Ariya into what you hope will be a functioning charge point. “Is that one of them new ones?”, calls a voice from behind. Startled, you drop your charging cable in a puddle.

“Looks alright that. How far does it go?” About 300 miles on one charge, you reply. “Oh right”, comes the lukewarm response. “Not enough for me. Wouldn’t want to take that to France, would you.”

Now I’m not saying I make all my holiday plans around proving people wrong, but three months on I seem to have found myself driving an Ariya off a Eurotunnel train in Calais. The plan is pretty simple: head down to the motor racing Mecca of Le Mans, pop into Paris for a box of macarons on the way home, and be back in time for Emmerdale. What could be simpler?

Well, doing it in a petrol car, presumably. Our Ariya of choice – a four-wheel-drive, e-4ORCE model with an 87kWh battery – should be able to do the 260-mile jaunt from Calais to Le Mans without stopping. But 40 spare miles of electricity doesn’t leave much margin for error, so we’ve planned in a charging break halfway.

Two hours of gloriously smooth French toll roads later, we stop near Nantes to recharge our batteries: the car with electricity, and me with frangipane. If you thought France’s service station deli counters were a thing of brilliance, the Ariya is already being pampered just as much. This particular Total-branded site is brand new, meticulously clean, and – just like their regular petrol station next door – designed with proper queueing in mind.

Not that there was any need for that: we’re the only ones there, helpfully protected by the overhead canopy as a thunderstorm rolls in above us. Toto, I don’t think we’re in Clackett Lane anymore.

40 minutes and no charging dramas later, we’re on the road again. Not that, at times, it feels like that: once you settle in to the Ariya, the interior starts to feel more first class Emirates cabin than car. There’s thick, shag-pile floor mats to bury your feet into, enormous armchair-like front seats, and even a centre console that electrically moves back and forwards.

The dashboard is more unusual still: a solid piece of wood-effect material that runs from one side of the car to the other, it’s more like staring at a G-Plan sideboard than a normal car interior. It’s all very open-plan, too: because Nissan hasn’t hemmed in driver and front passenger with a normal, immovable centre console, you’re free to stretch your legs in (almost) any direction you choose.

When sat on the monotonously straight motorways of Northern France, this focus on relaxation all pays dividends, and so we arrive at our hotel in Le Mans surprisingly fresh. Truth be told, the Ariya probably would’ve made for a more comfortable place to sleep too.

A successful overnight charge left our car ready for morning touring the sights of Le Mans – naturally including a stop-off at the track that bears its name. Soon though, the real challenge for the Ariya beckoned: the drive to, and through the centre of, Paris.

Once again, this day’s 129 mile jaunt should be well within the reach of the Ariya’s 310 mile range – and it is. But I want to get intimately acquainted with France’s rapid charging network, to see if you could you rely on it for trips further afield.

The evidence stacking up so far seems to suggest so. Half way to Paris, and picking a motorway services almost at random, we arrive at a bank of Ionity chargers. Expecting – as is customary in the UK – a bit of a fight to get any charging to happen, I cracked out our Octopus Electroverse card to see if that would speed up the process.

To the uninitiated, this magic card is a bit of a Swiss army knife when it comes to charging your car. We still live in a world where there are hundreds of different charge point providers, each with their own apps to download, and registration forms to fill in before you can have any electricity.

In answer to that, energy company Octopus has created a swipe card that works across hundreds of different providers. Incredibly too, they say it works chargers across the whole of Europe as well as the UK, from Glasgow to Gibraltar.

Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised, then, when it did exactly as it said on the tin: just one tap needed and electrons were quickly flooding into the Ariya’s battery.

Charge complete and Le Burger King consumed, we pointed the Nissan back in the direction of the French capital, bracing for what would probably be the real challenge of the journey. Joining the perilous Peripherique – Paris’s M25 and North Circular rolled into one – we were glad of the calming influence of the Ariya’s airy cabin.

Paris is, at the best of times, not an easy city to drive around. But if you don’t mind a bit of a brain workout, there’s something to be said for travelling around it in your own little vehicular cocoon. For us Brits, used to crawling around grotty and traffic-stained bits of London at a snail’s pace, suddenly finding yourself enveloped by Paris’s grand, Haussman-designed buildings feels like stepping into Chanel after years of shopping at BHS.

The Ariya suddenly feels very at home. Bathed in light from the panoramic roof, the interior starts to look more designer hotel than car. Unapologetically futuristic it may be, but it probably wouldn’t look out of place dropping off Birkin bag-clutching bourgeoisie-types on the Champs-Elysees.

Sadly that’s not us – and anyway, before we get near Paris’s most famous shopping street, we have to navigate around the nightmarish gyratory at its summit: the Arc de Triomphe.

The real triomphe here is getting your car around it unscathed: it’s the only roundabout I can think of with 12 different exits, nearly as many lanes, and no particular rules as to how to get around it.

Suddenly the instant acceleration and all-wheel-drive of the Ariya starts to come in handy. Darting around merging taxis, scooters and dawdling rental cars, we eventually escape at near enough the correct exit. Win some, lose some.

The touristy suburb of Montmartre now beckons. If you’ve seen the film Amelie, this is the sort of Paris you probably have in mind: cobbled roads, wysteria-clad buildings and old fashioned cafe-bars that spill out onto the pavements.

It’s not just acquaintances sipping cognac that line these streets though: conveniently for us there’s also a handful of electric car chargers. Another swipe of the magic Octopus card takes care of electricity and parking charges for the day, and we’re free to toddle off to our overnight accommodation and drink in the sights of the Sacre Coeur basilica above us.

24 hours later, with a day’s shopping and sightseeing under our belts, it was time to wave Paris a fond farewell. Cruising along the boulevards that bank the river Seine, it occurs to me that soon, this sort of car journey into the French capital will be the only type that’s allowed.

France is already quite militant with its clean air zones, and by 2030 electric cars like the Ariya will be the only ones allowed in Paris, with other cities likely to follow.

So does that, as the Northamptonshire man predicted, spell an end to those traditional driving holidays across the English Channel? Pulling into get our final electricity top up before Calais – at yet again, a brand new EV hub devoid of any customers – I’m now much less worried about what the future holds.

Of the half a dozen chargers we’ve come across on this trip, every one has worked flawlessly. There’s been no queue. They’ve even been quite cheap, thanks to some French electricity subsidies: to fully charge our Ariya at an Ionity charger in France would cost £44, compared to £64 at an identical charger in Britain. If anything, it’s been less stressful driving an EV in France than back in the UK.

So there you have it: you can have a relaxed, electric-powered trip to Paris, and you don’t need to get on a Eurostar to do it. And as for the Ariya, I can’t think of a better car to choose to do it in.