Charging an Electric Car in Italy
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Latest page update: 10 December 2024
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By Dion Protani
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The personal experience I had of charging an electric car in Italy drove me to write an article on the potential downfalls.
On the face of it, what seemed like a great idea at the time: the exciting opportunity to drive an electric car for the first time combined with the lower rental price, turned out to be a decision that wasted whole days and ended up costing more in total. |
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Bullet-points of problems experienced when renting an electric car in Italy
- Your car's charging system may not match that of the charging point
- Some charging points marked on a map (or app) no longer exist or no longer work
- Electric recharges take much longer than equivalent petrol/diesel/gas refills
- A charging point you find may be in use by someone else and with no way of knowing when they'll be finished
- You may not know how much you're being charged
- Electricity charges are higher than regular fuel prices
- Many/most charging points don't have sufficient instructions (either in English or Italian)
- In summary: it costs more, takes longer, reduces your holiday time and creates stress
An experience of renting an electric car in Italy
This article is very much relevant to the date on which it was originally written (December 2024) with the hope and expectation that the situation will improve in years to come. That opening statement should start to give a hint as to the current state of play of renting an electric car in Italy.
If you want an honest, first-hand account of the experience then please read on, I'm sure other people will have had better experiences but I'm also sure there will be others whose trips were ruined by the fundamental flaws in the Italian electric car infrastructure.
If you want an honest, first-hand account of the experience then please read on, I'm sure other people will have had better experiences but I'm also sure there will be others whose trips were ruined by the fundamental flaws in the Italian electric car infrastructure.
Collected an electric rental car in Naples and drove to Puglia
As part of my ongoing travels around Italy, mostly in the cause of updating this website with new materials, photos and videos etc, I decided to rent an electric car from the Noleggiare rental company at Naples Airport.
Having never driven an electric car before, my partner and I asked the sensible questions to the assistants at the rental desk, such as 'are there sufficient charging points in Puglia?', to which we were given all the necessary assurances.
We were provided with an app that showed all the charging points across the country and it did appear that there were plenty of them for it not to be a problem. This unfortunately did not prove to be the case.
Having never driven an electric car before, my partner and I asked the sensible questions to the assistants at the rental desk, such as 'are there sufficient charging points in Puglia?', to which we were given all the necessary assurances.
We were provided with an app that showed all the charging points across the country and it did appear that there were plenty of them for it not to be a problem. This unfortunately did not prove to be the case.
Not knowing how to operate the car or how the charging points worked
The car we were given was beautiful, an MG EV, nice and new with lots of fancy gadgets and a lovely dashboard screen with built-in SATNAV. Of course, pulling away in an electric car for the first time was a bit strange and there were plenty of things I simply didn't know such as how to start the engine! It would have been great to have someone from Noleggiare show us a few basic steps but the person who had given us the car had very little knowledge of its operation or I'm sad to say, much desire to help us with it.
We eventually pulled away with our battery showing 89% (apparently this car wasn't able to reach 100% - not sure why), and headed towards the motorway bound for Puglia. Our eventual destination that evening was Alberobello but we planned a stop in Matera along the way.
So as happens while you're driving along and you have all the navigation data unfolding in front of you, you start to calculate when you might need to stop for a recharge. As we could see the battery going down fairly and still a long way to go, we decided to stop for our first ever recharge at a motorway service station.
The charging points on the motorway are within marked parking bays (not in petrol stations as we had thought), so we found one available and set about the recharge. This was actually one of the easiest charges we had during the trip and not much went wrong with it. The only problem here was there were no instructions on how to use the thing, neither in English or Italian, so it was a simple case of taking the charging cable and plugging it into our car.
Once we could see it was charging we were happy, although there was nothing to show how much it was going to cost, who we were going to pay or how that payment would be made. I asked several other motorists who wanted to charge their own cars and nobody seemed to know how to pay or how much it would be.
Anyway, this was a high point in the experience; the car charged to full (89%!) within half an hour or so while we had our lunch and off we went again, headed for Matera.
We eventually pulled away with our battery showing 89% (apparently this car wasn't able to reach 100% - not sure why), and headed towards the motorway bound for Puglia. Our eventual destination that evening was Alberobello but we planned a stop in Matera along the way.
So as happens while you're driving along and you have all the navigation data unfolding in front of you, you start to calculate when you might need to stop for a recharge. As we could see the battery going down fairly and still a long way to go, we decided to stop for our first ever recharge at a motorway service station.
The charging points on the motorway are within marked parking bays (not in petrol stations as we had thought), so we found one available and set about the recharge. This was actually one of the easiest charges we had during the trip and not much went wrong with it. The only problem here was there were no instructions on how to use the thing, neither in English or Italian, so it was a simple case of taking the charging cable and plugging it into our car.
Once we could see it was charging we were happy, although there was nothing to show how much it was going to cost, who we were going to pay or how that payment would be made. I asked several other motorists who wanted to charge their own cars and nobody seemed to know how to pay or how much it would be.
Anyway, this was a high point in the experience; the car charged to full (89%!) within half an hour or so while we had our lunch and off we went again, headed for Matera.
The real problems begin
The drive from the service station to Matera went without a hitch and we managed a quick visit to the town. However, we did have to leave fairly soon as it was getting dark and we were at risk of missing our latest check-in time in Alberobello.
One thing you notice when driving an electric car is how much your speed affects the remaining battery; obviously this already happens with petrol or diesel cars to some degree but with electric cars it's much more pronounced. Your remaining battery will drop significantly when you put your foot down or rise again if you drive very slowly. We were up against it time wise to get to Puglia so got there as quickly as we could, by which time the battery was down to less than 10%.
We didn't think this would be a problem because we could see that the main car park in Alberobello had a charging point and we planned to leave it on charge there overnight. I'll come back to the idea of 'leaving to charge overnight' because that wasn't the first problem that hit us. Instead it was the fact that our car had a different charging system to the one in the Alberobello car park. No matter we thought, we can use that adapter cable they gave us at the rental office.
One thing you notice when driving an electric car is how much your speed affects the remaining battery; obviously this already happens with petrol or diesel cars to some degree but with electric cars it's much more pronounced. Your remaining battery will drop significantly when you put your foot down or rise again if you drive very slowly. We were up against it time wise to get to Puglia so got there as quickly as we could, by which time the battery was down to less than 10%.
We didn't think this would be a problem because we could see that the main car park in Alberobello had a charging point and we planned to leave it on charge there overnight. I'll come back to the idea of 'leaving to charge overnight' because that wasn't the first problem that hit us. Instead it was the fact that our car had a different charging system to the one in the Alberobello car park. No matter we thought, we can use that adapter cable they gave us at the rental office.
Different charging systems, cables and adapters
We were on a pretty steep learning curve here (it would have been great to have some of these basic explained to us by the rental car company) and quickly discovered that for our car at least, you needed one of the charging points that has a cable sticking out of it. To our untrained eyes it appeared a simple case of using our plug to plug into the charging point.
So this charging point in Alberobello had no cable coming out of it, and the cable we had in our car was the wrong type. Ok we thought, let's use that app we were given and use a nearby charging point. We planned to do this the next day as it was really late at this point.
We decided to deal with this first thing in the morning so we could then get on with the enjoyment of exploring Alberobello and the local area. Using the app, we drove to our second-nearest charging point which happened to be in a nearby petrol station. When we got there, we had the same problem as the first time - no cable attached to the charging point and our own cable being a different type. This then happened at the next charging point we found, by which time we were getting dangerously low on electricity.
The charging point app had a number of charging points listed that either didn't exist any more, were broken, occupied by somebody else or the wrong connector type.
So this charging point in Alberobello had no cable coming out of it, and the cable we had in our car was the wrong type. Ok we thought, let's use that app we were given and use a nearby charging point. We planned to do this the next day as it was really late at this point.
We decided to deal with this first thing in the morning so we could then get on with the enjoyment of exploring Alberobello and the local area. Using the app, we drove to our second-nearest charging point which happened to be in a nearby petrol station. When we got there, we had the same problem as the first time - no cable attached to the charging point and our own cable being a different type. This then happened at the next charging point we found, by which time we were getting dangerously low on electricity.
The charging point app had a number of charging points listed that either didn't exist any more, were broken, occupied by somebody else or the wrong connector type.
Abandoned our plans for the day to look for a charging point
At this stage we had to abandon the idea of visiting Alberobello and find some way of getting a recharge into this car. Our plan was to find a similar charging point to the one we used on the motorway the first time. This was now a real leap of faith because we had just enough charge to get to the town of Monopoli, around 20 kilometres away.
We were delighted when we found the same type of charging point at a McDonald's in Monopoli and kept everything crossed that it would work. Although it was the same type of connector, it was a different brand and there were still no payment instructions but we managed to get it charging then went for a bite to eat while we were waiting.
I should point out at this stage that we're now eating in a roadside McDonald's instead of exploring the trulli houses of Alberobello so absolutely not what we planned!
Anyway, it worked and we were delighted to get as full as possible, ready for our two hour drive down to Castro in the Salento region of Puglia.
We were delighted when we found the same type of charging point at a McDonald's in Monopoli and kept everything crossed that it would work. Although it was the same type of connector, it was a different brand and there were still no payment instructions but we managed to get it charging then went for a bite to eat while we were waiting.
I should point out at this stage that we're now eating in a roadside McDonald's instead of exploring the trulli houses of Alberobello so absolutely not what we planned!
Anyway, it worked and we were delighted to get as full as possible, ready for our two hour drive down to Castro in the Salento region of Puglia.
More and different problems
We eventually arrived in Castro late that night and were reassured to see the town had a charging point that looked like the ones we'd been successful with before. So we checked in to our hotel and our hopes were immediately raised when we found they had their own charging point. Of course, our hopes were dashed here because this was the really old-fashioned type: a simple plug system and our car was unfortunately way too advanced for that!
Ok so having checked in late at night, I decided to take the car to the nearby charging point in order to charge it overnight, only to find that someone had got there before me. That person was not in their car and there was no way of telling from the charging point how long it would take so I had to come back the next morning - more time wasted and plans changed.
Thankfully, this one did work and we were off on our travels again, heading for the lovely town of Otranto. By now, heavily-scarred from the whole electric car experience we erred on the side of caution, looking for charging points before stopping anywhere. Otranto is a great example of why you should avoid renting an electric car in Italy. There were numerous charging points around the town but they were either in use by someone else or our old favourite: the wrong connector type.
We found ourselves waiting next to a promising-looking charging point for half an hour in the hope the present user of it would return to their car and vacate it but our wait was in vain and we decided to head to the city of Lecce which is much larger and would surely have all sorts of charging points, no?
The charging points we found in Lecce were in a large car park around a piazza which was extremely busy; for a moment I felt having an electric car was great because those were the only parking spaces available but of course you guessed it - not compatible with our car.
Ok so having checked in late at night, I decided to take the car to the nearby charging point in order to charge it overnight, only to find that someone had got there before me. That person was not in their car and there was no way of telling from the charging point how long it would take so I had to come back the next morning - more time wasted and plans changed.
Thankfully, this one did work and we were off on our travels again, heading for the lovely town of Otranto. By now, heavily-scarred from the whole electric car experience we erred on the side of caution, looking for charging points before stopping anywhere. Otranto is a great example of why you should avoid renting an electric car in Italy. There were numerous charging points around the town but they were either in use by someone else or our old favourite: the wrong connector type.
We found ourselves waiting next to a promising-looking charging point for half an hour in the hope the present user of it would return to their car and vacate it but our wait was in vain and we decided to head to the city of Lecce which is much larger and would surely have all sorts of charging points, no?
The charging points we found in Lecce were in a large car park around a piazza which was extremely busy; for a moment I felt having an electric car was great because those were the only parking spaces available but of course you guessed it - not compatible with our car.
From Puglia back to Naples Airport
Another problem with renting an electric car is you simply cannot predict how long a journey is going to take. On a long journey like this one from Castro to Naples Airport you could allow for around five hours in a regular car plus any stops you might like to make. Our journey was dominated by calculating how many stops we'd need to make and how long it would take to fully recharge at each stop.
I think we stopped three times to recharge on this journey alone (the motorway charging points all worked fine) and we did need up a bit late back at the rental office which meant we went into another day's rental with them, only adding to the complications.
I think we stopped three times to recharge on this journey alone (the motorway charging points all worked fine) and we did need up a bit late back at the rental office which meant we went into another day's rental with them, only adding to the complications.
How much did it cost?
One huge mystery of this whole experience was that of when we did successfully charge the car, who was paying for it. We never had to insert a card or pay any money and we had no idea how much any of it was costing.
We figured out we had a chip in our key fob that unlocked the charging points but there was nothing we could log in to to see the price of any of the recharges we made. It was only weeks after the rental that we were contacted by Noleggiare the rental company who handed us a surprisingly large bill.
We figured out we had a chip in our key fob that unlocked the charging points but there was nothing we could log in to to see the price of any of the recharges we made. It was only weeks after the rental that we were contacted by Noleggiare the rental company who handed us a surprisingly large bill.
Were there any good points?
Yes, there were certainly a few positives. With the car we had the drive was lovely, effortless power and low engine noise combined to make the driving experience really good. The car's tech was state of the art as well and it really felt like a premium vehicle.
At the outset, the big positive was the difference in price of this car against a regular car. The price difference was around half and that made a positive difference over the three days of the rental. However, in the end the higher price of charging against regular fuel ate up any money saved on the rental cost and the total was higher than we would have had to pay for a regular car.
At the outset, the big positive was the difference in price of this car against a regular car. The price difference was around half and that made a positive difference over the three days of the rental. However, in the end the higher price of charging against regular fuel ate up any money saved on the rental cost and the total was higher than we would have had to pay for a regular car.
Conclusion
If you travel to Italy with your own electric vehicle I would recommend proceeding with caution, downing exactly what type of connector you have and the likelihood of that working at your destination.
For anyone entertaining the idea of renting an electric car in Italy I would urge you to think twice and probably not do it. I'm sorry to say the infrastructure simply isn't there to support it sufficiently at the moment and this isn't for tourists alone. At the charging point in Lecce for example, a local lady had to abandon the idea of recharging her car as the charging point simply didn't work. She'd bought herself an expensive car and explained to us how much she regretted it with all the problems it caused.
I hope to come back and rewrite this conclusion in years to come with a more positive outlook but for now, I feel the infrastructure and general knowledge of people working in the industry has to improve dramatically.
For anyone entertaining the idea of renting an electric car in Italy I would urge you to think twice and probably not do it. I'm sorry to say the infrastructure simply isn't there to support it sufficiently at the moment and this isn't for tourists alone. At the charging point in Lecce for example, a local lady had to abandon the idea of recharging her car as the charging point simply didn't work. She'd bought herself an expensive car and explained to us how much she regretted it with all the problems it caused.
I hope to come back and rewrite this conclusion in years to come with a more positive outlook but for now, I feel the infrastructure and general knowledge of people working in the industry has to improve dramatically.
