Auto-Estradas do Atlântico

When booking the rental car through Avis, I opted for an electric Peugeot e-2008, which was upgraded to an equally electric Jeep Avenger when I picked it up at Lisbon Airport. With the exception of my Tesla adventures in California in 2023, this was the first time I had driven a fully electric vehicle for any real distance. Four hundred and ten kilometres later, I can sum up the experience.

First, I was struck by how difficult it still is to charge an electric vehicle in this day and age. It took four different apps before I finally found “myAtlante”, signed up for a virtual RFID card, and was able to start charging. Second, while perhaps no Tesla, I was nevertheless positively impressed by how briskly the car accelerated and how easy it was to handle on Portugal’s auto-estradas. Third, there are clearly chargers – and chargers. Using a residential charger in Nazaré, it took hours to add only a few dozen percentage points of range; by contrast, a stop at the fast charger next to Calatrava’s Oriente Station in Lisbon meant that a single latte at Starbucks was enough to bring the battery back to full.

All in all, I will definitely rent an electric vehicle again next time, now that I have figured out which apps actually accept Swedish addresses. Still, it is rather telling that only now, with the EU’s new Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation, is there a mandate that all future public EV chargers must accept something as simple as direct credit or debit card payments.