jc and i quickly fall into our travelling routine – since tw231 belongs to jc, he gets to drive first 🙂

jean-claude settling into the routine!
jean-claude settling into the routine!

rather quickly after beginning TDE2012, we hit bad weather – heavy rain and wind. after some 20kms of this we decide to check switzerland’s weather radar system. according to the data presented there, we’re to expect bad weather throughout switzerland.

rain, rain, rain. no fun!
rain, rain, rain. no fun!

this makes us decide to temporarily abandon our quest to follow the blue theoretical line as closely as possible for the swiss part of the TDE2012. not much fun to sit in a TWIKE driving on very small roads whilst driving through the rain and possibly – because we’re driving up an down some mountains – through the clouds.

small swiss village en route
small swiss village en route
solar panel and battery for our mobile phones
solar panel and battery for our mobile phones

we arrive in berne and charge TW231 using a park & charge recharging point conveniently situated in the middle of the city. after a quick lunch (for me, i’m already getting ready for france, it was foie gras with some chutney…mmmm! soul food!)

tri-phase charging in berne!
tri-phase charging in berne!

coming back to the P&C charging station, we are surrounded by two different generations of ev’s: a mini-el one-seater and a brand-new tesla roadster. the tesla was sporting his own political ev-like message… check out the picture below! 🙂

like the political messaging (see plate frame!, click pic!)
like the political messaging (see plate frame!, click pic!)

during the first leg i noticed that unlike tw560’s computer, tw231’s computer was not showing plausible energy consumption and depth of discharge. after checking the config data, it was clear why the controller was displaying inpluasible data: some of the values were from a nicd config.

i got in touch with peter zeller who programmed the controller software and he then sent me a lenghty email explaining all the values and added: every twike is different. you will need to tweak the settings to get the best results. (lucky us, that we have many, many full cycles ahead of us during the next few days…)

from berne we drove along some less interesting  roads until we got to lake geneva where, obviously, things got more interesting 🙂

with a quick 3-phase recharge in nyon at the local P&C, we head to geneva. en route we see 2 renault zwizzy ev’s and when we arrived in geneva city, not only did we hit heavy traffic, but also saw a fisker carma hybrid. a stunningly beautiful car.

Fisker karma, one really good looking car!
Fisker karma, one really good looking car!

after Geneva, weather cleared up as we crossed into france and drove up and down some rolling hills until we arrived in aix-les-bains around sundown.

the bridge to aix-les-bains
the bridge to aix-les-bains
that's many kms for one twike-day!
that’s many kms for one twike-day!

we are hoping that weather will be better tomorrow, since we will start following our red “pre-planned-we-stay-as-close-as-we-can-to-the-blue-theoretical-route”-line

after changing some of the parameters, we eat some cheese and drink some wine before heading to bed tired, but looking forward to next day’s driving.

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