One of my first little EV adventures of 2025 with the TW560 was a quick day trip to the Black Forest. If you’ve ever spent winter (October to March) in the lower parts of Switzerland, you know the struggle—weeks of thick, soupy fog that just doesn’t go away. After five sunless weeks, your brain starts to feel like it’s running in low-power mode. Luckily, the Black Forest is just around the corner from me—well, 40 minutes away—and since it climbs up to 1600 meters, it guarantees me seeing some sun! Climbing out of the grey and into a clear, sunny […]
ODT: Escaping the rain – Engadin, here I come
A quick one-day trip (ODT) entry on my trip to Switzerland’s mountainous region to the east: Graubünden, with its famous valley and region, Engadin. Many a trip me and my TWIKE have undertaken during the last 18 years has at a point either crossed this valley or driven along it. It’s a region well worth visiting! Everyone in my family was busy an I didn’t feel like staying inside all day – every weather app I had was forecasting a full day of gray and rain around where I live. The forecast for Graubünden, however, was great. Lucky me a […]
ODT: Adding the Nufenen pass to TW560’s list
Picture this: Mid-June – a beautiful day with very clear skies: I get up early and see the alps beckoning in the distance. Swiss Meteo’s prediction of the day was spot-on and the reason why I had started a full-range ‘trip-mode’ charge for my TWIKE the evening before. With a full day at my disposal, the evening before, I had started wondering where to go and what to visit. I’ve traveled extensively across Switzerland and have been to more places than many Swiss, including many of Switzerland’s beautiful road passes. There aren’t many left TW560 hasn’t been! Whilst looking at […]
Two years in: Testing Dreifels 51Ah Pack Capacity
How time flies – it’s already been 2 years since I installed my 51Ah 17.7kWh LiNiCoAlO2-Cell-based battery pack. For better battery health and less ageing my daily charge is only to 3.8V cell charge, I never discharge below 3.3V and balance the cell packs from time to time. As my daily commute is only around 11% of the total pack capacity, I never see what the real capacity of the pack is and if it has lost any capacity. Using ‘Tesla-speak’ I drive in trip mode only 1-2 weeks total per year. And there, I never really drive the pack […]
ODT: Lake Lucerne – Ibergeregg, postcard-grade Switzerland
After my first drive across Switzerland after TW560’s rebuild following a the destruction of TW560 in an accident, a visit to the Gran Sasso and enjoying a weekend in the Graubünden Alps, it’s time to drive back home. This entry isn’t too much about TW560 and more about the stunning beauty of the country I live in. We start by crossing the Oberalppass for the third time in as many days. It’s another very nice day with a bonus of being one of these day that has extremely clear air, giving 200km+ visibility. Then, not using the motorway, I head […]
ODT – Visiting Sasso San Gottardo
Sleeping at 1600m is always relaxing – fresh air, cow bells in the distance and crickets all merge into the typical Swiss soundscape I find deeply relaxing. (Maybe the bottle or two of very drinkable Rhine valley reds we had the evening before also helped a little 😉 ) Today, whilst my daughter is competing in a Show Jumping competition, I, together with a fellow neo-Swiss, will be visiting one of Switzerland’s greatest wartime relics: the Gran Sasso fortified bunkers atop of the Gotthard pass. There is so much interesting to learn about how Switzerland prepared to defend against being […]
New Battery Pack: How far can I go on a charge?
Every time when changing something related to batteries, many other parameters potentially change at the same time: Chemistry, response to load, max/min voltages and discharge curves, etc. In a way, it feels like being a novice TWIKE pilot again – you really don’t know how your battery will react and – in consequence – how far your will be able to drive. Without a reliable total charge capacity figure, any subsequent computations are meaningless. I’m currently driving with the 29E-config I just left in-place since my 35E pack has at least 14% more capacity. It would, nevertheless, be interesting to […]
ODT: Vorarlberg & Lake Constance
Contrary to my prediction in my last post, we’ve been having extremely nice weather late into the year – a week-end of sun and acceptable temperatures for driving without the canopy was coming up. Claudia, a close friend and long-time reader of my blog, had asked me to join me on a trip for some time now: 1+1= another awesome one-day-trip with TW560. Since there are many places we could head to, I asked Claudia if she had any preference: Appenzell and the upper Rhine valley. (Good choice!) We agreed to meet early morning in Winterthur. This left me with […]
One-Day-Trip: Swiss Jura
One-day trips are one of the nicest forms of TWIKE travel. After our last trip together, visiting the Italian part of Switzerland – Nico and i had always been wanting to take TW560 on another spin somewhere nice, together. As always, life goes by really quickly and Nico’s high-powered career with lots of international travel and myself being also quite busy didn’t help either. Finally, In January 2015 we fixed a date for our second adventure after a 3 year break… in July 2015! Already with some ev-travel experience himself, I asked Nico in which general direction he wanted to […]
i3: one day with BMW’s ev-offering … & four swiss passes
not long ago, a petrol-head friend of mine converted from driving a 550hp bmw alpina to an i3. his first ever ev-drive was one i organized for him to participate at the world record attempt in zurich in 2013 where he was provided with a renault fluence z.e., an ev with one claim to fame: it was the first commercially available ev with a swappable battery that could be exchanged within a minute at designated drop stations. (…which never took off because the company behind this design feature went bankrupt. i wanted to visit their danish headquarters during my TDD2011 […]