Even without air conditioning, I sleep well, with wonderfully fresh air flowing into the room throughout the night, presumably thanks to the short rain shower yesterday.
The day, however, does not start particularly well from a charging point of view: while I was already asleep, the TWIKE sent me a message: Charge interrupted, no electricity.
When I get to the TWIKE, I am greeted by the blue screen of the charging station telling me that the StopReason was a timer. The exact 9 kWh charge makes me suspect that the charging was both free and, somehow, limited. Assumptions, assumptions. Later today I will discover that the charging station was not actually the problem.
With more than 400 km to cover today, I will need to charge somewhere on the way, and preferably combine that with lunch.
With the battery half full, TW560 sets off into a rather cool and humid morning.
After a few kilometres, the road takes us back into increasingly hilly country … and brings something new with it: rain!
I snap the canopy back on just as the rain starts. Fortunately the air is cool, so I am not too hot inside the enclosed TWIKE.
The rain stops after about 15 minutes. A quick look at the weather radar shows that I have somehow managed to sit inside a small isolated patch of rain, with little more behind it. The rest of the day should be dry.
Off comes the canopy again as the sun burns away the last clouds. The temperature climbs quickly, with the humidity staying behind.
The first 200 km today are just lovely: no flat roads anymore, plenty of hills, good views and very little traffic. This is the sort of Slovak road that makes travelling slowly feel like the right way to go.
A little later the landscape starts to flatten out, and the continental summer heat becomes very noticeable again.
Which brings us to today’s regular feature: consumption of local energy drinks!
A few kilometres later we are down to around 7% charge. Since a small town happens to be on the route, I decide to stop for a late breakfast while charging.
Setting up the charge is becoming remarkably easy: plug the TWIKE into the DIY EV-Emulator, connect the charging station as if the TWIKE were a normal EV, tap the charging card, and bob’s your uncle!
And here we are again with the second recurring feature of this trip: trying completely undefined local bakery items!
While enjoying the bakery finds, I read the news and came across this item, which confirmed something I had already been thinking while sweating in the TWIKE this week.
My musing is cut short, though, when the TWIKE suddenly tells me that the charge has been interrupted again.
I head back to the charging station and, sure enough, the AC port is showing as unavailable.
No amount of resetting or restarting brings the AC port back.
So it is onwards to the next charging station, just 500 metres away in a parking garage. This turns out to be rather fortunate, as the temperature is now climbing past 35°C.
The new charging station starts charging without any trouble, and I am soon back at full speed.
I have another problem to think about, though. The canopy opening mechanism fails when I want to get out of the TWIKE at the second charging station.
At least I have all the tools I need to fix it with me.
My trusty repair box has gone through quite a few iterations over the years.
And then … the charge is interrupted again. I start suspecting a problem with the TWIKE’s inverter, perhaps some transient DC flowing back into the AC side of the charger or something else causing the RCD to trip.
I try restarting the charge a few times, only for it to stop again after a few minutes. I confirm that I can still charge the TWIKE using only the two additional chargers, giving me a minimum of 4.4 kW, which will take me to around 78% SOC.
Interestingly, the main inverter does not trip the RCD as long as I stay below 8 A. These are some of the pleasures of travelling in a 26-year-old vehicle with 26-year-old electronics. I will have to investigate this properly when I get home.
I decide not to fully charge the TWIKE, hoping I have enough energy for the rest of the trip and can finish charging at a lower rate tonight.
The temperature climbs above 40°C, making the driving difficult again. Everything in the TWIKE is hot to the touch, and the black parts are simply too hot to touch. Some electronics are reading above 60°C.
It turns out that I have been a little too optimistic about the consumption I can achieve for the rest of the trip, so I decide to top up at a charging station along the route. I was planning to combine the stop with 20 minutes in an air-conditioned shop, because I really need to cool down. That plan does not quite work out: the charger cuts out after five minutes.
I restart the charge without the TWIKE’s inverter connected and immediately see that the external chargers are struggling with the heat too. They initially deliver around 2 kW in total, less than half of what is possible, and then reduce the rate further. The “quick” charge is therefore getting longer, which I do not mind too much by this point as this time will be spent in an air-conditioned space and have spent another 15 minutes standing in the sun, leaning over a very hot TWIKE.
I only want to add another single kWh, so the charge is complete after about 30 minutes. I am back to something approaching normal temperature after staying inside the shop and ready for the final kilometres to Bratislava, which are, again, very flat and very hot.
Entering the city, I think back to the first time TW560 came to Bratislava: 16 years ago, only a few months after I had installed the new LiFePo4 battery pack. The city was known to earlier generations as Pressburg in German and Pozsony in Hungarian, a reminder of how many languages and histories meet here on the Danube.
I pick a nice hotel for the night with late check-out, protected parking and free charging. Tomorrow’s stage will be very short, so I would like to keep a little time for Bratislava itself.
Arriving at the hotel, I set up the charge quickly … only for the inverter to cut out immediately, putting an end to my plans for a nice, long, low-current charge overnight.
I let the additional chargers do the work and hope that the problems with the main inverter will ease once the temperatures drop later this evening.
Then I spend some time in my rather nice hotel room, shower, cool down, and eventually head out for a stroll around town.
It has been 16 years since my last visit. The old town has long been a tourist attraction, helped by Bratislava’s easy connection to Vienna by road and river, but this time I notice how much more has been done. Everything feels clean, maintained and cared for, with the older centre sitting alongside a much more modern city.
I have a few drinks and snacks at a nice little bar, followed by some genuinely tasty local food.
Before heading back to my room, I make another trip to the TWIKE to see how the charging is getting on.
The additional chargers have finished charging.
There are still around 6 kWh missing, and since I will leave at about 12:30 tomorrow I have roughly 15 hours and 30 minutes left. A quick calculation gives the ideal charge rate: 6000 Wh divided by 15.5 hours is about 387 W. At 220 V that is 1.75 A. I set the TWIKE’s internal inverter to 2 A and wait for a good quarter of an hour to make sure the RCD is happy. It seems to be.
Let’s have a look at today’s stats.
