We’ll be picking up a rental car in Coimbra and traveling to Tomar, Nazare, Obidos, Evora and Lagos before returning at the Lisbon Airport. There were lots of electric options available at Europcar. Is the charging network in Portugal strong enough to recharge without too much hassle on a 10 day road trip or are these primarily for shorter rentals where you would not need to charge.
Thanks
Posted by
Tresana, Highlands Ranch, CO, USA
23968 posts
If you do not have ay experience with all electric vehicles, I would not rent one. There are apps that assist with finding charging stations, etc, but without any experience in Portugal I would stick to ICs.
Posted by
Mid-Atlantic area
8066 posts
Ditto what Frank said.
I don’t recall seeing any charging stations at any of the places I visited in 2023. None of our hotels had charging points. Not to say there weren’t some, but I don’t recall seeing any in Coimbra, Tomar, Nazaré, or Óbidos.
You’d be fine with a hybrid, but personally, I wouldn’t want an all electric car going places I’ve never been before.
Posted by
Calgary, AB, Canada
700 posts
This Blog by Cameron Hewitt is in Italy, but does highlight some of the challenges if you are not familiar with an EVhttps://blog.ricksteves.com/cameron/2022/11/ev-europe-road-trip
Posted by
199 posts
We had a horrible, stressful experience with a 100% EV in France in 2024 and I have vowed never again to rent a 100% EV when traveling in Europe. I don't really recall seeing charging stations when I travelled in Portugal (Lisbon, Porto, Madeira, and Azores is where I travelled). They may have been there but were so few it was not memorable.
In my experience even when you do find a charging station in Europe it was not as simple as just plugging in. We needed to have an account or membership to whatever charging company it was we were using. Something our French rental car company did not tell us about. We could not easily find charging stations where we could use our credit card to pay like you would at a gas station for example. It became incredibly stressful and we wasted a lot of valuable vacation time trying to find charging stations that we could use. Our GPS even had a option to locate charging stations......it ended up showing directing us to ones that were at private residences! I would expect the same or even less availability in Portugal. If you do rent an EV one tip is the Carrefour retail chain (grocery and other goods) is found in many European countries and we discovered they have charging stations that we could access with our credit card.