EV Charging And a Film in Balexert

Someone suggested going to see Sinners last night so I went with the EV. I plugged the car in, started the charge and went up to the cinema. I went to see Sinners for the main reason that I haven’t seen an imax film in a long time. I haven’t seen a film at the cinema in a long time. Having said this I was at film screenings several times a week ago.

Balexert has really changed since the last time I was there. It has changed so much that I got lost for a few minutes as I tried to find my bearings.

It’s impressive to see car charging at Balexert. There are 10-20 car charging parking spaces side by side. This means that 20 cars, per floor can charge at a time. I couldn’t find car chargers on the ground floor so I went to P1 and did find them. I had looked for them in the car but gave up.

I parked the car, and then went for a walk through the parking and eventually found the charging points. These are SIG (Service Industriel de Genève) charging points. You need to have your charging cable with you to charge. In my case I used the TCS e-charge card. It worked flawlessly.

Sinners is an IMAX film where you often hear the sound of a harmonica being played. You never actually see the harmonica. The beauty of an IMAX film, in contrast to a TV series or classic film is that you can really look around the scene. You have cotton fields. You have the scene at the train station, where a steam train has arrived.

You also have a music scene where different time periods mix together while people are playing instruments and dancing.

You also have a long walking shot, from one store with one person, and back with another.

The film was good and I’m glad I went to see it.

When I headed home I went to pay my parking ticket but it was free. I then went to the car to unplug. The car had charged to 100 percent. The one shock or surprise was that it cost me 16.61 CHF for 27 kkWh. That’s about 63 centimes per kWh which is the expected cost per unit. If I did the same charge with M-charge I would expect it to be half that cost. I expected it to be about 8 CHF. At most I would expect 12-14 CHF.

I arrived extra early so that I had time to fiddle if something did not work as expected. The car was at 37 percent or so, so I overpaid with the charge. I also noticed that to get home took 10 percent of the battery’s capacity.

SIG does reward loyalty with preferential tariffs if you pay 39 CHF per year.

I thought that going to see a film would be the perfect thing to do while charging an EV but as last night’s experiment proved, it’s better to charge at the cheapest charging point and go for a run, hike or meal, rather than a film.

If I took the bus, train, and tram to and from the cinema it would cost me 15 CHF for one person, for one night out. Although 16CHF is 2-6CHF more than I expected it’s still cheaper. I can do this trip three to five times with an EV for the price of a single trip with public transport.

And Finally, although it is not a cheap option it is convenient to charge a car at Balexert while watching a film or doing something in Geneva. It worked perfectly. It is a good solution to know about.