Finally, with a delay of about 36 hours, I reached the port of Tanger at 6:30 in the morning.
The customs clearance at Tanger Med can take between 30 minutes and 8 hours. You never know what will happen. After all this chaos on the ship and the huge delay, I wasn’t keen at all to wait another 8 hours at customs. Luckily, this time it was extremely fast. In less than 30 minutes, I was through customs. They didn’t even look in my car. I quickly changed some money at the port and said goodbye to my new friends from the ferry and hit the road.
My first charging stop was at the Total Energies station near Larache. It’s a 50 kW DC charger which could be activated without any app. Total chargers in Morocco sometimes need a specific app for activation, sometimes they work immediately without any activation, and sometimes they don’t work at all.
At first, my car was only charging at 10 kW. The reason was that another car was connected to the AC outlet. As soon as the other car left I got the full 50 kW.
Just as I had finished charging, my travel companion, Hans, arrived with his Tesla Model X.
Our next stop was a 150 kW DC charger from Kilowatt in Rabat.
There, we also met Ayoub, an electrical engineer from Morocco, who is also an extremely nice guy. We already knew him from our Rive Maroc adventure in 2024. He will accompany our Dakar expedition and help us to set up the charging infrastructure along the way.
Ayoub gave us some charging equipment to transport to Agadir, where he will later pick it up with his car.
Hans had some problems charging his Tesla at the Kilowatt charger. Ayoub immediately started looking for a solution.
In the end, it was not the charger but the car. The fridge and/or some other components had lowered the 12v battery in the Tesla too much, which led to the charging problem. After boosting the 12V battery, everything was back to normal.
At the charger, we also met Tim by chance, a traveler from the Netherlands with an ID.Buzz. He was already on his way back home. We had a quick chat and exchanged some information.
Next to the charger, there were also a couple of Renault Twizy, used as food delivery vehicles.
We said goodbye to Ayoub and continued to Marrakech. Hans decided to charge at the Tesla Super Charger in Rabat, while I used the 150 kW DC charger from Kilowatt in Bouskoura.
We met again at the Le Relais du Marrakech campground. I arrived there just after sunset.
It’s a beautiful campground, full of overlanders. I have been to this place in 2024 and thoroughly enjoyed my stay there.
Sadly, this time it was much more crowded. It’s clearly high season now.
Nevertheless, we had a calm night and left the place shortly after sunrise. Our next destination was Agadir.
My first charging stop on that day was at the Fast Volt charger at the Targa Afriquia station. It’s a 50 kW DC charger and worked very well. You need the Fast Volt app to activate it. It’s best to first activate the charger and then plug it in the car, and not vice versa.
Since there is only one DC charger, we decided to split up again to not lose too much time. Hans charged at another Fast Volt charger north of Marrakech, and we met again at the Targa station.
Since the next charger between Marrakech and Agadir at the Chichaoua (Total Energies) is currently out of order, we charged both cars to 90% to safely reach Agadir.
Hans had installed a Starklink in his Tesla, which works very well. When we were driving close to each other, I could also use his Starlink from my car without any problems. Nice!
In the afternoon, we reached the Atlas Kasbah Ecolodge near Agadir, where we had planned to spend the next night.
It’s a beautiful place and can be highly recommended.
At the Atlas Kasbah, there are two options to charge an electric car. Directly at the entrance is a single-phase wall plug with 13A. That’s where I plugged my car using my Juice Booster.
At the lower parking lot is a 3-phase 16A CEE connector, which was used by Hans, using his NRG Kick.
In the late evening, we exchanged the charging spots to have both cars fully charged the next morning.
Later, we met with Silvia (see last post) at the Atlas Kasbah and discussed some details of the expedition with her. Some sections in the Western Sahara will be quite challenging regarding charging infrastructure. Let’s see if we will manage to get 4 cars through this section in a reasonable amount of time.
EV Overlanding 