Six months after we’d received our brand-new Fiat E-Ducato, it stopped moving. We initially hoped the problem would be easy to fix, but it turned out to be so complex that it ended up taking three months and three weeks to repair. This is the full story: from our electric van breaking down to the issues that were found, how we dealt with it all, and finally: the fix.

At the hight of the pandemic, when we felt the walls of our apartment closing in around us, we packed a tent for a camping micro adventure close to home in the Netherlands. We booked a stay in a local’s spacious backyard via Dutch start-up Campspace and experienced how easy it can be to switch off, as we spent an evening by a campfire sharing stories with a stranger.

We were among the first in the world to order the brand-new Fiat E-Ducato and unfortunately, we’ve had to deal with a fair few issues since it arrived. We’ve compiled the biggest setbacks we experienced in our first nine months of being electric van owners and the solutions we’ve found so far.