The Good, the Bad, the Ugly in a Cross-European Tesla Trip

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The plan was easy — embark on a wild journey travelling 4,500 miles throughout Europe to achieve Nazare in Portugal. As we’ve got two vehicles, a gasoline SUV and a Tesla Mannequin 3 Efficiency, my spouse’s alternative was to go within the SUV — secure, comfy, and “good vary.” I used to be additionally leaning in the direction of that secure choice, however then obtained just a little ashamed of burning fossil fuels in opposition to every part I imagine in. I all of a sudden remembered assembly a well-known CleanTechnica journalist and EV fanatic (whose identify shall stay a thriller) a number of years in the past whereas he was travelling throughout Europe together with his spouse. I remembered asking him what automotive he was driving and I remembered his utter embarrassment when he confessed he was travelling in an ICEV. I wasn’t in for such a humiliation. All I needed to do was persuade my spouse the Tesla was our greatest choice. I succeeded. It wasn’t straightforward, although.

To make issues extra attention-grabbing, I made a decision to make use of solely Tesla Superchargers and resort chargers in a single day if accessible. Here’s a quick overview of our itinerary with some hints and proposals:

TARNÓW (Poland) — house
KATOWICE (Poland) — first charging session of many to come back
CERN (Switzerland) — Massive Hadron Collider
SAD HILL (Spain) — movie set
SAN SEBASTIAN / MUGARITZ (Spain) — unbelievable delicacies
PORTO (Portugal) — enterprise assembly, wine, and oyster museum
NAZARE (Portugal) — the place the waves are the very best
LISBON (Portugal) — yellow trams and a divine New 12 months’s Eve
BEAUNE (France) — meat and purple wine
WEUNHEIM (France) — Alsatia at its finest and white wine
Stuttgart (Germany) — Porsche muzeum
NUREMBERG (Germany) — human rights declaration, A. Durer
PRAGA (Czechia) — beer and a Columbian film star
TARNÓW (Poland) — house candy house

The Good

The great appears apparent. Tesla Superchargers are merely the very best, with their Plug&Cost system making your charging expertise as easy as potential. The automotive tells me the place to cost, whether or not there can be found chargers, and if not, the place to go subsequent. You may’t ask for extra. Nicely, truly, you’ll be able to. I hoped to see charging hubs surrounded with eating places, outlets, and motels. I obtained that, too. Seems to be just like the path of rising the infrastructure has been set for good and I prefer it.

After I add the pricing for Tesla Superchargers, you’ll begin pondering I’m getting paid to write down it, but it surely’s easy details. Nothing will get cheaper at this fee of quick charging. Irrespective of whether or not you cost in wealthy Norway, aspiring Poland, or commonly rich Germany, you pay the identical respectable cost per kWh. I beloved it. And so did my spouse.

One other good expertise is a rising variety of resort charging choices. Utilizing a well-liked reserving portal, we might filter the seek for EV charging and ensure we had been secured. To be totally sincere, although, I have to admit we referred to as the resort every time to confirm what they meant by EV charging, whether or not the charging level may very well be reserved, and so forth. There are nonetheless some misunderstandings on what a charging level is. Anyway, the brilliant aspect is you usually pay fairly for charging. For instance, €15 for 60kWh and parking was the very best we obtained. In San Sebastian, we paid twice as a lot however obtained a pleasant valet service driving the automotive to the charger and again. Probably the most we paid for in a single day charging was €40 in a resort in Prague, fastened fee. I’m nonetheless shocked there are such a lot of motels, even massive ones, with none charging choices. It’s like not having wifi service — unacceptable. Contemplating the size of the funding in a easy wallbox(es), there appears to be no excuse. As EV customers, be sure you complain, politely, in every resort with out charging choices. It’ll do the trick.

A stunning good thing about driving an electrical automotive on such a protracted journey is what many individuals identify as a drawback — that’s extra frequent breaks than are needed in an ICE car. The longest we drove on a single day was 960 km (600 miles). It took us 12 hours and included 4 breaks to relaxation and eat (and cost after all), two jams on motorways, and a go to to a pharmacy. I’ve pushed longer distances in a single go in my life, however I do know that was all the time excessive and on the sting. Driving electrical, the tempo is extra affordable and I used to be much less drained total. Generally, the charging was truly too quick, as we would have liked extra time to get pleasure from our meal in a restaurant and I needed to go and re-park the automotive to keep away from blocking the charging stand. All in all, whether or not it’s a matter of age or smarter perspective, taking a bit longer to drive was extra of an added worth fairly than a burden. [Editor’s note: I had the same sort of experience and feeling when I drove a Tesla Model S from Poland to Paris, France, with a friend several years ago. —Zach Shahan]

My responsible pleasure to conclude the nice a part of the story was testing my Tesla on the sections of the German motorway the place there aren’t any velocity limits. It was irresistible and I do know you all would have carried out the identical. There was a stretch of about 100 km (60 miles) the place I drove as much as 220 km/h (136 m/h) along with another vehicles, principally combustion engine autos. As a lot because it was enjoyable to see how clean Tesla was accelerating to greater than 200km/h, watching the power consumption rocket to 295 Wh/km helped me get my ft on the bottom. The one comfort was figuring out the combustion counterparts consumed a number of instances extra power than me driving the identical velocity.

The Dangerous

Charging roaming nonetheless sucks. So simple as that. It may very well be the truth that I used to be spoilt with Superchargers’ ease of use, as talked about above, however out of curiosity, I attempted two different chargers on our means and failed each instances. The easy truth is the European roaming both doesn’t work or the UX is disastrous. I’ve learn quite a few EV street journey accounts by CleanTechnica, particularly the European journeys by WysokieNapiecie.pl journalists (see right here and right here and right here, for instance) and bear in mind them reporting enhancements in roaming throughout Europe. I shudder to suppose what it should have been like earlier than the development, then! Name me spoilt, however I merely don’t settle for all of the app installations needed to start out charging, or blocking massive quantities in your card to start out charging, or another foolish hiccups like charging not initiating until your automotive doorways are closed (Ionity invention!). That is all dangerous and wishes to vary.

Because the journey was happening within the chilly season in Europe, we found some poor Tesla options, too. I might rage on and on about auto windscreen wipers. I really thought I’d tousled with the settings myself as I couldn’t imagine they labored so badly under any fashionable normal. I googled the problem and shortly learnt the drama round it. I suppose it’s one among Elon’s jokes on customers, as he’s able to launching house rockets, designing autonomous driving programs, and screwing up Twitter for enjoyable, so his group should be capable to repair such an earthly situation as wipers, proper? It have to be a joke, then. Thanks, Elon Musk. Oh, what enjoyable we had and nonetheless have.

One other situation is defrosting. I really like the operate, after all. The difficulty is that melted snow/ice trickles down into door and knob areas from the roof and home windows and freezes once more there. We struggled to open the doorways on a number of events fearing it might result in cracks or chipping on the physique of the automotive. In comparison with the bloody wipers, it’s nonetheless a small factor, but it surely did trigger some dissatisfaction.

Lastly, the multi-destination choice within the nav system might work higher. As we had been planning the journey with a number of stops at locations of curiosity (which was the principle motive we did the journey to Nazare by automotive, not by aircraft), our drive plan was full of stops and nights in lots of locations. The nav system doesn’t appear to acknowledge a vacation spot charging occasion even when it comes from Tesla. Once more, it seems like a simple enchancment that after you add a resort with Tesla vacation spot charging, it ought to take into consideration in a single day charging in your itinerary. Possibly at some point….

The Ugly

Our windscreen window obtained damaged as we obtained hit with a stone on the Bordeaux ring street in France. Contemplating the variety of miles we did, it’s statistically potential, however why us! And even twice, as we obtained hit with two stones in two completely different locations, but the latter one proved lethal to the window. That was the ugly a part of our journey throughout Europe. All the remainder was pure pleasure.

Right here come some primary statistics from an exterior app we used for monitoring our drive:

Lowest consumption: 164 Wh/km, equal of 1.8l/100 km (mixture of freeway and nation roads in Spain)
Highest consumption: 295 Wh/km, equal of three.3l/100 km (German freeway, responsible pleasure)
Common consumption: 189 Wh/km equal of two.1l/100 km (the entire journey of 4500 miles)
Charging time instance: half-hour, 10% to 77% of battery, common 112 kW, max 231 kW, 55 kWh added, 19.8 euros (0.36 euros/kWh)
Longest day drive: 960 km, 12h 20min, together with 4 Supercharging breaks of 2h 34min in complete.

I’m actually glad I managed to persuade myself and my spouse to go electrical on this epic journey. If nothing else, the fee financial savings of as much as 60% ought to fulfill even the most important oil lover. Chances are you’ll not imagine in local weather change, world warming, anthropogenic impression on the world’s CO2 ranges, or the spherical form of the Earth, however you need to imagine in greenback worth. Get monetary savings, go electrical.

By Maciej Cichocki