The Good, the Unhealthy, the Ugly in a Cross-European Tesla Journey

By Last updated Jul 21, 2024

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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 automobiles, a fuel 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 possibility, however then received somewhat ashamed of burning fossil fuels in opposition to every little thing I consider in. I all of the sudden remembered assembly a well-known CleanTechnica journalist and EV fanatic (whose identify shall stay a thriller) a couple of years in the past whereas he was travelling throughout Europe along with his spouse. I remembered asking him what automobile 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 possibility. 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 obtainable. Here’s a quick overview of our itinerary with some hints and suggestions:

TARNÓW (Poland) — dwelling
KATOWICE (Poland) — first charging session of many to come back
CERN (Switzerland) — Giant 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 best
LISBON (Portugal) — yellow trams and a divine New 12 months’s Eve
BEAUNE (France) — meat and crimson 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) — dwelling candy dwelling

The Good

The nice appears apparent. Tesla Superchargers are merely the very best, with their Plug&Cost system making your charging expertise as easy as attainable. The automobile tells me the place to cost, whether or not there can be found chargers, and if not, the place to go subsequent. You’ll be able to’t ask for extra. Nicely, really, you possibly can. I hoped to see charging hubs surrounded with eating places, retailers, and resorts. I received that, too. Appears to be like 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 considering I’m getting paid to write down it, but it surely’s easy information. Nothing will get cheaper at this price of quick charging. Regardless of whether or not you cost in wealthy Norway, aspiring Poland, or usually rich Germany, you pay the identical respectable cost per kWh. I liked it. And so did my spouse.

One other good expertise is a rising variety of resort charging choices. Utilizing a preferred reserving portal, we might filter the seek for EV charging and ensure we had been secured. To be absolutely trustworthy, although, I need to admit we referred to as the resort every time to confirm what they meant by EV charging, whether or not the charging level might be reserved, and so on. There are nonetheless some misunderstandings on what a charging level is. Anyway, the intense facet is you usually pay moderately for charging. For instance, €15 for 60kWh and parking was the very best we received. In San Sebastian, we paid twice as a lot however received a pleasant valet service driving the automobile to the charger and again. Essentially the most we paid for in a single day charging was €40 in a resort in Prague, mounted price. I’m nonetheless shocked there are such a lot of resorts, even giant 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, ensure you complain, politely, in each resort with out charging choices. It’ll do the trick.

A shocking good thing about driving an electrical automobile on such a protracted journey is what many individuals identify as an obstacle — that’s extra frequent breaks than are mandatory in an ICE automobile. 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 in fact), 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 at all times excessive and on the sting. Driving electrical, the tempo is extra affordable and I used to be much less drained general. Generally, the charging was really 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 automobile 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 reasonably 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 are not any pace limits. It was irresistible and I do know you all would have achieved 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 automobiles, principally combustion engine automobiles. 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 couple of occasions extra power than me driving the identical pace.

The Unhealthy

Charging roaming nonetheless sucks. So simple as that. It might 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 manner and failed each occasions. The easy truth is the European roaming both doesn’t work or the UX is disastrous. I’ve learn quite a few EV highway 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 assume what it should have been like earlier than the advance, then! Name me spoilt, however I merely don’t settle for all of the app installations mandatory to start out charging, or blocking giant quantities in your card to start out charging, or another foolish hiccups like charging not initiating except your automobile doorways are closed (Ionity invention!). That is all dangerous and wishes to vary.

Because the journey was going down 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 consider they labored so badly beneath any fashionable customary. I googled the problem and rapidly learnt the drama round it. I suppose it’s certainly one of Elon’s jokes on customers, as he’s able to launching area rockets, designing autonomous driving techniques, and screwing up Twitter for enjoyable, so his staff should have the ability to repair such a secular concern as wipers, proper? It should be a joke, then. Thanks, Elon Musk. Oh, what enjoyable we had and nonetheless have.

One other concern is defrosting. I like the perform, in fact. 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 couple of events fearing it could result in cracks or chipping on the physique of the automobile. In comparison with the bloody wipers, it’s nonetheless a small factor, but it surely did trigger some dissatisfaction.

Lastly, the multi-destination possibility 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 primary purpose we did the journey to Nazare by automobile, not by airplane), 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 have in mind in a single day charging in your itinerary. Perhaps at some point….

The Ugly

Our windscreen window received damaged as we received hit with a stone on the Bordeaux ring highway in France. Contemplating the variety of miles we did, it’s statistically attainable, however why us! And even twice, as we received hit with two stones in two totally 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 fundamental 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 associated fee financial savings of as much as 60% ought to fulfill even the largest oil lover. You might not consider in local weather change, international warming, anthropogenic influence on the world’s CO2 ranges, or the spherical form of the Earth, however you will need to consider in greenback worth. Get monetary savings, go electrical.

By Maciej Cichocki