The primary concern - and this is, of course, arguable - surrounding the serious consideration prior to purchasing a fully electric car is: range. Exactly how far can it reliably take you before requiring another charge. The measuring contest around acceleration really is reaching silly heights at this point, and is very much inconsequential in the real world.
The second largest concern: Will I be near a charging station when it does eventually deplete its charge?
Back in June, we reported on a pair of Tesla owners and enthusiasts in Belgium who spent an agonising 15 minutes shy of 24 hours in a Model S P100D, carefully stretching the car’s battery reserves to have driven a claimed 901.2km on a single charge. It was quite a feat.
As August is upon us, some similarly motivated folk in Italy, members of the Tesla Owners Club Italia, have claimed to have eked out an astonishing 1,078km from their own Model S 100D. If proven, it marks the first time a production EV has been driven continuously over 1,000km.
Our guess is that the town of Salerno in southern Italy, south of Naples, which is where the run was conducted, is at least a little bit warmer than the suburbs of Antwerp where the previous record run was set, so the the 29 hours those Club members took to set that new milestone must have been even more maddening. But maybe not.
Curiously, the Italians took a different approach. According to a statement uploaded to their website, the car travelled at an average speed of 40km/h, with multiple (5) drivers taking turns to drive the Model S in shifts while a team monitored the car’s progress. According to their own account, the semiautonomous driving systems helped them keep a consistent pace and remain locked in the middle of the lane.
This is in contrast to the Belgian duo which, to save every microwatt of electricity, seemingly turned off every electronic aid and system they could access without impacting the car’s motive operations.
"To complete the 1078 km record distance, we used 98.4 kW/h of electricity, which are equivalent to 8 litres of gas- 3,78 gallons," explains Tesla Owners Club Italia President Luca Del Bo. “This has been possible thanks to the very high output of the electric [motor] that transforms in motion the 95% of the energy. Just consider that the most efficient combustion engines today do not exceed 30% efficiency."
For more on Tesla cars, check out our Showroom.
