From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin on 1. February 2023

Electric cars still falling short on long-haul trips…”you need to plan lots of extra time”…”an absolute no go”

What follows is a written personal experience on a trip using an electric car.  German Anton B. reports on his journey in a Tesla rental car, where he travelled from Hanover, Germany, to the 2023 World Handball Championship in Poland last month.

Image cropped from Tesla website

His conclusion: “Never again electric car!”

“His assessment is devastating,” reports the online Berliner Zeitung (BZ) here.

According to Anton B., the trip of course had to be planned differently due to the limited charging possibilities. Recharging and refueling are things that normal internal combustion engine car drivers never need to worry about.

Depending on the model, Tesla cars are claimed to be able to travel 500 km or more on a single charge, thus theoretically the 800-kilometer trip to Poland should be possible with just one single charging stop halfway. But that would not be the case, as Anton B. (28) describes in the BZ.

Already after just 250 kilometers, the car had lost 90% of its charge, forcing a 50-minute long recharging between Magdeburg and Leipzig. The second recharging was needed in Dresden, where the charging time was “much longer”.

“In the end, we were on the road for almost eleven hours, and we spent almost two and a half of them just charging. We missed the 3:30 p.m. match,” With the combustion engine, we would certainly have made the trip in eight and a half hours with a short break,” Anton B. reports in the BZ.

Anton B. also describes the hassles of not being able to charge at the Tesla stations and having to charge at general ones, “which cost money and more time.” There it took the battery over an hour and a half to charge. According to Anton B., you need to plan lots of extra time when travelling long distances.

He also described Tesla’s assistance systems as “undeveloped” and whích caused the vehicle ” to automatically brake on the highway even though no other car was visible ahead”.

No heat

But things got even worse on the trip back to Hannover: “We had to make three big stops to charge for an hour and a half each time at a non-Tesla station.” Next the heating stopped working – “not a nice experience at -2 degrees”.

Anton B. concludes that a Tesla is not at all suited for long trips, rather it is only practical for short distances around the city, where there are enough charging points.

“For longer distances, especially in winter, an e-car is an absolute no-go for me as of now,” he reports in the BZ. “Such a vehicle cannot keep up at all with diesel or normal gasoline engines.”

Makes no sense

Anton B. also noted that the energy for the Tesla was twice as expensive as the fuel for a conventional gasoline car. “These conditions mean that it makes no sense at all for me to drive such a vehicle; instead, I will rely on internal combustion engines for as long as it is possible.”

Read entire article here at the BZ.