Fully electric to Norway, again!

Last Year

In the beginning of 2015 I drove a 5.500km trip with my father to the most Northern Tesla Motors SuperCharger. For a few reasons:

To see the Aurora Borealis
To prove it can be done with an electric car
Because I like roadtrips and travelling

This winter I’m going it again!

My Model S

I have a ‘classic’ Model S from September 2013. No Auto-Pilot features or All-Wheel drive. It’s a 85kWh RWD model.

The ODO currently displays 110.000km and when we get back it won’t be long before I hit the 120.000km.

Still enjoying this car every time I drive it.

Lofoten

My girlfriend also wants to go to Norway to see the Aurora Borealis. She heard me telling her all the stories for over a year about how great it was and how much I like Norway.

So I said: “Why don’t we go there?”

This year the destination will be the Lofoten Islands. From what I’ve seen and heard it is about the best place to watch the Aurora Borealis!

Route to Lofoten

Our route will take us from Middelburg (Netherlands) to Hirtshals (Denmark) where we take the ferry towards Larvik (Norway). Following the Tesla SuperChargers we will drive to Bodø from where we take the ferry to the Lofoten Islands.

On the Lofoten there are no Tesla SuperChargers, so I’ll be using the CHAdeMO chargers using the CHAdeMO adapter to charge my Model S there.

I found these CHAdeMO chargers on elbil.no’s Hurtigladekartet and on uppladdning.nu.

Route back home

We’ll drive back through Sweden where I want to take Fiskevägen again. What a beautiful route!

The total route should be about 6.000km

Preparations

Since I did almost all the preparing last year already I still have about everything I need.

Making sure we have enough water, food, heat and proper winter gear with us. We should be fine!

To Norway and back using just Tesla SuperChargers

I had never seen the Aurora Borealis and with the growing SuperCharger network of Tesla Motors I’ve driven my Tesla Model S from the Netherlands to the North of Norway using just SuperChargers.

A 5412km roadtrip going through Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway using just the Tesla Motors SuperCharger network.

An amazing trip through snow, ice, rain and -22 Celcius. Driven 100% electric and without a single problem.

I’ve written multiple blogposts about my trip:

Energy Consumption

Everybody always talks about how much more EVs start consuming in the cold. To see if this was true I kept a detailed triplog of every leg of the journey.

The sheet is on Google Docs and shows that over 5412km I used 1197kWh of energy. That comes down to 221Wh/km or 22kWh/100km.

That is 10% more then the ‘Typical Range’ (Tesla terminology) the car tells me.

From Tromsø to Trondheim

Power failure

On Thursday we charged my Model S again at Jekta Shoppingcenter since we were taking the Hurtigruten ferry that night to Trondheim and I wanted the battery to be full.

The battery was charged around 14:30, so we headed towards the polar museum in downtown Tromsø.

After driving just 500 meters the city got dark. All lights went out, power failure!

Lucky me that we just finished charging. It took over 2 hours before the power came back. So no Polar Museum since that was closed. We sat in the car for 2 hours since there was nothing to do and it was very cold and windy outside.

Hurtigruten

Since this is also a vacation for us we figured it was nice to take the Hurtigruten ferry from Tromsø to Trondheim. A 2-day and 3 nights trip which takes you through the Fjords here in Norway.

After driving on to the ship the Hurtigruten employee asked for the key of the car. He explained that they need to move the cars as people come on and go off.

I gave him the key and just as we were about to go up, he asked: How does this car work?

He had never driven a Model S before. I gave him a brief walkthrough in 2 minutes, explaining that it’s simply a automatic. D, R and P, that’s all. I didn’t look and him parking the car. Thought it was best to just trust the guy.

After sailing for a day I checked on my phone (WiFi on board) to see how my car was doing. The battery was still at 312km, but it said the car was parked on the dock in Tromsø!

Did they drive the car off again to make some room and forgot to drive it on again? For some peace of mind I wanted to know if it was on the ship. The nice lady at the reception asked the car deck if they could check if a white Tesla was onboard. It was.

Trondheim

Early Sunday morning we arrived in Trondheim at 06:30. Our next destination was Lillehammer, but to get there we had to use the Dombås SuperCharger. 200km from Trondheim. Although the battery was still full enough (290km) I wanted to have some reserve.

The SuperCharger near Trondheim (Klett) was still about a week away from being finished, so that was no option. I called the Tesla Service Center in Trondheim in advance since I heard that they had 22kW charging available. A quick phone call told me that they had 4 22kW chargers available outside the gate. They were accessible 24/7.

After the charge it was time to head to the Dombås SuperCharger!