From Middelburg to Trondheim

To Hirtshals

Last Saturday we left at 08:00 from Middelburg for the 1.100km drive to Hirtshals, Denmark. From there we would take the ferry to Larvik, Norway on Sunday morning.

It took us 14 hours to reach Hirtshals. Traffic was bad, very bad starting at Hamburg towards the border. Roadworks and border controls made it stop and go over almost 100km!

A short night followed since our ferry left at 08:00.

Lier South SuperCharger

After arriving in Larvik our first SuperCharger in Norway was Lier South, 100km from Larvik.

It was busy! After we parked all 8 stalls are occupied. Other Model S had to wait in the queue.

A queue is bad, but it also shows that the infrastructure is used! It’s not a charger which is rarely used. From what I understood it was also a vacation period, so that might have caused the spike in traffic.

Lillehammer

After charging in Lier we headed to Lillehammer. We would stay the night there and charge again.

Fortum CHAdeMO

While heading to Lillehammer I stopped at a CHAdeMO from Fortum to see if I could charge there. The people from Fortum told me that I could use my Dutch phone and send a SMS to active it.

Well, that didn’t work. I borrowed a RFID tag from somebody else as a backup. On the Lofoten Islands I will need to use a Fortum charger, so I wanted to know if it worked. Lesson learned. It doesn’t.

Busy times at Lillehammer

On the E6 to Lillehammer we already spotted a lot of Model S coming from Lillehammer, so I expected the SuperCharger to be crowded.

It was! 9 of the 10 stalls we busy, so we parked at the last stall available.

As we were charging we saw more Model S arrive. We still had 100km left in the battery and we would leave the next morning. We vacated the stall and to decided to charge the next morning for the 155km drive to Dombas and Trondheim.

We checked in at the hotel and went for a dinner in Lillehammer.

SuperCharging with a cold battery

The next morning the car had been in -8C for the night. When I switched to ‘Drive’ a warning indicated that regenerative braking had been disabled. This was due to the battery being cold.

SuperCharging didn’t go very fast. When I just started it would charge with 17kW and slowly climbed to roughly 30kW before we had enough to leave for Dombas.

This was a similar experience as last year at the Krokom SuperCharger in -22C.

The picture below shows that we were charging with 24kW where under normal conditions it should have been about 80kW.

To Trondheim

From Lillehammer we drove to the Dombas SuperCharger. After a charge and lunch there we headed down to Klett (near Trondheim).

Nothing really special on this part of the trip. The temperature was about -5C and the (road) conditions were good.

To the Lofoten

Our destination is a house we rented through Airbnb on the Lofoten Islands.

From Trondheim we are taking the Hurtigruten ferry to Stamsund on the Lofoten. This will take 2 days.

From Stamsund to the house it is just 21km. Time to relax!

Energy Consumption

The tripmeter shows 1861km and a total usage of 391kWh. That’s 210Wh/km. Not bad at all!

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.

The most Northern SuperCharger on the planet

Setermoen

After staying the night in Narvik at the Scandic hotel we left for the most Northern SuperCharger on the planet. Setermoen to be exact.

In Narvik it was +2 Celcius and some wet snow was coming down. We figured we were in for a drive on slushy roads again. That was true for the first 30km, but suddenly we started climbing and it started snowing!

I also took a small video of the weather. It was fine to drive in, but as you can see, the roads are covered in snow and visibility sometimes wasn’t that good. Just use your common sense when driving in those conditions.

But finally, after 3346km using just Tesla SuperChargers we arrived in Setermoen!

All the way from the Netherlands we’ve driven to the most Northern SuperCharger! A hard thing to do? No, not at all. Just make sure you adapt to the Swedish and Norwegian conditions. Be prepared, that’s all.

Tromsø

Setermoen was however not our final destination! After charging in Setermoen for a while we continued up North towards Tromsø.

In Tromsø we met with a future Model S owner, Thilo Bubek. When he saw I was making this trip he contacted me so we could meet up. We did and obviously we talked a lot, I mean a lot, about Tesla.

We also came to Tromsø to watch the Aurora Borealis. It happens that Thilo has photography as a hobby and he knew the good places to watch the Aurora.

Aurora at Sommarøy

It took an hour to drive from Tromsø to Sommarøy. We had stood in the -4C with heavy winds for hours and hours, but we saw a beautiful Aurora display! Clear skies with half moon.

At 01:00 we figured it was time to go home, the display was over.

On the way back we made a quick picture of my Model S under the moonlight and a bit of Aurora:

The credits for these pictures go to Thilo Bubek. He’s a lot better in taking pictures then I am!

To Trondheim

Tonight we are taking the Hutigruten coastal ferry from Tromsø to Trondheim. From there we’ll continue our journey back home, using just the SuperChargers again!